In volatilizing, nature brings the most fixed toward the more fixed and fixed, then fixed toward volatile, volatile toward more volatile, and that toward most volatile. Likewise, to fix a volatile thing, it descends again in this order, making the most volatile more volatile, then volatile, and from that most fixed. It does not intend an immediate change from most volatile to most fixed, but passes through middle degrees. Anyone wishing to work this process for curiosity’s sake may do so, but is not compelled. If the reader thinks I go against philosophical rules, I say as above: I do not aim at the philosophers’ secret. I am a natural philosopher or lover of fire. Nature and I work in this manner, and I depart not one foot to right or left, however the philosophers may have written; perhaps I know their methods quite well. Yet I attend to my own methods rather than theirs, being certain they accord with nature’s rule. I wish to lead no one away from the philosophers’ path, only to guide them to consider mine a little. If it does not please someone, he may retreat at the first boundary, lest my way lead him astray.

Nature taught me not to enclose moist and dry in one phial, according to the philosophers, and by continuous digestion and circulation coagulate and fix it until it dries and finally becomes earth in a constant fire. This deserves neither contempt nor mere esteem from a philosopher: whoever attains the true natural end has gained and shortened the work. To make water and earth bear fruit, nature sends seed down from above in water’s form. Earth takes and retains as much as it needs for growth. By heat below and above—subterranean central heat and the sun’s heat above ground—nature drives superfluous water up again into the air as vapour and smoke. There it becomes water again, falls and distils upon earth, which again takes what growth requires. The remainder is distilled back into the air as vapour, smoke, mist, and so forth. Nature continues this circulation until the Creator’s will coagulates and fixes everything together into one fixed stone. During this imbibition or distillation of the macrocosm, all earth’s fruits grow, each according to its quality.

When the sun has dried and reverberated earth, heaven gives moisture again, imbibing it with rain and dew. The sun returns, dries, coagulates, and reverberates earth again, making it thirsty to attract moisture once more. Every practitioner should draw the finest advantage for coagulation and fixation from this natural operation, just as nature itself taught him the finest advantage for dissolving and volatilizing in Part I, Chapter IX. Everything receives only as much fire and water as it needs, letting the rest go because for that occasion it is excessive and unnecessary. Such labour has swept many a purse clean when someone tried to coagulate and fix all the moisture of his subject. He burned much charcoal, heated the subject until it boiled, broke the glass, and let his treasure run into ashes, then fell into distress and need and gave up his spirit from melancholy. O miserable life, spirit, and time! If only those poor people considered nature’s course, working daily before their very noses, labouring unceasingly and presenting an example and forerunner to every investigator of nature.

I cannot blame anyone, for initially I too thought everything went very well according to my own brain. The outcome taught me the contrary, until unremitting reflection brought me to my path and I grasped the method of working solely after nature. Then my eyes were somewhat more enlightened. As I began it, so I communicate it again. Whoever wishes to observe this way should follow the treatise and will obtain some satisfaction, finding as much as he expects from other books. If one point or another is too difficult, let him run to nature and reflect further: there is a wide field in which his thoughts may pasture. Many certainly cry, “Follow nature!” Show me one who has ever truly examined nature at its ground. Hundreds, indeed thousands, write about nature and wish to describe the matter exactly. They have done their part, it is true; yet very many, and most, have described only shells and husks, not the kernel; only the exterior, not the interior. Through such writing, innocently and unknowingly, they have ruined and misled many thousands who followed their doctrines, explaining the author’s intention now one way, now another, arranging it according to their own brains and believing it.

If someone described everything with every circumstance, it could not be contained in a compendium: great folios would result, and I confess I am not capable of that. Who would not be astonished at undertaking so indescribable a work concerning everything? In this work we show a philosopher as much as nature permits, and I arrange all my works according to nature’s work. Someone who strays can thus return immediately, guided not only to me but to nature and its works. Once he has grasped a manipulation, let him extend his reflections and arguments and confirm them in practice; then he will reach the path and desired end. We see how long it takes to bring a subject into solution, consuming time, expense, and charcoal—much less how long it takes to coagulate and fix the joined liquid into powder. Some wait whole months and years in attendance upon one subject, and when the time is past, it is mere fiddle-faddle and nothing. To help someone coagulate his subject more quickly, he should consider carefully what substances and parts it contains: namely, water and spirit.

Whether spirit is born into water in the form of salt, oil, subtle powder, or any other form, it takes no more water than it needs to coagulate into a body and become fixed. It lets the rest go through the power of fire; gently remove that by distillation, as nature shows when giving thirsty, dried earth enough water for coagulation without flooding it, and distilling the remainder away through heat and sun. Mark this well. Do not draw off moisture with strong fire, but gently in the water bath, cohobating until earth can endure greater heat. Then it needs no further moisture: it must increasingly take on dryness and proceed to coagulation. The recolactum rises away, and seed or spirit then coagulates increasingly and more quickly. Recolaceous water hindered it, since that water turns into earth very slowly. Someone will ask: “How can the spirit in water attach to the fixed body, coagulate, and become fixed when just as much passes over as I poured on?” I confess that I myself found this understanding difficult to obtain.

Observe the following. Water is a visible body within which seed or spirit lies invisibly hidden. It is the sole means of uniting all things by mixture, because moist liquid things mix in their smallest parts more readily than dry things. This water retains spirit, seed, and its power hidden and invisible; water is the spirit’s vehicle. Such waters are subtle or coarse according as they are extended, subtilized, or thickened, and according as their seed or spirit is volatile or fixed. Water takes its character with seed, and seed with water. For example, spirit of wine is a water, vinegar is a water, oil is a water: everything liquid is a water, yet according to the property of its coagulated or dissolved spirit. Spirit operates differently in wine spirit, vinegar, oil, salt, and likewise acids and corrosives. In such waters it is evident that the materials are dissolved, remain liquid, and still contain considerable moisture. If coagulated they would be dry, for chymists call coagulated things dry substances.

Remove recolaceous moisture by distillation in such a way that its spirit or sharpness does not rise with it, but remains behind and coagulates. The moisture should pass over entirely empty and tasteless, like an insipid phlegm without sharpness. Then seed coagulates immediately and quickly, giving the practitioner a thousand joys and making him a thousand times keener to embrace and practise chymistry: he sees the truth and directs his further reflection accordingly. Understand and consider this point carefully, valuing it above all others if you want to profit in this art. Water, or the recolaceous part, is by no means the principal portion to coagulate. Spirit, or the seed contained in water, alone coagulates, concentrates, and becomes fixed through its own mediate middles. The volatile coagulates and is fixed through its own fixed or most fixed portion—or, more clearly, through its own acid and alkaline part. They themselves release the remaining moisture or recolaceous water, retaining no more for their consistency than a body needs to form and maintain itself in an imperishable permanent moisture. They hold that attracted moisture so firmly that with it they flow permanently like wax in every fire without smoke.

This is seen in pebbles and glass, from which superfluous moisture has been driven to the utmost. They retain only what they need to flow with it like oil at the highest, strongest degree of fire without losing permanence or fixity, unless nature or art drives them back again. Consider that it would be an insuperable labour for a practitioner and even nature itself to coagulate into earth, dry powder, or stone all the water or superfluous moisture concentrated in each individual. Though it can be done, it is too slow and wholly unnecessary for a philosopher: the greatest lifespan would be too short. Try merely enclosing rainwater or well water in a phial and setting it to coagulate. You will indeed find an earth, but in half a year or a whole year will perceive little or no decrease in the water’s quantity or its coagulation.

We rightly follow nature, which does not turn all animal moisture into an animal or animal part; otherwise animals would discharge no urine, sweat, mucus, or excrement. Nor does all moisture enter plants’ growth, as trees show especially in spring, when their bark opens from excess and superfluous moisture drips out in various forms. Neither does all moisture enter the growth of minerals and stones, or great streams, springs, and fountains of every quality would not flow from mountains. If all served mineral growth, all water in the mountains would become stone and ores, and none would emerge into daylight for us. Likewise not all rain, dew, snow, and so forth enters creatures’ growth, or the central warmth of the earth and the sun could sublime and attract no vapours, mists, or fumes. Daily they produce abundant vapours, which separate as abundant dew, rain, and snow and are precipitated upon earth again. Nature thus shows us macrocosmic imbibition and cohobation. It does not give at once enough moisture to carry creatures to perfection; rather it cohobates continually, imbibing little by little and drying again.