A New Light of Alchemy

3In nature’s first operation, the four elements, through nature’s Archaeus, distil a heavy watery vapour into the earth’s centre. This is the seed of metals. It is called Mercury because of its fluidity and its conjunction with every thing, rather than because of its essence. It resembles sulphur through its inward heat, and after congealing it is the radical moisture. Although the body of metals is generated from Mercury—which must be understood as the Mercury of the philosophers—we should not listen to those who think common mercury is the seed of metals. They take the body in place of the seed, overlooking that the common mercury itself contains its own seed. The errors of all these people will become apparent from the following example. Clearly human beings possess seed, through which they multiply. The human body is Mercury, but the seed is concealed within the body, and its quantity by weight is small in relation to the body. Whoever wishes to generate a human being should therefore take the seed, a congealed watery vapour, rather than the Mercury that is the body. Common chymists likewise proceed wrongly in the regeneration of metals. They dissolve metallic bodies, whether mercury, gold, Saturn, or Luna, corrode them with strong waters and other heterogeneous things unnecessary to the true art, then join them and cook them together. They do not know that a human being is not generated from a dissected human body, because the corruption of the body and destruction of its seed have already occurred in this procedure.