I therefore say: when water has been brought from one colour into another until it reaches the highest colour and fixed redness, one possesses the tincture. Rosarius supports me here, saying: “My son, I admonish you to direct your whole intention to the cooking of the water. Do not grow weary if you wish to obtain the fruit, and do not concern yourself with other vain things, but with water alone. Cook it gradually, bringing it through putrefaction, until it changes from colour to perfect colour.”

But this requires time and patience, as the Son of Sendivogius also testifies. Above all, the devil, as humanity’s sworn enemy, is not idle, but continually raises obstacles and adversity. He is especially hostile to those who possess this high secret, since in it, as the same often-cited author again testifies, they have a true sign of God’s love towards them. I have experienced this sufficiently myself: precisely where I thought I had obtained the greatest security for attending to the work, I encountered the most obstruction.

What the practitioner says about operating in an open fire can likewise refer only to the method of fermentation in Basilius’s twelfth key, mentioned above. Here “burn our brass” must be accomplished very differently from working by the violence of fire, although our magistery cannot be completed without fire. Elsewhere it is called women’s work, yet also a labour of Hercules. Both are true in their philosophical sense. The philosophers also call whoever has attained the supreme secret a knight of the Golden Fleece, because nature’s firm bond, as they call it, is so difficult and laborious to dissolve.

It must further be known that there is only one thing in the whole world that dissolves gold radically. It accomplishes this through neither corrosiveness, sharpness nor strength, but solely through its sameness of essence with gold. Such dissolution must be performed with subtle ingenuity—to use Hermes’ own expression—and with skill, persistent diligence and perseverance, rather than with haste and speed. As the philosophers say: haste comes from the devil.