A New Light of Alchemy

Treatise II The Operation of Nature in Our Subject and Seed

1I have already said that nature is true, one, everywhere manifest, and continuous, and that she is known through the things she produces—wood, herbs, and so forth. I have also said that an investigator of nature must be truthful, simple, patient, steadfast, and devoted in mind to a single thing, and so on. We must now begin with nature’s activity. Just as nature is in God’s willing, and God created her, or imposed her upon every act of imagination, so nature made herself a seed: that is, she established her willing in the elements. She is one, yet brings forth diverse things; but she does nothing without seed. Nature performs whatever the seed wills, for she is like an instrument in a craftsman’s hands. The seed of each thing is therefore better and more useful to the practitioner than nature herself. With nature but without seed, you will accomplish as much as a goldsmith without fire, gold, or silver, or a farmer without grain and seed. Once the seed is obtained, nature will be ready to assist, whether for evil or for good. She works in the seed as God works in human free will. It is a great wonder that nature obeys the seed, freely rather than under compulsion, just as God grants all that a human being wills, without compulsion and from his own willing. He therefore gave humanity free choice, whether for evil or for good. Seed is thus the elixir of each thing, or its quintessence: its most perfect decoction and digestion, or balsam of sulphur, which is the same as the radical moisture in metals. Much could be said here about this seed, but we are concerned only with our purpose in the chymical art.