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What the life of Mercury is. Mercury resembles a fur garment, and so forth.
The life of Mercury is nothing but inner heat and outer coldness: inside its body it heats, outside it cools. It may rightly be compared with a fur garment, which, like Mercury, both heats and cools. When someone puts on and wears such a garment, it warms and protects against cold. But if the hairless side is worn against the naked body, it cools and works against excessive heat. Thus from the earliest times, and still in many places, such fur garments have been worn in summer as well as winter, against heat as well as cold. In summer the smooth side is turned inward and the hairy side outward; in winter’s cold the hairy side is worn inward and the smooth side outward. What you have now heard about the fur garment can likewise be applied to Mercury.
What the life of Sulphur is.
The life of Sulphur is combustible, foul-smelling fatness. While it burns and stinks, it can be called alive.
What the life of salts is.
The life of all salts is nothing but the spirit of aqua fortis. Once their water is drawn off, what remains at the bottom is called dead earth.
What the life of gems and so forth is.
The life of gems and coral is colour alone, which can be taken from them through spirit of wine. The life of pearls is nothing but their lustre, which they lose in calcination. The life of the magnet is the spirit of iron, which can be extracted and removed from it by rectified ardent wine or spirit of wine.
What the life of the magnet is.
What the life of marcasites is.
The life of flints is a mucilaginous material. The life of marcasites, cachymiae, talc, cobalt, zinz, garnets, zwitter, Wismat and antimony is a tinging metallic spirit.
What the life of realgar and so forth is.