The Instructed Beginner in Chemistry: A Hermetic Epistle

and afterward, new waterings are repeated with the other spiritu volatili volatile spirit, along with evaporations. These are not eight-day cycles but three-day cycles, repeated until the laton unrefined matter is made white, as we said above. Then this laton or body, or the foliated earth, is separated from the soul and floats above the dissolved soul, as Your Excellency will find such testimonies everywhere, although not so well explained. Especially in Avicenna Ibn Sina chapter 5, where he says: pour the water in mass upon the earth; or in the Treasury of Treasuries original: "Thes. Thesaurorum" by Arnoldus de Villa Nova chapter 15; in the treatise The Glory of the World original: "Gloria mundi"; or in the book Methodical Explanation of the Three Medicines of Geber original: "Enarrat. methodicæ trium Gebri medicinarum"; in the treatise of Aristotle, and so on.

Therefore the Sages say that the beginning of this work is to dissolve the stone, namely the salt, into the first matter, as Avicenna, Lullius, and others report. See also Richard the Englishman original: "Richardum Anglicum" in his Correctorium chapter 18. This complete dissolution cannot happen without our vinegar, therefore it is called the first water, so that it can then be united with the volatile spirit or

second water; otherwise it would be impossible. Therefore one reads in the Assembly of the Philosophers original: "Turba philosophorum" from Socrates, discourse 16: first grind it with the sharpest vinegar, and boil it until it becomes thick, but take care that the vinegar is not turned into smoke. For this reason, the Sages command that it be boiled slowly, week by week, as we said above. After the waterings, in a glass vessel or preparation dish covered with blotting paper, or with a distillation head placed over it, we evaporate only the excess moisture with slow distillation in the ash fire. This is so that the subtler part of the spirit of vinegar does not vanish in the smoke along with the phlegmate watery waste, but only the watery part flies away in the smoke, and the more spiritual part is made solid in the body. Socrates confirms these teachings in the cited place when he repeats: grind it with the sharpest vinegar, and boil it for seven days, and guard yourself so that the secret does not fly away. This technique, where one dissolves with the spirit