Do the same with the fourth, fifth, and sixth. If opening a vent does not start it within one or one and a half hours, open another; once it runs, stop up the other again until it is needed. In this manner one should not go wrong. As I said, draw the moisture from earth; if any acid or oil does rise, pour it back. Yet take care: if the fire is so strong that oil rises, it smears throughout the flask and you lose a noble volatile part of your earth. Attend carefully to the degree of fire. Observe this concerning philosophical calcination and reverberation: the noblest part of chaotic water coagulates and becomes fixed, while what is excessive and superfluous passes away by distillation. Practitioners should take this as a lesson. Nature takes no more at once than it needs, as here in coagulation and fixation. Once it has coagulated, fixed, and dried the material completely, it needs moisture again. Given that, it again takes only what it needs and lets the rest pass away. Mark this well and you are spared much trouble, labour, and expense.

When acid and oil have coagulated upon the charcoal and nothing has passed over except an insipid water without sourness or power, discard that water: nature itself has released it as superfluous. Apply a slightly stronger fire so that the matter in the glass dries thoroughly and becomes completely dry. This is philosophical calcination and reverberation, which must be repeated in this manner. Earth is thereby coagulated, fixed, and made thirsty. The drier and thirstier it is, the more willingly it desires its own moisture. Heaven must moisten dry earth, or it can bear no suitable fruit. Take the three rectified fractions of heaven, air, and water: these must moisten earth. Mix them by the proper weight and pour them upon earth, so that earth dissolves and water coagulates, as follows. Take three parts subtlest heaven, two parts subtler heaven, and one part subtle heaven. Pour all three together in a glass. One heaven has descended into another, as stated in the first part: the subtlest heaven is always caught and fixed in the thicker one and, descending into air, water, and earth, finally becomes entirely earthly, as will be seen here.

Then likewise take three parts subtlest air, two parts subtler air, and one part subtle air, and pour them together in a glass. Take three parts subtlest water, two parts subtler water, and one part subtle water, and mix those too. Once each part has been rejoined, take the water and add air and heaven. When heaven, air, and water are together, this is ambrosial nectar, or the drink of the gods, which must rejuvenate, enliven, or regenerate our old one. Pour enough of this water upon dry earth to moisten it at first like thick honey. Stir it well with a piece of wood, then add more water until it resembles thin, melted honey. For this occasion it has enough moisture for its growth.

Set the flask in the water bath at the first degree of fire and let it digest day and night until earth is thoroughly soaked or dissolved. Distil the moisture off; when nothing more passes at those degrees, set it in ashes and proceed as before, slowly making earth thoroughly parched, dry, and thirsty, even ready to crack or split from dryness. Do not drive it too strongly at first, for it is still too volatile. Once dry again, give it fresh water as before and repeat every step: imbibing, digesting, drawing off, drying, and reverberating very gently in ashes. Continue imbibition and coagulation until earth is well impregnated with heaven, air, and water. Recognize it thus. When you think it has attracted much heaven, air, and water, pour the drawn-off water upon it to a hand’s breadth above it, set it in the water bath day and night, let it dissolve, and draw off to one-third. Cool it and place it in a cellar to crystallize. The quantity of crystals formed indicates how much volatile matter—heaven, air, and water—it has coagulated, also making earth thoroughly subtle. Once it shows this sign, which it soon will, it is time to fix.

Take the flask and draw off the moisture in the water bath and finally in ashes. Dry earth thoroughly and apply a slightly stronger fire: it will reverberate at the flask’s bottom, becoming brown or red with mixed colours. Drying and reverberation in ashes take one day. At night take out the flask, remove the matter with a piece of wood onto a grinding stone, grind it thoroughly and finely together, and return it to the flask. Pour on its drawn-off water or enough fresh water to make it only as thick as honey. Set it in the water bath and draw off the moisture, then coagulate and dry it in ashes. Apply a little stronger fire so that it reverberates and acquires a colour as before. Cool it, remove earth, and grind it together again. Return it to the flask, add its drawn-off moisture as before to make thick honey, set it in the water bath and then ashes: coagulate, dry, reverberate, and so forth. Continue until gentle reverberation gives earth one colour throughout; then it can endure stronger fire.

Once this is done, remove earth from the flask again, grind it finely together, return it, moisten it with its drawn-off water, and from now on set it in ashes. First gently draw off moisture, then coagulate gently by degrees, and finally reverberate a little more strongly than before. Earth again acquires a more fixed colour at the bottom, as you see when the flask is removed and cold. Take it out, grind earth finely again, and proceed as before in everything. It is one operation: the point now is to reverberate earth more strongly until it again gains one colour throughout and becomes increasingly fire-resistant. Continue imbibing, coagulating, and reverberating until stronger reverberation gradually makes earth fire-red and fixed throughout in ashes. Then reverberate further by degrees in sand until it is so fixed that it withstands open fire: the magistery is ready. But do not hurry straight from the sand degree into open fire. First set it in hammer-scale at the fourth and fifth degrees. After it has endured that, enclose it between two crucibles and apply a surrounding fire by degrees for four hours, then take it out. Heaven and the most volatile water have become a corporeal and most fixed stone. According to Hermes, it is now said: “Its power is complete if it has been turned into earth.”

This is the general universal medicine. One, two, three, or up to six grains of it cure every disease at the root and restore radical moisture, the animal, vital, and natural spirits, and the whole animal balsam of life. From this general example the lover of the art sees how the most fixed stony body has arisen from the most volatile watery vapour: the visible and tangible from the invisible and intangible. Mark the example carefully, for it governs all animals, plants, and minerals: first putrefy them, then separate and rectify them, then again coagulate, fix, and regenerate them into a glorious translucent body, each through homogeneous things, as will follow. Someone will say: “This operation seems extraordinary. First, it is very long and irksome; second, it goes directly against all philosophers’ rules. He speaks of putrefying, separating, distilling, coagulating, fixing, rectifying, conjoining, and generating. But after separation the philosophers conjoined the principles in definite weights, enclosed them in a phial and sealed it completely by fusion, so that no breath, much less water, could escape. In one furnace, one glass, one regimen of fire, and one vessel, without further touching, they cooked it to perfection.”

“This man, however, orders us to conjoin the parts and continually distil off, imbibe again, dry, coagulate, reverberate, remove the mass from the glass, grind it, imbibe again, draw off, dry, coagulate, reverberate, and transfer from the water bath to ashes, from ashes to sand, then to hammer-scale and open fire. Not one philosopher has taught these methods. Moreover he says nothing about separating the dregs, but leaves grease and filth—pardon the expression—and all together, which philosophers absolutely and strenuously command us to remove, lest the work become poison rather than medicine. They also say the heat must never be allowed to go out.” I answer: I myself admit that this work is long and irksome. I have not set it here because one must necessarily proceed so, but to show the reader how beautifully chaotic water can be divided into degrees of subtlety and fixity. Nor do I intend to direct him to follow this path unless he wishes to undertake it for curiosity’s sake. There are shorter and more agreeable methods, several of which will be shown below.

Recall that in the first part I said the great primordial Chaos was divided into four parts: heaven, air, water, and earth. These were again divided and distinguished within themselves into degrees of subtlety and thickness. Such degrees of subtilizing and thickening can be seen at length in the chapter on earth, Book I, Chapter II. The preceding process is intended to explain them for the reader’s benefit, showing how the subtler always rises and separates from the coarser, the coarse following close after it, then the coarser, and finally the coarsest. I included this method only so that everyone may see nature work in the most beautiful order through its stages and middle degrees, continually ascending and descending. From this the reader should better recognize and grasp nature’s labour. See Part I, Chapter II. Just as young students have their degrees of comparison, nature has hers: the subtlest and most volatile, the more volatile and subtler, and the subtle and volatile; conversely, the coarse and fixed, the coarser and more fixed, and the coarsest and most fixed.