A New Light of Alchemy

Treatise V The Generation of Stones of Every Kind

1The matter of stone is the same as that of other things. Stones are born as follows, according to the purity of their places. When the four elements distil their vapour into the earth’s centre and nature’s Archaeus expels and sublimes it, the vapour passes through the earth’s places and pores, drawing all the earth’s impurity along with it to the surface. Air then congeals it: what pure air creates, crude air congeals. Air can enter air, and the two join each other, for nature delights in nature. Rocks and stony mountains are thus formed according to the large and small pores. The larger the earth’s pores, the better the place is purified. More heat and a greater quantity of water pass through such a vent, and the earth is purified more quickly. Metals subsequently arise more readily in places of this kind. Experience itself testifies to this: gold is sought and found only in mountains, something that occurs only rarely in plains. Such places are very often moist, not with vapour but with elemental water, which attracts that vapour. They embrace each other so closely that they are not easily separated. The sun in the sky then digests it, making the fatty clay used by potters. In places with coarse sand, however, where the vapour carries no fatness or sulphur, it creates herbs and grass in the meadows.