Experience itself has likewise shown above that gold is present in water, specifically rainwater; for philosophical oil and gold are notoriously one and the same. In Chapter One of this second part, concerning nature, it was also demonstrated and proved that water is alive and possesses life. It follows that such gold must likewise be alive and possess life. Otherwise, had it not been living, spiritual and philosophical gold, or the essence of gold, it could not have tinctured other, lesser metals into gold. The rule therefore still stands: nothing weak is able to help another.

As for the many mineral and metallic names the philosophers have given our subject, I conclude, for my humble part, that they did so first because it possesses metallic and mineral nature more abundantly than anything else. Second, and especially, we must distinguish raw matter from matter already separated from superfluities. Third, they may also have used these names to mislead the ignorant; and fourth, to indicate the changes in our subject’s form and colours during its operation. The sayings that follow testify to this.

Thus sings the Universal Little Bird of Hermes: “The philosophers say that antimony is Mercury and vitriol is sulphur. By this they make their meaning clear, indicating where our sulphur and Mercury are to be sought. Nevertheless, if one reflects a little on nature, it is found in reality that neither antimony nor vitriol serves our purpose.”

Above all, Antonius de Abbatia says: “If you know how to work rightly, you will see our vegetable salt, our gold made spiritual, our silver, our lead, our tin, our copper, our iron, our arsenic, our sal ammoniac, our vitriol, our magnesia, our alum, our Hybith, our sulphur, our milk, vinegar and children’s urine, the white honey, the fountain, the dew of heavenly grace, the sourest vinegar, our wine, our seasoned menstruum, the blessed drink of the gods.”

These sayings sufficiently explain those quoted above, both the familiar words of Sendivogius and those in the manuscript found at L. They also show especially that those who take ordinary vitriol, or Roman or Hungarian vitriol, as the subject of the Hermetic art are mistaken. They may imagine that the following reasons and foundations support them:

1. The philosophers give their subject that name. 2. Vitriol is itself, as it were, a dry water. 3. The philosophers say of their subject: “Nature has begun it but has not completed it.” The same could be said of vitriol. 4. Vitriol has many excellent powers and virtues.

But, first, the reasons and sayings already given sufficiently show what the philosophers mean by these and other similar names.

Second, Part One has sufficiently explained what the philosophical dry water that does not wet the hands actually is.

Third, the saying “Nature has begun it” is directly opposed, among other statements, by this one: “As soon as our matter touches the earth, it is no longer of any use for our art.” Furthermore:

Fourth, concerning vitriol’s excellent powers and virtues, for my part I have no wish to deprive it of them at all. Yet the following inference is entirely invalid: this or that subject has many excellent virtues; therefore it is a universal and all-embracing subject. It cannot be demonstrated, either from principles or from effects, that vitriol is universal or possesses universal power. It is instead known and undeniable that vitriol, like all other minerals, is particular. Although earth in itself is universal, everything that comes from it and is generated within it is particular. No universal medicine or tincture can therefore be prepared from vitriol. I appeal to the preceding deduction and the foundations supplied there.

I intend all this, and everything said so far or still to be said about the matter of metals, to be understood equally of precious stones. Chapter Five already noted that they arise from the same matter as metals, and likewise in the first instance without any seed or proximate matter, since water and the elements possess mineral nature both actually and potentially. This is not impaired by the philosophers’ opinion that the diamond alone is generated from the vapour of nature, as they call it, and without sulphur. It can no more exist without sulphur than without salt, which, according to Nuysement, gives it hardness. I pass over the fact that both white and red sulphur are otherwise found in our philosophy.