A New Light of Alchemy

On the Element of Earth

1On the Element of Earth

1.2Earth is an element worthy of consideration in its quality and dignity. In this element the other three, and especially fire, rest. It is an excellent element for concealing and revealing what has been entrusted to it. It is gross and porous, heavy in relation to its smallness but light in relation to its nature. It is also the centre of the world and of the other elements. The world's axis, joining both poles, passes through its centre. As I have said, it is porous, like a sponge, and produces nothing of itself. It receives whatever the other three distil and cast into it, preserves what should be preserved, and reveals what should be revealed. It produces nothing of itself, but receives the others. Every product remains in it and putrefies there through moving heat. Through that same heat, once the pure is separated from the impure, it multiplies. What is heavy is hidden within it; heat drives what is light to its surface.

1.3Earth nurses and serves as the womb of every seed and mixture. It can do nothing further than guard the seed and compound until maturity. It is cold and dry, tempered by water: outwardly visible and fixed, inwardly invisible and volatile. It is a virgin, left over from the creation—the distillation—of the world, a caput mortuum, or dead residue, which must one day, by God's will, be calcined after its moisture has been extracted, so that a new crystalline earth can be made from it. This element is divided into a pure and an impure part. The pure part uses water to produce things; the impure remains within its globe. This element conceals and houses every treasure. At its centre is a fire of infernal heat that maintains this fabric of the world in existence by forcing water into the air. This fire is kindled by the first moving sphere, and caused and kindled by the influences of the stars. Solar heat, tempered by air, meets it to ripen and draw forth what has already been conceived in its centre.