XVII

"by the Priests at the altar, and so forth." For this reason, the wise seem to be contradictors to the inexperienced at first glance, because they do not understand their cabalas secret traditions or codes. In reality, they are not such, but all feel the same way. For when the wise speak of minerals, or that our quicksilver mercury is found in the center of the earth, did they understand that in the center of our black earth, or the aforementioned tartar potassium bitartrate or a stony deposit, our mercurial salt and our mineral, or our sulfur, are found? Hence Antonius de Abati a 15th-century alchemist says in his Letters: "That our matter is drawn out of the black earth, or from the black blacker than black original: "ex nigro nigriori nigro"." Because our tartar after the first calcination heating to powder is truly very black, and so it is called by Lullius and others "the black blacker than black." Others, by way of similarity, have equated it to the iron scales or dross thrown off by blacksmiths. These are the apparent contradictions, because according to the changing colors in the work, the wise have called this salt now lead, now antimony, now copper, now gold, now quicklime, and glittering marble, sometimes blood, hair, and many other things. Therefore, all the aforementioned things appear in the preparation of the salt, described under the metallic regimens stages of the work governed by planetary influences, namely the regimen of Jupiter, the regimen of Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, Venus, and so forth, according to the variations of colors, and so forth. Yet these contradictions, when they are so wisely reconciled and explained, are not truly contradictions. Just as when they speak sometimes of a foul-smelling soluble menstruum solvent, and sometimes