Sendivogius says: “If Hermes himself, the father of the philosophers, were to return to life today, together with Geber of subtle intellect and the most profound Raymond Lull, our chemists would regard them as pupils rather than philosophers. They would not know the many distillations now in use, the many circulations and calcinations, and the countless other operations that the practitioners of this age have discovered in their writings. Only one thing is lacking to us, which they themselves accomplished: the Philosophers’ Stone, or physical tincture.”

Although this again concerns practice, whereas I still intend to set out a theory, such mistaken labours—new examples of which are invented daily—flow from a corresponding error, namely a false theory. Moreover, in this second part of the present treatise I also intend to explain the operations of our subject further. I have therefore chosen to place Sendivogius’s own words and admonition here as a proem.