Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

Yet experts in preparing the stone of the sages may say that Calid intends a different meaning in this passage. For according to the teaching of them all, there are two parts in the work: one volatile, which rises in the form of vapour, resolves and condenses into water, and which they call spirit; the other more fixed, which remains at the bottom of the vessel, and which they call body. They take this volatile part for air, as indeed it is, and the fixed part for earth. Rozinus sought to explain this passage by another from the same author, where he says: “Take the things from their souls, and exalt them into high places. Harvest them at the summits of their mountains, and put them back upon their roots.” The gloss says these words are clear and true, without any jealous withholding or ambiguity, yet that he has not named the things of which he intended to speak. By the mountains, it says, the sage meant pots or cucurbits, and by their summits the heads or alembics. To harvest, according to the comparison, is to cause the water of the aforesaid things to rise within the vessel; to return it to the roots is to allow that water to fall again upon the earth from which it came. This is confirmed by Morien when he says that the entire operation of the sages is nothing other than the extraction of water from earth and the return of water upon earth until the earth putrefies. For this earth putrefies and is cleansed with this water; and when cleansed, with God’s help it will guide and perfect the entire magistery.