Divining rods are uncertain.

Take care, therefore, not to let yourselves be led astray by divinations of uncertain arts. They are vain and ineffective, especially divining rods, which have deceived many miners: if they show something correctly once, they deceive ten times in return. Nor should one trust other fraudulent signs of the devil appearing by night or at an unsuitable time against all nature, such as ghosts and visions. I wish you to know that the devil too produces signs, but from sheer fraud and deceit. No temple is built beside which he does not place his chapel; no chapel is built into which he does not bring his little altar; no good seed is sown among which he does not sow darnel. The same applies to supernatural visions and apparitions in crystals, beryls, mirrors and waters, which ceremonial necromancers have hitherto shamefully abused against every command of God and the power of nature’s own light.

The foundation of Christian magic and cabala.

Visions are not to be rejected absolutely. They have their place, if they occur through another process. We no longer live in the first generation, but in the second. We Christians in regeneration should therefore no longer use ceremonies and conjurations as the ancients did in the Old Testament, when they lived in the first generation. Those were only prefigurations for us who were to live in the New Testament. Whatever the ancients in the Old Testament or first generation accomplished and obtained through ceremonies and conjurations, we Christians of the second generation, living in the New Testament, must seek and obtain through faith by prayer: by praying, knocking and seeking. In these three principal points lies the whole foundation of magical and cabalistic science, through which we can obtain whatever we desire, so that nothing is impossible for us Christians. We cease teaching more of these matters here, since they are handed down in the little book on vision and the other writings of cabala. I direct you there to see how wonderfully Christ the Son of God works through his angels in us Christians and faithful people, and how fraternally he associates with us. Hence we too are true angels and members of Christ, as he is our head, so that, as he is in us, we may live in him, as is taught in the books on the Lord’s Supper.

The power and faculty of the tincture of the natural philosophers.

How the tincture of the natural philosophers becomes astral.

The superiority of tinctured gold and so forth over natural gold.

To return to our subject of mineral signs, especially the flashes of metallic veins, know that just as metals still in their first being display their flashes, that is, their signs, so too the tincture of the natural philosophers, which changes all imperfect metals into good silver or gold, white metals into silver and red into gold, displays its own particular signs resembling flashes if it has been perfected and prepared astrally. As soon as a small quantity is cast into molten metal and the two meet in the fire, a natural flash or brilliance arises, just as refined gold and silver flash in the test or cupel. This indicates that the gold or silver is freed and purified from every admixture of other metals. How our tincture of the natural philosophers becomes astral is to be understood in this way. First, every metal, while still lying concealed in its first being, has its own particular stars. Gold has the stars of the Sun; silver, those of the Moon; copper, Venus; iron, Mars; tin, Jupiter; lead, Saturn; and quicksilver, Mercury. As soon as they reach perfection and coagulate into a fixed metallic body, their stars withdraw from each and leave its body dead. It follows that all such bodies are thereafter dead and ineffective, and the unconquered star of metals overcomes them, converts them into its own nature and makes them all astral. For this reason our gold and silver, tinctured and prepared with our tincture, is much nobler and better for preparing medicinal arcana than natural gold and silver generated by nature in mines and subsequently separated from other metals. Likewise mercury of the body, made astrally from another metal, is much nobler and more fixed than common mercury. Judge the other metals in the same way. I therefore affirm that every alchemist possessing the star of gold changes all red metals into gold by tincturing. By the star of silver all white metals are changed into silver; by the star of copper, into copper; by the star of quicksilver, into mercury of the body; and so on. It is not our purpose to explain here how all these stars are prepared according to spagyric art; that explanation belongs to the books on the transmutations of metals.

The condition of the red tincture.

The condition of the white tincture.

The nature of the star of copper.

The nature of the star of tin.