Let your proper intention now be to follow your mother, Nature, so that reason may preserve you and philosophy may be your guide. If you do this, I assure you that you will obtain the matter and reach the right end. It costs little: see only that you grasp my beginnings correctly. Observe how I work; mark what Aristotle says in books three and four of the Meteorology. Learn natural philosophy and read On Generation and Corruption, and On Heaven and the World, where you will find the matter beautiful and pure. Unless you understand it, you will certainly always lose. Therefore consult Albertus Magnus On Minerals, who accomplished this work. When your eyes have opened, you will find my secrets in the ores and see that all stones grow from the elements. Learn to know me before calling yourself a master. Follow me, the mother of all creatures that exist and possess an essence, which cannot grow or attain a sensitive soul without heaven and the elemental power. To learn to understand such things, you must diligently study philosophy, keep watch and work. When through practice you learn enough to recognise the heavens’ virtue and great operations, know the elements’ affections and why they receive such operations—which are the means of transformations—and understand the cause of putrefaction, generation and nourishment, and the essence and substance of the elements, you will possess knowledge of the art. Although it is otherwise enough to have an acute understanding for contemplating my works, not all sages have possessed this gift of God through their knowledge and private reason. Rather, good-hearted people who followed me rationally obtained it after the long time I ordain and after long-endured patience. Do as I tell you if you wish to obtain this treasure which the true natural philosophers and ancient philosophers also possessed. It is a treasure of such virtue and sublimity that no person between heaven and earth can attain its like through art. It is an intermediate thing between Mercury and metal which I take, from which, through your art and my wisdom, such a splendid being is fashioned. It is fine and potable gold and radical moisture. It is the highest medicine, as Solomon describes it in Ecclesiast., chapter 38: God created it; it is taken from the earth, and the wise man does not despise it. God has placed it among my secrets and gives it to the wise and understanding. Yet many orators, and those who consider themselves great doctors in theology and philosophy, laugh it utterly to scorn. Physicians likewise despise and mock alchemy. But they do not know me and have experienced nothing of the art, as Avicenna, Villanovanus and many other great natural philosophers and tried ancient physicians have.

Only the unwise mock it, therefore, having never traced the path of true physicians. The mockers do not have brains enough to recognise such a root and noble medicine, which heals every disease. Happy is the person to whom God gives the time and life to reach this high being, even if they are old. For Geber says that although the philosophers who possessed it were old, they nevertheless delighted in it in their old age. Whoever possesses it possesses all goods and great riches. From an ounce, indeed from a grain, they may remain rich and healthy. Yet the creature must finally die and be content with God and Nature. It is a strengthening of the heart and more than a golden tincture. It is the elixir, the water of life, in which all works and things are enclosed. It is quicksilver, sulphur and the gold hidden in my treasure; the incombustible oil; the white, enduring, fusible salt; the philosophers’ Stone, which can be found in no way other than by natural art and human knowledge assisting it. I tell you openly that you, the worker, cannot complete the work without me, and that without you, my servant, I too can accomplish nothing in it. But through me and you, you will obtain the work in a short time. Abandon the sophists and their deceptive works. Leave their many different furnaces and vessels, their horse manure and charcoal fire, which are altogether useless. Leave the metals and other things aside. Rather, change the elements into a changeable form, the philosophers’ most splendid matter, which the ignorant reject. In substance it is like gold, but unlike it in essence. Turn the elements and you will find what you seek. I mean that you should sublime the lowest and make the highest into the lowest. Now take quicksilver mingled with its active sulphur, put it all in one single well-closed vessel in one single furnace, buried to the third part; set it above the philosophers’ fire and guard it from becoming smoky. Do this and trust me. Therefore, my son, I beg you to abandon all other species and not take the matter from which the ores begin. I will tell you no more, but I swear to you truly that you must follow me, Nature.

The alchemist’s answer to Nature, acknowledging his errors, asking pardon and giving thanks. ALCHEMIST. My dear mother Nature, after the angels the most perfect creature created by God, I now give you honour and praise, for I recognise and confess that you are a mother and governor of the great world, created for the human being, the little world. You are set on high in the first mover so that with your hands you rule the circuit and with your feet below transmute the elements, whether through love or contrariety, to the earth’s innermost part. You do all this at your lord’s command, generating without ceasing and accomplishing such high operations through your high intelligences and the incorruptible substances of the heavens, stars and planets. From these such pure things are formed that you rightly deserve everywhere to be acclaimed and loved as mother and mistress. I confess that nothing living lives without a soul, and that whatever exists and has an essence proceeds from you and your power, according to the authority and order you received from God. I recognise that you govern the whole mass and bring all the matter of the elements under your command. From them you take first matter and from the heavens form. Although this matter is initially mingled unequally within itself, it is qualified and specified by you; then it assumes substantial form and afterwards visible accidental form as well. You are so wise that through heavenly power and your highly effective forms you accomplish all your works so perfectly and in such good order that no one can condemn them. I see that God has endowed you so that he has placed beneath your hands everything human beings can do. He has caused four degrees to arise through you. The first has being and existence alone, as stones and metals do. The second consists of plants, which have being and growth. The third has sensation, as wild animals, birds and fish do, these being three kinds. The fourth is the noblest and most perfect among the others, as God has pleased: here stands the human being, in whom the other three degrees are fulfilled. But God worked beyond you when he gave the human being an immortal soul, adorned with reason and without dimension, which is not subject to the affections of our proportionately formed body. But he allowed sensation and sensuality to turn towards evil and sin through the body, which is afflicted with disordered desire. From this damnation follows unless grace is obtained, grace which comes from God and is bestowed principally for the sake of this eternal soul, rather than of the body. Therefore the great perfection of the human being does not come from you. But, as you have said, although you do not bestow humanity, no one but you puts a hand to work within the human vessel: the most perfect essence of your work and great power does this. It is a matter for great wonder, rightly considered, how our body is divided and furnished with limbs, in such a way that through an object or something presented to it the will is ready to move any limb whenever it wishes. Although the will does not proceed from you or your assistance, it is nevertheless a great wonder that the body, as a subject, exerts itself for the soul’s sake. So it must be, yet the body often becomes master here, not through its worthiness but through sin, whereby the soul is injured.