A New Light of Alchemy

3All these things happen, yet ordinary people’s eyes do not see them. The eyes of understanding and imagination perceive them, however, with true—most true—vision. The eyes of the wise see nature differently from common eyes. For example, common eyes see the sun as hot. The philosophers’ eyes, on the contrary, see the sun itself as cold, but its motions as hot. Its activities and effects are apprehended through distances of place. Nature’s fire is one and the same with it. Just as the sun is the centre among the planetary spheres and scatters heat downward by its motion from that centre of heaven, so at the earth’s centre there is the earth’s sun. Through perpetual motion it drives heat or rays upward toward the earth’s surface. This inward heat is much more effective than our elemental fire, but it is tempered by earthly water, which penetrates the earth’s pores daily and cools it. Air likewise tempers the heavenly sun and its heat, circling the globe day after day. Without this, such heat would consume all things, and nothing would be born. Just as that invisible fire, or central heat, would consume everything without the intervention of water, so the sun’s heat would destroy everything without the mediation of air.