A New Light of Alchemy

Treatise IV How Metals Are Generated in the Interior of the Earth

1Metals are produced as follows. After the four elements cast their powers into the earth’s centre, the Archaeus, by distilling, sublimes them toward the earth’s surface through the heat of perpetual motion. The earth is porous, and wind, passing dropwise through its pores, is resolved into water, from which all things are born. Let the children of learning therefore know that the seed of metals differs in no way from the seed of all things: it is a moist vapour. Practitioners consequently seek in vain to reduce metals to the first matter, which is only vapour. The philosophers did not mean such a first matter; they meant only the second matter. Bernard of Treviso argues this excellently, although not very clearly, because he speaks about the four elements. Nevertheless, that was his meaning, and he spoke only to the children of the art. To disclose the theory more clearly, I wished here to warn and admonish everyone to abandon so many dissolutions, circulations, calcinations, and repetitions. It is vain to seek this in a hard thing when it is in itself soft everywhere. Seek the second matter only, rather than the first: something that, once conceived, can no longer be changed into another form. If you ask how a metal is reduced to such a matter, I follow the philosophers’ intention in this. Above all, I want the children of the art to understand the meaning of the writings, rather than their syllables. Art must begin where nature ends: namely, in metallic bodies perfected before our eyes.