A New Light of Alchemy

Treatise VI The Second Matter and the Putrefaction of Things

1We have spoken of the first matter of things and how things are born from nature or seed: that is, how nature receives from the elements the matter from which she generates seed. We shall now discuss seed and the things generated from it. Everything that possesses seed is multiplied in it, but this does not occur without nature’s assistance. Seed is nothing but air congealed in a body, or moist vapour; unless it is dissolved by warm vapour as well, it is of no use. Let investigators of the art therefore know what seed is, lest they seek a thing that does not exist. Let them know that what is produced from the four elements is threefold: first mineral, which is our subject here; second vegetable; and third animal. Mineral seed is known to the philosophers. Vegetable seed is common and familiar, as we see in fruits. Animal seed is known through imagination. Vegetable seed shows us how nature creates it from the four elements. Know that winter causes putrefaction, since it congeals the vital spirits in trees. When these are dissolved by the sun’s heat—which has a magnetic power attracting all moisture—nature’s heat, aroused by motion, drives a subtle watery vapour toward the circumference. This opens the tree’s pores and makes drops distil, continually separating the pure from the impure. Sometimes, however, the pure precedes the impure. The pure portion issues forth and congeals into flowers; the impure goes into leaves, and the coarse and thick into bark. The tree’s bark remains fixed; the leaves fall through cold or heat when their pores are blocked. Flowers congeal in a colour corresponding to their heat and yield fruit or seed, such as an apple containing sperm. A tree is not born from this sperm as such: within it lies the seed or grain, from which a tree is born even without the sperm. Multiplication takes place in the seed, not in the sperm. Thus we see with our own eyes how nature creates seed from the four elements, so that we need not occupy ourselves vainly in doing this: what has already been created needs no creator. Let this example suffice to instruct the reader; I return to the mineral subject.