Chapter Four. The generation of metals, and how they are generated in the earth.

At the end of the first part it was stated that the principal purpose of this study should be contemplation of God’s wondrous works. Metals are not the least among God’s wondrous works and noble creatures. They are mentioned in various places in Holy Scripture, and gold in particular near the Bible’s beginning. The Lord God also expressly commanded Moses to use it to adorn his dwelling and tabernacle and to make the splendid priestly garments. He even commanded that his holiness be engraved upon the plate for the forehead, itself to be made of fine gold.

Since philosophers consider knowledge of metallic generation very necessary to understanding and learning the Hermetic art, I have wished to discuss that generation here. Having offered some hints concerning the operation of our subject in the preceding chapter, I shall proceed a little further. Writing about this knowledge in itself is rather hazardous, however, and I regard it only as a conjectural science. We know that metals are generated in the earth; but to my judgment nobody has thoroughly investigated how that generation actually takes place. Even the celebrated mining master Lazarus Erkard must remain silent here. I shall pass over the disagreements of ordinary philosophers with equal silence.

As for our own philosophers, although observing the operation of our subject may have brought them somewhat closer to the matter, they do not agree entirely either. I judge that each has formed his opinion and written according to the process he used in accomplishing his work. There is not merely one way, but several ways, of preparing the philosophical magistery.

When philosophers say that there is only one way to attain it, this is to be understood of the end rather than the beginning: all finally arrived at one goal, although one initially used this path and another a different one.

In particular, I judge that those who worked according to Bernard, or in the same manner, inferred a corresponding transformation of metals from the changes in colour and appearance undergone by our subject during that process. They fully believed that Mercury first becomes lead, then tin, then silver, then copper, then iron and finally gold.

Others, however, drawing their observations from a different process—conjecturally, I suppose, the procedure and practice of Artephius—describe metallic generation approximately as follows. The so-called vapour of nature, which in miners’ language may be called Einwitterung or Bergschwaden, rises by sublimation from the earth’s centre and passes through dry or warm places. Passing through clean and warm places where sulphurous moisture adheres to the rocks, it takes up that moisture and carries it along. It thereby becomes greasy, loses the name of vapour and acquires that of unctuosity.

If this unctuosity—which miners might otherwise call Metallferch—rises farther and meets places purified by the preceding vapour, and there encounters a pure, subtle, moist earth, it fills that earth’s pores and unites with it, producing gold. But if the unctuosity reaches other, impure and cold places, lead results. If the earth is pure and mixed with sulphur, copper results, and so forth.

The author of the True Chemical Foundations describes the origin of metals as deriving from mercurial vapour in the earth. The force of fire within the mountains cooks it into a rather thick water, after which it is particularly determined into one metal or another according to the character of the pure or impure sulphur it has absorbed.

The author of the treatise On the Metamorphosis of Metals describes metallic generation differently again. In brief, he particularly refuses to admit the addition of sulphurous fatness to Mercury, stating that Mercury already possesses within itself a digesting power and operation derived from celestial influences. Further information may be read in his work.

For my own modest part, I maintain first, with all philosophers, that all metals have one origin and spring from one matter. That matter has already been indicated above and will be named more clearly below. But, I repeat, nobody has yet thoroughly investigated how and in what manner their generation takes place in mines. In particular, I am least able to agree with the first opinion concerning the successive transformation of metals.

When I once worked according to Artephius, careless management of the fire caused one or more vessels to break—the regimen of fire and the weight being the two principal points to observe in practice. In the remaining fragments I myself found black, whitish, yellow and other flowers. Yet this in no way moves me to affirm the transformation of metals just mentioned or to agree with that opinion.

I also believe that by these and other analogies philosophers intend to describe nothing other than the operation of our subject, as will be explained more fully below. It is undeniable that every nature continually seeks to ennoble itself. It therefore contradicts both nature and reason that silver, the purest and noblest metal after gold, should first become copper again and then iron. Moreover, our art is one thing and metallic generation in mines another, although more may be conjectured about metallic generation from the operation of our subject than from anything else.