A New Light of Alchemy

9Alchemist: You are nothing but the devil, and you mean to mislead me.

9.2Mercury: Certainly, my philosopher, you are a devil to me, rather than I to you. You have treated me abominably, in a devilish fashion.

9.3Alchemist: What am I hearing? He is certainly the devil. I do everything according to the philosophers’ writings and know very well how to work.

9.4Mercury: Very well indeed! You do even more than you know or read. The philosophers said that nature must be mixed with natures and commanded nothing outside nature. But you mix me with almost every filthy thing and kind of dung.

9.5Alchemist: I do nothing outside nature. I sow the seed in its own earth, as the philosophers said.

9.6Mercury: You sow me in dung. At harvest time I disappear, and dung is what you harvest.

9.7Alchemist: Nevertheless, the philosophers wrote that their matter must be sought in the dunghill.

9.8Mercury: What they wrote is true. You understand their syllables, rather than their meaning and intention.

9.9Alchemist: I see now that perhaps you are Mercury, but you refuse to obey me.

9.10He began conjuring Mercury again: “Vx vx.” Mercury answered with a laugh, “You will achieve nothing, my dear fox.”

9.11Alchemist: People have good reason to call you strange, inconstant and volatile.

9.12Mercury: You call me inconstant. Here is my answer. I am constant to a constant practitioner, fixed to a steadfast mind. You and your kind are inconstant, wandering from one thing to another, from one matter to another.

9.13Alchemist: Tell me whether you are the Mercury of whom the philosophers wrote, whom they called the principle of all things together with Sulphur and Salt, or whether another must be sought.

9.14Mercury: The fruit certainly does not fall far from the tree. But I do not seek my own glory. I am the same as I was, although my years differ. At the beginning I was young as long as I was alone. Now I am older, but the same as before.