Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

Returning, then, to my first course, and withdrawing from chymical paths as far as the subject will allow, I shall say that this general spirit is the stone and elixir which Nature has composed, and through which she performs all her wonders, far more worthy of admiration than those of the chymical stone. To that stone this same spirit grants only the ability to act upon its like, introducing into it what it lacked. For, being truly metallic, purified and perfected by art, it purifies and perfects impure metals which have remained imperfect through lack of digestion. But this natural stone perpetually reproduces things which have already had their beginning from it, and at every moment creates new ones in the animal, vegetable and mineral kinds alike. It could not do this without the aid and favour of the celestial bodies, especially the sun, source and principle of all powers and generations. It therefore has the sun as its father and contains spiritual gold and silver, since it is the first matter of the first matter of bodily gold and silver. And because air is the medium through which it receives the higher powers, Hermes says that the wind carried it in its belly; for this reason Raymond Lulle calls it aerial Mercury. The earth, its first parent, nourishes it in her fruitful bosom. This is proved by the production of everything that issues from the earth; for if this spirit were not enclosed within her, she would have neither strength nor power to generate and produce, being properly only the vessel or womb of so many different generations and productions. This general matter, to which the name Mercury is given, is, according to the sages, invisible and almost incorporeal, and can be embodied and brought into view only through subtle artifice.