Dear brother, essence is the principal thing in which the truth and the art reside. Yet misled, sophistical alchemists are so clumsy and ignorant that they cannot discern or comprehend this. Instead they torment themselves day after day with so many different substances contrary to Nature, which are wholly unfit for the true art. It is as though I intended to sow horn, wood or stone and hoped to harvest natural grain from them. It is impossible to make Sol and Luna from every imaginable substance; they can be made only from the natural essence of the natures, from which all things receive their beginning and thereafter, through different coctions, divide into different substances. Every natural thing thus has its particular coction in the natures. If we wish to attain the true art of alchemy, we must therefore work as Nature accomplishes its work in the veins of the earth.

The ancients also mentioned many colours: first black, then white, citrine and finally red, as well as green and every sort of colour. This too is nothing but deception, intended to mislead you into taking other natural paths and thus to keep you in ignorance. For the ancients were very subtle and took great pains to adorn their statements and sayings with such veiled words that ordinary people could not comprehend what they meant by them.

As a good friend, I therefore warn you not to be confused or misled when they speak of a black colour. Do not suppose that you must possess or take a black substance, or that the matter becomes black, white and red during the work. They spoke of blackness because, at the first beginning, the essence mixes with hot corporeal fire, whereupon the liquor separates from the essence like black smoke. The ancients called this black smoke the black raven, but called the essence the raven’s head.

You must consider this separation very carefully, for it gave the ancient sages occasion to investigate the three natures—vegetable, animal and mineral. From this they found that the difference between the natures was nothing but a deficiency of coction in Nature.

They then reflected further on these things, considering how ordinary fire might naturally assist those essences which Nature had cooked least thoroughly. In this way the essences which are now combustible, together with their liquors—which the ancients enviously named mercury, and which separate from the essences as black smoke—might be perfected by art. The essences would then be protected by the liquor against burning, and the liquor would be unable to separate from the essence. The ancients called this our sulphur, for after this preparation the essence is no longer vegetable or animal; through coction it has become a mineral essence and is therefore called sulphur. The essence is nothing other than elemental fire. Its liquor, which is protected against burning, is true elemental air. Because air is naturally warm and moist, the envious call it mercury.

Air contains the nature of fire, and elemental fire in turn possesses the nature of air, so that adding their like must bring about a true conjunction between the two. The corporeal materials, namely fire and water, which are visible to us, are nothing but an aid to the essences of the elements, through which they can naturally be brought to their highest degree. This elevation through the degrees is the true and proper alchemy; apart from it there is none.

What the sophists practise today is nothing but a loss of money and time. Do not imagine that you will acquire a thorough understanding from the philosophers’ sayings. These men directed you to the outward appearance while concealing the true inward essence. They give you the bran and bake bread from the sifted flour themselves. Consider what you will make from coarse bran! This is how they deal with you through their sayings: they direct you along paths they themselves never intend to tread. I therefore advise you to abandon such a corrupt foundation in good time. Otherwise you will enrich the apothecaries and bring yourself and your family into poverty. Moreover, through your poisonous black vapours of sulphur and quicksilver and the stench of marcasites and salts, you will burden yourself with indescribably dangerous illnesses, for all these things oppose the true art.

It is astonishing that all those who daily seek this lofty gift of God and labour hard for it remain so obstinate, persisting in senseless folly although they openly say that it achieves nothing. Consider what so many thousands have accomplished by tormenting themselves with sublimation, solution, coagulation, putrefaction, amalgamation and circulation, and with the melting of salts. What have they achieved towards the transmutation of metals with their waters and dissolution of metals, with tartar, blood, hair, eggs, milk, honey, sugar and assorted herbs? Nothing useful—indeed, less than nothing. Let your predecessors be an example to you. You see and hear that in all these years their sophistical conduct has not brought them to true alchemy, which serves to improve or exalt elemental fire. Through this, by its own light or liquor, elemental fire is exalted and improved from the first degree to the last; through this the imperfect things are also exalted. Their only deficiency is that their elemental fire has not been completely cooked and united through its liquor. Elemental fire therefore cannot endure: its liquor separates from it through the heat of ordinary fire and escapes in white smoke. The elemental fire itself cannot escape but remains with the earth and must burn beside and with it, because its protector has fled in white smoke. This is the whiteness of which the ancients wrote, which comes after blackness. Hence they said: you must first blacken before you whiten. We must begin from the black and transform the black smoke. This does not mean that you should take black smoke as your matter and make it white; that too would be deception. I therefore tell you that the philosophers’ sayings are difficult for those who have not been thoroughly instructed in the natural operation of the natures. As long as you remain ignorant of Nature and cannot properly understand what constitutes the metallic character of metals, you will be unable to attain true and proper alchemy.

I know well, dear brother, that my writing will bring you no joy. Instead, your heart will be alarmed because I so utterly trample underfoot the false sophistical regimen in which you are firmly rooted. You imagine that you know a great thing, yet it is nothing but great folly and foolery. It does not improve metallic natures; it serves only barbers, bathkeepers and physicians. Let them amuse themselves with it, for it is sometimes useful to them.

Adam von Bodenstein likewise was a master of sophistry. He produced many strange books under the appearance of Theophrastus’s authority, and boasted greatly of alchemy as though he understood it well, when he was far from doing so. I acknowledge that he was a good sophist, for his whole activity consisted of sophistical regimens. Through the power of ordinary fire he discovered certain preparations useful in his own occupation, namely medicine; these, however, have nothing to do with true alchemy and are entirely contrary to it. Nevertheless, many people today attribute true alchemy to Bodenstein and imagine that he understood all its secrets thoroughly, when he was far from doing so. To the unlearned it looks wonderfully intricate, as though it contained immense understanding, although an informed person sees that it is without foundation. Yet, as the saying goes, it is easy to fence before the blind. I shall leave it there: since Adam von Bodenstein is not present in person, I will not speak much ill of him, following the proverb, “Say nothing of the absent except good.” But I do say this: he was a physician and a good sophist, yet, as his own writings show, he did not properly understand the natural art of alchemy or the secrets of the natures. It matters little to me if someone praises him highly; that will not harm me. It will harm the poor, plain, simple people who rely on such men and are thereby led to ruin. I write this for their benefit, so that they may know what to guard against. The deception is great, but the truth is plain.

If you love the truth, abandon sophistry and all the operations you have practised until today. Consider only what Nature does and how it works upon the essence. Then you will neither fail nor err, but will see what you desire without difficulty, requiring little labour or expenditure. The whole affair is accomplished by a subtle and slight coction. Through it occur the solution and coagulation of bodies, and through it sublimation and putrefaction are all completed, as the sages have written. Some, however, have set up something entirely different in place of the true, plain being. In this way they have blinded the whole world and brought many people to great harm. Whether they have acted rightly I leave to God, who will judge everything. It would be much better if so much were not written, causing distress to those who rely solely on the sophistical, invented processes they learn in lying little books, and are thus deceived. If so much had not been written about alchemy, or were not still being written daily by those ignorant of Nature, many thousands today would have known the true art and could have understood it by themselves. As matters stand, scarcely one person reaches the truth in many years, because almost all lovers of philosophy rely solely on books and sophistical work. They suppose the ancients achieved it by the same dreadful labour. I openly rebuke this and say that it is false: the true art has no need whatever of the bungling used by workers today. The ancient sages did not work in that way themselves, although they taught about it at greater length in their books to blind the unwise. They did not act well in doing so, for even people who were perhaps on the right path could thereby be led into error unless living teachers instructed them otherwise.