A New Light of Alchemy

3To return to the subject: I promised in this first chapter to explain nature, so that empty imagination might not divert us from the simple, true path. I therefore say that nature is one, true, simple, and whole in her being. God made her before the ages and enclosed a spirit within her. Know, however, that nature’s end is God, who is also nature’s beginning: no beginning comes to its end anywhere except where it begins. I have said that there is only one nature, through which God makes all things. This does not mean that God could not work without her—he himself made nature and is almighty—but that he was pleased to do so, and did so. All things proceed from this one nature, and nothing in the world lies outside nature. Although a failed birth sometimes occurs, the fault belongs to the practitioner or the place, rather than to nature. Nature is divided into four regions, in which she performs all these things that appear and are in shadow; indeed, things are more in shadow than truly manifest. She changes in male and female and resembles Mercury, because she joins herself to various places and produces things according to the earth’s good or bad locations—although there are no bad locations in the earth in the way we imagine. There are only four qualities, present in all things. They do not agree: one always exceeds another. Nature herself is invisible, although she acts visibly, for she is a volatile spirit that performs its office in bodies. Her place and seat are in the divine will. For our present purpose, understanding her serves only to acquaint us with the places most suitable and nearest to her: that is, to teach us to join one thing to another according to nature. We should not mix wood with a human being, or an ox or another animal with a metal. Each thing should act upon its own like; then nature too will perform her office. Nature’s place, as already said, is nowhere other than in God’s willing.