Book 5 On the Death of Natural Things

Latin witness: Frankfurt 1605, printed pp. 215–223, SUB Göttingen PPN578052199. Source facsimile: https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/id/PPN578052199?tify=%7B%22pages%22%3A%5B199%5D%7D

What death is.

The death of all natural things is nothing but the alteration and overthrow of their forces and virtues, the predominance of badness and goodness, the suppression and destruction of the former nature, and the generation of a new and different nature. Many things are good and possess their virtues in life, but once dead retain little or none of their virtue and appear utterly insipid and powerless. Conversely, many things are bad in life, but in death, or after being mortified, display manifold force and efficacy and confer great benefit. We could list many examples here, but that is not our purpose. Yet to show that I write from experience rather than plausible opinion, I must offer one example to quiet and silence the sophists who say that absolutely nothing can be obtained from dead things, and nothing should be sought or found in them. They say this because they set no value on alchemists’ preparations, through which many such great secrets are discovered. Consider Mercury, living and crude Sulphur, and crude Antimony as brought from the mines—that is, while alive. How small their virtue is, how mildly and slowly they exert their efficacy! Indeed, they bring more harm than good and are poison rather than medicine. But if through an expert alchemist’s diligence they are corrupted in their first substance and prudently prepared—Mercury coagulated, precipitated, sublimed, dissolved and converted into oil; sulphur sublimed, calcined, reverberated and converted into oil; likewise Copper sublimed, calcined, reverberated and converted into oil—you will see how much benefit, force and virtue and how swift an efficacy they display, beyond anyone’s adequate expression or description. Their manifold virtues cannot be fully investigated, and no one can discover them all. Every alchemist and faithful physician should therefore search in these three things throughout life and occupy and spend time with them until death. They will most certainly compensate all that labour, study and expense magnificently.

Preparations of Mercury, Sulphur and Copper.

What human death is.

Let us turn to particulars and describe the death and mortification of each natural thing: what its death is and how it is mortified. First, human death is undoubtedly nothing but the end of the day’s work, the withdrawal of air, the disappearance of balsam, the extinguishing of the natural light, the great separation of the three substances—body, soul and spirit—and the return to the mother’s womb. Since the natural earthly human is from earth, earth will also be the mother to which that human must return, there to lose the earthly natural flesh and thus be regenerated on the last day in new, heavenly and clarified flesh, as Christ says to Nicodemus when he came to him by night. These words about regeneration must be understood in the manner just described.

What the death of metals is.

The death and mortification of metals is the removal of their bodily structure and sulphurous fatness, which can be taken from them in many ways: by calcination, reverberation, dissolution, cementation and sublimation. Metallic calcination is of more than one kind. One occurs through salt, one through sulphur, one through aquae fortes, and one through common Mercury and living Mercury. Calcination through salt requires the metal to be beaten into extremely thin plates, layered with salt and cemented. For calcination through sulphur, the metal is beaten into plates, layered with sulphur and reverberated. Through aquae fortes, it is granulated, dissolved in aqua fortis and precipitated in it. Calcination through common Mercury likewise requires metal plates: place Mercury in an earthen vessel narrow above and broad below, then in a moderate charcoal fire gently blown until Mercury begins to fume and a white cloud emerges from the vessel’s mouth. Put the plated metal over its mouth: common Mercury penetrates it and makes it brittle like coal. Calcination through living Mercury requires the metal to be cut into small pieces, beaten into plates or granulated and amalgamated with Mercury. Afterward squeeze the Mercury through a skin, and the metal remains in the skin in the form of calx or sand.

The various calcinations of metals.

What calcination through Salt is.

What calcination through sulphur is.

What calcination through aquae fortes is.

What calcination through common Mercury is.