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Book 7 On the Transmutations of Natural Things
Latin witness: Frankfurt 1605, printed pp. 228–236, SUB Göttingen PPN578052199. Source facsimile: https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/id/PPN578052199?tify=%7B%22pages%22%3A%5B212%5D%7D
To write about the transmutation of all natural things, it is fitting and necessary first to show what transmutation is, second what its stages are, and third through what means and in what way it occurs. Transmutation occurs when a thing loses its form and is so altered that it is wholly unlike its former substance and form, assuming another form, essence, colour, virtue, nature or property: when metal becomes glass or stone; stone becomes coal; wood becomes coal; clay becomes stone and brick; skin becomes glue; cloth becomes paper, and many similar things. All these are transmutations of natural things. Next it is absolutely necessary to know how many stages there are toward transmutation. There are no more than seven. Though some count more, there are no more than seven principal stages; the others which can be counted as stages are included under these seven: Calcination, Sublimation, Solution, Putrefaction, Distillation, Coagulation and Tincture. Whoever climbs this ladder will reach so marvellous a place as to see and experience many secrets in the transmutation of natural things.
What transmutation is.
The seven principal stages of transmutation.
1. What Calcination is and its kinds.
The first stage is Calcination, which also includes Reverberation and Cementation. There is little difference among these three insofar as calcination is concerned, so calcination is the principal stage here. Through reverberation and cementation many corporeal things, especially metals, are calcined and reduced to ash. Yet a thing which has been calcined has not thereby necessarily been reverberated or cemented. Through calcination all metals, minerals, stones, glasses and all corporeal things become coal and ash. This occurs through a bare, strong, aerated fire which hardens every tenacious, soft and fatty earth into stone, but reduces all stones to calx, as we see in pottery, lime and brick kilns.
2. What Sublimation is and its kinds.
Sublimation, the second stage, is also highly important for the transmutation of many natural things. It includes Exaltation, Elevation and Fixation and is not very unlike distillation. As water rises in distillation from all phlegmatic and watery things and is separated from its body, so in sublimation the spiritual is raised and subtilised from the corporeal, the volatile from the fixed, in dry things such as all minerals, and the pure is separated from the impure. Through sublimation many good virtues and marvellous things are found in minerals, and many things are fixed and made stable so that they remain in fire, as follows. Grind and mix the sublimate again with its own dregs and sublime as before. Repeat until it no longer sublimes but everything remains together at the bottom and becomes fixed. It will afterward become stone or oil whenever and as often as you wish: place it, cooled, in air or glass, and it immediately dissolves into oil; put it back into fire and it coagulates again into a stone of marvellous and great virtue. Regard this as a great secret and mystery of nature and do not reveal it to sophists. Just as many corrosives become sweet in sublimation through the union of two materials, so conversely many sweet things become corrosive: many sweet things become tart, astringent or bitter, and conversely many bitter things become sweet as sugar. Note also that every metal brought to sublimation through sal ammoniac afterward dissolves into oil in cold or air and conversely coagulates into stone in fire. This is one of the greatest and highest transmutations among all natural things: to transmute a metal into a stone.
How minerals are fixed into a stone.
A rule concerning Sal Ammoniac.
3. What Solution is and its kinds.
Solution is twofold.
The third stage is Solution, which includes dissolution and resolution. This stage often follows sublimation and distillation, dissolving the material which remains at the bottom. Solution is twofold: one of cold, the other of heat; one outside fire, the other in fire. Cold solution dissolves all salts, corrosives and calcined things. Whatever is of a salty and corrosive quality it resolves into oil, liquor or water. This occurs in a moist, cold cellar, or merely in air, on marble or in glass. Everything dissolved in cold contains an acrid spirit of salt, which it often acquires and takes up in sublimation or distillation. Everything dissolved in cold or air is coagulated again by fire’s heat into powder or stone. Solution by heat dissolves all fatty and sulphurous things. Whatever fire’s heat dissolves, cold coagulates into a mass; whatever heat coagulates, air and cold dissolve again. Understand also that what air or a cellar dissolves is very dry and contains a hidden corrosive fire; what is dissolved in fire and its heat contains a sweet coldness outside fire. Solution must be understood in this way and no other.