The Way of Truth

Via veritatis

Chapter Outline

False operations and the imitation of Nature

One substance and the three natures

The hidden fire, moisture and the language of colours

The origin of the elements and essences

Coction, metallic perfection and the true way

THE WAY OF TRUTH. A very fine, useful and excellent little treatise.

Dear friend and brother, until now many false alchemical writers have led the simple astray in the noble art of chymistry. Their writings contain nothing but deceit and lies, although the simple suppose them to contain something excellent, put great faith in the lies and continue with the work. In this way, however, they involve themselves in great trouble and labour, for what is begun without understanding cannot be brought to a commendable end. You therefore see that most people who now take up the noble art of alchemy immediately run in pursuit of false alchemical processes. They imagine that they have found the true and proper art there, although it is never described in books without parables. Instead, there is an ample supply of false recipes invented by scoundrels who themselves knew nothing of the truth and therefore could write nothing true. Reader and writer have thus understood equally little of what belongs to Nature. If the writers had known Nature, they would not have ventured to write such absurd directions and recipes, with their false sublimation, calcination, distillation, solution and coagulation, their invented putrefaction and conjunction. We see every day how the unskilled squander all their possessions on this false bungling. All of this happens through false books which teach false regimens wholly inconsistent with Nature.

True chymists have nothing to do with such useless and unnecessary processes. They follow venerable Nature, which accomplishes the work in the veins of the earth according to its own manner, without solution, coagulation or putrefaction, and is itself entirely simple and plain. Consider carefully, dear friend, what instruments are found in the veins of the earth where metals flourish and grow: what alembic heads and cucurbits, what retorts, circulating vessels and subliming vessels, what assorted furnaces, fires and materials? Does Nature use so many different furnaces or glasses in the veins of the earth, and so many materials—vitriol, salt, arsenic, mercury, sulphur and other rubbish which need not be listed here—as alchemists use today, spending their money and time with such great ignorance? They may rightly be called ignorant, since they practise alchemy daily yet persist in their great bungling with solutions, coagulations, distillations and putrefaction, which are worth nothing, and uselessly consume money and time. Nature is plain, and accomplishes its work very simply and plainly. What use to us, then, is all this bungling and labour, which true practitioners regard as nothing but folly?

The true practitioners also ridicule them daily for failing to open their eyes and for remaining stuck in sophistry. There they must remain and perish, because they will consider nothing beyond what they have read in their sophistical books. All their conduct is sophistical rather than philosophical, and so they attain neither the art nor the truth. I tell you truly: as long as you love lies instead of the philosophical art, the truth will not be revealed to you. I too persisted and laboured for a long time in sophistical regimens: subliming, distilling, calcining and repeating operations. Nor did I spare many substances, such as urine, salt, vitriol, alum and borax. I searched in hair, blood, tartar and bone by many kinds of work; I laboured with eggs, bones and all sorts of herbs. I tried arsenic and mercury with sulphur. I tested every mineral and metal, attacking them with all manner of strong waters and lyes, dissolving and coagulating them. I also applied myself to amalgamation, and precipitation gave me no joy. I placed great trust in quintessences, but was deceived there too.

My earnest admonition and injunction, dear brother, is therefore this: if you intend to search in this noble art, do not involve yourself in the sophistical and disorderly regimen of subliming sulphur and mercury, dissolving bodies or coagulating spirits. Have nothing to do with their expensive furnaces, for these do not serve the true art. Moreover, as long as you fail to consider the true being of Nature, you will remain without comfort, until at last you suppose the art to be worthless, wholly invented and false.

If you wish to make progress, therefore, you must entirely abandon all this sublimation, calcination, solution and coagulation, together with putrefaction. Desire to be a disciple and to be called one, learning the true and proper foundation of philosophy. Through right understanding, that foundation will show and teach you a different solution, a different coagulation and a different regimen, which is natural and agrees with Nature. You must follow Nature fittingly, as it works in the veins of the earth where metals grow. You can see that Nature uses only one substance in its being, and that all things lie hidden in that substance. This substance needs no other labour than a true coction, through which it rises from degree to degree until it reaches its highest degree. Out of this plain coction and progression, the subtle sophists have invented solution, coagulation, calcination, putrefaction, sublimation and many more fanciful names. They have thus contrived something entirely different out of the true, plain being, or plain coction, and have burdened this plain and truthful art with the greatest difficulty, as though it required such enormous labour, such a long time and such great expense. They invented these things falsely, from hatred and envy, to lead their followers away from the true art and into great poverty. They will scarcely be able to answer for this before God, having given little heed to his command: Love your neighbour as yourself. They have trampled truth underfoot and put lies in its place, adorning those lies magnificently and writing great books about them, as though improving metallic Nature were a weighty undertaking, when it is nothing but a plain coction.

While you cook, you putrefy: the substance passes into decay, just as grain sown in the earth is sustained there by the sun’s warmth and, through natural rain, must first perish and rot before anything new can grow from it. They called this putrefaction, and also solution. You also sublime while cooking, for they called the improvement of the substance sublimation and multiplication, intending thereby to blind the simple and unwise. In the same way you coagulate: when moisture is changed into the nature of fire, so that it can withstand fire and is neither scorched nor dispersed as vapour, they call this coagulation. The philosophers circulate in coction, for in it fire is united with water so that the fire cannot burn. We see every day that water protects all things from burning as long as the water is present. Thus in coction the water takes on fire and unites with it, becoming wholly pure fire; the ancients called this circulation or conjunction. You see, then, how they invented so many names for plain coction and established so many false regimens to mislead people. The ancients gave this one substance its many names so that no one could discover what it might be from which, through the power of God, such excellent things could be accomplished. First they call it our mercury, meaning nothing but the moisture which has begun to unite a little with fire and has therefore been likened to mercury. They also called it our sulphur, which is nothing other than the fire hidden in the water or moisture and cooked by that water to its highest degree. It was further named Hyle, that is, the beginning of all things, because all things are first generated from water and fire.

Other names, such as auripigment, arsenic and marcasite, were invented by worthless, ignorant scoundrels and sophists who themselves knew nothing of the truth, rather than by philosophers. Henceforth free yourself from the sophists and do nothing but follow Nature, which requires only plain coction; then you will not be deceived. If you are not too badly misled, and are willing to consider Nature a little, you will doubtless soon be able to discern the matter from which metallic creatures are generated. First, however, you must learn to understand metallic Nature correctly: why Sol, Luna, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all metals, and what their origin is, through which they have become metals.

You must also know with certainty that all created things are divided into three natures: vegetable, animal and mineral, and that these three encompass everything. All herbs, all wood and trees—whatever burns in fire and gives off flames—are called vegetable. Next, all beasts that have life, or whatever is included under flesh and blood, are called animal. Finally, all metals and stones, and all other things that cannot give off flames, are mineral and are included under mineral Nature. You now see, dear brother, that all things are divided and included in three different natures. Although divided into these three different natures, they nevertheless all have one beginning or principle from which they are generated or born. Through different coctions this first matter changes in three ways, according to the coction, through this single and common substance of the different natures.

I therefore advise you, as before, to abandon all the alchemists’ sophistical sublimation, solution, coagulation and putrefaction, together with all the jugglery they still practise today. Keep solely to the plain, natural coction of the true and proper substances. This will truly and certainly guide you to the real transformation of natures, for Nature is exalted or improved by no other thing and by no other means than the natural coction of essences.