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

The Testament of Hadrian

He is like a young stag coming from his mother’s breast!
There is a wonderful movement of those joined in the glass. Now they rise on high, now they seem submerged in the lowest bottom. They are often dissolved and often unite. They mortify mortificant themselves alchemical death or breakdown of matter and repeatedly call back the life that was put to flight, until, having putrefied, they assume a perfect blackness.
This is the first work of our stone. Indeed, the corruption of one is the generation of another. From this is born the Raven’s head corvinum caput, the King of the Ethiopians, and the black tail, while the Sun and Moon undergo a dark eclipse.
For as soon as the blackness has sufficiently increased and entered, that blackness surpassing all pitch and every other blackness, it is the true pregnancy of the matter. The bodies are dissolved, and the black earth is generated by the putrefaction.
Rejoice, for this is the beginning of the work! To be sure, she is black, but she is a very beautiful girl. That Black-that-is-White Niger-ille-Albus is flying without wings. For in this blackness the purest Whiteness Albedo lies hidden and concealed.
Hardly any other work is more difficult, but none is more excellent in the works of Mother Nature. Only take care that the flower of that feminine hair and the marrow of the raven’s feather are not burned by excessive fire.
When the Blackness Nigredine is finished, let Mulciber fire be one degree stronger, until the Green viridis color succeeds the Black, and then the Peacock’s tail pavonis cauda follows the green color. That tail displays all the colors that exist in the world.