IV

A 4

...you bring forth and elsewhere, as Lullius Ramon Lull, a 13th-century philosopher and purported alchemist testifies in his Testament, Experiments, and Codicil, and nearly everywhere. Indeed, if our matter were not fluid and spermatic, or even electric, the author uses "electrica" to describe the vital, attractive force of the universal spirit wine could never have been made from it. And Lullius, Parifinus, and others speak of nothing else more than of wine, and its quinta essentia fifth essence or purest part, aqua ardente burning water or alcohol, aquâ vitæ water of life, the menstruo vegetabili vegetable solvent, and its salt of tartar, and so forth. However, this is not understood as common wine, but as the Philosophical wine. For this reason, Ripley George Ripley, a famous English alchemist says in his Key of the Golden Gate original: "Clavi aureæ Pontæ": It is burning water, and our Water of Life, the Spirit of our wine, but not the common kind, which the ignorant think to be common Water of Life. And Lullius adds: that our wine is the first Basis, and the principal foundation of the art, without which nothing can be done in the mastery of this work.

Furthermore, therefore, I pray you, most Excellent Lord, deign to grant me your trust. Know for certain and believe one who has experience, that wherever the envious Philosophers alchemists who "enviously" hid the truth behind metaphors to protect it from the unworthy speak of metals and minerals, or of their preparations with various things and mixtures, such as common salt, common vitriol sulfate minerals, Niter saltpeter, sulfur, arsenic, marchasitâ marcasite or iron pyrite, gur Bisemutho bismuth "gur" or metallic primordial slime, strong waters acids, urine, snow, thunder-waters, auripigmentô orpiment or arsenic trisulfide, and other commonly known things to be mixed; they have mixed these and other sophisticated things intentionally with the truth. This was done to lead the minds of the foolish astray and to cause the simple to hallucinate, thus deluding the inexperienced. As Paracelsus the famous Swiss-German physician and alchemist openly says in his