Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist

Beweiß der Natur / welchen sie den jrrenden Alchimisten thut

Chapter Outline

Nature rebukes the furnace worker and distinguishes her matter

Mineral being, plant growth and animal sensation

First matter, privation, form and celestial influence

Planetary movements and the formation of sulphur and Mercury

The elemental qualities and the fifth being

Nature’s exclusive power and the limits of mechanical imitation

Gold, the Stone and claims of medicine

One matter, one vessel, one furnace and one regimen

Human generation and the partnership of art and Nature

Philosophical study, authorities and the cost of the work

The alchemist answers and questions Nature’s account

Matter, potentiality and the three visible colours

The fruit of natural generation and the failure of destroying gold

The impossibility of separating and recombining elemental proportions

Three effects of alchemy and the father and son analogy

Repentance, gratitude and commitment to follow Nature

Nature’s demonstration to the erring alchemist, in which she complains of the sophist and foolish charcoal blower. Written by Johann von Mehung. NATURE. Ah God, how troubled I am when I consider the human race, which God made in his own image as a perfect work, yet which, beyond all other creatures, departs so far from me, Nature, and my order, failing to use time and reason properly. I am speaking to you, fanciful fool, who call yourself a practising alchemist and a good philosopher, although you possess neither art nor the right matter, neither theory nor knowledge nor understanding of me. You coarse ass, you break glasses and burn charcoal until the fumes drive your head mad. You boil alum, salt and orpiment, seethe things black and cast metal; you make small and large furnaces and use all sorts of vessels. Yet I am ashamed of your folly; worse still, you sicken me with your stinking sulphurous smoke. You suppose that your fiercely burning fire will fix quicksilver, though it is only the common volatile kind and not that from which I make a metal. You accomplish nothing by this path unless you take another. For you do not use my ways rightly and do not understand my craft. You would do better to attend to your own affairs than dissolve and distil so much muck, then congeal it by means of alembics, cucurbits, stills and pelicans. You will never make quicksilver remain fixed in that way. For your vivification you use a reverberating fire, so hot that everything melts, and thus carry out your work; but in the end you ruin yourself and another person with you. You will never discover anything in this manner unless you go into my forge, where I ceaselessly forge metal in the earth’s interior. There you will see the matter with which I work and the manner of my working.

Do not imagine that I will reveal my secret to you unless you seek the growing little grain of metals, animals and plants, all of which are kept under my power and within the earth: the one as regards generation, the other as regards nourishment. Metals have only being; plants have living and growth; animals have sensation, which is more than growth. I make metals, stones and atramenta from the elements, bringing them into a mixture and first composition within the belly of the earth; you need not seek them elsewhere. Plants have their seed to preserve their form within it. Animals likewise give their seed to beget their like. Briefly, each fulfils its office without falsehood. But you, vicious human being, who presume to undertake my office, alone depart from me, Nature, and do so more than every other creature. Metals have no life or nourishment by which to grow, flourish or multiply, for they have no generative seed; therefore they do not beget their like. They are originally created from the substance of the four elements, and from these I cause them to come into being. They and the stones have nothing beyond being, or existence. All stones are brittle and all metals fusible; after their fusion, however, metals should be fixed and fit to endure the hammer. Some, such as gold and silver, acquire great perfection through artificial purification. The others are all the more impure, for their quicksilver is too raw and their earthly sulphur too combustible. Such metals therefore cannot be purified, because the matter has received no good form. For I order all my works so well that each brings forth its form according to the purity of its matter.

If you now wish to know where I take the matter for this, I tell you that first I open the chamber of my high and subtle secrets and seek the right proximate matter for making an ore. I take this from the containers of my four elements. It is an original seed containing an essential form, composed in simplicity, prepared and well ordered for transmuting the four into one, so that it is a most general genus, or a common universal thing. Then, through my goodness and art, I give it metallic power, from which pure and impure, hard and soft metals arise. I draw this matter from the elements, draw it with my heavens, and over a long time lead it from first matter into the proximate matter proper to it, from which I make my ore. Afterwards sulphur and quicksilver emerge and turn into metals; but not a quicksilver and sulphur such as you see, which are of no use here. For through their contrary qualities they have been transmuted and driven from their own nature into another. Thus a matter passes through putrefaction and suitable corruption, by the privation of its first form, and puts on a new one. Through the natural warmth which the matter possesses within itself and which heaven awakens, with a gentle fire that I know how to make, I finally give a form which the matter willingly receives and draws to itself. In this way privation, form and matter are my ordained principles and beginnings, received from above.

And my lord the Creator has commanded me, as his handmaid, to transmute the four elements from universal matter through my operation and governance and to bring every mineral form under one common or universal form. Likewise, through my natural art I lead the Sun around the earth’s circuit in twenty-four hours. Through its movement it never ceases to arouse warmth in every element. The eighth sphere, the seven planets and their father, the first mover, which carries all the other spheres around with it, do the same. It takes its course towards the west, while all the others do the opposite, some in a long time and some in a short one: Saturn traverses its sphere in thirty years, Jupiter in twelve, Mars in two; the Sun traverses its signs in one year and six hours; Venus in 349 days; Mercury in 339 days; and the Moon passes through the twelve signs in twenty-nine and a half days. This differing course produces summer and winter, changes in the elements, and the generation of things upon earth. Nothing, whether capable of sensation, visible or invisible, can exist or have its place without me, the heavens and God. Thus the heavens work upon all things enclosed beneath the Moon and impart their influence to the power of matter. Matter desires to receive form as a woman desires a man. To all the countless stars in heaven, matters in their differing quantities are subject and subordinate; some of the stars are clear and others dark, all of which is indeed wondrous. Thus they produce different things according to their different courses, first above in heaven, then below according to their virtues within the elements, whence species and individuals arise. Know, therefore, that these many influences do not flow down into the element of earth in vain, although they occur invisibly. Before they descend into the earth, it has been determined within itself that they should enter successively with force and penetrate to the centre in as many different ways as they produce different generations in the ore through different impressions, and that the lower things should follow the upper without error or deviation. Thus the earth is surrounded and adorned by the heavens and receives their influence and best substance. Therefore every sphere desires to impart its virtue and penetrate as far as the centre.