Thesauri et armamentarii medico-chymici appendix [...] Testamentum Hadrianeum

The Testament of Hadrian

But to what end? Let it suffice to have explained here what our matter is, what noble name it bears, and in what places it must be sought. Leave behind those vain sophistries which seduce you through winding paths. Let every kind of herb be dismissed, and leave animal bodies alone while it is your concern to seek our stone. Flesh, blood, and those things excreted from them—menstruum, semen produced by human genital vessels, dung, and urine—will give nothing. You will find nothing in hair, eggs, nor in the afterbirth, nor in the green herb.

The fruit, you see, corresponds to the seed; and from this, he who sows dung will find a dung-filled field. Nor will anyone sweat with less futility who seeks it in Gold and Silver. Thus, it is necessary that our matter be more pure and more digested than common Gold or Silver, so that it may be able to penetrate metals by its own power, changing whatever it touches into Silver or Gold.

Nothing common enters our work; it is drawn solely from the Mercury of the Sages Mercurio sophorum with which we tint, and which brings the imperfect to perfection. This is the point, this is the center of Nature which separates the impure from the pure. This is that thing which, although extracted from no metals by any art—whether they be perfect ones, which know not how to admit change, or whether they be imperfect ones—would be entirely void of vital nourishment and the genital seed of life, unable to generate any offspring similar to themselves from their own substance.