THE PHILOSOPHER, OR THE PHYSICIAN

CONSULTED BY NATURE

The wise original: "sapientes" held the vital Philosopher to be far more celebrated than the elementary one. Therefore, following your instruction to investigate the hidden aspects of mixed substances, they discarded the useless dross of the ineffective Elements. This "matter," as the Arabs referring to the medieval Islamic alchemical tradition call it, was set aside as they strove to extract the "species." This is the astral essence the celestial or spiritual power within a substance brimming with formal properties, which they brought into the clear light. They did this through no other art than that which works by the service of fire. This art, which brings forth things hidden within Elementary envelopes and matrices the formative environments or "wombs" of minerals from their essential juice, is called Alchymia Alchemy. However, when it concerns the processes of joining and separating, it is called Spagyria the spagyric art.

Therefore, O Great Hippocrates the ancient Greek father of medicine, whatever progress later ages made in practicing your most healthy precept for healing correctly and well, they have wonderfully amplified it with both laborious admiration and curiosity. It is certainly no small glory that you placed a sort of primary literary Hermathena a statue combining Hermes and Athena, representing the union of eloquence and wisdom at the crossroads. It showed the way one must go, but did not know the method of travel. Nor did people stop fighting more strongly against those clouds of ignorance afterward, until Galen the influential Roman physician, who anxiously desired the art of separation, was fully satisfied. Thus, for those who approach living and perennial springs equipped with a large vessel or urn, if they draw and carry away much more water, it should seem strange to no one. For we join a great desire for action and a zeal for learning to that desire for discovery implanted in us by nature. Through the diligent and very laborious effort of the clever Chymical chemical or alchemical artists of succeeding centuries, it was finally discovered that every power, or that vital principle of essential forces, resides in the innermost nature of a mixture. Indeed, once the husks were broken and the pure was separated from the impure by the favor of Vulcan the Roman god of fire, here representing the alchemist's furnace, and once the simplest state was reached, it was shown to the bodily eyes—rather than just the mind—in a triple form. Nothing more sincere or noble can be found in any mixture. From this were born the three

chemical principles: Sal Salt, Sulphur Sulfur, and Mercurius Mercury. These names were transferred from the family of minerals to the same principles in plants and animals. This is because they are the roots and foundations of all powers in every compound. Nothing possesses such power before these principles do. This is true to such an extent that these same Principles are, by a certain right, adapted to all things in the whole world. They exist according to their power even in similar parts of the body, constituting nutrients, remedies, diseases, the causes of diseases, poisons, and anything harmful.

It is therefore right that the Physician consulted by Nature should be most thoroughly instructed in this most noble and useful science. Indeed, I believe that the marriage of Vulcan Fire and Pallas Athena or Wisdom, which was once expressed in bronze and placed before the strongholds of the court in Athens, did not so much signify that a very tight bond existed between virtue and learning. Rather, it signified that Vulcan, that is, fire, must be rightly joined as the most faithful investigator of the interior of all things that are, will be, and have been. This was once the inscription of Pallas among the Egyptians. For those who do otherwise, nothing remains but the dross and shells to be swallowed along with the kernels. Furthermore, it is necessary for the Philosopher to have penetrated to the principles, causes, and roots of mixtures, not merely by the idle contemplation of the mind, but to have grasped them, as if with his hands, through exquisite and firm science. This cannot happen to any of the senses without the separation of the dregs. Since only Chemistry teaches the separation of the pure from the impure, who does not understand that it follows with unchangeable necessity that the Physician consulted by Nature must in no way be unskilled in Chemistry? For no one would dare to claim he has attained an absolute knowledge of things if he has not drawn out the moments of dissolution in some way, neither with his own eyes nor with the help of his other senses.

Therefore, so that the Philosopher might more successfully reach the boundaries of his profession, and other aids by which he is moved...