XII

...Roger Bacon in his Mirror of Alchemy, chapter 7, and also Isaac Hollandus in the place cited above, and also chapter 85, teach, and so forth. This is the work of three days, where simpletons are deceived, believing that the whole work can be perfected in three days. And I say, not even in three years, and so forth.

Wherefore, regarding the true matter of our Stone, Basil Valentine says in the preface to his Treatise on the Great Stone of the Ancients, before his Twelve Keys: "And you should know that this is nothing other than a liquid substance proceeding from a celestial lineage, adorned with its own dry earth, namely the central Salt, and this is the Key of the Art, and so forth."

However, in his Triumphal Chariot The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, he deceived us, just as all others have done with so many false recipes and experiments, where they described innumerable trifles to lead the minds of the foolish astray. To be sure, from the gold particles of immature antimony mostly residing in it, he matured it by means of our universal mercury, and perfected his "particular" work; without which universal agent, all "particulars" limited alchemical results or partial transmutations boasted of by chemists and "smoke-sellers" charlatans are false.

When the universal Root is held, however, as Basil himself testifies above to have held it, many particulars then sprout from it, as Basil and the others did. Therefore, a branch is not obtained except from the trunk of the tree, as is understood from those same words of Basil, since he adds in the same place: "That so much is not granted to antimony, nor can anyone do this, except he who possesses the Philosophers' Stone." Hence Sendivogius in...