Had they considered hermaphroditic charcoal-sulphur, fixed and not fixed, and how even when fixed it can be volatilized, they would judge differently. What is ash but fixed, firmly fixed vegetable and animal sulphur, merely mixed with dust, sand, and other impurities on hearths and furnaces, preventing its ivory whiteness from showing? Let charcoal glow most strongly in an unglazed pot in an open flame and fall into ash, and its lunar whiteness and highest permanence appear. Yet that ash or sulphur made from charcoal is less good than when it appears in the cinnamon colour gained through its own alkali, as shown above. That in turn is far less splendid than the sulphur entering a ruby liquor with its oil. Everyone sees how acid becomes oil, oil charcoal, and charcoal salt and ash. The longer salt or alkali is melted, the earthier it becomes and the more virginal sulphurous earth it leaves through its retention, dissolution, and filtration. That earth is well suited to fixing its previously separated principles and bringing them with itself into a glassy yet soluble stone: a perfected magistery.

Ash can quickly be brought into a very subtle, snow-white earth by adding it to molten alkali, which prepares it fine and snow-white in fusion. The practitioner need not fume salts away through prolonged melting: in this manner he makes a large quantity at once and has enough matter for fixation. Yet this work is unnecessary if he does not wish it; charcoal itself is sufficient to fix its volatile parts by degrees. Since this is found universally and particularly in everything in the whole world, let someone now prove and show me any dregs anywhere in nature, and I shall give him the victor’s laurel. If he speaks of an earth, I direct him to vitrification. Glasses show the glory of eternal permanence among all things. Observe that no earth of any kind can become glass without salt. It must either have salt born within it or receive salt from outside. With salt it becomes fusible; the longer it flows in fire, the more superfluous moisture fumes away. Glass retains only what it needs to assume glassiness, holding that so firmly that scarcely any element can rob it.

This gives another excellent light. If one cannot bring a salty tincture into glass, add a definite weight of such a subtle prepared earth and fuse them together in a closed crucible in a glass furnace for several days and nights. They unite into a fusible glassy body. To remove every doubt, use prepared animal earth for an animal tincture, vegetable or mineral earth for the corresponding tinctures. Metallic bodies demonstrate this after sulphur is separated: once most or all sulphur is removed, the body becomes an electrum or metal-glass. Everyone thus sees that ash is the same matter as its distilled spirit, vinegar, oil, salt, and charcoal: a fixed vinegar, oil, charcoal, and salt. Ash differs only in accidental form, not matter. Thus something supremely fixed in itself can be made from animals and plants as well as all minerals, and plants and animals cannot be accused of lacking imperishability. Though they do not stand in the same degree of fixity as minerals, the practitioner’s hand can bring them there, showing that they carry imperishability within their centre, no less than minerals.

Finally, to see clearly that disputes about this thing and that are only goat’s wool, consider what I have repeatedly said: animals, plants, and minerals differ not in essence or matter but in accidents—lesser and greater volatility and fixity, subtlety and thickness, moisture or solution and dryness or coagulation. In origin and original water they are the same. Animals are volatile plants; plants are volatile minerals; minerals are fixed plants, and plants fixed animals. I have now proved that nature contains no dregs. Whoever can produce a better trial may refute this freely. Meanwhile I remain with my opinion and experiment. No one will take from me what I see with my eyes and handle with my hands. Further, when I interrupt coagulation, remove the body from the flask, grind it, moisten it, draw off, reverberate, let the fire go out, and grind again, I follow nature and shorten all my works. What nature dries, parches, and macrocosmically reverberates by the sun in daytime it moistens and imbibes by the moon’s cold at night, or by a cool moist rain in daytime. Then it dries, coagulates, and reverberates through the sun above and the centre below, almost continually and infinitely.

Mark well, practitioner: nature does not keep its alternations in vain; do likewise. There is no advantage in a long road when a shorter brings me sooner to the goal. I leave everyone free to follow other philosophers; whoever does not wish to follow me may pass unhindered. Only work one way according to others and another according to me, then compare the advantage of each. As for the philosophers’ work being made in one vessel, I too have only one flask, sometimes using another for brevity on account of fixed parts that do not readily rise so high. In sum, this treatise is intended to illuminate natural philosophy from nature itself, not overthrow authors. Whoever finds an advantage should thank eternal God. These chapters on the corruption and regeneration of things require extensive teaching and explanation; the reader will excuse my adding brief physical reasons to most doubtful points. This second treatise’s chapters will therefore be somewhat longer, although fewer than in the first. I called the practice with chaotic water lengthy and irksome and promised shorter, more agreeable paths. I now fulfil that promise: first, according to crude art; second, according to nature itself; third, according to the art of separating dregs. Choose whichever you wish. As it proceeds here, so it proceeds in all animals, plants, and minerals.

First method. Without separating dregs. Take putrefied rainwater, stir up its turbidity, and put it in a still. Distil the subtler spirits off: this is the volatile, to be kept separately. Continue distilling coarse phlegm until a fairly moist liquor remains. Purifying and edulcorating the salt is superfluous for this work. Transfer the remaining liquor from still to retort and distil phlegm, acid, and oil in ashes or sand. Put the residue in a flask and pour its oil and acid on it. In the water bath, using a tall flask and alembic, draw off whatever passes and digest four or six days and nights. Add its upper volatile spirit, digest at the water bath’s first degree for two or four days and nights, and distil by degrees everything that will pass. When nothing more passes, set it in ashes, coagulate, and reverberate through the second and third degrees; calcine until a colour appears at the bottom. Remove it, grind to powder, and return the liquor drawn off in the bath and ashes. Set in the bath two days and nights, then distil everything that will pass, preserving it as before for further imbibition. After the water bath, set in ashes and distil all moisture to dryness. Fix through all degrees of ashes, then in sand, as first explained at length. You have the quintessence and magistery of the macrocosm, as good as the following.

Second method. Nature’s own way. Take putrefied rainwater and distil all moisture from the copper still until a thick liquor remains. Put that in another flask with head and receiver and distil in the water bath whatever passes. Earth remains at the bottom. Set it in ashes with head and receiver, drying very gently by degrees without burning it or awakening its vinegar or oil; draw away only superfluous moisture. When a sour vapour is perceived through the head’s beak, let everything cool: its vinegar is rising, which must not happen, and oil will immediately follow. That would be violent operation, not nature’s way, for nature does everything gently and slowly until it makes stone from water. Nature does not readily make charcoal from things, or only very rarely: it burns none for you. That is neither generation, corruption, nor natural generation, but violent destruction by the upper Vulcan. After gently drawing moisture off in ashes, reverberate earth gently at the second degree, remove it, and add enough of its drawn-off moisture to make thin melted honey. Set in the bath to dissolve, distil there and afterward in ashes, and continue distilling, drying, reverberating, digesting, and coagulating until earth has one colour throughout. It progresses from brown to red. After passing through the colour several times, reverberate strongly and fix in ashes, then sand as above. You have quintessence.

Third method. The shortest way with separation of dregs. Take putrefied rainwater and distil its volatile spiritual portion from the still, preserve it separately and label A. Distil the phlegmatic portion until thin melted-honey thickness remains; keep the phlegm separately and label B. Transfer the honey-thick material to a retort in sand. Distil first coarse phlegm, then acid, then oil by degrees; the dead head stays below. Separate the coarse phlegm and vinegar from the oil through a glass funnel, label them C, and the oil D. Put the phlegm with acid into a low flask in the water bath with head and receiver. Draw off phlegm and add it to B above. All parts are now separated and must be rectified. Rectify volatile spirit through a tall cucurbit as subtly as you please: A is rectified. Gently drive acid C over through a retort in ashes: it too is rectified. Rectify oil D thus: take three parts dead head from the retort and three parts oil D, grind together, put in a retort, and distil in ashes or sand. The oil is rectified.

Take the dead head and calcine it in open flame until it falls into ashes. Leach these with its phlegm B, filter, and coagulate, obtaining a brown salt. Heat the salt red-hot, dissolve again in its phlegm, filter, and coagulate. Repeat until it is snow-white; all parts are rectified. Conjunction. Take two parts salt, three parts vinegar, and six parts volatile spirit A. Pour the volatile spirit upon its salt in a flask, add the vinegar, fit head and receiver, and distil in the water bath to an oily consistency. Set the oil in a cellar to crystallize; it forms beautiful subtle crystals. Take and dry them, draw the liquid down again to half or an oily consistency in the water bath, and let it crystallize again. Continue until no more crystals form. Collect them all and dry gently in the sun or by a warm oven. You have the macrocosm’s quintessence.