Chapter Two. The three philosophical principles.

Having considered nature from outside in the preceding chapter, we should now consider it from within. We previously described nature as the substance and essence of each visible creature. We shall now show what that essence is and in what it consists. It is nothing other than, or consists in nothing other than, the three philosophical principles.

One may likewise ask what the philosophical principles are. My answer comes not from mere speculation, like that of one or two so-called new natural philosophers who undertake to define them although, by their own admission, they have never seen any of them or known what one or another is. Rather, God be praised, I answer from my own experience: the philosophical principles called Salt, Sulphur and Mercury by the philosophers are nothing other than the elements.

Mercury is air; Sulphur is fire; Salt is water, and at the same time earth and the body of all the others, as will be explained below.

As argued above, the elements in turn are nothing but water, just as all of them originate and spring from water.

I therefore say with the author of the Revelation of Divine Majesty: “Is air not a spirit, and yet water is made from it?”

Both Nuysement and that frequently mentioned author prove with sufficient reasons that fire is water. The latter exclaims: “Is the lightning that sets something alight not fire, and yet a blessed rain comes from lightning?” Dr Müller agrees to this extent in his Spiritual Kiss of Love, assigning lightning and rain a single origin.

Likewise Salt is an earth, and yet water is also made from it.

These, I say, are the three philosophical principles, and the three philosophical principles are the elements.

Mercury, as stated, is air; Sulphur is fire; Salt is water. That same Salt is also earth, and no less the body through which this threefold spirit becomes visible and tangible, can be divided into three distinct hypostases and principles, and can be treated philosophically. Nuysement strongly supports me when he says, “Nothing reaches the sense of sight or touch without Salt.” As already mentioned, the author of the Revelation of Divine Majesty likewise writes that the originally invisible water was covered with a shell by the Lord God and thereby given a visible appearance.

This threefold Mercury, according to Nuysement, is again what I call created nature: the efficient cause, form and matter of the ordinary philosophers, about which they have written so much and invented so many definitions without knowing what they meant to teach their pupils. I say “the ordinary philosophers’ efficient cause and form” because they are ignorant of the true efficient cause and, indeed, of form; their form and nature do not exist in reality. Nothing therefore remains to them but the elements, which, physically speaking, are the principles of all things. All visible created things, as they call them, are composed from those elements. I likewise understand Nuysement in this sense when he says that the world has spirit, soul and body: by spirit I understand air, by form or soul fire, and by body Salt.

So much for this at present.

We should also recall what Basilius says: “Finally, in truth and through the love of God, I will reveal this to you: the root of philosophical Sulphur, which is a heavenly spirit, together with the root of spiritual, supernatural Mercury and the beginning of spiritual Salt, are in one and are found in a single matter, rather than many things. Although all philosophers discuss Mercury separately, and Sulphur separately, alongside Salt, I tell you that this concerns only their abundance—whichever is found most plentifully in a given thing—and their preparation and profitable use in many particular ways, for medicine and the alteration of metals.”

“The Universal alone, as the highest treasure of earthly wisdom and of all three originating principles, is one single thing, and is found and extracted in one single thing.” This makes clear not only what was said above, but especially that the philosophical principles must be drawn from one single subject, rather than from different things, however closely related those things may be. Those who expect to extract Mercury from one matter, Sulphur from another and Salt from yet another are therefore entirely mistaken. I would further warn that these principles must be extracted in due order, never in a reversed or confused order, lest the matter be spoiled and time lost as well.

As for the second operation: since this work is considered quite easy, and sufficient information about it may be found in Hollandus, Kelley, Filius Sendivogii and others, I shall properly leave it there, especially since I do not intend to describe a detailed practice and procedure here.

To explain Basilius’s preceding statement further, I consider it appropriate to observe that it sufficiently shows what the true philosophical particular works are and from what they flow. Filius Sendivogii likewise makes this known in the following words:

“First is the Philosophers’ Stone, which holds the foremost place of all. Next comes the tincture of Sun and Moon for the red and the white; then the tincture of Vitriol and Venus, and also the tincture of Mars. Each of these contains the tincture of the Sun, provided it has been brought to enduring fixation. Next comes the tincture of Jupiter and Saturn for coagulating Mercury, and finally the tincture of Mercury itself.”

“Such, then, is the distinction and manifold diversity of stones and tinctures. Yet all are generated from one seed and one womb, from which the genuine universal work likewise flows. Outside that womb no other metallic tincture can ever be found in anything whatsoever, by whatever name it may be called.”

It must therefore be held as an infallible rule that no particular work is profitable unless it proceeds from the universal source.

Bazdorff’s saying also belongs here: no particular work is profitable except melting gold and silver together so that no person can separate them. These last words show that he means only philosophical gold and silver proceeding from the universal source. Mineral gold and silver can never be melted together in such a way that they cannot be separated again. Since the False Paths of the Alchemists, printed at Nuremberg in 1667, provides further information about this particular work, I refer the reader to it. Above all, I warn him to abstain from all other particular works that do not, as stated, proceed from the universal source, since they are nothing but deceptions.