The Instructed Beginner in Chemistry: A Hermetic Epistle

Therefore, from this same substance, we first extract the mercurial mercury-like, fiery, and volatile spiritum spirit, in a sufficient and living quantity. This is one of our mercuries philosophical quicksilvers, and it is our natural fire, which Basilio Basil Valentine, a legendary alchemist called "all in all." Secondly, after the putrefaction of our wine, which has been made into a vinegar acidic solvent through our art, we bring forth the spirit of our very sharp vinegar. This is our other mercury, a dissolving menstruum solvent, and it is called a "fire against nature" because it dissolves the body and turns it into oil. Thirdly, we obtain the fixed, bitter, alkaline salt, which is white on the outside but red on the inside. Although we extract it in small quantities from the tartaro tartar or stony crust of our wine, it is nonetheless of great power, as Lullius Ramon Lull demonstrates in The Power of Riches original: "Potest. Divitiarum" chapter 8, regarding its small quantity and aforementioned virtue. Thus we have a spirit and a body, and consequently the soul, because this salt contains that same soul hidden in its center. And these two pieces are the proximate matter catchword: matter

of the stone, namely the male and the female, the active and the passive, the sun and the moon, the heaven and the earth, the sulfur and mercury, the volatile and the fixed, the water and the earth, Gabritius and Beja alchemical personifications of the solar/sulfuric and lunar/mercurial principles, the matter and the form, and so on.

When these have been previously cleansed of superfluities, philosophically prepared, and reunited, our stone is prepared without any other means, with no addition and no reduction of the pure middle substance. The exception is that, after the final boiling or solidification, we unite or specify it with common gold at the end, as mentioned above. Initially, we dissolve the salt with our vinegar. This vinegar comes from the same chaos primal unformed state or second matter, and gold is also of its nature, because gold was birthed by nature with this salt and spirit. Therefore, the salt or the fixed body and the volatile spirit are called Re-bis double-thing by the philosophers. Regarding this, Richardus Anglicus Richard the Englishman says in his Correction original: "Correct." chapter