A New Light of Alchemy

2The four elements generate seed through God’s will and nature’s imagination. Just as a man’s seed has its centre, or seminal vessel, in the kidneys, so the four elements, in ceaseless motion and each according to its quality, cast seed into the earth’s centre. There it is digested and sent outward in due manner. The earth’s centre is an empty place where nothing can remain at rest. Into the excentre, so to speak—the edge and circumference of the centre—the four elements cast their qualities, as a man discharges his seed into a woman’s womb. None of the seed remains there except the due portion received by the womb; the remainder is expelled. Something similar occurs at the earth’s centre: the magnetic power of some part of a place attracts to itself what is suitable for bringing something forth, while the remainder is expelled into stones and other waste products. All things originate from this spring, and nothing in the whole world is born except through this spring.