Chapter Six. From what metals and precious stones arise in the earth. In which the truth of the Hermetic art is also established by sufficient and irrefutable foundations, some of which, to my knowledge, have never before been presented by other philosophers.

In Chapter Two above, while describing the three philosophical principles, I said something about practice, specifically the wet way, as it is called. In the two preceding chapters, the fourth and fifth, I therefore wished to add some remarks on the operation of our subject in the dry way, through an account of the generation of metals and precious stones. For that reason I placed those chapters before the present sixth chapter, although in the natural order they might perhaps have followed it.

To turn now to the matter itself: among other things, the two preceding chapters have already sufficiently shown from what metals and precious stones arise. Yet exact knowledge of this is so necessary to a philosopher that I could not avoid repeating and explaining it here.

It has likewise been demonstrated at length above how all visible things were created from water and arose from it. It therefore follows once again that metals too were created from water and arose from it, just as they are still created from it and arise from it. No true philosopher will contradict this.

This is not impaired by the earlier statement that metals arise from the elements, or by the philosophers’ teaching that they consist of salt, sulphur and Mercury. For Chapter Two above also demonstrated that these principles are nothing other than the elements, and that the elements in turn are nothing other than a single water.

To establish this further, and to continue my intended description of the mystery of rainwater—and through it of the subject of the Hermetic art—I must now fulfil my promise. Above I demonstrated from first principles that rainwater contains the powers of all nature, and from effects that it contains animal and vegetable nature. In the same way I shall now show that it also contains mineral nature.

I can truthfully testify that I poured the spirit mentioned in Part One, which the aforementioned chemist M. M. had communicated to me, into a warmed silver spoon; the spoon was thereby coloured entirely golden yellow.

Likewise a person of high rank gave me an entirely credible account that an oil prepared from rainwater had tinctured a lesser metal, namely silver, into pure gold. I pass over the crystals mentioned in the preceding chapter, which I took to be the essence of gold rather than topazes, and the fact that M. M. also prepared a spirit from rainwater that dissolved gold leaf in his hand.

I will, however, mention one further matter. An enthusiast for chemistry and other branches of knowledge told me of a silver mine where the following occurred. After work had been carried out there and the customary liquation performed, the waste rock or residue was thrown into the open air. Because of the warfare at that time, it lay exposed to rain for some twenty years. When it was afterwards liquated again, more and better silver was found in it than before. There is no doubt that this came from rainwater, for, as the late Arnd says, water, rather than earth, contains the root of metals.

This not only confirms my foregoing opinion concerning the generation of metals—that according to the place water encounters in the earth, a corresponding mucilage or Mercury arises from it—but also gives me occasion to appeal once more to Hortulanus. He says: “Our stone is called perfect because it contains animal, vegetable and mineral nature.” I therefore argue as follows:

Whatever contains animal, vegetable and mineral nature is a perfect subject.

Rainwater contains animal, vegetable and mineral nature.

Therefore it is a perfect subject.

The major premise is abundantly proved by Hortulanus’s statement itself, and the minor premise by the preceding deduction.

It further follows that, since rainwater is a perfect subject, containing mineral as well as animal and vegetable nature, both a tincture for improving metals and a universal medicine can be prepared from it.

It is no objection, first, that the projection just mentioned was only particular, and that the oil in question tinctured silver alone into gold.

Nor, second, is it an obstacle that certain students of this science have themselves objected to me, on Bernard’s authority, that we do not possess the remote matter: otherwise we would also be able to create animals, trees, plants and other things.

Hence comes the third objection, also voiced by the sophists: since the philosophers cannot create even a fly—if I may mention such a thing—or the smallest little plant, they are still less able to create or make gold.

The fourth objection, raised by another good friend, is equally no impediment. He appealed to the rule that every cause is nobler than its effect. Since gold is supposedly the noblest thing, he argued, it could neither arise nor be made from water. Yet he wished instead to derive it from earth rather than water, because of its weight.

None of this, I say, is any obstacle. As to the first objection, Sendivogius expressly says: “Let the sons of Hermes know for certain that whoever can accomplish this by the philosophical way, without fraud or deception—truly tincturing even the smallest quantity of metal with the colour of the Sun or Moon, whether profitably or unprofitably, with that colour enduring all the required tests—has the doors of nature open to him, so that he may investigate further and higher secrets and, with God’s blessing, attain them.”