A New Light of Alchemy

4For if, against God’s most solemn prohibitions, a man coupled with a cow or another animal, the animal would readily conceive from the man’s seed, since nature is only one. What was born would then be an animal and a failed birth, rather than a human being, because the seed had not found a place suitable for itself. From such an inhuman and detestable mingling of men with animals, various animals resembling human beings would be produced. This is how it happens: when seed enters the centre, what ought to be born from it is born. Once it has reached a place and conception has occurred, it no longer changes its form. While seed is still in the centre, however, a tree can be produced from it as easily as a metal, a herb as readily as a stone, and one stone more precious than another, according to the place’s purity or impurity. We must now say how the elements generate seed. It happens as follows. There are four elements: two heavy and two light, two dry and two moist; but one is supremely dry and another supremely moist. They are male and female, and so on. Each is of itself most ready to produce things like itself within its own sphere; so the Most High willed. These four never rest but continually act upon one another. Each emits its own subtle portion, and they meet in the centre. In the centre is the Archaeus, nature’s servant, who mixes these seeds and casts them outward. How this happens can be seen more fully in the epilogue to these twelve chapters.