Nine Books on the Nature of Things

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.