As one philosopher warns and says: “Do not engage with this spirit unless you first have sufficient knowledge and understanding of it.” For God is wonderful in his works and his wisdom is without number, and he will not allow himself to be trifled with. Some examples could be recounted of people who rashly undertook and presumed upon this high work and came to grief: some were even found dead at it, while others were seriously injured through unfortunate accidents. It is not such a trifling matter as some imagine in their dreams. Because the philosophers compared it to child’s play and women’s work, these people think the whole thing easy and insignificant. But the philosophers did not mean it in that way. They meant the subsequent work, which in itself is very simple and easy; they described it in such plain and modest terms only for those whom God had deemed worthy and gifted with knowledge of it. Take care, then, not to rush prematurely and thoughtlessly into it. Begin all your undertakings with prayer and God’s help, as urged at the outset; then you will have nothing to fear and need expect no danger.

Therefore, when you have earnestly exercised yourself in your oratory, and have recognised the matter and have it at hand, you may afterwards apply your diligence in the laboratory, take up the labour belonging to it and make a beginning.

First and above all you must dissolve and open up the repeatedly mentioned matter, or first being, which the philosophers also called nature’s highest good. Purify and cleanse it of its wateriness and earthiness—for at first it appears as an earthly, heavy body, rough, tenacious, slimy and mistily watery. Remove also the dark, thick-looking shadow that overshadows it, so that afterwards, by further sublimation, its heart and inward soul, concealed within it, may also be separated and taken out of it and brought into a lovely state. All this is to be done through the great universal sea-water, which moistens and makes fruitful the whole earth with its swift, evenly flowing ebb and flood. It is also so sweet, beautifully clear, bright and shining that it is a far more exalted and beautiful marvel to behold than gold and silver or the gleam of a carbuncle or diamond. The said matter is to be enclosed and united within this blessed water.

You must further distil this extracted heart, soul and spirit again with its own salt, and also congeal it, so that it becomes one single thing once more. This salt is also particularly incorporated in it in the manner already indicated. In colour it is blood-red inwardly, but after its preparation white, bright, clear and transparent; the philosophers then call it the salt of wisdom. Through the process you have performed so far, which is called the preliminary work, you have first separated only the pure from the rough, made the visible invisible, and then made the invisible visible and tangible again. It is then no longer so heavy, rough and unfriendly as at the beginning, but most delightful and agreeable to the taste and smell, biting and sharp upon the tongue, and also subtler, more penetrating and more fluid. It is found and perceived that, if freely exposed to the air, it would rise away and vanish of itself, although it is fixed in itself within the work. For this reason the wise called it mercurial water, mercury of the sun and also their mercury. In the form just described, however, this subject would still be of little help if you wished to use it as a medicine without further preparation: it would rather be a harmful poison. If you wish to enjoy its rich gift and blessed benefits, you must therefore proceed and advance further, knowing how to prepare it by other particular means and labour.

Before doing so, however, you must be diligently reminded to pay close attention to the works: observe how nature conducts its operation over time, and direct yourself by it in every aspect of your labour. Once you know this, take two parts of the prepared watery matter described above, and divide from it again three distinct parts. Carefully preserve and keep back the two parts. To the former third part you must first add another material matter: the most beautiful and most highly endowed body of gold created by God, which is most closely related and most acceptable to the first matter. Prepare one part against the twelfth part for the first fermentation, and unite it with the water. For the prepared watery matter, which is as it were spiritual and heavenly, and this earthly body of the sun must both be conjoined and made into one body.

Note here, however, that common gold is unsuitable for this purpose and is to be reckoned unfit and, as it were, dead. Although God has qualified and honoured it above all the other metals as the most beautiful and precious, while it was still in the minerals and ore-pits it was to some extent prevented from growing to full perfection. Moreover, through prolonged use its inward powers—that is, the sulphur it contains, which is its soul—are greatly weakened. It is also continually mixed and united with other inappropriate things unsuited to it, and left unpurified, so that it becomes increasingly unfit for the present purpose. See therefore that you obtain gold that is pure and also possesses a living spirit, still unweakened in its sulphur, as stated above, and never fraudulently adulterated. It must be found wholly clean and pure after passing through antimony or through the heaven and sphere of Saturn, where it is cleansed of its impurities. Otherwise the other matter cannot enter it with its spirit and power. This work requires and demands an entirely pure body and can in no way endure or tolerate anything impure or inappropriate beside or within it.

When you have thus brought together in a dissolving dish the unequal parts of water and gold—unequal not only in quality but also greatly in quantity, for the first, when prepared, is light, gentle, subtle and soft, while the other is very heavy, firm and hard—and made them, as it were, into a dry liquor or amalgam, let this stand first for six or seven days in very gentle warmth, just perceptibly lukewarm. Then take one part from the three parts of water previously kept back and put it into a round, unbreakable glass vessel or flask, shaped like a phial or egg. Place the tempered liquor in its midst and let it stand in this way for another six or seven days. The body of the sun will gradually be dissolved and opened by the water. Then the conjunction of these two begins, and one mingles so delicately and pleasantly in the other as ice in warm water. The philosophers have indicated this in many ways and compared it to a bride and her bridegroom, as Solomon also says in his Song of Songs.

When this has happened, take the third part first withdrawn and add that too, but not all at once or in one day: add it on seven separate occasions. Otherwise the body placed in the vessel might become much too wet, be flooded and finally be wholly spoiled. For just as a seed planted in the earth cannot sprout if at the beginning it has too much water, rain or moisture—the farmer’s seed drowns—so the case is exactly the same here.

When this too has been done, seal and lute the glass with the greatest care, so that the compound placed within it cannot escape or fly away. Then place it in the appropriate furnace. Give it fire of the first degree: very gentle and steady, also airy and vaporous, with a warmth comparable to that of a hen sitting upon her eggs.

Note. The philosophers have written much about the vaporous fire, which they called the fire of wisdom. They also stated that it was not a material or elemental fire, but an essential or supernatural fire, which is also called a divine fire. This is mercurial water, stirred into action with the help of art by common fire. At the beginning, let the two digest and cook steadily together, and take diligent care that nothing whatever sublimes away from it. Or, as the philosophers put it in parables, the woman must never rule over the man, nor must the man become too violent towards the woman. The work then performs its process successively by itself, without any further labour beyond tending the fire. First it thoroughly dissolves, crushes, destroys and putrefies the earthly body of the sun that has been added, depriving it of all its powers. At first this produces a dark colour and afterwards an entirely black one, which the philosophers called caput corvi, or their raven’s head. This generally happens in forty days. In the end its soul is also drawn out, taken from it and carried upward, being wholly separated, so that for a time it lies at the bottom of the glass like ash, completely dead and devoid of all power.