Once you have dulcified the corrosive in this way and drawn it down to oil, put it in a retort and distil it over as a sweet, lovely, agreeable oil that all animals and plants can consume without the least danger. It is called the quintessence, magistery, or mineral arcanum of the subject from which it was taken. If you wish to coagulate this oil into a saline stone, fixed and volatile like butter, put it in a tall flask with head and receiver and set it in the water bath. Withdraw its superfluous moisture by degrees, for the essence does not readily rise there. Then set it in ashes and slowly drive off the moisture that would not rise in the bath. It grows thicker and thicker, flowing like oil in fire and setting like ice in air. You have it both liquid and dry. Thank God for it. Note that the sharper your acid and spirit of wine, the faster they dulcify; the weaker, the slower. Sharpness consists in separating recolacean water or phlegm as far as possible, so that spirit of wine and acid are as concentrated as possible. The lover of the art should also note that, if he wishes to apply the mineral, corrosive, or mineral essence only to a vegetable work and not to animals, he need not add spirit and acid of urine along with spirit of wine and vegetable acid, although it does no harm. Only spirit of wine and vegetable acid are needed. If he desires it solely for mineral nature, he need not dulcify it at all unless he wishes. But physicians continually seek the recovery of their sick neighbour and pay little attention to other transmutations. They must therefore dulcify the corrosive in the manner described.

Now come objections. Some will say: 'This process is truly contrary to all philosophers, who command us to separate from every mineral its mercury, sulphur, and salt, its properly constituted principles. Here he makes each mineral into a salt or vitriol, from this a corrosive oil, and fixes that again into salt. Where is mercury, in dry and flowing form?' My dear friend, whoever you are, if you have attained this route described in all the books, I freely tell you that you have not come far, still less properly investigated mineral nature, and least of all understood the philosophers. You will also have read among them—although it is not to be understood in the same way here, for that is a higher route—that the salt of metals is the philosophers' stone and the magistery of art. This salt contains mercury and sulphur hidden within it. Made into oil, it is called sulphur; its inwardly working spirit is mercury. Thus salt, sulphur, and mercury are together. When this oil is coagulated again into salt and made fixed—as it readily coagulates through slow withdrawal of moisture—it flows constantly like oil in warmth, sets like ice in cold, and dissolves in all liquors like sugar in water, without precipitation. It is then a real medicine for curing any diseases whatsoever. Someone will object again: 'This operation is not only performed with corrosives; the corrosive is also left with it and never separated again.' To disabuse him of this notion, I must become lengthy once more and return all the way to the origin.

Now consider: God created something visible, as we see daily before our eyes—namely, two things from which everything has arisen. There is the universal chaotic water as a body, dwelling, and instrument of the spirit or seed; this is visible and tangible. But the spirit or seed that dwells within it is invisible until, through the successive degrees of putrefaction and fixation, it becomes visible, tangible, and bodily, as we have adequately explained above. Observe now that the water is recolaceum and does not become a body with the seed and alongside it, except when it is absolutely necessary for the seed to make itself a body; the rest it forcibly drives out through fire and heat. Mark this well: aqua recolacea is the instrument and dwelling of the universal spirit or seed, by means of which the spirit must perform its operation of fixing or volatilizing itself, making itself volatile or fixed, heavenly or earthly. Without this water the spirit would be dry and would therefore lie inactive, as though asleep or dead. For as long as aqua recolacea is with the spirit, or the spirit with the water, it never rests, being continually awakened to act. This is clearly seen in minerals and vegetables, especially those that are excessively moist and from which the aqua recolacea has not been separated. Thus, as long as the animal and vegetable flourish and live, this spirit or seed travels with the water through their moist members and vessels, digesting, putrefying, separating, and coagulating, and so distributes nourishment for the growth and preservation of the subject. But when the subject approaches its decline and destruction, withers or dies, the spirit turns about. Instead of assisting the vegetable and animal and providing nourishment as before, it begins again—the instant the animal or plant has scarcely lost its balsamic spirit of life—and brings it into putrefaction and dissolution, then onward into generation as something else. All this it does through and by means of the water, without which it cannot act, as can be demonstrated.

When a subject is thoroughly dried and coagulated until entirely dry, the spirit is as though dead or asleep, because its medium, dwelling, instrument, or aqua recolacea has been taken away. But if it receives one again, either from the universals—air, dew, rain, water—or in a specified form, that is, when it is applied or administered as a medicine to vegetable or mineral subjects, it acquires superfluous moisture again, or a correspondingly specified watery instrument. This awakens it once more to act, and it then either rarefies or destroys the vegetable or mineral according to how it is applied and prepared. Now I say: the more the universal spirit is separated from its aqua recolacea, the more fixed and concentrated it becomes; and if this fixed, concentrated spirit or seed is made spiritual again by excessive heat, it is pure fire and a winged dragon that consumes everything in its jaws. Thus spirit of nitre, aqua fortis, and spirit of salt are pure consuming fire; and as long as it is such a fire, it is hostile to all individual things, especially animals and vegetables. But since means have been shown for calming its raging cruelty and bringing it to a pleasing mildness, the practitioner need not have many scruples on that account.

The practitioner should know: if the spirit or seed did not have such sharpness, how could it dissolve such hardened bodies and earth? If anyone dislikes this way, let him dissolve stones and metals with spirit of wine or urine, or with a vegetable and animal acid; then let him observe and learn the difference for himself. Practice will eventually teach him. It follows now that I should leave the universal seed or spirit—spirit of nitre or aqua fortis and so forth—as the solvent with the dissolved matter; and I give the reason. When the universal seed or spirit is joined to the specified seed, and the universal spirit thus also becomes a corresponding specific through the specified one, the mother comes to the child and the child to the mother. The mother nourishes and increases the child with its own food, and the child draws its nourishment from the mother from whose substance and blood it originally sprang. Thus I do not know what harm there should be in the child being fed by its true mother and changing that food into its own quality and nature, by which it differs in nature; nor should it be so harmful when the child has gained and advanced its growth thereby. All universals make themselves homogeneous with the specifics, assume their nature and quality, and perform the specific’s predestined power. This not only increases the virtue and power of the concentrated and therefore sharpened universal seed, but also exalts and raises it in quantity and quality. The sharper and more fiery the spirit, the more powerfully it acts; the more concentrated it is, the stronger it is, and the smaller its dose. Nor have I taught that such a sharp spirit should be applied to animals and vegetables before its dulcification. After dulcification, however, prove a fault. Whoever will not believe this in theory will be taught by practice, which will set it before his face.

I will add just one very simple example here, from which every practitioner should immediately grasp the rapid change of the sharp or corrosive spirit or seed into sweetness. Take one part of well dephlegmated spirit of vitriol or oil of vitriol; pour ordinary distilled wine vinegar upon it and draw it off in ashes until an oil remains. Pure phlegm or aqua recolacea will pass over at the first or second degree of fire, in a flask that is not too low. Then again gently pour on fresh distilled wine vinegar and draw it off just as gently down to the oil; do this three times. Then taste the oil of vitriol on the tongue to see whether it has not already changed most of its sharpness into sugar. To dulcify it still further, pour spirit of wine upon it and abstract in the water bath. Do this also a third time, and the oil of vitriol—especially if the acid and spirit of wine are strong—will become so sweet that everything drunk or eaten afterward will also seem sweet, so strongly does it tinge the pores of the tongue and take possession of the taste. The sharper the vinegar and spirit of wine, the more and the faster they dulcify, to say nothing of what would happen if the animal kingdom were added to them.