This must not be understood to mean that the seven metals, or likewise a tincture or the philosophers’ stone, can be generated from just any Mercury, any Sulphur and any Salt in fire by an alchemist’s art and diligence. All seven metals must be generated in the mountains through the Archaeus of the earth. An alchemist will transmute metals more easily than generate or make them. Nevertheless, living Mercury is the mother of all seven metals and will rightly be called the mother of metals. It is an open metal: just as it contains within itself all colours, which it brings forth in fire, so it secretly contains all metals, which it does not bring forth outside fire, and so forth.

Living Mercury is the mother of metals.

The regeneration of metals into tinctures.

The regeneration and renewal of metals occurs as follows. Just as a person can return to the mother’s womb—that is, to the earth from which the first human came—and thus be born anew on the last day, so all metals can return to living Mercury, become Mercury, and be regenerated and clarified through fire if they remain for forty weeks in continuous warmth, like a child in the mother’s womb. What are born then are tinging metals rather than common metals. If Silver is regenerated as described, it will afterward tinge all other metals into Silver; likewise Gold will tinge the remaining metals into Gold. The same must be understood of every other metal.

Soul is the medium by which spirit is joined to body.

Hermes was right to say that soul alone is the medium which joins spirit to body. Since Sulphur is that soul and, like fire, matures and cooks all things, it can also bind spirit to body, embody and unite them together, so that a very excellent body is generated. Yet common combustible sulphur must not be taken as the soul of metals: that soul is something other than a combustible and corruptible body. It therefore cannot be consumed by any fire, since it is entirely fire. In truth it is nothing other than the quintessence of Sulphur, extracted from reverberated sulphur by spirit of wine, red in colour and transparent like a ruby. This is a great and outstanding arcanum for transmuting white metals and coagulating living Mercury into fixed and tested Gold. Regard it as a treasure commended to you for enrichment: you ought rightly to be content with this one arcanum in the transmutation of metals.

What the soul of metals is.

Whence the generation of metals comes.

Concerning the generation of mineral ores and semimetals, nothing further need be understood beyond what was said of metals at the beginning: they arise in the same way from those three principles, Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. Yet unlike metals, they arise from Mercury, Sulphur and Salt which are less perfect and more tenuous, rather than perfected, and still have their distinct colours.

Whence the generation of gems comes.

What the generation of stones is.

Gems are generated and flow from the subtlety of earth, from transparent and crystalline Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, each according to its distinct colours. Common stones, however, are generated from the subtlety of water, from mucilaginous Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. All stones, including pebbles, arise from the mucilage of water; sand too is coagulated from it into stones, as is evident to the eyes. Any stone placed in water soon attracts mucilage to itself. If that mucilaginous material is taken from such stones and coagulated in a cucurbit, a stone results such as would have arisen and coagulated by itself in that water, but over a long time, and so forth.