# Centrum Naturae Concentratum
The Salt of Nature Regenerated
Attributed to Ali Puli
Diotimos Editions 2026
A German and English edition of the complete 1682 collection with companion works and Diotimos study features
## Contents
- [Edition Statement](#EDITION_STATEMENT)
- [Introduction](#INTRODUCTION)
- [Chronology](#CHRONOLOGY)
- [Note on the Text and Translation](#NOTE_ON_TEXT)
- [Original Preliminaries](#CNT-PRELIMINARIES)
- [The Historical Title](#CNT-TITLE)
- [Preface by Helbig to the Reader](#CNT-PREF)
- [The Salt of Nature Regenerated](#CNT-TREATISE)
- [The Concentrated Centre of Nature](#CNT-MAIN)
- [Companion Works](#CNT-COMPANIONS)
- [Discourse on the Universal](#CNT-DELLE)
- [Philosophical Discourse](#CNT-JJF)
- [The Short Preparation of Potable Gold](#CNT-POTABILE)
- [The Last Testament of a Father to His Beloved Son](#CNT-TESTAMENT)
- [Keyword Essays](#KEYWORDS)
- [Short Glossary](#GLOSSARY)
- [Contextual Lexicon](#LEXICON)
- [Relations within the Collection](#RELATIONS)
- [Guide to the Historical Figures](#FIGURE_GUIDE)
- [Supplied Note on the Signs](#SIGN_READING_NOTE)
- [A Note on the English Printing of 1696](#COMPARISON)
- [Reading Routes](#READING_ROUTES)
- [Discussion Guide](#DISCUSSION)
- [Selected Annotated Bibliography](#BIBLIOGRAPHY)
- [Source and Editorial Credits](#SOURCE_CREDITS)
- [Subject Index](#SUBJECT_INDEX)
## Edition Statement
This Diotimos edition presents the German collection published in 1682 under the title Centrum Naturae Concentratum in a fresh English translation, with the historical German above each translated passage. It includes the title, Helbig’s preface, the main treatise attributed to Ali Puli, the discourse associated with Martin de Delle, the Philosophical Discourse signed J. J. F., the short potable-gold preparation, and the anonymous Father’s Last Testament. The engraving and the three diagrammatic signs explained in the testament are reproduced from the governing copy.
The copytext is Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, shelfmark 87 B 76050. Its numbered sequence runs from 1 to 80, in addition to the unnumbered title. The preface is dated Heidelberg, 12 September 1682. That is a statement inside the book, not an independently established place of printing. The catalogue records the volume as [S.l.]; Leipzig: Martini, 1682. The collection’s separate historical voices and attributions are retained.
The complete historical reading text is included, with no editorial text omissions. The passage on printed pages 76–77 previously replaced by a notice is restored in German and English. Its English, together with the adjoining augmentation and butter-of-antimony paragraphs, follows a supplied translation reproduced without changing its wording. A separate supplied note records the translator’s sign readings and reservations. The interpretive annotation allows quantities and directions to carry material and symbolic meanings together without asserting an exclusive authorial intention.
The translation, readable German transcription and modern supporting material were prepared with AI assistance for Diotimos Editions in 2026, with the supplied translation and sign commentary identified separately. The original words and claims are distinguished from annotations and interpretation. The six essays, glossary, contextual lexicon, relations, figure guide, reading routes, discussion questions, bibliography and index belong to the present edition. Historical claims of healing and transmutation are presented for study, not certified as effective procedures.
## Introduction
### The Centre and the Reader
The Concentrated Centre of Nature begins by trying to stop the wrong reader from practising alchemy. Its opening speaker describes households neglected, money lost, and promises of future charity used to excuse present failures of duty. Gold-making is set against an ordinary obligation: serve God and one’s neighbour with the means already available. Only after this long examination of motive does the book admit a reader who may continue to investigate nature. Its moral prelude therefore governs the natural philosophy that follows.
The central word names more than a place. A centre gathers powers, gives movement to what surrounds it, and feeds from the source to which its desire is directed. The human being becomes a little world within a greater one, receiving breath from above and nourishment from below. Digestion supplies a model of transformation: one food becomes many bodily materials. The speaker extends that observation into a claim that the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms share one foundation. Reading carefully means following both the analogy’s explanatory work and the additional assertions it is asked to support.
The promised regenerated salt joins these arguments. It is described as a natural agent, a concentrated power, a source of medicine and metallic transformation, and an image through which creation, incarnation and resurrection become intelligible. The work’s religious language is thus part of the stated account of matter. At the same time, its final pages expressly withhold the continuation from philosophers’ mercury to the finished masterpiece. A reader should not treat an eloquent promise of openness as proof that every practical step has been supplied.
### The Historical Name and the German Witness
The title names Ali Puli and presents an Arabic work translated first into Portuguese and then into High German by Johann Otto Helbig, also known as Hellwig. This edition preserves those statements as historical paratext. It does not supply a recovered Arabic or Portuguese original. Vera Keller’s study treats the work as apparently contemporary, possibly composed by Hellwig himself. For that reason this edition uses the attribution “Attributed to Ali Puli”; Helbig’s historical publishing and translating role remains visible. [Keller’s study](#BIB_KELLER) provides the basis for that cautious distinction.
The Latin title does not make the governing text Latin. Here the sustained prose is German, with Latin names, quotations, headings and abbreviations. A fresh translation must therefore attend to early German phrasing and its technical signs. A phrase that makes convenient sense in a later English book cannot automatically decide what this earlier printing says. Local notes preserve awkward readings, apparent contradictions and uncertain abbreviations when they materially affect interpretation.
### A Collection of Distinct Voices
At printed page 39 the main treatise gives way to the Discourse on the Universal. Its narrative recalls a visitor in 1589 who teaches through conversation, a walk, a field, and an interpretation of what lies before the narrator’s eyes. Books are discussed, an elusive guest departs, and a remembered practice is written down afterwards. This narrative form distributes authority differently from the main treatise’s direct address. The date belongs to the story’s report; it is not the publication date of this volume.
The discourse signed J. J. F. is itself a gathering of material. It includes a Hermetic judgement dated May 1631, extracts identified as coming from an anonymous work on love of one’s neighbour, and a narrative about Sebastian Siebenfreund. Philosophical propositions, medicinal claims and a story of secrecy, violence and punishment are placed together. Their presence in one sequence does not turn allegations into independently corroborated biography. The edition preserves the internal headings so that those shifts of voice remain apparent.
The short potable-gold paragraph and the Father’s Last Testament follow on the same page, numbered 68. The testament speaks to an eldest son, regulates transmission, and then reads a figure through the vocabulary of antimony, mercury, sulphur and salt. Its own prose and closing verse provide the first guide to its symbols. The emblem belongs to this companion work, rather than to the main treatise attributed to Ali Puli.
### The Later English Reception
The English printing of 1696 has a different shape. Its title says that the work had appeared in Low Dutch in 1694. It contains an address signed E. Brice, a separate address signed H. C. K., a preface of the Belgic interpreter, and the main treatise; publisher advertisements follow. The German companion collection is absent from that English sequence. The later book is therefore a useful witness to reception, but cannot stand in for the whole 1682 volume.
Two small differences are especially instructive. The German title calls the regenerated salt “properly” the Philosophers’ Stone, whereas the 1696 English title says “improperly.” This translation preserves the German judgement. The English printing also ends the main work with a short devotional verse after its Amen; the corresponding German ending has no such verse. These differences are described in the [comparison note](#COMPARISON), not silently inserted into the earlier text.
### Using This Edition
Read the first work in order at least once. The temptation to isolate its famous call to self-knowledge is strong, but that sentence follows discussions of nourishment, bodily change, creation and the human being’s place between upper and lower. Then compare the other works by question: what is universal, how does a spirit become fixed, what makes a reader worthy, and what counts as experience? Comparison is more useful when differences remain visible.
The glossary gives short local orientation. The contextual lexicon develops selected terms through connected explanations and exact sentences from this translation. Essays examine recurring arguments, and the figure guide separates what is visible from what the testament explicitly says it means. Stable passage identifiers allow these references to survive changes of pagination and reading device. The final subject index points into both the historical works and the supporting discussions.
## Chronology
**Dates and the kinds of evidence they represent**
| Date | Record | Status for this edition |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1589 | Visitor narrative in the Delle discourse | Internal reported event, not independently corroborated here |
| May 1631 | Date attached to a Hermetic judgement in J. J. F. | Internal date of a compiled item |
| 1682 | German collection; preface dated 12 September at Heidelberg | Governing printed witness; preface place is not assumed imprint place |
| 1694 | Low Dutch publication stated by the 1696 English title | Transmission statement; Dutch text not collated here |
| 1696 | London English printing for J. Harris | Later comparison witness with different introductory material |
| 1951 | The Epistles of Ali Puli, English by J. W. Hamilton-Jones | Later collection identified from Warburg catalogue; not copytext |
| 2012 | Vera Keller’s historical study | Modern attribution research |
| 2026 | Diotimos translation and supporting apparatus | Complete historical reading text with the supplied passage restored |
The dates in the first two rows are claims inside the transmitted texts. The chronology distinguishes them from publication dates and from modern scholarship.
## Note on the Text and Translation
### The Governing Copy and Its Sequence
The governing copy is the 1682 volume digitised by the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe as 87 B 76050, record 4524850. Its 88 image canvases include covers and blanks. The source used here comprises the unnumbered title at scan BLB-005 and every numbered page 1–80 at scans BLB-007 through BLB-086. The library-generated downloadable PDF has an additional modern cover. Such library packaging is not treated as part of the seventeenth-century text.
The historical preface occupies pages 1–4; the main treatise, 5–38; the Delle discourse, 39–48; the J. J. F. discourse, 49–67. Page 68 begins with a short preparation before the testament starts, and the testament closes on page 80. The paired source locators identify actual printed pages and BLB scans. The shared page is assigned by passage, so its two works are both preserved without duplication.
### Readable German and Fresh English
The German is a readable transcription rather than a photographic imitation of blackletter type. Long s is regularised, words divided only by printed line endings are joined, and ordinary ligatures and combining umlauts are made readable. Historical spelling and meaningful wording remain. Punctuation and paragraph divisions are lightly clarified to make the paired text usable. Running heads, catchwords, signatures and ornaments are omitted as printing furniture.
Technical signs are retained with suitable type where possible. Where a printed sign has no faithful ordinary character, an explicitly bracketed description identifies the representation; annotations explain contextual expansions. Three original sign diagrams and the large engraving are also reproduced as exact crops. The English expands a sign into a material name only where the surrounding passage supports that reading. A symbol is not assigned one universal meaning across the collection merely because the same shape appears elsewhere.
The English was made from the German witness, with a supplied translation used for the restored passage and adjoining paragraphs identified in the testament’s notes. It preserves distinctions of agency, qualification and asserted experience. It does not silently make an awkward historical theory consistent with itself, add a missing practical step, or substitute a modern chemical formula for a variable preparation name. Bracketed wording identifies editorial interventions. Local notes distinguish a difficult printed reading from a proposed interpretation.
### Historical Claims and Editorial Scope
All seven historical sections are included without editorial text omissions. The German passage on printed pages 76–77 and its supplied English translation are restored, with source locators preserved. The source’s attribution to Paracelsus is retained without independent authentication. Quantities and directions may carry material and symbolic meanings together; their procedural form alone does not settle the author’s exclusive intention. The separately labelled supplied note and local annotations preserve uncertainty in the reading of signs.
Assertions about medicines, poisonous preparations and metallic transformation are retained as historical claims. Statements that the narrator saw, tested or heard something are translated with that speaker and scope. Stories about named people are not silently promoted to verified events. The modern apparatus provides context without adopting the text’s religious tests of worthiness as criteria for present-day readers.
The 1696 English facsimile was used to verify its structure and selected differences, not for an exhaustive line-by-line collation or as the source of this new translation. Its additional addresses and closing verse are identified in the comparison note. References printed inside the German text are retained; where an exact cited edition has not been established, the annotation says so rather than inventing a modern locator.
## Original Preliminaries
### The Historical Title
*Centrum Naturae Concentratum*
German witness: 1682, unnumbered title, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Source facsimile: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/pageview/4591549
**CNT-TITLE-P001** 1682 unnumbered title · BLB-005
**German**
Centrum Naturae Concentratum. Oder: Ein Tractat. Von dem Wiedergebohrnen Saltz, Insgemein und eigendlich genandt Der Weisen Stein, In Arabischen geschrieben Von Ali Puli, Einem Asiatischen Mohren, Darnach in Portugisische Sprache Durch H. L. V. A. H. Und ins Hochteutsche versetzt, und heraus gegeben Von Johann Otto Helbig, Rittern, Chur-Fürstl. Pfältzischen Rath, Leib-Medico, und bey der Heidelbergischen Universität Professore Publico. Gedruckt im Jahr 1682.
**English**
The Concentrated Centre of Nature. Or a treatise on the regenerated salt, commonly and properly called the Philosophers’ Stone. Written in Arabic by Ali Puli, an Asiatic Moor; afterwards put into Portuguese by H. L. V. A. H.; and translated into High German and published by Johann Otto Helbig, knight, councillor and personal physician to the Elector Palatine, and public professor at Heidelberg University. Printed in the year 1682.[^n1]
### Preface by Helbig to the Reader
*Vorrede An den Leser*
German witness: 1682, printed pp. 1–4, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Source facsimile: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/pageview/4591551
Johann Otto Helbig
**CNT-PREF-P001** 1682 p. 1 · BLB-007
**German**
Vorrede An den Leser.
**English**
Preface to the reader.
**CNT-PREF-P002** 1682 pp. 1–2 · BLB-007, BLB-008
**German**
Gegenwärtigen Büchleins Autor ist ein Asiatischer Mohr, Nahmens Ali Puli, welcher, nachdem er den Mahometischen Glauben verlassen, und den Christlichen angenommen, unterschiedliche kleine Bücher geschrieben und den Seinigen überlassen hat, von welchen allein dieses mir ohngefehr zur hand kommen ist. Es wurde aus der Arabischen in die Portugisische, und aus dieser von mir in die Hochteutsche Sprache versetzet, weil ich urtheilete, die Natur-Befliessene solten, wofern es durch den Druck gemein gemacht wäre, grossen Nutzen draus haben.
**English**
The author of this little book is an Asiatic Moor named Ali Puli who, after leaving the Mohammedan faith and embracing Christianity, wrote various small books and left them to his own people. Of these, this one alone came into my hands by chance. It was translated from Arabic into Portuguese, and from that language into High German by me, because I judged that those devoted to the study of nature would greatly benefit if it were made public in print.[^n2]
**CNT-PREF-P003** 1682 p. 2 · BLB-008
**German**
Ob nun schon des Autoris Meynung de Creatione mit unsern orthodoxis nicht übereinstimmet, und man solche nicht gut heissen kan, hat doch ein jeder die Freyheit, davon zu urtheilen, was ihm beliebet. Ich meines Theils, weil mir des Ali Puli geglaubte Schöpffungs-Ursache nicht angestanden, hätte selbe verändert oder ausgelassen, wenn nicht dadurch des gantzen Büchleins Stellung hätte müssen zu nichte werden.
**English**
Although the author’s opinion concerning creation does not agree with that of our orthodox theologians, and cannot be approved, everyone is free to judge it as they please. For my part, because Ali Puli’s supposed cause of creation did not satisfy me, I would have altered or omitted it had doing so not destroyed the arrangement of the whole little book.[^n3]
**CNT-PREF-P004** 1682 pp. 2–3 · BLB-008, BLB-009
**German**
Was sein übrigs anlangt, welches wegen fürnemlich dieses Büchlein gemacht ist, nemlich das Wiedergebohrne Saltz der Natur, insgemein und eigendlich Der Weisen Stein genandt, habe ich seine vermeynte Meynung, so weit man den Anfang und Mittel desselben betrachten kan. Von dem Ende wil ich nicht reden, weil ich solches niemahls selbsten gemachet, ob schon eines Freundes Gütigkeit mich auf unterschiedliche Weise, und zum höchsten mit einem Theil des Wiedergebohrnen Saltzes auf 6000. Rthlr. ♄, die kräfftige Auswürckung zum besten ☉, hat erfahren lassen, wie ich denn auch niemahls Reichthumb durch meine Arbeit gesuchet habe; sondern allein die wahre Erkäntniß des Mittelpuncts, oder allgemeinen Geistes aller Dinge, welches eintzig einen zur Natur-Weißheit begierigen Menschen vergnügen kan.
**English**
As for the rest, which is the principal purpose of this little book—namely the regenerated salt of nature, commonly and properly called the Philosophers’ Stone—I have grasped what I take to be his meaning, insofar as its beginning and intermediate stages can be considered. I will say nothing about the final result, since I have never brought it about myself, although a friend’s kindness has allowed me to experience its powerful action in various ways, and at the highest degree with one part of the regenerated salt upon 6,000 Reichsthalers of lead, producing the finest gold. For I have never sought riches through my work, but only true knowledge of the centre, or universal spirit of all things, which alone can satisfy a person eager for the wisdom of nature.[^n4], [^n5]
**CNT-PREF-P005** 1682 p. 3 · BLB-009
**German**
Seine Besitzung eröffnete mir wunderliche Dinge, Ich fand ihn überall, aber concentrirt mehr an 2. Orthen in der grossen und kleinen Welt, in der Lufft und im Menschen, und bey beyden in den verachtesten Materien. Die eine liefferte ohne Zusatz Animalien Vegetabilien, und Metallen, nach dem ihr eine dazu gehörige Bewegung gegeben wird. Aus der andern aber habe ich biß dato alleine Metallen bringen können, doch niemals zu grossen Schätzen, sondern allein zur NaturErkändtniß gnugsam.
**English**
Possessing it opened marvellous things to me. I found it everywhere, but more concentrated in two places in the great and little world: in the air and in the human being, and in both cases in the most despised materials. One of these yielded animals, plants and metals without addition when the appropriate motion was imparted to it. From the other, however, I have so far been able to bring forth metals alone, though never great treasures, but enough only for knowledge of nature.[^n6]
**CNT-PREF-P006** 1682 pp. 3–4 · BLB-009, BLB-010
**German**
Nun aber schläfft mein Eyfer, und ich habe wenig Lust zum plus ultra; sondern vergnüge mich durch GOTTES Gnade darinnen meinen Zweck erlanget zu haben, zumahl nun etliche Jahre durch Reisen und andre Geschäffte meine Ruhe ziemlich zerstöhret worden.
**English**
Now, however, my zeal sleeps, and I have little desire to go further. By God’s grace I am content to have attained my purpose in this, especially since travel and other business have considerably disturbed my repose for several years.
**CNT-PREF-P007** 1682 p. 4 · BLB-010
**German**
Im übrigen zeuge ich, wie oben gesaget, hiemit, daß der Autor dieses Büchleins von dem Natur-Saltze die Warheit geschrieben, wie ich es mit eignen Augen und Händen probiret habe. GOTT laß es dir Leser, zum besten gereichen, Gehab dich wohl. Heydelberg, den 12. Septemb. 1682.
**English**
For the rest, as stated above, I hereby testify that the author of this little book has written the truth about the salt of nature, as I have tested it with my own eyes and hands. May God let it serve your good, reader. Farewell. Heidelberg, 12 September 1682.[^n7]
## The Salt of Nature Regenerated
### The Concentrated Centre of Nature
*Centrum Naturae Concentratum*
German witness: 1682, printed pp. 5–38, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Source facsimile: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/pageview/4591555
Attributed to Ali Puli
**CNT-MAIN-P001** 1682 p. 5 · BLB-011
**German**
Ich glaube nicht, daß ein Ding in der Welt ist, umb welches willen so viel geschrieben, so viel gearbeitet, und so viel gesuchet wird, als der so genandte Stein der Weisen, viel sind darüber arm und närrisch worden: Sehr wenig haben das gewünschte Ziel erreichet, weil dieser Kunst meist von allen, nicht aus Liebe zur Weißheit, sondern des Reichthumbs wegen nachgetrachtet wird. Und weil der Geitz so Ehre, als Geld belanget, eine Wurtzel alles Übels ist, kan aus denen darvon wachsenden Wercken auch nichts als Unglück und Boßheit hervor kommen.
**English**
I do not believe there is anything in the world about which so much is written, for which so much labour is undertaken, and which is so earnestly sought, as the so-called philosophers’ stone. Many have become poor and foolish over it; very few have reached the desired goal, because almost everyone pursues this art for the sake of wealth rather than from a love of wisdom. And since greed, whether for honour or for money, is a root of every evil, nothing but misfortune and wickedness can arise from the works that grow out of it.
**CNT-MAIN-P002** 1682 pp. 5–6 · BLB-011, BLB-012
**German**
O ihr Alchymisten und vergebliche Laboranten, wenn ihr wüßtet, was zu eurem Friede dienete, ihr soltet eure Gedancken und Arbeit besser anwenden, last ab von solcher Unruhe, wartet treulich eures Berufs, Weib und Kinder damit, so viel möglich zu versorgen, ihr seyd zu Natur-Priestern nicht beruffen, habt auch kein zu diesem Dienst nothwendig Talent empfangen; Wenn ihr Nahrung und Kleider habt, so last euch begnügen, denn ihr habt nichts in die Welt bracht, werdet auch nichts mit hinaus nehmen. Nacket seyd ihr kommen, nacket müst ihr dahin fahren, wo euer Lohn auf euch wartet.
**English**
O alchemists and fruitless workers in the laboratory, if you knew what would bring you peace, you would put your thoughts and labour to better use. Abandon this unrest. Attend faithfully to your calling and thereby provide, as far as possible, for your wife and children. You have not been called to be priests of nature, nor have you received the talent necessary for this service. If you have food and clothing, be content with them, for you brought nothing into the world and will take nothing out of it. You came naked, and naked you must depart to the place where your reward awaits you.[^n8]
**CNT-MAIN-P003** 1682 p. 6 · BLB-012
**German**
Was solte ein Herr sagen zu seinem Knecht, der neben andern über die Feld-Früchte gesetzt wäre, und solche solte helffen einsammlen, versorgen und helffen in die Scheune bringen, hülffe aber unterdessen mit Unterlaß seines Berufes andern Mit-Knechten die Schafe hüten, würde ihm nicht der Herr wegen seines ungetreuen Haußhaltens Streiche für Lohn geben; Du Fürst, du Herr, du Prediger, Rechtsgelehrter, Medice, Künstler, Handwercker, Bürger und Bauer, bistu nicht ein Knecht, welcher seinen Beruf läst fahren und andre Arbeit suchst, womit er seinem Gott, Herrn und seinen Mit-Knechte, den nechsten keine gute Dienste thut, wenn du vergeblich Alchimistiren deiner Pflicht vorziehest.
**English**
What would a master say to a servant whom he had appointed, along with others, to look after the crops, to help gather and tend them and bring them into the barn, but who meanwhile neglected his calling and helped his fellow servants tend the sheep? Would the master not reward him with blows for his unfaithful stewardship? You prince, lord, preacher, lawyer, physician, artist, craftsman, townsman, or farmer: are you not such a servant, abandoning your calling and seeking other work, thereby rendering poor service to your God and master and to your fellow servant, your neighbour, when you prefer fruitless alchemy to your duty?
**CNT-MAIN-P004** 1682 pp. 6–7 · BLB-012, BLB-013
**German**
Es wird wohl diese Sache von euch gründlich, so ihr meynt, entschuldigt, wenn der Fürst oder Herr sagt: Mein Land und Unterthanen müssen jetzund viel Schatzung bezahlen, viel Land liegt ungebauet, und man muß den Bösen bißweilen durch die Finger sehen, damit nur Geld gnug zu Erhaltung unsers Stats, in die Kammer komme. Aber lernen wir die Kunst ☉ zu machen, alles soll frey seyn, überall von neuem gebauet, und die Liebe mit Gerechtigkeit das Regiment führen. Der Prediger will, als er Gold machen kan, den Gottesdienst sonder Besolden in Acht nehmen, der Jurist wil die Leute nicht weiter in einander hetzen, sondern ohne Straf zu Recht helffen; Der Medicus allen Menschen umsonst dienen; Künstler, Handwercker, Bürger und Bauer, wollen, so sie den Schatz haben, stille auf- und nieder gehen, nicht mehr arbeiten, noch sich umb weltliche Nahrung bekümmern, sondern Gott dienen, wie sie sagen, in guter Ruh sitzen:
**English**
You suppose, no doubt, that you have thoroughly excused this conduct when the prince or lord says: “My country and subjects must now pay heavy taxes; much land lies uncultivated, and sometimes we must turn a blind eye to evildoers simply to bring enough money into the treasury to maintain our estate. But if we learn the art of making ☉, everything shall be free, building shall begin afresh everywhere, and love and justice shall govern.” The preacher intends, once he can make gold, to conduct divine service without a salary. The lawyer will no longer set people against one another but help them obtain justice without a penalty; the physician will serve everyone for nothing. Artists, craftsmen, townspeople, and farmers intend, once they possess the treasure, to go quietly about, work no longer, and cease worrying about a worldly livelihood: they will serve God, as they say, and sit comfortably at rest.[^n9]
**CNT-MAIN-P005** 1682 pp. 7–8 · BLB-013, BLB-014
**German**
aber ihr müst wissen, daß aller Standt von Gotten verordnet; Eure Fürsten müssen seine Unterthanen erhalten; und ist er ein würcklicher Christ, der sich bemühet den Willen seines Königs im Himmel zu thun, So werden die Unterthanen ihn in Gottesfurcht, Demuth und Liebe nachfolgen, die Gerechtigkeit wird regieren, gesegnet werden sie seyn in der Stadt, gesegnet auf dem Acker, gesegnet werden sie eingehen und ausgehen, der HErr wird die Feinde, die sich wider sie auflehnen, schlagen, ihre Brunnen werden seyn auf dem, da Korn und Most gnug ist, dazu ihr Himmel wird mit Thau trieffen, ihre Berge werden Ertz die Fülle geben, und nicht vonnöthen seyn, dem Goldmachenden Stein der Weisen nachzuforschen, und sich darüber so viel Unruhe, Kosten und verdrießliche Arbeit auf den Halß zu legen; Zuhörer sind schuldig ihren Predigern Speise und Kleider nach Nothdurft zu geben; Juristen und Aertzte wil man gerne bezahlen, wenn sie gebührlich und aufrichtig ihre Schuldigkeit verrichten, und wenn Bürger und Bauer und Handwercker, stille solten auf- und niedergehen, und Gott im Müssiggang dienen, so solte Stadt und Land schlecht bestellet werden.
**English**
But you must know that every station in life is ordained by God. Your princes must sustain their subjects; if a prince is a true Christian who strives to do the will of his king in heaven, his subjects will follow him in fear of God, humility, and love. Justice will reign. They will be blessed in the city and in the field, blessed when they come in and when they go out. The Lord will strike the enemies who rise against them. Their springs will be in a place with grain and new wine in abundance; their sky will drip with dew and their mountains yield ore in plenty. There will be no need to search for the gold-making philosophers’ stone and burden themselves with so much unrest, expense, and vexatious labour. Congregations owe their preachers food and clothing according to their needs. People are glad to pay lawyers and physicians who discharge their duties properly and honestly. If townspeople, farmers, and craftsmen were to wander quietly about and serve God in idleness, both town and country would be poorly provided for.
**CNT-MAIN-P006** 1682 p. 8 · BLB-014
**German**
GOTT sagt: Auf dem Acker soltu dich nähren dein Lebelang, und im Schweiß deines Angesichts, soltu dein Brodt essen, biß daß du wieder zur Erden werdest. Paulus dienete Gott mit Eyffer, und auch mit dem Evangelio dem Menschen, gleichwohl arbeitete er noch dazu mit den Händen und machte Teppiche. Müssiggang ist aller Laster Anfang. Sich in andern Dingen einzumengen, ist grosse Sünde, und wenn du den Philosophischen Stein besässest, möchtestu vielleicht zu satt und fett und denn zu Geil werden, du möchtest deinen GOtt fahren lassen, der dich gemacht hat, und den Felß deines Heils geringe achten. Darumb bleibe im Lande, und nähre dich redlich, fürchte GOtt und halte sein Gebot, du seyst arm oder reich, den Frommen wird alles zum besten dienen, warte deines Berufs treulich und mit rechten Eyfer.
**English**
God says: “You shall gain your sustenance from the field all your life, and in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread until you return to the earth.” Paul zealously served God and served humanity with the gospel; nevertheless he also worked with his hands, making tent-cloths. Idleness is the beginning of every vice. Meddling in other affairs is a great sin; if you possessed the philosophers’ stone, you might become too full and fat, and then wanton. You might abandon the God who made you and slight the rock of your salvation. Therefore remain in the land and earn an honest living. Fear God and keep his commandment, whether you are poor or rich. All things will work for the good of the devout. Attend faithfully and with true zeal to your calling.[^n10]
**CNT-MAIN-P007** 1682 pp. 8–9 · BLB-014, BLB-015
**German**
Siehe an die Exempel vieler 1000. welche durch Beliebung und Einmischung fremder Geschäffte erschrecklich sind gefallen; ein jeder Mensch, ob er schon aus seinen Zinsen lebt, hat doch so viel mit GOtt, seinem Nechsten und sich zu dienen zu thun, daß ihme, wann er diese 3. Dinge mit allen Kräfften, von gantzen Hertzen, von gantzer Seelen und mit gantzem Gemüthe verrichtet, und also mit seinem Fleische dem Teufel und der Welt eifrig streitet, wird ihm keine Zeit zum Müssiggang oder Alchymisterey können überbleiben.
**English**
Consider the examples of many thousands who have fallen terribly through their fondness for, and interference in, other people’s affairs. Every person, even one who lives on income from investments, has so much to do in serving God, neighbour, and self that, if these three duties are performed with all one’s strength, whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind, and one thus zealously struggles against one’s flesh, the devil, and the world, no time can remain for idleness or alchemical dabbling.
**CNT-MAIN-P008** 1682 pp. 9–10 · BLB-015, BLB-016
**German**
Probier dieses, vor einmahl fange von gantzem Hertzen in GOttes Krafft an fromm zu werden; und alles was du wilst, daß dir die Leute thun sollen, thu du ihnen auch. Liebe die dich hassen, segne, die dir fluchen, thu guts, denen, die dein Verderben suchen, hasse dein Fleisch und alles, was ihm wol thut, stille deine unartige Gemüths-Bewegung, und ziehe sie aus der wütenden Circumferentz in das stille und sanffte Centrum: so wirstu in deiner Seelen hören ein sanfftes, liebliches Sausen, welches dich unaussprechlich erfreuen, und deinem Willen nicht zulassen wird, wieder aus dem heiligen süssen Licht in das sündliche scharffe Feuer, aus der Gedult und Vergnügung in die Hoffahrt, Eigen-Liebe, und der Welt-Liebe einzutreten, du wirst gantz ein ander Mensch werden, und deine in Wollust, Ehr- und Geld-Geitz verlauffne Zeit mit Thränen für GOtt bereuen. Du kanst täglich, ja augenblicklich GOttes wunderliche Geschöpffe anschauen und sagen: HErr ich freue mich deiner Hände Werck, du kanst seine Allmacht und grosse Weißheit gnugsam an dir alleine abmercken, und darffst den Stein der Weisen Natur-Meister nicht darumb begehren, daß du doch GOttes unbegreifliche Wercke mögest zu sehen kriegen.
**English**
Try this: for once begin with your whole heart, in God’s strength, to become devout. Do to others everything you wish them to do to you. Love those who hate you; bless those who curse you; do good to those who seek your ruin. Hate your flesh and everything that gratifies it. Still your unruly inward movement and draw it out of the raging circumference into the quiet, gentle centre. Then in your soul you will hear a soft, lovely whisper that will delight you beyond words and prevent your will from passing again out of the holy, sweet light into the sinful, sharp fire, or out of patience and contentment into pride, self-love, and love of the world. You will become an entirely different person and with tears before God repent of the time you spent in sensual pleasure and greed for honour and money. Every day, indeed every moment, you can contemplate God’s wondrous creatures and say: “Lord, I rejoice in the work of your hands.” In yourself alone you can observe enough of his omnipotence and great wisdom; you need not desire the philosophers’ stone, the master of nature, merely to obtain a sight of God’s incomprehensible works.[^n11]
**CNT-MAIN-P009** 1682 pp. 10–11 · BLB-016, BLB-017
**German**
Mercke wohl was ich dir vorstelle: welches ist unbegreiflicher und wunderbahrlicher, daß aus schlechten Metallen, als ♄ ♃ ♀ ☽ ♂ ☿ ein bessers, nemlich ☉ oder aus einerley Graß Kraut oder Frucht, Milch, Bluth, Fleisch, Knochen, Haven, oder Fett, Haut, Haar, Saltz, Oel, Sauer, Süß, Eiter, Rotz, Wasser, Dreck, Harn, Sand und Steine, in Nieren und Blasen, mit so viel andern liquoribus oder Safften und endlich gar durch den Menschlichen oder Thierischen Saamen, welcher aus Graß und Kraut ist entsprossen, ein Mensche oder Thier, sondern etwas dabey zu thun, gemacht wird? Das letztere ist ja viel seltzamer als das erste, weil die Verbesserung der geringen Metallen, in edlere, allezeit in einerley Natur und Wesen, nemlich der Metallen bestehet: aber das Brodt oder Graß alleine, wenn es gegessen wird, durch das ⊖ naturæ in denen animalibus zu so vielerhand Dingen verändert. Hier liegt das grosse Natur-Geheimniß verborgen, und wer dieses verstehet, kan ohne Verhinderung biß in das Natur-Centrum sehen, und sich desselbigen mit GOttes Segen gebrauchen. Doch weil der Menschen Wachsung und die Verbesserung des Brodts und grünen Grases in den animalibus so gemeine und allen Bauren bekandt ist, achtet man solches wenig, und sucht nur, was neues, ob schon was geringers zu wissen.
**English**
Attend carefully to what I put before you. Which is more incomprehensible and wonderful: that a better metal, namely ☉, should be made from base metals such as ♄, ♃, ♀, ☽, ♂, and ☿; or that from a single kind of grass, herb, or fruit there should be made milk, blood, flesh, bones, suet or fat, skin, hair, salt, oil, sourness, sweetness, pus, mucus, water, excrement, urine, sand and stones in the kidneys and bladder, together with so many other liquids or juices—and, finally, through human or animal seed that has sprung from grass and herbs, a human being or an animal, without any further intervention? The latter is surely far stranger than the former, because the improvement of lesser metals into nobler ones always remains within one nature and substance, that of metals. Yet bread or grass alone, when eaten, is changed into so many different things through the ⊖ of nature in animals. Here the great secret of nature lies hidden. Whoever understands it can see unhindered into nature’s centre and use it with God’s blessing. But because human growth and the improvement of bread and green grass within animals are so commonplace and known to every farmer, people think little of them and seek only to know something new, even if it is something less significant.[^n12]
**CNT-MAIN-P010** 1682 p. 11 · BLB-017
**German**
Mein guter Freund, köntestu den Geist fangen, der in animalibus alles was drein kommt, durch die Bewegung animalisch machet, was soltestu wol damit nicht können ausrichten, wenn er in die Metallen zum agens durch Kunst gesetzet wird. Viele kluge neubegierige Liebhaber der Natur haben dieses zu thun zwar probiret, aber mit unglücklichem Ausgange. Darumb lieben Freunde, lernet erst verstehen, was euch vor der Nasen liegt, ehe ihr frembde und in der Erden liegende Sachen examiniren und begreiffen wollet. Seyd vergnügt, GOtt und den Menschen zu erkennen, webet mit Freuden die wahre heilige und unverfälschte Liebe: es ist gnug, ihr solt euch so Schätze im Himmel sammlen, da sie weder Motten noch Rost fressen, und da sie die Diebe nicht suchen oder wegtragen; höre auf mit Alchimistischem laboriren, und stillet eure Begierde den Philosophischen Stein zu finden; eure Arbeit und Unkosten werden täglich grösser, und die Hoffnung kleiner.
**English**
My good friend, if you could capture the spirit that through movement makes everything entering animals become animal in nature, what could you not accomplish with it if art introduced it into metals as an agent? Many clever and curious lovers of nature have indeed attempted this, but with an unhappy outcome. Therefore, dear friends, first learn to understand what lies before your noses before you seek to examine and comprehend unfamiliar things lying in the earth. Be content to know God and humanity; joyfully weave true, holy, unadulterated love. That is enough. In this way you will gather treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes them and thieves neither seek them out nor carry them away. Cease your alchemical labour and still your desire to find the philosophers’ stone. Your labour and expenses increase daily, while your hope diminishes.
**CNT-MAIN-P011** 1682 pp. 11–12 · BLB-017, BLB-018
**German**
Schwerlich ist unter 100000. Suchern mehr als ein Finder: ob du Leser eben der glückliche und gesegnete Mann sollest seyn, bistu, wann ein wenig Verstand in dir ist, gantz ungewiß. Die treflichste und subtilste Leute haben gefehlet, und ihrer Weißheit Ziel neben das Ziel geschossen, derowegen lege die Zeit besser an zu deiner Seligkeit, wer weiß, wird deine Seele nicht heut von dir genommen, kanstu auch gute Rechenschafft geben für deinem GOtt. Hat deine Seele in ihrem Hause, dem Leibe, auch wol haußgehalten, hat sie dasselbe nicht bißweilen in Brandt gestecket, brennt es nicht noch mit derselben durch die scharffe und unordentliche Bewegung der Seelen, im Feuer, oder Licht, darinnen Furcht, Zittern und Schrecken die Finsterniß und Kälte verursachen, in deiner Seelen ⊖ dadurch Unsaltz, corrosio, und bitter sauer werden, wie sollen seine Aushauchungen Gedancken, und wie sol es selbst in dem heiligen süssen Munde GOttes schmecken, wird er die Seele nicht ausspeien?
**English**
Among a hundred thousand seekers there is scarcely more than one finder. Whether you, reader, are to be that fortunate and blessed person is entirely uncertain, if you have any understanding at all. The most excellent and subtle people have failed, aiming their wisdom beside the target. Therefore employ your time better, for your salvation. Who knows whether your soul may not be taken from you today? Can you give a good account before your God? Has your soul kept good house in its dwelling, the body? Has it not sometimes set it on fire? Does it not still burn together with the body through the soul’s sharp and disordered movement, in the fire or light in which fear, trembling, and terror cause darkness and cold? If your soul’s ⊖ thereby becomes unsalt, corrosion, bitter and sour, how will its exhalations—its thoughts—and how will it itself taste in God’s holy, sweet mouth? Will he not spit the soul out?[^n13]
**CNT-MAIN-P012** 1682 pp. 12–13 · BLB-018, BLB-019
**German**
O lieber Christ, du bist nicht eine Stunde für dem Tode sicher, arbeite doch in dir, und suche deine Seele, die so hart als ♂, so kalt und unsauber als ♄, so scharff bitter und feurig als ♀ und unbeständig als ☿ ist, mit GOttes Geiste, der allzeit für der Seele, gleich wie die Lufft für dem leiblichen Munde schwebet, und gerne von deinem Willen mit stillen und sanfften Sausen wil eingesogen seyn, zu verbessern. Ach lieber Mensch ziehe ihn ein, so wird er sie durch heilige Bewegung erwärmen, gleichsam schmeltzen, und in demüthigen Flusse mit Lieb und Weißheit tingiren, daß sie vollkommen wird, besser als ☉, und kein Teuflisch Corrosiv sie weiter kan angreiffen und verändern.
**English**
O dear Christian, you are not safe from death for a single hour. Work within yourself and seek to improve your soul, which is as hard as ♂, as cold and impure as ♄, as sharp, bitter, and fiery as ♀, and as unstable as ☿, by means of God’s spirit. That spirit always hovers before the soul, just as air does before the bodily mouth, and willingly desires to be drawn in by your will with a quiet, gentle whisper. Dear human being, draw it in: through holy movement it will warm your soul, melt it, as it were, and in its humble flowing tincture it with love and wisdom, so that it becomes perfect, better than ☉, and no diabolical corrosive can attack or alter it further.[^n14]
**CNT-MAIN-P013** 1682 p. 13 · BLB-019
**German**
Solten aber alle diese freundliche Vermahnungen unvermutlich fruchtloß seyn, so stelle ich dir die weltliche Ehre, deine Reputation, und dein Geld für, warumb in einer ungewissen Sache so viel verthan, ist es nicht Narrenwerck? Wiltu ein Politicus und Welt-kluger Mann seyn, so weist du wol, daß ein Reichsthaler im Beutel besser ist, als 1000. in betrieglicher Hoffnung, du weist, daß Persohnen, welche so embsich die Goldmacherey suchen, und nicht finden, der gantzen Welt zum Gelächter und Mährlein dienen, man hält sie, und nicht unbillig, vor Narren, weil sie sich von den Autoribus und Process-Krähmern so lange lassen bey der Nase herumb führen, und Zeit und Geld mit Gesundheit in kurtzen verliehren, endlich, daß sie suchen, und im Grunde nicht wissen, wo, was, wie. Darumb wilt du nicht fallen, so bleibe auf ebenem Wege;
**English**
But if, unexpectedly, all these friendly admonitions should prove fruitless, I set before you worldly honour, your reputation, and your money. Why squander so much on an uncertain matter? Is it not folly? If you wish to be a statesman and a worldly-wise person, you know well that one Reichsthaler in the purse is better than a thousand in deceptive expectation. You know that people who so busily seek gold-making and fail to find it become the whole world’s laughingstock and byword. They are considered fools, and not without reason, because they let authors and peddlers of processes lead them about by the nose for so long, soon losing time, money, and health. Finally, they seek without fundamentally knowing where, what, or how. Therefore, if you wish not to fall, remain on level ground.
**CNT-MAIN-P014** 1682 pp. 13–14 · BLB-019, BLB-020
**German**
diejenigen aber, welche durch GOttes Geist im Licht beruffen sind, und in wahrer Demuth getrieben werden, seinen Natur-Wundern nachzuforschen, und dieselbigen den Naturkündigern bekandt zu machen: Diejenige, welche voll ungefärbter sanffter Liebe, und Verleugnung ihrer selbsten GOtte in weniger Wissenschafft und kleiner Habe getreu seyn: Diejenige, sage ich, wil ich nicht von weitrer Nachforschung abhalten, sondern hiemit brüderlich ermahnen, eyfrig fortzufahren, und selbst ihnen in dem tunckeln Wege, durch gegenwärtigs Büchlein ein Licht anzünden: ob sie aber erwehlet seyn, müssen sie sich erst wol, und gantz sonder eigner Liebe prüfen, ob sie in Streit stehen mit ihrem bösen Willen? ob sie suchen GOtt über alles, und den Nechsten als sich selbsten, zu lieben? ob sie dem Nothleidenden gerne helffen? denn auch ein Trunck Wasser und ein Heller aus wahrer Liebe, bey Mangel grösserer Mitteln, dem Nechsten geben, für GOtt so angenehm, als von einem Reichen ein gantz Faß Wein oder 100. Thaler.
**English**
But those who are called into the light by God’s spirit and moved in true humility to investigate his natural wonders and make them known to students of nature; those who, full of sincere, gentle love and self-denial, remain faithful to God with little knowledge and small possessions: these people, I say, I do not wish to deter from further inquiry. Rather, I exhort them fraternally to continue with zeal and, through this little book, shall myself light a lamp for them on the dark road. Yet they must first examine carefully, and entirely without self-love, whether they are chosen: whether they struggle against their evil will; whether they seek to love God above all things and their neighbour as themselves; whether they willingly help those in need. For a drink of water and a small coin given to one’s neighbour out of true love, when greater means are lacking, please God as much as a whole cask of wine or a hundred thalers given by a rich person.
**CNT-MAIN-P015** 1682 p. 14 · BLB-020
**German**
Wenn sie sothanig leben, mögen sie in ihrem Vornehmen zu völliger Natur-Erkändtniß fortfahren, und des gewüntschten Endes versichert seyn. Es ist umb sonst, daß ihr früh auffsteht und sitzt biß tief in die Nacht, und esset euer Brodt mit Bekümmerniß, GOtt gibt es den Seinen gleichwie im Traum. Wer erst trachtet nach dem Reich GOttes, und nach seiner Gerechtigkeit, dem wird das andre alles zufallen. Wil also hier nichts von Verschwiegenheit oder Gnaden-Gebrauch des berühmten Natur-Geheimniß reden, weil verständige Leute wol selber wissen, was sie thun sollen, und die Gottlosen Narren hierin nichts finden werden, sondern mit GOtt von der Sache selbst anfangen nach Endigung dieses Gebets.
**English**
If they live in this way, they may continue in their undertaking towards a complete knowledge of nature and be assured of the desired end. It is in vain that you rise early, sit up far into the night, and eat your bread with anxiety: God gives it to his own as if in a dream. Whoever first seeks God’s kingdom and his righteousness will have all the rest added to him. Thus I shall say nothing here about secrecy or the gracious use of the celebrated secret of nature, because sensible people already know what they ought to do, and godless fools will find nothing here. Instead, with God, I shall begin upon the matter itself once this prayer is ended.[^n15]
**CNT-MAIN-P016** 1682 pp. 15–16 · BLB-021, BLB-022
**German**
O GOtt unser Vater, und HERR aller Güte, der du alle Dinge durch dein Wort gemacht, und den Menschen durch deine Weißheit bereitet hast, daß er herrschen solte über die Creaturen, die von dir gemacht sind, gib uns die Weißheit, die stets vor deinem Thron ist, und verwirff uns nicht von deinem Angesicht, denn wir sind deine Knechte, und Söhne deiner Mägde, schwache Menschen, kurtzes Lebens, voller Irrthumb und Zweiffel, und zu geringe ohne deiner Hülffe, unser von dir übergebnes Talent mit ehrlichem Wucher in diesem Beruf zu vermehren, und wenn gleich einer unter den Menschen-Kindern vollkommen were, so gilt er doch nichts, wo er ohne der Weißheit ist, die von dir kommt, sende sie von deinem heiligen Himmel, und aus dem Thron deiner Herrlichkeit. Sende sie, daß sie bey uns sey, und mit uns arbeite, daß wir erkennen, was dir wolgefällt, laß sie uns leiten in unsern Wercken mäßiglich, und uns führen durch ihre Herrligkeit, so werden dir unsere Wercke angenehm seyn, und wir werden die Warheit erfahren in deinen wunderlichen Geschöpffen; HErr unsre Gedancken sind mißlich, und unser Urtheil voll Dunckel und Zweiffel. Sende deinen Heil. Geist aus der Höhe, und erleuchte uns, daß wir allezeit den rechten Weg treffen, und machen, was dir wolgefällt, zu deines heiligen Nahmens Ehre, und des Nächsten Nutzen, umb JEsu Christi willen, Amen.
**English**
O God our Father and Lord of all goodness, you who made all things through your word and fashioned humanity through your wisdom to rule over the creatures you have made: give us the wisdom that stands always before your throne, and do not cast us away from your presence. For we are your servants and the sons of your handmaids, weak human beings, short-lived, full of error and doubt, and too feeble without your help to increase, with honest gain in this calling, the talent you entrusted to us. Even if someone among the children of humanity were perfect, he would count for nothing without the wisdom that comes from you. Send it from your holy heaven and from the throne of your glory. Send it to be with us and work with us, that we may know what pleases you. Let it guide us with moderation in our works and lead us through its glory. Then our works will be acceptable to you, and we shall learn the truth in your wondrous creatures. Lord, our thoughts are uncertain and our judgement full of darkness and doubt. Send your Holy Spirit from on high and enlighten us, so that we may always find the right way and do what pleases you, to the honour of your holy name and the benefit of our neighbour, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.[^n16]
**CNT-MAIN-P017** 1682 pp. 16–17 · BLB-022, BLB-023
**German**
Als die Materia, worin der Teuffel vor dem Fall das Centrum und Herr war, durch seine allzustarcke Bewegung, mit welcher er sein Licht mehr in Klarheit zu exaltiren, und dem Lichte GOttes gleich zu machen vermeynte, mit ihren und seinen Kräfften oder Engeln, zugleich scharff wurde, anbrandte, und sich aus der Licht-Natur in die Finsterniß veränderte, so wurde aus dem Lichte erst eine Lufft, aus der Lufft Nebel, aus Nebel schleimig Wasser, und solte in seiner brennenden Kälte ohne Licht weiter und härter coagulirt seyn, hätte GOtt nicht von neuem einen Strahl seines göttlichen Lichtes in ihr reines Centrum, (denn der Teuffel war nicht mehr ihr Centrum) durch die gantze Materia hinfliessen lassen, durch welches Lichtes Glantz und Süssigkeit sie, als ein Sterbender wiederum erwachet, die Schärffe der bewegenden Krafft gemildert, und so, wie ein Erschrockener, ohne weitre Bewegung in der Gestalt des schleimigen Wassers stehen blieben.
**English**
When the matter in which the devil had been the centre and lord before the fall became sharp and caught fire, together with its powers and his powers or angels, through his excessively violent movement—by which he imagined he could raise his light to greater brilliance and make it equal to God’s light—and changed from the nature of light into darkness, light first became air, air became mist, and mist became slimy water. In its burning cold without light it would have coagulated further and harder had God not once again allowed a ray of his divine light to flow into its pure centre and through the whole matter, for the devil was no longer its centre. Through the radiance and sweetness of that light it awoke again like a dying person; the sharpness of its moving power was moderated, and it remained, like someone struck with fright, without further movement in the form of slimy water.[^n17]
**CNT-MAIN-P018** 1682 p. 17 · BLB-023
**German**
Denn GOtt wolte nicht, daß der Himmel, das Hauß, Natur oder Reich, worinnen der Teuffel geregieret, und welches von ihme, als dem Centro sein Licht-Wort oder Bewegung hat empfangen müssen, derwegen nicht vorsetzlich, sondern per Consensum in die hitzige imagination sich mit Gewalt zu exaltiren, wodurch das süsse Licht in scharffe Corrosivische Finsterniß, die lieblich bewegende Wärme in schrecklich zusammen ziehende Kälte, und der HErr in irrdisches Wasser, in wässerichte Erde sich veränderte, gefallen, gantz und gar vergehen solte; sondern wolte die von Ewigkeit in ihm gelegene Ideam der Welt bilden, und also etwas neues, worinnen er sich weiter offenbahren und ergötzen könnte, formiren, fing derowegen die neue Schöpffung an, sprach mit seinem Worte durch den Geist in die Materia, und denete oder theilete sie aus in 3. Theil, welche drey forthin mit ihrer Zusammenwürckung solten durch einigen Ausfluß aller andern Dinge Anfang seyn. Doch, daß keines von diesen 3. ohne die andern 2, gleich wie in der GOttheit, bestehen könnte; wurde also aus dem einigen Chaos, oder wässerigen Schleime, fix, fliessend und flüchtigen Leib, Geist und Seele, Erde, Wasser und Lufft.
**English**
For God did not wish the heaven—the house, nature, or kingdom in which the devil had ruled—to perish utterly. It had been obliged to receive its light-word or movement from him as its centre, and had therefore fallen, not deliberately but by consent, into the heated imagination of exalting itself by force. Through this, the sweet light changed into sharp, corrosive darkness, the pleasantly moving warmth into a terribly contracting cold, and the lord into earthly water, into watery earth. Instead, God wished to give form to the idea of the world that had lain within him from eternity, and thus to fashion something new in which he could further reveal and delight himself. He therefore began the new creation, speaking with his word through the spirit into matter and extending or distributing it into three parts. These three, working together, were henceforth to be the beginning of all other things through a single outflow, yet none of the three could subsist without the other two, just as in the Godhead. Thus from the single chaos, or watery slime, came fixed, flowing, and volatile body, spirit, and soul: earth, water, and air.[^n18]
**CNT-MAIN-P019** 1682 p. 18 · BLB-024
**German**
Der fixe Leib ist vor die eingegossne leuchtende Bewegungs-Krafft zu grob, der fliessende Geist zu unbeständig, und die flüchtige Seele zu subtil, aber wenn sie aus ihrer Vereinigung ein 4. gebähren, einen rechten Liebes-Saamen und Centrum der Kräffte, welcher eigendlich kein Wasser, weil es ein Schleim voll Erde, der auf Wasser schwimmen kan, keine Erde, denn es fliesset und nasset, und keine Lufft weil es gantz greiflich ist, und stille kan liegen, und doch Erde, Lufft und Wasser zugleich, aus allen dreyen gebohren ist, so entstehen daraus durch die Bewegniß-Wärme vielerhand Creaturen Animalien, Vegetabilien und Mineralien, welche zuletzt alle wieder aus der Einheit in die Dreyheit gehen, und Lufft und Wasser und Erden werden. So geht es zu mit der Natur in infinitum.
**English**
The fixed body is too coarse for the luminous moving power poured into it, the flowing spirit too unstable, and the volatile soul too subtle. But when their union brings forth a fourth—a true love-seed and centre of the powers, which is not properly water, because it is an earth-filled slime that can float on water; not earth, because it flows and wets; and not air, because it is entirely tangible and can lie still, yet is at once earth, air, and water, born from all three—then through the heat of movement there arise from it many kinds of creatures: animals, plants, and minerals. In the end all pass again from unity into threeness and become air, water, and earth. Thus nature proceeds to infinity.
**CNT-MAIN-P020** 1682 pp. 18–19 · BLB-024, BLB-025
**German**
Animale, Vegetabile oder minerale kan sich fortpflantzen und vermehren, wenn sein Saame nicht ein viscosum ist oder wird, alle Thiere vermehren sich durch einen Schleim. In allen Vegetabilischen Saamen wird das Weiß, ehe etwas draus wächst, erst ein zäher Schleim. Selbst die Metallen und Mineralien wachsen aus Schleim, und müssen wieder Schleim werden; sollen sie ohne Zusetzung, in sich selbst, von dem Künstler Verbesserung erlangen; stirbet, vergehet, oder wird radicaliter aufgeschlossen, ein Animal, Vegetabel, Mineral, so tritt es allezeit in eine schleimige Erde oder schleimig Wasser; kommet aber das Ende mit seinem Anfange sehr wol überein.
**English**
An animal, plant, or mineral can propagate and multiply if its seed is not or does not become a viscous substance; all animals multiply through a slime. In every plant seed, before anything grows from it, the white part first becomes a tenacious slime. Even metals and minerals grow from slime and must become slime again if the artist is to improve them within themselves, without an addition. If an animal, plant, or mineral dies, perishes, or is opened at its root, it always passes into a slimy earth or slimy water. Thus the end agrees very well with the beginning.[^n19]
**CNT-MAIN-P021** 1682 pp. 19–20 · BLB-025, BLB-026
**German**
In einem jeglichen schleimigen Wasser nun liegt in seinem Centro ein Centrum concentratum, welchs sal naturæ heisset, verborgen. Dieses ist das Licht der Welt, und überall, wo es wohnet, treibts seine circumferentiam an zur Bewegung, erleuchtet, stärcket und erhält sie in der Bewegung. Dieses ⊖ aber selbst hängt ausser dem göttlichen Natur-Geiste, an dem unsichtbahren Hauche des göttlichen Aussprechens, ist von demselben Lichte und wird dadurch beweget. Dieses ⊖ ist dasselbe, welches von Christo unter allen Geschöpffen alleine ist gut geheissen, es ist der Geist, der hinauf in den Lufft-Himmel steigt, und wieder herab: der den Wind bindet und hält mit seinen Fäusten: der die Wasser in seinem Kleid versammlet; Dieser SaltzGeist ist das Mittels-Ding, wodurch das Obre an das Untre hanget, er wird von beyden überflüssig gespeist, und theilt allen Dingen wieder reichlich mit: Durch ihn und in seiner Krafft wird der Mensch nach GOttes willen empfangen und gebohren: Durch ihn und in seiner Krafft, wachsen beydes Vegetabilien und Mineralien. Durch ihn thut GOtt, was er wil, in dem Firmament, in der Lufft, in der Erden, in dem Meere, und in allen Tiefen, durch ihn läst er die Wolcken aufgehen vom Ende der Erden, macht den Blitz sammt dem Regen, und holet den Wind aus heimlichen Orten. Er ist das Instrument, wodurch sich GOtt in den Wolcken schrecklich hören läst. Darumb trieffet er von Fett, und ist voll wunderliches Seegens. Ohn ihn kan nichts bestehen. Er ist überall, unten, mitten und oben. Der Bettler wird durch ihn so wol erhalten als der König. O HErr, wie sind deine Wercke so groß und viel, du hast sie alle weißlich geordnet, und die Erde ist voll deiner Güte, lobet GOtt.
**English**
Now in the centre of every slimy water lies hidden a concentrated centre, called the salt of nature. This is the light of the world. Wherever it dwells, it impels its circumference to movement, illuminates and strengthens it, and maintains it in motion. But this ⊖ itself depends, beyond the divine spirit of nature, upon the invisible breath of divine utterance: it is of that same light and is moved by it. This ⊖ is that which Christ alone among all created things called good. It is the spirit that ascends into the aerial heaven and descends again; that binds the wind and holds it in its fists; that gathers the waters in its garment. This salt-spirit is the intermediate thing by which the upper is connected with the lower. It is fed abundantly by both and in turn distributes richly to all things. Through it and in its power, according to God’s will, the human being is conceived and born; through it and in its power both plants and minerals grow. Through it God does what he wills in the firmament, the air, the earth, the sea, and all the depths. Through it he makes clouds rise from the end of the earth, makes lightning together with rain, and brings the wind from hidden places. It is the instrument through which God makes himself heard terribly in the clouds. Therefore it drips with fatness and is full of wondrous blessing. Nothing can subsist without it. It is everywhere: below, in the middle, and above. The beggar is sustained through it as well as the king. O Lord, how great and numerous are your works! You have ordered them all wisely, and the earth is full of your goodness. Praise God.[^n20]
**CNT-MAIN-P022** 1682 pp. 20–21 · BLB-026, BLB-027
**German**
Aus diesem Saltz wenn es durch den Künstler wird wieder gebohren, entstehet ein herrlichs und wunderliches Ding, das alle Schärffe versüssen und alle Schwachheit verbessern kan; Es gibt Gesundheit und Reichthumb, und ist unter unzähligen Dingen der höchste Schatz, den der Allmächtige GOtt in gegenwärtigem Leben etlichen seiner lieben Getreuen schencken wil. Es ist das Bild der Auferstehung und Unsterblichkeit: In seinem Wesen und Wercken offenbahret uns der himmlische Vater klar und deutlich die Erkändtniß seiner grossen und tiefen Geheimnüß, ich habe gesehen darinnen, als im Spiegel, das Bild der Schöpffung, die Vertheilung des Chaos, den Liebes-Saamen oder Ausfluß der 3. principiorum, die die Zerschneidung des Liebes-Saamen in vielerley Formen, wie das Ewige Wort Fleisch worden, und den inwendigen Glantz seines herrlichen Lichts mit so einem knechtischen Kleide Menschliches Fleisches bedecket, wie er stets unter den Pharisäern und Schrifftgelehrten gewandelt, viel Wunder gethan, und darnach wegen seines schlechten Ansehens verachtet, verworffen und verspeyet gewesen, wie er gelitten, gestorben und mit einem clarificirten Leibe auferstanden und gen Himmel gefahren, wie er darnach seine Brüder und Freunde von der Kranckheit erlöset und noch täglich in unsere zubereitete oder gläubige Seelen mit seinem Lichte und süsser Tinctur des Verdienstes einfliesset und alles darinnen hochheilig machet und verbessert, endlich, das Jüngste Gerichte, und die neue Welt. Groß sind die Wercke des HErrn, wer sie achtet, der hat eitel Lust dran, er hat ein Gedächtniß gestifftet seiner Wunder, der Gnädige und Barmhertzige HErr, Lobet GOtt.
**English**
From this salt, when it is regenerated by the artist, there arises a glorious and wonderful thing that can sweeten all sharpness and remedy every weakness. It gives health and wealth and, among countless things, is the highest treasure that almighty God wishes to bestow in this present life upon some of his beloved faithful. It is the image of resurrection and immortality. In its being and works the heavenly Father clearly and distinctly reveals to us the knowledge of his great and deep mysteries. In it, as in a mirror, I have seen the image of creation, the division of chaos, the love-seed or outflow of the three principles, and the division of the love-seed into many forms; how the eternal Word became flesh and covered the inward radiance of his glorious light with such a servile garment of human flesh; how he continually walked among the Pharisees and scribes, performed many wonders, and afterwards, because of his humble appearance, was despised, rejected, and spat upon; how he suffered, died, rose with a glorified body, and ascended into heaven; how he afterwards delivered his brothers and friends from sickness and still daily flows into our prepared or believing souls with his light and the sweet tincture of his merit, making everything within them most holy and improving it; and, finally, the Last Judgement and the new world. Great are the works of the Lord; whoever attends to them takes pure delight in them. He has established a remembrance of his wonders, the gracious and merciful Lord. Praise God.[^n21]
**CNT-MAIN-P023** 1682 pp. 21–22 · BLB-027, BLB-028
**German**
Dieses Saltz aber, ob es schon (wie gesagt) überall und in allen Dingen, nach einer jeden Materie Maaß, Zahl und Gewichte, so kan es doch überall nicht leichtlich bekommen werden, ist auch aus allen Dingen nicht bequem zu allen. Die Gelehrten sagen: So Gold soll gemacht werden, so muß es geschehen durch ☉ oder ☉rische Materia, und die Verbesserung eines Dinges könne aus nichts anders, als seines Gleichen entspringen. Halten also die Animalien, Vegetabilien und Lufft-Kräffte zur Erhöhung der Metallen gantz vor untüchtig, weil sie meynen, daß ein jeglichs der 3. Reiche, wie sie genennt worden, von dem andern im Natur-Grunde unterschieden werden.
**English**
Although this salt is everywhere and in all things, as stated, according to the measure, number, and weight of each matter, it cannot be obtained easily everywhere, nor is it suitable for every purpose when taken from just any thing. The learned say that if gold is to be made, it must be done through ☉ or solar matter, and that the improvement of a thing can arise only from something like itself. They therefore consider animals, plants, and the powers of the air wholly unfit for the exaltation of metals, because they believe that each of the so-called three kingdoms differs from the others in the foundation of its nature.
**CNT-MAIN-P024** 1682 p. 22 · BLB-028
**German**
Allenfals, sie sind blind und Leiter der Blinden. Alles wächst und erhält sich aus einer Wurtzel, und ist die Ursache des vielen Unterscheids alleine die unterschiedene Matrix und Bewegung. Einerley Krafft speiset die gantze Welt, und formet sich in dick oder dünn, süß oder sauer, hart oder weich, animalisch, Vegetabile oder minerale.
**English**
In any case, they are blind guides of the blind. Everything grows and sustains itself from one root; the many differences arise solely from different matrices and movements. One and the same power feeds the whole world and takes form as thick or thin, sweet or sour, hard or soft, animal, vegetable, or mineral.
**CNT-MAIN-P025** 1682 p. 22 · BLB-028
**German**
Doch muß ich dieses zugleich sagen: Der allgemeine Natur- oder SaltzGeist, wiewol er an dem Hauch des göttlichen Aussprechens hänget, und in alle Dinge gesprochen wird, kan er doch nun nichts neues mehr zu wege bringen: Sondern wird allein zur Unterhaltung und Bewegung derer vormals durch eine sonderliche Schöpffung des Wortes GOttes gemachten Wercke, von dem erhaltenden Worte der GOttheit getrieben.
**English**
Yet I must say this at the same time: although the universal spirit of nature, or salt-spirit, depends upon the breath of divine utterance and is spoken into all things, it can now bring about nothing new. Rather, the sustaining word of the Godhead drives it solely to maintain and move those works formerly made through a particular creation by God’s word.[^n22]
**CNT-MAIN-P026** 1682 pp. 22–23 · BLB-028, BLB-029
**German**
Die Hn. Doctores, welche den bekandten Unterscheid machen zwischen Animalien, Vegetabilien und Mineralien, sprechen sich täglich mit augenscheinlichen Wercken entgegen. Denn sie geben einem Animali den Krancken Menschen unzählich viel Mineral- und Metallische Medicamenten ein, wodurch, wenn sie ohn △ und corrosiv bereitet sind, er viel besser, als von andern gesund wird. Weil nun Gesundwerden anders nichts ist als Correctio Spiritum Acri-acidorum aut degeneratorum, und aber kein unartiges Wesen gecorrigiret wird, oder das Corrigens muß mit seiner besten Essentz in das Corrigendum radicaliter gehen, und sich mit demselben unscheidentlich vereinigen: So folgt unwiedersprechlich, daß der Mineralien und Metallen Essentz mit den Animalien könne vereiniget werden; So müssen sie im Natur-Grunde eines Wesens und der Unterscheid nur accidental seyn.
**English**
The gentlemen doctors who make the familiar distinction between animals, plants, and minerals contradict themselves daily through visible deeds. For they administer countless mineral and metallic medicines to an animal—the sick human being—through which, when they are prepared without △ and corrosives, the patient recovers much better than through other remedies. Now recovery is nothing other than the correction of sharp-acid or degenerated spirits; and no disordered substance is corrected unless the correcting agent enters the thing to be corrected at its root with its finest essence and unites with it inseparably. It follows irrefutably that the essence of minerals and metals can unite with animals. They must therefore be of one substance in nature’s foundation, their difference being merely accidental.[^n23]
**CNT-MAIN-P027** 1682 p. 23 · BLB-029
**German**
Die Krebsaugen, Conchylia &c. machen den Spiritum und ⊖ vomitorium Vitrioli besser süß und viel eher als Kalck, oder andre mineralische Dinge. Kein 🜅 kan ☉ zerschneiden, wenn nicht gutes Sal 🝕æ oder 🜹 dazu kommt. Das Ohren-Schmaltz macht die leichten Ducaten schwerer, und andere brauchen den frischen Pferde-Mist oder legen sie unter die Füsse in die Schuh, wenn sie schwitzen. Die Ostindianer machen das ☉ geschmeidig und hochfärbig mit Kühdreck und bringen das ♀ zu stetsbleibender ☉farbe durch ein Animalisch Fett.
**English**
Crayfish eyes, shells, and the like sweeten the spirit and emetic ⊖ of vitriol better, and much sooner, than lime or other mineral substances. No 🜅 can dissolve ☉ unless good salt of 🝕 or 🜹 is added. Earwax makes underweight ducats heavier; others use fresh horse dung or place them beneath their feet inside their shoes when they sweat. The East Indians make ☉ malleable and richly coloured with cow dung and bring ♀ to a lasting ☉-colour by means of an animal fat.[^n24]
**CNT-MAIN-P028** 1682 pp. 23–24 · BLB-029, BLB-030
**German**
Durch gemeinen dünnen Kinder- oder erwachsener Menschen-Dreck können mit blosser Bewegung in das von ☉ geschiedene Silber etliche gran ☉ gebracht werden. Gestossener Weitzen, wenn er vor mit geschiedenen Silber-Blechlein &c. in einer wolverschlossenem Cementir-Büchslein geglüet und verbrandt wird, gibt in dem 🜅 ☉ aus der ☽. Frische ungesaltzene Butter kan die rothe Corall seiner Tinctur mit einem kleinen Handgriff und Instrument berauben: Und der unbezwingliche Talc läst sich durch nichts, so viel mir bekandt, als durch vegetabilien und vornemlich durch Animalien solviren und in ein 🝆 bringen. Die 🝆 und Salia herbarum ziehen dem 🜍 seine Tinctur aus, und wie herrlich die Spiritus Salis und 🝆 von dem Weinstock in alle mineralien und Metallen radicaliter wircken und sie auffschliessen, ist überflüssig bekandt. Ohne Wein und Mensch ist es unmöglich eine vollkommene und aufrichtige ☉ Tinctur zu machen.
**English**
Through ordinary thin excrement from children or adults, and by movement alone, several grains of ☉ can be introduced into silver from which ☉ has been separated. Crushed wheat, when first heated and burned with small plates of parted silver and the like in a well-closed cementation box, yields ☉ from ☽ in the 🜅. Fresh unsalted butter can deprive red coral of its tincture by a small manipulation and instrument. And, so far as I know, unconquerable talc can be dissolved and brought into an 🝆 only through plants and especially through animal substances. The 🝆 and salts of herbs extract the tincture of 🜍. It is abundantly known how splendidly the spirits of salt and 🝆 from the vine act at the root of all minerals and metals and open them up. Without wine and the human being it is impossible to make a perfect and genuine ☉-tincture.[^n25]
**CNT-MAIN-P029** 1682 pp. 24–25 · BLB-030, BLB-031
**German**
Wie Graß, Kraut oder Brodt die Animalia speiset, erhält, verbessert, und in denenselben zu so vielerhand Dingen verbessert und in denenselben zu so vielerhand Dingen verändert, hab ich vorn erzehlet. Alle Bauern wissen, daß die Animalia Stercus und Urin auch Vegetabilien essen, darvon fett und verbessert werden. Der Mensch allein hat in sich die Vegetabil- und Mineralische Krafft so öffentlich, daß er vielmals mit Schmertzen solches bekennen muß. Sind die grossen Steine sammt dem Sand in Nieren und Blasen, nicht Mineralisch? wovon wachsen sie, als von Vegetabilischen und Animalischen Safften, die der Mensch zur Speise gebraucht? ist nicht zwischen den Zähnen eines Toden-Kopffs ☉ heraus gewachsen?
**English**
I have already related how grass, herbs, or bread feed, sustain, and improve animals and are changed within them into so many kinds of things. Every farmer knows that animal dung and urine also feed plants, which grow fat and are improved by them. In the human being alone the vegetable and mineral power is so evident that one must often acknowledge it with pain. Are not the large stones, together with the sand in the kidneys and bladder, mineral? From what do they grow if not from the vegetable and animal juices used by human beings as food? Has not ☉ grown out between the teeth of a dead person’s skull?[^n26]
**CNT-MAIN-P030** 1682 p. 25 · BLB-031
**German**
Ich selbst, durch GOttes Gnade, weiß aus Animalien eine Materiam zu kriegen, aus welcher auf sonderbahrer Weise bereitet Animalien, auf andre Manier Vegetabilien und wieder anders Mineralien oder Metallen, als Argentum vivum, Saturnus, Cuprum, Vitriol, Crystall, Vitrum, plumbum, Limus Mineralis &c. entstehen, und diese alle ohne der geringsten Beysetzung eines andern Dinges, allein aus sich selbst.
**English**
I myself, through God’s grace, know how to obtain from animal substances a matter which, prepared in a particular way, produces animals; in another manner, plants; and in yet another, minerals or metals such as quicksilver, Saturn, copper, vitriol, crystal, glass, lead, mineral slime, and so forth. All these arise solely from itself, without the slightest addition of anything else.[^n27]
**CNT-MAIN-P031** 1682 pp. 25–26 · BLB-031, BLB-032
**German**
Aber ich gehe zu weit, wer mehr hievon wil wissen, mag in der Natur einfältiglich suchen, mein Vornehmen war, vor mit kurtzen Worten anzuweisen, daß Animalia, Vegetabilia und Mineralia essentialiter einerley, und nur Accidentaliter ratione majoris & minoris perfectionis unterschieden seyn, und also das Saltz Naturæ überall und in allen Dingen, nach Gelegenheit einer jeglichen Materien in debita mensurâ, numero & pondere gefunden werden, leichtlich heraus zu kriegen, und auch aus allen Dingen, nicht zu allen, vornemlich zu dem so genandten Meister-Stück der Weisen, kräfftig gnug ist. So wird vonnöthen seyn, das beste aus der gantzen Natur zu erwehlen, wenn man anders nicht vergeblich arbeiten, sondern das erwünschte Ziel erreichen wil.
**English**
But I go too far. Whoever wishes to know more about this may search simply in nature. My intention was first to show briefly that animals, plants, and minerals are essentially the same, differing only accidentally with respect to greater and lesser perfection; and thus that the salt of nature is found everywhere and in all things according to the condition of each matter, in due measure, number, and weight. It can be readily extracted, yet, when taken from every sort of thing, it is not powerful enough for every purpose, especially for the so-called masterpiece of the wise. It will therefore be necessary to choose the best from the whole of nature if one wishes to attain the desired goal rather than labour in vain.[^n28]
**CNT-MAIN-P032** 1682 p. 26 · BLB-032
**German**
Sed hic labor, hic opus est. Es scheinet sehr schwer, das universale Centrum aller geschaffnen Kräffte zu finden: Weil es von vielen gesucht, aber von wenigen ergriffen wird: da doch leichtlich dazu zu kommen, wenn ihr nur die heilige Schrifft in der Grund-Sprache mit nachdrücklicher Andacht durchleset. Es ist denn solches Universale Centrum des ▽ 🜃 und △er, klar und deutlich, ohne der sonst gewohnte Verblühmung zu reden, der Mensch, welchen GOtt umb sein selbst willen hat geschaffen am 6. Tage aus der leiblich gemachten Liebes-Begierde der gantzen Natur.
**English**
But here lies the labour, here the task. It seems very difficult to find the universal centre of all created powers, because many seek it but few grasp it. Yet it is easy to reach if you will only read holy scripture in its original language with earnest devotion. For that universal centre of ▽, 🜃, and fire is—to speak clearly and plainly, without the usual figurative concealment—the human being, whom God created for his own sake on the sixth day from the embodied desire of love of the whole of nature.[^n29]
**CNT-MAIN-P033** 1682 pp. 26–27 · BLB-032, BLB-033
**German**
An diesem 6. Tage sprachen sich durch göttliche Bewegunge alle Eigenschafften zusammen, umb aus ihnen allen ein einiges Centrum und Licht zu formiren, daß also ihr König universaliter in sie herrschen und regieren solte: und dieses geistliche Centrum machte GOtt leiblich, über den ordentlichen Lauff der Natur, durch eine gleichsam neue Schöpffung zu seinem Bilde, als einen kleinen Gott, zu seiner Ehre, daß der Mensch, umb welches willen alles in den ersten 5. Tagen geschaffen war, solte seyn wie GOtt, ein Herr über alles irrdische, und GOtt ein HErr über ihn: stellete den Menschen also in der Mitten, zwischen das Obre und Untere, gab ihm Erde und Wasser unter seine Füsse, und bließ ihm durch 2. Nasenlöcher den Odem, oder die Aushauchung zweyer Leben; Im Hebräischen ist dieses Geheimniß mit dem Duali chajim bezeichnet, nemlich den Hauch oder Lufft des ewigen göttlichen Worts oder Lebens, und den Geist der zeitlichen Lufft, Lebens oder Luffts-Wortes.
**English**
On that sixth day all the properties spoke themselves together through divine movement to form from them all one single centre and light, so that their king should rule and govern them universally. God made this spiritual centre bodily, beyond nature’s ordinary course, through what was, as it were, a new creation in his image, as a little god to his honour. The human being, for whose sake everything had been created in the first five days, was to be like God, a lord over everything earthly, while God was lord over him. Thus God placed humanity in the middle, between the upper and the lower, set earth and water beneath its feet, and breathed through two nostrils the breath or exhalation of two lives. In Hebrew this mystery is designated, the text says, by the dual chajim: namely the breath or air of the eternal divine word or life, and the spirit of temporal air, life, or the air-word.[^n30]
**CNT-MAIN-P034** 1682 p. 27 · BLB-033
**German**
Und diese 2. eingeblasene Kräffte der Leben formirten in dem Menschen auch ein jegliches sein eigen Centrum in sich, welches war ein Wille, dasjenige allezeit zu begehren, davon sie hergekommen. Sie sehneten sich nach ihrer Mutter, umb von ihr zu essen, gebahr also hier der Wille, als Vater, im Centro des Lebens, die Sehnung oder Lust, als seinen Sohn, aus welchen Zweyen, Wille und Lust, ausging der Geist, das war die Krafft durch Aushauchung von GOtt und der Lufft-Welt zu leben. Lebten also beyde aus GOtt und Lufft.
**English**
Each of these two inbreathed powers of life also formed its own centre within the human being. This was a will continually to desire that from which it had come. They longed for their mother, to feed from her. Here, therefore, the will, as father, begot longing or desire as its son in the centre of life. From these two, will and desire, proceeded the spirit: the power to live through exhalation from God and the air-world. Thus both lived from God and air.
**CNT-MAIN-P035** 1682 p. 27 · BLB-033
**German**
Der Leib aber gebahr auch aus seinen Eigenschafften ein Centrum im Willen, Lust und Krafft von seinen Muttern, ▽ und Erden zu essen, zu trincken, von ihren Brüsten zu leben; Aß derwegen auch und lebte eine Dreyfachheit in dem Menschen, auf daß er wäre GOttes Bild und gleich als Er.
**English**
But the body also brought forth from its properties a centre in will, desire, and power to eat and drink from its mothers, ▽ and earth, and live at their breasts. Thus a threefold being also ate and lived within the human being, so that it might be God’s image and like him.
**CNT-MAIN-P036** 1682 pp. 27–28 · BLB-033, BLB-034
**German**
Doch wurden die Centra in Leib, Geist und Seele nicht gezwungen aus GOtt, Lufft und Erde sich zu sättigen, sondern ihr Wille war frey, zum Ebenbilde des göttlichen freyen Willens, und konte die in lieblicher Sanfftmuth ausgebohrne Güte, leuchtende und süsse Lust, wieder in sich einziehen, zurück in seine circumferentz oder Eigenschafften, darüber er als Centrum herrschete, vertheilen, und entweder durch scharffe und ziemliche Bewegung seines Rundes oder seiner Eigenschafften in sich eine andre scharffe und böse Lust gebähren, zu einer andern untauglichen Speise, oder den Mund gantz zu thun, und nicht mehr anziehen.
**English**
Yet the centres in body, spirit, and soul were not compelled to feed themselves from God, air, and earth. Their will was free, in the image of the divine free will. It could draw back into itself the goodness, luminous and sweet desire, born in lovely gentleness, distribute it back into its circumference or properties over which it ruled as centre, and either, through a sharp and considerable movement of its circuit or properties, beget within itself another sharp and evil desire for another, unsuitable food, or close the mouth entirely and cease drawing anything in.
**CNT-MAIN-P037** 1682 p. 28 · BLB-034
**German**
Was und wie aber die Speise gewesen, ist zu erzählen weitläufftig, und wie Eva mit Adam durch die böse Krafft und Lust, und aus dem bösen Willen, damals selig gegessen und himmlisch gestorben, oder wie sie durch Wieder-Einziehung der guten GOtt angenehmen Krafft und Lust in den Willen ihrer Seelen Mund zugethan, verstopffet und also ersticket, ist bekandt und schmertzlich gnug.
**English**
But to relate what that food was and how it was constituted would take a long account. How Eve together with Adam, through evil power and desire and from an evil will, then ate away their blessedness and died to heaven—or how, by drawing back the good power and desire pleasing to God into their will, they closed and stopped the mouth of their soul and thus suffocated it—is known and painful enough.[^n31]
**CNT-MAIN-P038** 1682 pp. 28–29 · BLB-034, BLB-035
**German**
Nicht alleine aber die Seele verdarbe oder fiehl in Adam und Eva, sondern weil alles aneinander hing; so steckte das Seelen △ auch den Geist und den Leib an. Der Geist und Leib zündeten an Lufft, Wasser und Erde, und zwungen sie per Consensum mitzufallen, weil Geist und Leib das Universale Centrum oder Hertz waren, und die Krafft der Imagination in ihrer Mutter, Lufft, Wasser und Erde hatten.
**English**
But it was not only the soul that was corrupted or fell in Adam and Eve. Because everything was connected, the soul’s △ also set spirit and body alight. Spirit and body ignited air, water, and earth and compelled them to fall along with them by consent, because spirit and body were the universal centre or heart and possessed the power of imagination within their mother—air, water, and earth.
**CNT-MAIN-P039** 1682 p. 29 · BLB-035
**German**
Gleichwie jetzt in unserm Leibe, wenn das Hertz kranck ist, so muß der gantze Leib mit-krancken, wenn im Hertzen gesündigt wird, so muß alles übrige nach Christi Aussage mit sündigen, und sich verunreinigen, ja es sollen umb des Hertzens willen alle Glieder und Theile des Menschen auch einsten mit leiden, ob sie schon nichts als gezwungen, gethan haben. Eben also wurde die Erde verflucht umb Adams willen, aber wir kommen zu weit in die Theologiam, und wollen wieder zum Natürlichen schreiten.
**English**
Just as now, in our body, when the heart is sick, the whole body must share its sickness, so when sin is committed in the heart, everything else must, according to Christ’s saying, share in the sin and be defiled. Indeed, because of the heart, all the human members and parts must one day suffer with it, although they have done nothing except under compulsion. In the same way the earth was cursed for Adam’s sake. But we are going too far into theology and shall return to natural matters.
**CNT-MAIN-P040** 1682 p. 29 · BLB-035
**German**
Der Mensch, hab ich gesagt, ist das Centrum aller geschaffnen Dinge, welchem durch Krafft der Imagination, die das Centrum in seiner circumferentia hat, alles in der Welt muste vor dem Fall gehorsamen.
**English**
The human being, I have said, is the centre of all created things. Before the fall, everything in the world had to obey it through the power of imagination that the centre possesses within its circumference.
**CNT-MAIN-P041** 1682 pp. 29–30 · BLB-035, BLB-036
**German**
Aber wie der Teuffel durch böse Imagination das Recht und die Krafft der guten Imagination in sein gewesenes Reich, gegenwärtige Welt, verlohren: also hat auch Adam, der in dem Stuhl des gefallenen Engels durch gröbere substantz, weil der Fall des Lucifers, das Reich hatte gröber genaturet, von GOtt gesetzt war, durch gleiche böse Imagination die vorige Krafft der Gnaden, und sein Natur-Recht verlohren. Seine Imagination wird von der Natur jetzt gehasset und ausgespeyet, und behält der Mensch anders nichts übrig, als daß sein Geist und Leib von der Natur noch müssen unterhalten werden, neben dem Vermögen durch Verstand und Arbeit particulare Dinge in der Natur zu verbessern und zu verschlimmern.
**English**
But just as the devil, through evil imagination, lost the right and power of good imagination in his former kingdom, the present world, so Adam also lost the former power of grace and his natural right through the same evil imagination. God had placed him upon the fallen angel’s throne in a coarser substance, because Lucifer’s fall had given that kingdom a coarser nature. His imagination is now hated and spat out by nature. Nothing remains to the human being except that nature must still sustain spirit and body, together with the ability, through understanding and labour, to improve or worsen particular things in nature.[^n32]
**CNT-MAIN-P042** 1682 p. 30 · BLB-036
**German**
Der natürliche Mensch lebet nun aus Lufft, Wasser und Erde auf zweyerley Weise, nemlich von oben und von unten; Von oben durch Anziehung des Athems geniesset er zur Speise den Geist oder Athem des Welt-Worts, oder die Lufft der Lufft; und von unten ihr Fleisch, animalia vegetabilia und mineralia und Blut-Wasser, der Weltgeist oder Athem erqvicket und speiset mit seinem Saltze nicht allein selbst des Menschen Geister, sondern aus ihnen ist auch das ferment und die auflösende Krafft in dem Magen und anderen Theilen des Leibes, wodurch alles Fleisch und Blut der grossen Welt wird sanfft aufgelöset, und daraus ihr ⊖ zur Bereitung des Fleisches und des Bluts in der kleinen Welt, geschieden, damit es von den hungrigen Theilen könne an- und eingesogen werden; aber die Hefen, Hülsen und Excrementa gehn wieder weg durchs Haupt, Schweiß-Löcher, heimliches Glied und Hintern.
**English**
The natural human being now lives from air, water, and earth in two ways: from above and from below. From above, by drawing in breath, one takes as food the spirit or breath of the world-word, or the air of the air; from below, its flesh—animals, plants, and minerals—and blood-water. With its salt the world-spirit or breath refreshes and feeds not only the human spirits themselves; from these also comes the ferment and dissolving power in the stomach and other parts of the body. Through this, all the flesh and blood of the great world are gently dissolved and their ⊖ separated to prepare flesh and blood in the little world, so that the hungry parts may attract and absorb it. But the dregs, husks, and excrements depart again through the head, sweat pores, private member, and backside.[^n33]
**CNT-MAIN-P043** 1682 pp. 30–31 · BLB-036, BLB-037
**German**
Weistu nun, mein Freund, was dem Untertheil der Welt sein innerliches Centrum das ⊖ naturæ, oder aus den Obern sein Hertz, Centrum oder ⊖ naturæ auszuziehen, oder weist du das Saltz Naturæ Centrale und Astrale in einem Dinge zugleich e. g. in dem Menschen vereiniget und überflüssig zu finden, so ist fürwahr die Natur-Weißheit in dir, und kanst mit diesem Lichte die gantze Natur durch und übersehen.
**English**
Now, my friend, if you know how to extract from the lower part of the world its inner centre, the ⊖ of nature, or from the upper its heart, centre, or ⊖ of nature; or if you know how to find the central and astral salt of nature united and abundant in a single thing—for example, in the human being—then the wisdom of nature is truly within you, and with this light you can see through and survey the whole of nature.
**CNT-MAIN-P044** 1682 p. 31 · BLB-037
**German**
Kennestu einmahl wol die kleine Welt, in der Grossen wird dir nichts hernach unbekandt bleiben. Darumb rieffen und schrieben die alte Ægyptische Physici: kenne dich selbst, und die Griechen, ihre Schüler, nahmen dieses aus Unverstandt meist Moraliter, und liessen es über ihre Kirch-Thüren schlagen.
**English**
Once you know the little world well, nothing in the great world will afterwards remain unknown to you. Therefore the ancient Egyptian natural philosophers proclaimed and wrote: “Know yourself.” The Greeks, their pupils, misunderstood this chiefly in a moral sense and had it inscribed above their temple doors.[^n34]
**CNT-MAIN-P045** 1682 p. 31 · BLB-037
**German**
Findestu O Sucher der Natürlichen Weißheit, nichts von deme, daß du suchest, in dir, vielweniger wirstu ausser dir finden; verstehestu noch nicht die Herrlichkeit und Krafft in der vereinigten Wohnung, warumb bemühestu dich denn nach einer andern zu fragen? In dem Menschen, der nach GOttes Nahmen genennet ist, liegt mehr und herrlichere Dinge, als in der gantzen grossen Welt, und wenn jemand unter den Naturkündigern begehrt Meister zu werden, so wird er warhafftig nirgends bessre Materia finden zu seinem Meisterstück als in ihm selbst.
**English**
O seeker of natural wisdom, if you find none of what you seek within yourself, much less will you find it outside yourself. If you do not yet understand the glory and power in the united dwelling, why do you trouble to inquire after another? In the human being, who is named after God’s name, there lie more and more glorious things than in the whole great world. If anyone among students of nature wishes to become a master, nowhere will that person truly find better matter for the masterpiece than within himself.
**CNT-MAIN-P046** 1682 pp. 31–32 · BLB-037, BLB-038
**German**
Derowegen wil ich hier den Egyptern nachfolgen, und aus treuen Hertzen mit gründlicher Erfahrung meinen lieben Nechsten also zuruffen: O Mensch kenne dich selbst! in dir liegt der Schatz aller Schätze! du geniessest in der Lufft den Odem des Firmaments, welchen das wunderliche Gestirn aus dem Licht derer obern Wasser gesogen, und in die Mittel-Lufft ausgehaucht hat, allwo er sich mit Lufft durch die Bewegung läst incrassiren, du Mensch geniessest durch die Lufft den Athem der Erden, und des Wassers, vereinigest in dir beyde, und gebährest unwissend aus allen diesen erzehlten Kräfften ein Ding, welches von uns erfahrnen und wissenden das grosse Wunder der Welt genennet wird, Es ist ein rechtes Wasser-Feuer und Feuer-Wasser, ja mehr als alles Feuer, Lufft, Erde und Wasser. Denn es löset und schliesset radicaliter auf in seiner Rohigkeit das reiffe und sehr beständige ☉, es reducirt solches in eine fette schwartze Erde, dicken Schleim Saltz-Wasser, ohne Feuer-Gewalt und Schärffe, welches kein ander Ding in der Welt verrichten kan. Nichts ist für ihm verschlossen, und ob es schon das köstlichste der gantzen Welt ist, kan doch dessen der König nicht mehr haben als der Bettler.
**English**
Therefore I shall follow the Egyptians here and, from a faithful heart and thorough experience, call to my dear neighbour in this way: “O human being, know yourself! Within you lies the treasure of all treasures!” In the air you partake of the breath of the firmament, which the wondrous stars have drawn from the light of the upper waters and exhaled into the middle air, where it is thickened with air through movement. You, the human being, partake through the air of the breath of earth and water, unite both within yourself, and unknowingly bring forth from all these stated powers a thing which we who possess experience and knowledge call the great wonder of the world. It is a true water-fire and fire-water, indeed more than all fire, air, earth, and water. For in its raw state it dissolves and opens at the root mature and very stable ☉, reducing it to a fatty black earth, a thick slime and salt-water, without violent fire or sharpness—something no other thing in the world can accomplish. Nothing is closed to it. Although it is the most precious thing in the whole world, the king can have no more of it than the beggar.
**CNT-MAIN-P047** 1682 pp. 32–33 · BLB-038, BLB-039
**German**
Dieses haben die Weisen gesucht und gefunden. Hievon hat Hermes seine 28. Bücher, die noch bey den Weisen der andern Welt unverfälscht verwahret liegen, und von mir gesehen sind, aufgesetzt. Dieses sucht auch ihr meine Freunde, in allerhand Dingen, habet aber bißher seine speluncken nicht erkennet, noch gewust, wie es, wenn ihr es sehen möchtet, aussehen soll.
**English**
This is what the wise have sought and found. About it Hermes composed his twenty-eight books, which are still preserved uncorrupted among the wise of the other world and which I have seen. You too, my friends, seek this in all kinds of things, but until now you have not recognised its hiding places or known what it should look like if you were to see it.[^n35]
**CNT-MAIN-P048** 1682 p. 33 · BLB-039
**German**
Es ist, ich wil es deutlich sagen, ein geistlich Wasser, ein wässeriger Geist, und ein Wasser des Lebens, welchs Adam und Eva zu ihrem Trost und Verstärckung haben mit aus dem Paradieß genommen, und durch ihre Kinder den Nachkommen überlassen.
**English**
It is, I shall say plainly, a spiritual water, a watery spirit, and a water of life which Adam and Eve took with them from paradise for their comfort and strengthening, and passed through their children to their descendants.
**CNT-MAIN-P049** 1682 p. 33 · BLB-039
**German**
O herrliches, O leuchtendes, O süsses Wasser, O verachtes, O finsteres, O bitter Wasser, welches uns stärcket biß an den Todt. Dieses ist der Eckstein, den bißhero die weisen Bauleute, die grossen Philosophi, erfahrne Alchymisten und Meister von Israel, aus nachlässigen Unverstandt verworffen haben. O Menschen-Kind thu einmahl die Augen auf, liebe von Hertzen GOtt und den Nechsten, sey demüthig und sanfftmüthig, so wird dir der HErr hold seyn, und die Finsterniß des Gemüths zu Licht machen.
**English**
O glorious, O shining, O sweet water; O despised, O dark, O bitter water that strengthens us until death! This is the cornerstone which the wise builders, the great philosophers, experienced alchemists, and masters of Israel have until now rejected through careless incomprehension. O child of humanity, open your eyes for once. Love God and your neighbour from your heart; be humble and gentle. Then the Lord will favour you and turn the darkness of your inward being into light.[^n36]
**CNT-MAIN-P050** 1682 pp. 33–34 · BLB-039, BLB-040
**German**
Hiemit hab ich den Weg getreulich angewiesen, und wil noch dieses zum Überfluß dabey fügen: Die Welt, worinnen der Weisen höchste und nechste Materia zu ihrem Meisterstück zu finden, der Mensch ist die Grube, darinnen das lote Loch und Ertz, das beste und schlimmeßte, köstlichste und schlechteste Wasser, Lufft und Erde, zugleich und doch keines allein; sondern ein Sohn und Saamen von diesen dreyen reinesten Leibe, Geist und Seele in dem Menschen, zu seinem besten und seiner Nothdurfft gebohren und TESSA genandt:
**English**
In this I have faithfully indicated the way, and I shall add this for further assurance. The world in which the wise find their highest and nearest matter for their masterpiece—the human being—is the mine in which lie the ore-bearing opening and ore: the best and worst, most precious and least worthy water, air, and earth together, yet none of them alone; rather, a son and seed born from these three purest body, spirit, and soul within the human being for its good and necessities, and called TESSA.[^n37]
**CNT-MAIN-P051** 1682 p. 34 · BLB-040
**German**
Kanstu es finden durch GOttes Gnade, und deinen Fleiß, so scheide das Reine von dem Unreinen, mache ohne △ und Beyfügung eines andern Dinges die Jungfräuliche Erden, ohne Geschmack, Geruch und Farbe; kriege heraus und scheide das Sal centrale, Vitriolum microcosmicum Philosophicum, und das Saltz Astrale, ☿ium Microcosmi, ♀em Philosophicam, saubre sie, und gebähre daraus einen Sohn, der besser als seine Eltern ist. So solt ihr sehen, warumb Quecksilber von den alten Ægyptiern so wunderlich ☿ gezeichnet ist: Nemlich unten mit den Zeichen des Kupffers, und oben mit dem Zeichen des Silbers.
**English**
If you can find it through God’s grace and your diligence, separate the pure from the impure. Without △ or the addition of another thing, make the virginal earth, without taste, smell, or colour. Extract and separate the central salt, the philosophical vitriol of the microcosm, and the astral salt, the mercury of the microcosm, the philosophical Venus. Purify them and bring forth from them a son better than its parents. Then you will see why the ancient Egyptians so wonderfully represented quicksilver by ☿: with the sign of copper below and the sign of silver above.[^n38]
**CNT-MAIN-P052** 1682 pp. 34–35 · BLB-040, BLB-041
**German**
Das Astralische oder obere Saltz ist sehr flüchtig, süsse und gläntzet wie fein ☽, und ist auch nicht anders, als der Weisen Silber, und Saltzig ☿ische Geist. Das Centralische Saltz ist ein Vitriol von wunderlicher und unaussprechlicher Krafft, das es ☿ coaguliren, und zu feinem ☽ machen kan. Aber diese ♀ liegt in einem heß Kleide, welches ihr muß abgenommen werden, wenn man ihre Schönheit sehen wil, aus diesen beyden Saltzarthen werden alle Metalle gebohren, und geht im Macrocosmo zu, wie im Microcosmo. Hier hastu das Bergkwerck in deinem Leibe, und kanst ohne Zusetzung, Gold, Silber, Quecksilber, Kupffer, Bley draus machen.
**English**
The astral or upper salt is very volatile, sweet, and shines like fine ☽. It is nothing other than the silver of the wise and the saline mercurial spirit. The central salt is a vitriol of wonderful and inexpressible power, able to coagulate ☿ and make it into fine ☽. But this ♀ lies in an ugly garment, which must be removed if one wishes to see her beauty. From these two kinds of salt all metals are born, and the macrocosm proceeds as the microcosm does. Here you have the mine in your body, and without addition you can make gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, and lead from it.[^n39]
**CNT-MAIN-P053** 1682 p. 35 · BLB-041
**German**
Aus diesen hab ich sehen mit gebührlichen △ gebähren, die Artzeney der krancken Animalien, Vegetabilien und Metallen, wovon so viel 100. Bücher im Druck sind. Durch wenig von diesem wiedergebohrnen Saltze der Natur, hab ich viel geringes Metall zu ☉ und ☽ gemacht.
**English**
From these, with the proper △, I have seen the medicine of sick animals, plants, and metals brought forth—the medicine about which so many hundreds of books are in print. With a little of this regenerated salt of nature, I have made much base metal into ☉ and ☽.
**CNT-MAIN-P054** 1682 p. 35 · BLB-041
**German**
Ob die Alten oder neuen Philosophi den Weg auch gegangen, und wie ich gearbeitet, bedisputir ich nicht. Meinethalben schreibe man von dieser oder jener Materia, ich bin zu frieden, und suche jetzund andere zum Beweißthumb weder anzuziehen, noch zu widerlegen. Weil mich als einen Kunstbesitzer selbst die Toden und Lebendige vonnöthen haben, durch meine eigene Erfahrung zu bezeugen, daß sie die Warheit der Natur an die Welt, wiewol etwas bedeckter, haben übergegeben.
**English**
I shall not dispute whether the ancient or modern philosophers followed this path too, or how I worked. Let people write about this matter or that, for all I care; I am content and now seek neither to cite others as proof nor to refute them. For both the dead and the living themselves need me, as a possessor of the art, to testify through my own experience that they handed nature’s truth to the world, though in a somewhat more veiled manner.
**CNT-MAIN-P055** 1682 pp. 35–36 · BLB-041, BLB-042
**German**
Und hätten sie etwan andre Materien gehabt, wie frölich wolt ich seyn; denn hierdurch konte ich erkennen, daß GOttes Gnade durch mein Gebet und Fleiß in der Natur ein neues und unbekandtes Wunder offenbahret habe. Weil das Saltz der Natur aus meiner Materia so viel, wenn es durch den Künstler wieder gebohren wird, verrichtet, als der Alten Wunder und Meisterstück jemals gethan hat.
**English**
And if they should have had other matters, how glad I would be! For thereby I could recognise that God’s grace, through my prayer and diligence in nature, had revealed a new and unknown wonder. For the salt of nature from my matter, when regenerated by the artist, accomplishes as much as the ancients’ wonder and masterpiece ever did.
**CNT-MAIN-P056** 1682 p. 36 · BLB-042
**German**
Und ist ein frommer Christ, (die bösen mit ihrem bittern, sauern und brennenden Verstande schliesse ich gantz aus) der zum Natur-Priester innerlich von GOttes Weißheit beruffen ist, sich selbst durch Anweisung meines Schrifftgens wil examiniren, so hüte er sich vor allen Unkosten und grosser Mühe, findet er das lote Loch und die Materie, so wird ihm die Natur von sich selbst, ohn Handanlegung beystehen, daß er die wunderliche Erde zu besitzen kriegt. Sehe er nur wol zu und gebe achtung auff die Werck der Natur, es ist alles geringe, leicht und ohne Kosten.
**English**
If there is a devout Christian—I entirely exclude the wicked with their bitter, sour, burning understanding—who is inwardly called by God’s wisdom to be a priest of nature and wishes to examine himself by the guidance of my little writing, let him guard against every expense and great exertion. If he finds the ore-bearing opening and the matter, nature will of itself assist him, without his putting a hand to it, so that he obtains possession of the wondrous earth. Let him simply look carefully and attend to nature’s works. It is all humble, easy, and without cost.
**CNT-MAIN-P057** 1682 p. 36 · BLB-042
**German**
Aber wie man weiter gehet und nach Besitzung des wahren Philosophen ☿ii, in welches Erkänntniß viel irren, wenn sie meinen, der ☿ Philosophorum sey ipsum Sal Naturæ Regeneratum oder Lapis Philosophorum, welches falsch, seine Arbeiten zu dem Meisterstück der Natur fortsetzet, schreibe ich hiebey nicht, weil dieses Blümlein vor die Weißheit- und nicht geldsuchende dienen soll.
**English**
But how one proceeds further after obtaining the true philosophers’ mercury and continues one’s work towards nature’s masterpiece I do not write here. Many err in understanding it when they suppose that the philosophers’ ☿ is the regenerated salt of nature itself or the philosophers’ stone, which is false. For this little flower is to serve those who seek wisdom, rather than money.[^n40]
**CNT-MAIN-P058** 1682 pp. 36–37 · BLB-042, BLB-043
**German**
Darumb lernet erst die Weißheit für eurer Seele: Wenn ihr sie findet, so wirds euch hernach wol gehen, und eure Hoffnung wird nicht umbsonst seyn. Mit ihr kommt alles Gutes, und unzählig Reichthumb ist in ihrer Hand. Findet ihr des Menschen natürliches Centrum, so wird euch die Arbeit nach Wuntsch gerathen.
**English**
Therefore first learn wisdom for your soul. When you find it, things will afterwards go well with you, and your hope will not be in vain. With it comes every good thing, and immeasurable wealth is in its hand. If you find the human being’s natural centre, your work will succeed as you desire.
**CNT-MAIN-P059** 1682 p. 37 · BLB-043
**German**
Nehmet unterdessen diese meine treuhertzige Vermahnung und Unterweisung in Liebe an, und folgt meiner eignen Erfahrung, wo ihr nicht Lust habt, mit dem grossen Hauffen zu irren. Leset, so ihr wollet andere Autores, wie tunckel sie haben ihre Meinung an den Tag gegeben, und wie sie mit mir überein stimmen; Keiner unter allen hat am nechsten die Treue gethan, die ich hier thue: und keiner hat die Klarheit der Menschlichen Wunder-Materie so öffentlich an des Tages-Licht gestellet: ihre Schrifften sind gleich der Bibel, ein jeder, der drüber kommt, und ein wenig subtilen Verstand hat, findet darinnen eine oder andre Meinung, und siehet, daß es sich, wo nicht alles, doch an vielen Orten zu seinem præjudicio schreibet. Wil aber jemand was bessers schreiben; wohl, wir wollen es sehen, und mit höchsten Danck die Weitereröffnung zur Natur-Weißheit annehmen,
**English**
Meanwhile accept this sincere admonition and instruction of mine in love, and follow my own experience if you do not wish to err with the great crowd. Read other authors if you will: see how obscurely they have made their meaning known, and how they agree with me. None among them has shown the neighbour the faithfulness I show here; none has brought the clarity of the human wonder-matter so openly into daylight. Their writings are like the Bible: everyone who comes upon them with a little subtlety of understanding finds one opinion or another within them and sees, if not all of it, at least many passages as written in support of his own preconception. But if anyone wishes to write something better, well, we shall see it and accept with the highest thanks that further opening into the wisdom of nature.
**CNT-MAIN-P060** 1682 pp. 37–38 · BLB-043, BLB-044
**German**
und wollen mich die Herren Doctores, gelahrte Naturalisten und erfahrne Chymici verlachen, und weil ich den Menschen die Welt, das lote Loch die Ertz-Grube, meine TESSA oder Materia, Saltz naturæ: und das Meisterstück, und eigentlich genandt der Stein der Weisen, Saltz Naturæ Regenerationis benennet habe, durch die Hechel ziehen, werde ich dar wenig Haar lassen und es gantz nichts achten. Von GOTT hab ich die Weißheit empfangen, mildiglich theile ich sie mit, und kehre mich an der Philosophorum Fluche gantz nicht, denn ichs aus ihren Büchern nicht erlernet.
**English**
And if the gentlemen doctors, learned naturalists, and experienced chymists wish to laugh at me and drag me through the heckle because I have called the human being the world, the ore-bearing opening the mine, my TESSA or matter the salt of nature, and the masterpiece—properly named the philosophers’ stone—the salt of nature’s regeneration, I shall leave little hair there and care nothing for it. I received wisdom from God and share it generously. I pay no heed whatever to the philosophers’ curse, for I did not learn it from their books.[^n41]
**CNT-MAIN-P061** 1682 p. 38 · BLB-044
**German**
Sondern befehle diese deutliche und Sonnenklare Schrifften der allweisen Versehung GOttes, denn er gibt den Weisen ihre Weißheit, und den Verständigen ihren Verstand, Er offenbahret was tieff verborgen ist, Er weiß, was im Finsterniß liegt, weil bey ihm lauter Licht ist.
**English**
Instead I commend these plain and sun-clear writings to God’s all-wise providence. For he gives wisdom to the wise and understanding to those who understand. He reveals what is deeply hidden; he knows what lies in darkness, because with him there is nothing but light.[^n42]
**CNT-MAIN-P062** 1682 p. 38 · BLB-044
**German**
Ich dancke dir, und lobe dich GOTT meinen Vater, daß du mir Weißheit und Stärcke verliehen, und offenbahret hast, darumb ich dich gebethen habe. O HERR erleuchte auch deinen andern Kindern die Augen, daß sie sehen, und dich preisen. Dem Einigen Dreyfaltig-geoffenbahrten GOTT, Vater Sohn und Heil. Geist, von welchem allein Licht, Warheit und Weißheit ausfliesset, sey Lob, Ehr und Danck gesagt, jetzt und in Ewigkeit. O gedencke meiner mein GOTT, hilff mir deinem Knechte aus Gnaden, umb JEsu Christi Willen, AMEN!
**English**
I thank and praise you, God my Father, for granting me wisdom and strength and revealing what I asked of you. O Lord, enlighten the eyes of your other children too, that they may see and praise you. To the one God revealed in threefold form—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—from whom alone light, truth, and wisdom flow, be praise, honour, and thanks, now and for eternity. O remember me, my God; graciously help me, your servant, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen!
## Companion Works
### Discourse on the Universal
*Discursus de Universali Martini de Delle ex oppido Vitri in Ducatu Mediolanensi.*
German witness: 1682, printed pp. 39–48, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Source facsimile: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/pageview/4591589
Narrative associated with Martin de Delle
**CNT-DELLE-H001** 1682 p. 39 · BLB-045
**German**
Discursus de Universali Martini de Delle ex oppido Vitri in Ducatu Mediolanensi.
**English**
Discourse on the Universal, by Martin de Delle, from the town of Vitri in the Duchy of Milan.
**CNT-DELLE-P001** 1682 p. 39 · BLB-045
**German**
Primum Ens Theophrasti eines jedweden Dings ist die Ausziehung oder Extract der Erden oder seines Saltzes:
**English**
Theophrastus’s first being of any thing is the extraction, or extract, of its earth or its salt.[^n43]
**CNT-DELLE-P002** 1682 pp. 39–40 · BLB-045, BLB-046
**German**
Demnach im vergangnen 1589. Jahre mit den Schlesier Fuhr-Leuten von Görlitz / eine hohe Person bey mir zur Herberge eingekehret / und ich gleich in Alchymia magna, den Tractat gelesen: Si felicitari desideras &c. aufgestanden bin / und das Buch offen gelassen / hat dieser Freund / als ich wieder in die Stuben kommen / in Händen gehabt / mir wiedergeben / und gesagt: Ob ich auch verstünde / was ich da lese? drauf ich geantwortet: Ich wolte gerne / daß es möglich / aber es wäre mir dieses so wunderlich wider einander / daß ich mich hierin nicht richten könte / ich hätte wol 23. gelesen und Concordantiam Philosophorum gerne wissen mögen / aber je länger ich hierauff speculirete / je weiter ich hievon käme: Da sagte er: Habt ihr denn auch gearbeitet? da sagte ich: Nichts sonderliches / denn gelesen / und fing an mit ihm zu disputiren / wie daß es möglich wäre / daß die Philosophi concordiren solten / weil sie ungleich schrieben.
**English**
In the past year, 1589, a distinguished person came to lodge with me, travelling with the Silesian carriers from Görlitz. I had just been reading in the Alchymia magna the treatise beginning “If you desire to prosper,” and had risen, leaving the book open. When I returned to the room, this friend had it in his hands. He gave it back and asked whether I understood what I was reading. I answered that I wished I could, but that its statements seemed so strangely contradictory that I could find no guidance in them. I had read a good twenty-three works and would gladly have learned the agreement of the philosophers; yet the longer I speculated upon it, the further away I seemed to get. He asked, “Have you also worked?” I replied, “Nothing much beyond reading,” and began to dispute with him about how the philosophers could agree when they wrote differently.[^n44]
**CNT-DELLE-P003** 1682 pp. 40–41 · BLB-046, BLB-047
**German**
Da begehrte er zu wissen: ob ich mehr Bücher hätte denn dieses / hielte mir treflich Widerpart / drauff ließ ich ihm alles sehen / das er gantz curieux durchblätterte / fing an / und sagte: So ich ihm zusagte / wie einem Philosopho gebühret zu halten / wolte er mir die widerwärtigen Philosophen wol concordiren / daß ich ihre verborgene Reden wol verstehen solte / und weil er bey mir ein Büchlein fand / darin er länger als in den andern blätterte / fragte ich ihn / obs ihm gefiele oder nicht? Sagte er: Ja hertzlich wohl; Indessen ward unser Gespräch zertrennet / daß mein Weib mich herunter ruffte / damit ja / wo unser Herr GOtt eine Kirche bauet / die Capelle auch dabey fundiret werde / daß also diesen Tag nichts ferner / als was disputando geschah / tractiret wurde / den andern Tag tagete es mir früh / denn ich besorgte; Er möchte mir hinweg ziehen / und ich die Metten verschlaffen / als leider doch den andern Tag geschah / so kommt er / als er auch aufgestanden / beut mir die Hand und guten Morgen / wäscht sich / da ich ihm im mittelst einen Brandtewein lange und zu trincken nöthige / sagte er: Nein / diß wäre ihm kein Dienst / wolte ich ihm aber / was an dieser Stadt / an Kirchen und Schulen / und Saltzwerck zu sehen wäre / zeigen / (auch mit ihm vor das Thor vor Essen spatzieren gehen /) da thät ich ihm einen Gefallen / so wolte er mir gestriger Zusage nach / mein Begehren gewähren / drauf ich mit ihm etliche Stunden umbher gangen / zu foderst aber gedrungen; daß ich vor dem Thor / nach dem Felde werts mit ihm gehen wolte / denn er die Stadt / wie sie läge / und wo man sie übersehen könne / gerne wissen wolte / daß ich zwar ungern gethan / sonderlich weil es die Nacht gewittert und zumahl böse gehen / jedoch bin ich ihm zu Willen gewesen / sind zum Claus-Thor hinaus gangen / an der Wiesen übergefahren übers Wasser / und an Ockels Weinberge die Stadt zu übersehen gangen.
**English**
He asked whether I had more books than this one and argued vigorously against me. I therefore showed him everything. He leafed through them with great curiosity and said that if I promised to keep the matter as a philosopher ought, he would reconcile the contrary philosophers for me, so that I could understand their hidden sayings. He found one little book in my possession and spent longer turning its pages than those of the others. I asked whether he liked it. “Yes, very much indeed,” he replied. Meanwhile our conversation was interrupted when my wife called me downstairs—so that wherever our Lord God builds a church, a chapel must also be founded beside it. Nothing further was dealt with that day beyond our disputation. The next day I was awake early, fearing that he might leave while I slept through matins, as unfortunately did happen on the following day. When he too had risen, he came, gave me his hand, wished me good morning, and washed. Meanwhile I offered him some brandy and urged him to drink. He said no: that would do him no service. But if I would show him what there was to see in the town—churches, schools, and saltworks—and walk with him outside the gate before the meal, I would oblige him; then, as he had promised yesterday, he would grant my request. I walked about with him for several hours. Above all he pressed me to go outside the gate towards the fields, since he wanted to know how the town lay and where one could look down upon it. I did this reluctantly, especially because there had been a thunderstorm during the night and the going was very bad. Nevertheless I complied. We went out through the Claus Gate, crossed the water by the meadow, and went to Ockel’s vineyard to look over the town.[^n45]
**CNT-DELLE-P004** 1682 pp. 41–42 · BLB-047, BLB-048
**German**
Als wir nun übers Lerchen-Feld bey der Stiffts-Schreiberin und Kitzings Garten gangen / hat er mehr denn einmal angefangen; Siehst du / Siehst du? Sagte ich: Ich sehe nichts: Er antwortete: Siehestu nicht in der Erden das Nichts der Philosophen / davon Pytagoras, Solon, Archelaus und Josaphat haben geschrieben / daraus die Welt geschaffen / ich sagte / ich sehe nichts / denn den Sand gläntzen / und die Sonne (so heiß schiene) blinckern / Ja sagte Er: Siehestu recht / aber nicht verstehestu es; sage zu wie gestern / daß du wilst treu seyn / als ich solches gethan / hat er mir angezeiget / gegen die Sonne getreten und das Blinckern darin gezeiget / daß dieses der Spiritus Mundi / so unvergleichlich herumschwebte / wäre / welcher durch GOttes Hauchen / Wort / und durch die Strahlen in alle Dinge sich legte / dieselben coquirte und fovirte, quia replevit totum orbem terrarum, dieser nähme nun einen Leib an / daß er corporalisch würde / den wolte er mir im Schatten zeigen / als wir hinter Ockels Weinberge im Schatten gangen / ist an der Fahrgleissen nach dem Regen es gar weiß / wie ein saltzig Erdreich zu seyn pflegt / und als wir in dem Sonnenschein eine lange Ecke daselbst gegangen / hat er gesagt:
**English**
As we crossed the Lark Field, beside the collegiate clerk’s wife’s property and Kitzing’s garden, he began more than once, “Do you see? Do you see?” I said, “I see nothing.” He answered, “Do you not see in the earth the philosophers’ Nothing, of which Pythagoras, Solon, Archelaus, and Josaphat have written, and from which the world was created?” I said that I saw nothing but the sand glittering and the sun, which shone hot, sparkling. “Yes,” he said, “you see correctly, but do not understand it. Promise, as yesterday, that you will be faithful.” When I had done so, he stepped towards the sun and pointed out its sparkling. This, he told me, was the Spirit of the World, hovering about incomparably. Through God’s breath, Word, and the rays, it entered all things, cooked and fostered them, “because it has filled the whole circuit of the earth.” It was now taking on a body, becoming corporeal, and he would show it to me in the shade. As we went behind Ockel’s vineyard in the shade, the cart-ruts were quite white after the rain, as saline ground commonly is. After we had walked along a long corner there in the sunshine, he said:[^n46]
**CNT-DELLE-P005** 1682 pp. 42–43 · BLB-048, BLB-049
**German**
Ecce vides illum, qui de Cœlo descendit, & quem jam terra producit, ☉ Pater, Luna Mater, ventus portavit in ventre, jam terra nutrix ejus facta est, & est ille, uti Propheta Esaias in similitudine inquit: Rorate Cœli desuper & nubes pluite justum, aperiatur terra & germinet Salvatorem ejus. Item Salvator noster, inquiens: Non vivit homo solo pane, sed quolibet verbo egrediente ex ore Altissimi. Item Ille: Vos estis Sal terræ. Item: Paulus Philosophus Corinth. 15. Seminatur & decidit corruptibile sive volatile, & resurgit sive oritur incorruptibile sive fixum. Et hoc Secretum Universale seu Spiritus Mundi est in omnibus rebus, quarum vita est (sicuti hominis) & nihil aliud est, quàm Spiritus Salis tinctus, juxta Dornæum, seu ⊖ crystallinum fixum, inferius quod est sicut superius, nempe cœlum quod est, est ▽ fixa crystallina gelata, aliàs non resistere posset stellis, sive △i. Deßwegen auch die Leibe der Verdammten nicht verbrennen werden noch können.
**English**
“Look: you see that which descended from heaven and which the earth now brings forth. The Sun is its father, the Moon its mother; the wind carried it in its belly, and the earth has now become its nurse. It is that of which the prophet Isaiah speaks by similitude: ‘Drop dew from above, O heavens, and let the clouds rain the just one; let the earth open and bring forth its Saviour.’ Likewise our Saviour says, ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word proceeding from the mouth of the Most High’; and again, ‘You are the salt of the earth.’ Likewise Paul the philosopher, in 1 Corinthians 15: ‘It is sown and falls corruptible, or volatile, and rises again, or springs up, incorruptible, or fixed.’ This Universal Secret, or Spirit of the World, is in all things and is their life, as it is the life of the human being. According to Dorn, it is nothing other than tinctured spirit of salt, or fixed crystalline salt: the lower which is like the upper. Heaven itself is fixed crystalline, frozen water; otherwise it could not withstand the stars, or fire. For this reason the bodies of the damned will not and cannot burn away.”[^n47]
**CNT-DELLE-P006** 1682 p. 43 · BLB-049
**German**
Ergò Lapis est in omnibus rebus, quia ex omnibus rebus fit ⊖, & inde Lapis, sed tamen non ex omni ligno ☿ius, quia subjectum in aliquibus propinquum, in aliis tamen etiamsi inest tàm longinquum, ut tutius habeatur in propinquis quàm quæratur in longinquis, varii sunt modi procedendi, sed tamen omnes incertis limitibus naturæ conclusi. Hierauff als wir nach Hause giengen / er mich berichtet / daß Particularia seyn könnten / aber also; daß dieses Universal Corpus insitum omnibus rebus liberum à superfluitatibus sey / ita ut æquiparetur Cœlo, & receptaculum sit △ Philosophici.
**English**
“Therefore the Stone is in all things, because salt can be made from all things, and from salt the Stone. Yet Mercury cannot be made from every piece of wood: in some things the subject is near at hand, while in others, although present, it is so remote that it is more safely obtained from those close at hand than sought in the distant. There are various ways of proceeding, yet all are confined within nature’s uncertain limits.” As we went home, he then explained that particular works could exist, but only in this way: the universal body implanted in all things must be freed from superfluities, so as to be made equal to heaven and become a receptacle for the philosophical fire.[^n48]
**CNT-DELLE-P007** 1682 pp. 43–44 · BLB-049, BLB-050
**German**
Drauff ich gebeten / was dieses sey mich zu berichten / hat er gesagt: Es sey ⊖ macrocosmi acquisitum per Sal microcosmi, der gedoppelte ☿ Bernhardi: das allerhöchste und fixeste / denn es 2. ☿ialische substantzen aus einer Wurtzel / nemlich ex Hyle Mundi, und ließ sich auch nicht zu wege bringen / als in seiner eigenen zum höchsten gereinigten substantz / da begehrt eins das ander / wie der Magnet das Eisen / oder der Mann das Weib / daß wäre der Philosophen ☉ / ☽ / ☿ / Corpus, Spiritus, Anima, ⊖, 🜍, ☿, quia ex terrâ microcosmi acquitur ☿, & per illum ☿ microcosmi, die doch beede aus einer Wurtzel / nemlich ex terrâ oder limo originem ducunt, das ist die Fontina Bernhardi / so er im Felde fand / und sich hierauff setzte / und zu pfützen anfing / kommt aus einer Wurtzel / nemlich Hyle, Spiritu Mundi, ist im Anfange / Mittel und Ende nicht mehr im Gesichte denn Eins / und seynd doch drey / nemlich Spiritus Microcosmi und Macrocosmi (die doch beyde aus einer Wurtzel) der qui ⊖ factus zum Saltz werden / & unus per alium acquisitus, hi tamen etiamsi uniti wider ihren Willen manent mortui, interveniente autem Spiritu æthereo, △e Philosophico (der sich im Donner Wetter öffentlich sehen läst) reviviscunt, und wird dieser durch die andern beyde / so doch ein Ding sind / gefangen / wie die Mauß in der Fallen / und sind diese 3. ein Ding / aber nicht ein Todes / denn der Geist der Welt ist kein todes Ding / denn ein lebendiges muß allezeit wircken / quia vivum semper operari oportet, Ergò erfreuet es sich im 4ten als im Saamen Auri eines jedweden Dinges / so es germinare (grünen und wachsen) machet.
**English**
I asked him to explain what this was. He said that it was the salt of the macrocosm obtained through the salt of the microcosm, Bernard’s doubled Mercury, the highest and most fixed: two mercurial substances from one root, namely the world’s hyle. It could only be brought about in its own substance purified to the highest degree. There one desires the other as the magnet desires iron, or man woman. This was the philosophers’ Sun, Moon, Mercury; body, spirit, soul; salt, sulphur, Mercury. For from the earth of the microcosm Mercury is obtained, and through it the Mercury of the microcosm: both derive from one root, namely earth or mud. This is Bernard’s little spring, which he found in the field, sat down beside, and began to clean out. It comes from one root, namely hyle, the Spirit of the World. At the beginning, middle, and end only one thing is visible, yet there are three: the spirits of the microcosm and macrocosm—both from one root—which become salt, one obtained through the other. Even when united against their will, however, these remain dead. But when the ethereal spirit, the philosophical fire, intervenes—it shows itself openly in thunderstorms—they revive. It is caught by the other two, which are nevertheless one thing, like a mouse in a trap. These three are one thing, but not a dead thing, for the Spirit of the World is no dead thing. A living thing must always act. Therefore it rejoices in the fourth, as in the golden seed of each thing, which it causes to sprout, become green, and grow.[^n49]
**CNT-DELLE-P008** 1682 pp. 44–45 · BLB-050, BLB-051
**German**
Mache dieses zum rothen Saltz /
Grab 🜍 ☉ vel ☽ 🜍 ein vor ein Schmaltz /
So hastu ein Pflaster /
Heilet die metallischen Laster /
Das ist der geschwind durch den [Sign: drei Punkte im dreilappigen Rund] geht /
In welchen ⊖ und △ bestehet
In welchen Quadrant und Triangel besteht
Bekommstu diesen Punct fixum / so hast du es gar /
Kommst aus Armuth und Gefahr.
**English**
Make this into the red salt;
Bury sulphur of Sun or sulphur of Moon to make a salve.
Then you have a plaster
That heals metallic defects;
It passes swiftly through the [three-dot sign],
In which salt and fire subsist,
In which square and triangle subsist.
Obtain this fixed point and you have it all:
You escape poverty and danger.[^n50]
**CNT-DELLE-P009** 1682 pp. 45–46 · BLB-051, BLB-052
**German**
In summa er weisete mir im Ludo Puerorum, Rosario, Raimundo, Arnoldo, Turba Philosophorum, Augurello und andern die Concordantzen und debitam materiam Philosophorum, und recommendirte mir obgedachtes Büchlein / sagte auch / daß nach Lehre desselben / wofern ich verstünde das putrificiren im tiefen Keller / daß nichts als das Philosophische Feuer / ohne welches nichts wäre / so würde GOtt wol seine Gnade verleihen. Dieweil ich aber froh war / und gedachte / diesen Mann / wie er mir zusagte zu bleiben / den andern Tag gewiß zu haben / so kamen auch andre / daß es auf ein Trunck hinausliefe / und ich leider! die Practicam nicht ex ore ipsius auffschriebe / auffn Morgen / da ich vermeinte / mein Gast schlieffe / und ich vor hatte / ihn zu tractiren / war er hinweg / hat 2. Mayländische Stück Goldes von 3 fl. (da er doch nicht einen verzehrt / hätte auch nichts genommen) dem Haußknecht geben / gesagt: Er wolte nach Wittenberg / da ich aufgestanden und es erfahren / dacht ich / mein Hertz würde mir vor Unmuth zerspringen / fuhr mit meinem Wäglein hernach / fand aber niemand auf der Strassen / glaube nicht daß er des Wegs willens zu ziehen gewesen / ist wol auf Eißleben seine Reise gewesen / denn er vom Eißlebischen Bergwerck / so in Italien beruffen seyn soll / zuvor geschwatzt / und die zu sehen begehrt. Er nannte sich Martinum de Delle, sagte / er wäre aus dem Hertzogthumb Meyland / und einem Städtlein hieß Vitri.
**English**
In short, he showed me the agreement of the philosophers and their proper matter in the Ludus puerorum, the Rosarium, Raymond, Arnold, the Turba philosophorum, Augurellus, and others. He recommended the little book already mentioned. He also said that if I followed its teaching and understood putrefaction in the deep cellar—which is nothing other than the philosophical fire, without which there would be nothing—God would surely grant his grace. I was delighted and thought I would certainly have this man with me the next day, since he had promised to stay. But others came, the occasion ended in drinking, and, alas, I did not write down the practice from his own mouth. In the morning, when I supposed my guest was asleep and intended to entertain him, he had gone. He had given the house servant two Milanese gold pieces of three florins, although he had not consumed one florin’s worth and I would have charged him nothing. He said he was going to Wittenberg. When I got up and learned this, I thought my heart would burst with vexation. I followed in my little wagon but found nobody on the road. I do not believe he had intended to travel that way. He probably went towards Eisleben, for he had previously spoken of the Eisleben mines, which are said to be renowned in Italy, and wanted to see them. He called himself Martin de Delle and said he came from the duchy of Milan, from a little town called Vitri.[^n51]
**CNT-DELLE-P010** 1682 p. 46 · BLB-052
**German**
Folgt nun das Werck / als gut ich von ihm verstanden / treulich.
**English**
The work now follows, faithfully, as well as I understood it from him.
**CNT-DELLE-P011** 1682 pp. 46–47 · BLB-052, BLB-053
**German**
Er sagte: Ich solte die materiam, jedem bekandt (wäre wol besser 7. mal depurirt / doch wäre auch nichts dran gelegen) nehmen / so Arme und Reiche / Junge und Alte haben / und das Spiel der Kinder thun / nemlich nach den ersten Gewitter / eine Grube unter offnen Himmel ins Erdreich / so ertrocknet / und an einem hange / doch wäre es besser in einem Thon (sie wäre nicht vergebens ein rother und weißer geschaffen) machen / und mit Urin die Seiten wol begiessen / und solches thun wann schön hell Wetter wäre / auf die Grube Stroh und Laub / daß nichts unreines hinein falle / zudecken / jedoch nicht zu dichte / damit die Sonne des Tages / so wol der Mond des Nachts hinein scheinen / und die Lufft deßgleichen hinein gehen könne; Des Morgens solle man mit der Sonnen Auffgang hinzu gehen / so würde man etwas weisses ausgesprützet finden / solches solte man fein abradiren und alsofort continuiren / biß man dieses gnug hätte.
**English**
He said that I should take the matter known to everyone, which poor and rich, young and old possess. It would be better purified seven times, though this was not essential. I was to perform the children’s play: after the first thunderstorms, make a pit under the open sky in dried earth on a slope—clay would be better, for red and white clay were not created in vain. I should wet its sides well with urine, doing this in fine, clear weather. I should cover the pit with straw and leaves so that nothing impure fell into it, but not so closely that the sun could not shine into it by day, the moon by night, and the air likewise enter. In the morning, at sunrise, I should go to it. I would find something white sprouted out, which I should carefully scrape off, and continue doing so until I had enough.
**CNT-DELLE-P012** 1682 pp. 47–48 · BLB-053, BLB-054
**German**
Nachmals solte man haben Aquam Cœli, so im Donnerwetter colligiret oder gesam̃let (Ros Cœli Mense Majo collectus) und solches in der Sonnen putrificiren lassen / biß es lebendige Würmlein bekäme / denn solte man es destilliren / so klar / als ein Augenzähr / in diesen solte man die collectam materiam auslaugen / und davon das subjectum scheiden und zuwege bringen / das heist denn / aus Erden Aschen / Lauge / ▽ machen / dieses wäre nun der ludus puerorum (Kinderspiel). Nun kommt das opus mulierum (Weiber Arbeit) quale welche ist coquere (kochen) nun müsse diese materia resolvirt, coagulirt, und so lange depurirt werden / biß ein fix Crystallinisch Saltz draus würde / so flüssig als ein Wachs gantz Crystallinisch durchscheinend / dieses müsse nun ins Erdreich begraben werden / unter dem freyen Himmel / doch zugedeckt / dieses würde sich von sich selber in Aquam nubis (ein Wolcken-Wasser) solviren / die Krafft des Untern und Obern an sich nehmen / und den Spiritum procreationis, (der Erschaffung) der im Erdreich solida corpora in die gröste Felsen / und ad Centrum usque penetrirt (weiter denn 2. Armbrust-Schüsse) nach sich und in sich nehmen; Spiritum illorum Vegetabilem sagt Bernhardus / qui à solo Deo vivo venit, & in terrâ habitat substantia virtutis bonum vel malum semen assumens, & juxta naturam illius multiplicans, qui assimilatur ☿io, sicuti in firmamento omnibus stellis, in Centro terræ omnibus Metallis. Sic ille omnibus rebus totius Mundi associatur, qui animalis, vegetabilis & mineralis, tam intra quam extra Corpus esse, erit atque manebit, est, erit atque fuit, vel desiit esse per orbem virtus rerum.
**English**
Afterwards one should have heavenly water, collected or gathered in a thunderstorm—“dew of heaven collected in the month of May.” This should be left to putrefy in the sun until living little worms appeared in it, and then distilled as clear as a tear. In this one should leach the collected matter, separate out its subject, and obtain it. This is called making ashes, lye, and water from earth; that is the children’s play. Now comes the women’s work, which is cooking. This matter must be dissolved, coagulated, and purified until it becomes a fixed crystalline salt, as fusible as wax and entirely crystalline and transparent. It must then be buried in the earth under the open sky, though covered over. It will dissolve of itself into cloud-water, taking to itself the power of the lower and upper and drawing into itself the spirit of procreation or creation, which penetrates solid bodies in the earth, into the greatest rocks and right to the centre—further than two crossbow shots. Bernard calls it their vegetative spirit, “which comes from the living God alone and dwells in the earth as a substance of power, taking up good or bad seed and multiplying it according to its nature. It is likened to Mercury, as to all stars in the firmament and all metals at the centre of the earth. Thus it is associated with all things in the whole world, as animal, vegetable, and mineral, both within and outside the body: it will be and remain, is, will be and was, or has ceased to be, the power of things throughout the world.”[^n52]
**CNT-DELLE-P013** 1682 p. 48 · BLB-054
**German**
Wenn dieses also geschehen ist / ist dein Acker (Arbeit) bereitet / in welchen du nun ☉ (Gold) und ☽ (Silber) säest / wirstu in einem Gefäß / in einem Ofen Ecclipsin ☉ vel ☽ sehen angehen / so hastu solutionem Philosophicam, die lieblich-wachsende Krafft / grüen und Pfauen-Schwantz / nochmals die gewünschte Weisse / und endlich die vollkommene Röthe / alles von ihm selber / mit einem geringen Lampen-Feuer: Das Oel aus Eyer-Oel / und der Tocht aus Federweiß gemacht / und darff weder gradus Ofen / oder dergleichen.
**English**
When this has happened, your field—that is, your work—is prepared. Sow Sun (gold) and Moon (silver) in it, and in one vessel, in one furnace, you will see an eclipse of Sun or Moon begin. Then you have the philosophical solution, the pleasantly growing power, green and the peacock’s tail; afterwards the desired whiteness and finally the perfect redness, all of itself, with a small lamp-fire. The oil is egg-oil and the wick made from feather-white; no graduated furnace or the like is needed.[^n53]
**CNT-DELLE-P014** 1682 p. 48 · BLB-054
**German**
Sufficit de Universali oder Telesmo.
**English**
Enough concerning the Universal, or Telesm.[^n54]
### Philosophical Discourse
*Discursus Philosophicus. J. J. F.*
German witness: 1682, printed pp. 49–67, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Source facsimile: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/pageview/4591599
Discourse signed J. J. F.
**CNT-JJF-H001** 1682 p. 49 · BLB-055
**German**
Discursus Philosophicus. J. J. F.
**English**
Philosophical Discourse. J. J. F.
**CNT-JJF-P001** 1682 pp. 49–50 · BLB-055, BLB-056
**German**
Negotium Philosophiæ Hermeticæ dividitur in 2. partes, in das superius und in das Inferius, Superius ist △ und 🜁, im △ ist ☿ Cabalisticus, aber der ☿ hat △em producirt, ist Radix elementorum & omnium Creaturarum; primum Mobile, Arcanum summum in totâ Naturâ; dadurch Gott alle Creaturen erschaffen / erhält / auch damit Himmel und Erden / sammt allen Creaturen / erneuren / glorificiren und clarificiren wird. Seelig ist der zu schätzen / der ein Possessor hujus divini Arcani ist / diesem folget Spiritus Mundi Salis Naturæ, entweder wenn die Sonne am hitzigsten ist / kan man ein Blutrothes Saltz colligiren / oder aber auch hingegen ein Eißkalt △ sammlen / kälter als ein Eiß im Winter. Die Academici wundern sich hierüber / wissen aber so viel hiervon / als Nicodemus von der Wiedergeburt. Vom Winde hat Nebelius etwas wenig nur obiter hiervon am Tag gegeben. Wind / Lufft / Hagel / Schnee / Regen ist nichts anders als Saltz Naturæ, wie auch GOtt Lob alles reipsa demonstriren kan; Das Inferius Hermetis ist der gantzen Welt vor Augen.
**English**
The business of Hermetic philosophy is divided into two parts: the upper and the lower. The upper is fire and air. In the fire is the Cabalistic Mercury; but Mercury produced the fire and is the root of the elements and of all creatures, the first mover, the highest secret in all nature. Through it God created and preserves all creatures, and through it he will renew, glorify, and clarify heaven and earth together with all creatures. Blessed is the person who possesses this divine secret. This is followed by the Spirit of the World of the Salt of Nature. When the sun is hottest, one can gather a blood-red salt; conversely, one can also collect an ice-cold fire, colder than ice in winter. The academics marvel at this, yet know as much of it as Nicodemus knew of rebirth. In his treatment of wind, Nebelius has published a little about it, only in passing. Wind, air, hail, snow, and rain are nothing other than the Salt of Nature; praise God, I can demonstrate all this in actual fact. Hermes’ lower is before the eyes of the whole world.[^n55]
**CNT-JJF-P002** 1682 p. 50 · BLB-056
**German**
Homo est Mundus intermedius, hat das Superius & Inferius in ihm / absque Influentiâ divinâ ist ihm unmöglich das Superius zu ergründen / daher sehen wir / daß gar wenig die Superiora, videlicet ☿ Cabalisticum; it. Saltz Naturæ ex 🜁e; Nive ▽ erklären. Was ist aber das Inferius? Antwort: Erden / Koth / und Staub / in diesem liegt auch das Saltz Naturæ / in selbigen liegt der Spiritus Mundi / so die Anatomia offenbahret: Der Bauer und alle Menschen haben ihre Nahrung von der Erden / zur Erden werden sie wieder / nun der ☿ Cabalisticus / das Göttliche △ / Spiraculum vitæ rerum creatar: ist in allen creatis zu finden; in einigen mehr und weniger als im andern. Also auch 3. Principia, Corpus, Spiritus, Anima, aber regeneriret / clarificirt werden sie am jüngsten Tage wieder erscheinen / das Superfluum videlicet Elementum ▽ wird separirt / diesen gehen die wahren Philosophi nach / und nehmen Massam Limi vel terræ depuratæ, sive sit vegetabilis, sive mineralis, vel metallica terra, und machen aus einen 2. Spiritum & Saltz aus 2. eines / nemlich / Saltz imprægnatum suo Spiritu. Sie machen aus 2. eins / neml. mit dem Spiritu solviren sie das Saltz / das ist alsdenn das Saltz Universale Solvens.
**English**
The human being is an intermediate world and contains the upper and the lower. Without divine influence it is impossible to fathom the upper. We therefore see very few explain the upper things: namely Cabalistic Mercury, and the Salt of Nature from air, snow, and water. But what is the lower? Answer: earth, dirt, and dust. The Salt of Nature lies in these too, and within it the Spirit of the World, which anatomy reveals. The peasant and all human beings receive their food from the earth and return to earth. Cabalistic Mercury, the divine fire, the breath of life of created things, is found in all creatures, in some more and in others less. So too are the three principles—body, spirit, soul—but at the Last Day they will reappear regenerated and clarified. The superfluity, namely the element water, will be separated. The true philosophers follow this process. They take a mass of mud or purified earth, whether vegetable, mineral, or metallic earth, and make two from one: spirit and salt. From two they make one, namely salt impregnated with its own spirit. They make one from two by dissolving the salt with the spirit; it is then the universal dissolving salt.[^n56]
**CNT-JJF-P003** 1682 pp. 50–51 · BLB-056, BLB-057
**German**
Ich habe jetzund 10. Pfund Materiæ Catholicæ terræ rubicundæ in 2. Theil elaborirt / in Saltz & Spiritum; das Saltz 1½. ℔ / den Spiritum ℔ jv, restiren noch ℔ jv. terræ; die hab ich mit ihren Spiritu in putrefaction gesetzt; & spero sic totam substantiam terrenam in Naturam Salis zu bringen. In dieser Anatomia ist ein Wunder zu sehen / daß eine so schlechte verachte Materia totalis in Spiritum und Saltz / und letzlich in einen Liquorem kan gebracht werden. Meine Gedancken von diesem Handel sind 3. Worte / Alchimia vera & vapor 🜃æ coagulatus; oder 2. Wort / Saltz fusile; es seynd viel / die in materia hâc Catholica laboriren mit ungleichen effectibus, es kommt alles aus der Erden zu seiner Zeit / alle Classes dienen dem Physico, wol dem / der diese alle inwendig und auswendig kennet / die unterste und oberste Wurtzel sampt sich selbsten / ein jeglich Vegetabile hat sein 🜍 und △em, seinem Spiritum und Saltz; das Elementum ▽æ wird weggeworffen; solches zu demonstriren / bedarff keiner Unkosten / keines destilirens / wenn nur der Philosophus den Handel weiß anzustellen; DEUS & Natura omnia præstant: daraus erscheinet aller Medicorum, Galenicorum Elend / von Hertzen wünsche ich / daß dieses Stück veris Amatoribus möchte offenbahr werden; GOttes Ehr zu preisen und den armen Krancken zu helffen.
**English**
I have now worked ten pounds of the universal matter, a reddish earth, into two parts: salt and spirit. The salt is one and a half pounds, the spirit four pounds, and four pounds of earth remain. I have put this earth into putrefaction with its own spirit, and hope thus to bring the whole earthly substance into the nature of salt. In this anatomy one sees a wonder: a matter so plain and despised can be brought entirely into spirit and salt, and finally into a liquor. My thoughts on this business are three words: “true alchemy and coagulated vapour of earth”; or two words: “fusible salt.” Many work upon this universal matter with differing effects. Everything comes out of the earth in its own time. All classes serve the natural philosopher. Happy the person who knows them all inwardly and outwardly, the lowest and highest root, together with himself. Each vegetable has its sulphur and fire, its spirit and salt; the element water is thrown away. Demonstrating this requires no expense or distillation, provided the philosopher knows how to set about it. God and nature accomplish everything. From this the misery of all Galenic physicians is apparent. I wish from my heart that this matter might be revealed to true lovers of the art, to praise God’s honour and help the poor sick.[^n57]
**CNT-JJF-P004** 1682 pp. 51–53 · BLB-057, BLB-058, BLB-059
**German**
Hierin ist Signatura naturalis omnium Vegetabilium, Theophrastus gedencket solches mit keinem Wort; und wie man in copia ex quo libet Vegetabili sol ein Saltz machen / welches hat des Vegetabilis Farbe / Geschmack und Geruch / das hat mir die einfältige Natur zu wissen gethan / und vor etlichen wenigen Tagen gelernet. Es werden hinc inde die Cadavera mit grossen Unkosten / wiewol mit schlechten Nutzen anatomirt / besser wäre es / man anatomirte Fleisch und Blut / Bein / Urin / ingeniosè absque violentiâ & corruptione Naturæ. Ich kan anjetzo ex Sanguine Cervi eine edle Medicin præpariren / so in puncto dolores podagricos stillet. ex Spiritu Microcosmico & sanguine fit Panacea universalis. Alle Partes corporis humani sind dienstlich zur Medicin, quia omnia secum fert, auxilio alterius non indiget, Gleichwie man nun ex Vegetabilibus, ohne Hülffe eines materialischen △ers / aus und durch Hülffe des blossen Wassers aus jedem Speciatim kan bekommen odoriferum liquorem, so in sich hat den Liquorem, Calorem & odorem innatum; also müssen auch die Corpora Sicca Metallica & Mineralia beneficio △is materialis elementaris in primam substantiam reducirt werden / daß sie lieblich seyn / wie oben von den Vegetabilibus gemeldt / wolriechend / wolschmeckend; das ist der gantze Handel; daß wer diese harte Nuß kan aufbeissen / der hat gute Zähne und Verstand. Mit wenigen viel zu melden. hi Liquor / lieblich süß und wolschmeckend / extrahirt, corrigirt ♁ geht ihm gleich / dieses halte ich sey die schlechte einfältige Art ex tribus Regnis in Praxi & Theoriâ zu reden.
**English**
In this lies the natural signature of all vegetables. Theophrastus says nothing of it. Plain nature has made known to me, and taught me only a few days ago, how to make an abundance of salt from any vegetable, possessing that vegetable’s colour, taste, and smell. Here and there cadavers are dissected at great expense and with little benefit. It would be better to analyse flesh and blood, bone and urine ingeniously, without violence to or corruption of nature. I can now prepare a noble medicine from deer’s blood which immediately stills the pains of gout. From the microcosmic spirit and blood a universal panacea is made. All parts of the human body serve for medicine, because it carries everything with itself and needs no help from another. Just as one can obtain from each vegetable separately a fragrant liquor containing its innate liquor, heat, and smell, without material fire and through the help of plain water alone, so dry metallic and mineral bodies must be reduced to their first substance by the benefit of material elemental fire, so that they become pleasant, fragrant, and well-tasting, as was said above of vegetables. This is the whole business. Whoever can crack this hard nut has good teeth and understanding. To say much in few words: this pleasant, sweet, well-tasting liquor extracts and corrects antimony and becomes its equal. This I take to be the plain, simple way of speaking of the three kingdoms in practice and theory.[^n58]
**CNT-JJF-P005** 1682 pp. 53–54 · BLB-059, BLB-060
**German**
Zum Beschluß muß ich noch etwas melden von der Congelation lapidis Universalis & Metallici; Vom Universal △ der Philosophen wird man gar wenig finden in den Schrifften derselben; das Universal-Feuer ist natürlich / nicht materialisch vom Holtz / Kohlen / 🜍. Oel / Kalck. Fimo &c. Die Materia Universalis, sie sey Cabalistica oder Astralisch vom Superiori / oder Inferiori / ist schlecht / einfältig / ubique reperibilis, tam à paupere, quam à divite; wenige wenden ihre Gedancken ad simplicitates naturæ, hinc omnis error & damnum emanat: GOtt hat alles in die Ordnung der Natur gelegt / darnach muß sich der Mensch richten; so du wider die Natur handelst / entspringt draus alles Ubel. e. g. Man künstelt viel in Spiritu Vini und mit Spiritu Vini / aber wenig wird ausgericht / es ist alles Sophistisch / oder wenig Patienten können ihn geniessen / plus nocet, quam prodest, contra, so man es via simplicissima per se, absque destillatione violenta, die rechte Ess. Vini wil extrahiren / so ist sie so lieblich süß / wolschmeckend / daß einer ohne Schaden ein ziemlich Gläßlein / summo appetitu kan geniessen / davon Leib und Seel erfreuet wird; seine Bereitung ist ohne Kosten / doch ist an der Zeit / auch Vortheil / wegen der Unkosten gelegen; und ist doch keine Unkosten zu rechnen; dieser Spiritus Vini ist dem ☿ Cabalistico in allen Creaturen am nechsten verwand; i. e. ad rem, und das △ Universale Philosophorum, und erkochet oder zeitiget alle Creaturen auff Erden:
**English**
In conclusion I must say something about the congelation of the universal and metallic Stone. Very little will be found in the philosophers’ writings about their universal fire. This universal fire is natural, not a material fire from wood, coals, sulphur, oil, lime, dung, and the like. Whether Cabalistic or astral, from the upper or the lower, the universal matter is plain and simple, found everywhere by poor and rich alike. Few turn their thoughts to nature’s simplicity; from this arise all error and loss. God has placed everything within nature’s order, to which the human being must conform. If you act against nature, all evil springs from it. For example, much artifice is practised upon and with spirit of wine, but little is accomplished. It is all sophistical, or few patients can take it: it harms more than it helps. Conversely, if the true essence of wine is extracted by the simplest way, of itself, without violent distillation, it is so pleasantly sweet and well-tasting that a person can enjoy a fair-sized glass with great appetite and without harm, gladdening body and soul. Its preparation costs nothing, though time and an advantageous method affect the expense; still, no expense need be reckoned. Among all creatures this spirit of wine is most closely related to Cabalistic Mercury—that is, to the matter in question—and [is] the philosophers’ universal fire, cooking or ripening all creatures on earth.[^n59]
**CNT-JJF-P006** 1682 pp. 54–55 · BLB-060, BLB-061
**German**
Responde, GOtt hat Sommer / Winter geordnet / Kälte und Wärme / Sonne und Mond; Gleichwie nun die lieben Früchte durch die Kälte in der Erden des Winters über putrificiren oder sich auffschliessen / daß sie hernach successive sich multipliciren können / und durch die Abwechselung der Zeit / Monden / Tag und Nacht / endlich vollkommlich selig werden / gleicher Gestalt haben die Mineralia und Metalla in der Erden ihre von GOtt gesetzte Mittel / △ / 🜁 / ▽ / 🜃 / zu blühen / und zu wachsen / es hat alles seine Zeit / wenn es auff Erden Sommer ist / so ists in der Erden Winter / wie die Bergleute wissen; wenn nun ein Artiste einen liquorem cujuscunque Regni coaguliren wil / muß er die Zeit in acht nehmen / nemblich wenn die Sonne im ♋ geht / oder wenn es ist Liquor Metallicus; wenn die ☉ im Steinbock geht; denn eo tempore ist verhanden Tempus & ordo putrefactionis magnæ Creaturæ. Wenn die Vegetabilia einzusetzen / hat auch seine Zeit. Er setzt sie also tieff in die Erden 2. oder 3. Manns tieff mit Erden wieder bedeckt / lästs stehen usque ad perfectionem. In diesem Natur-Feuer kan er congeliren alle liquores vegetabilibus perfectæ substantiæ animalis, mineralis & metallicæ; Der artiste thut hierbey nichts; GOtt und die Natur thuts. In diesem Wasser hab ich gesehen simplicem ▽am coagulatam in formâ pulveris rubicundissimi, Spiritu Vini, 🝆 olivarum, therebinthinæ, Mayenthau / schlecht ist dieser Handel anzusehen / aber groß das Geheimniß;
**English**
Answer: God has ordained summer and winter, cold and warmth, Sun and Moon. Just as the precious fruits putrefy or open themselves in the earth through the cold of winter, so that they can afterwards multiply successively and finally become perfectly blessed through the alternation of time, months, day, and night, so minerals and metals in the earth have their God-appointed means—fire, air, water, earth—of blossoming and growing. Everything has its time. When it is summer upon the earth, it is winter within it, as miners know. If an artist wishes to coagulate a liquor of any kingdom, he must attend to the time: when the Sun passes through Cancer, or, if it is a metallic liquor, when the Sun passes through Capricorn. At that time the season and order of putrefaction of the great creature are present. Vegetables too have their time for being put in. He places them deep in the earth, two or three men’s heights down, covers them again with earth, and leaves them until perfection. In this natural fire he can congeal all liquors of vegetables and of perfect animal, mineral, and metallic substance. The artist does nothing here: God and nature do it. In this water I have seen plain water coagulated into the form of a very red powder; spirit of wine, olive-oil, turpentine-oil, and May dew. The business appears plain, but the secret is great.[^n60]
**CNT-JJF-P007** 1682 pp. 55–56 · BLB-061, BLB-062
**German**
Es sind auch etliche / welche durch Cristallen-Spiegel; oder auch per reflectionem △ ☉is procediren / und ich gewisse Exempla / was damit ausgericht ist worden / aber es geschicht mit langer Zeit / und ist Gefahr bey Instrumenten / welche leicht vom Winde beschädigt werden. Was anlangt das gemeine materialische Feuer / darff man auch nicht viel Kunst; ich wil in einer Stuben oder Gemach ein Feuer haben / dem Philosophischen nicht ungleich / ohne Rauch / und 100. Gläser oder mehr uno calore continuo regieren / secundum gradus debitos, wären also 2. Stück oder requisita cum inferiori opere universalis dargethan / nemlich Materia & △ / mangelt noch eins / Instrumentum Physicum; Die Chymici brauchen Gläser / damit können sie ihre labores perficiren / aber gleichwol ist es Heterogeneum; Weil die Materia und Feuer schlecht / und von der Natur selbsten formirt / so muß auch das Instrumentum von der Natur nicht durch Kunst gemacht seyn / biß auf ein Stücke; bedencke doch / bedencke doch selbsten; Worin wachsen die Mineralia, Metall / und Edelgestein? Antwort: im Letten und Steinen; diß Mittel muß der Philosophus auch practiciren / ein Instrument aus Steinen lassen aushölern / wie ein Apotheker-Büchse / dieselbe also umb die juncturen mit ▽. Leim wol lutiren / und mit Eisen ✠ weise wol vermachen / er muß aber zu seiner Materia auch observiren Proportionem Geometricam, sonst ist aller Labor vergebens / also hab ich nun hiermit mein Schul-Recht angezeigt / denen nemlich / welche Filii Naturalis Hermeticæ Philosophiæ sind.
**English**
Some also proceed by crystal mirrors or by reflection of the Sun’s fire, and I know definite examples of what has been accomplished with them. But it takes a long time, and there is danger to the instruments, which the wind can easily damage. As for ordinary material fire, little art is needed either. I can have in a room or chamber a smokeless fire not unlike the philosophical fire, and govern a hundred glasses or more with one continuous heat, according to the proper degrees. Thus two things or requirements for the lower universal work have been shown: matter and fire. One remains: the natural instrument. Chymists use glasses and can perfect their labours with them, yet glass is heterogeneous. Since the matter and fire are plain and formed by nature herself, the instrument too must be made by nature rather than art, except for one point. Consider for yourself: where do minerals, metals, and precious stones grow? Answer: in clay and stones. The philosopher must practise this method too: have an instrument hollowed out of stone like an apothecary’s jar, lute its joints well with water and clay, and secure it well with iron crosswise. He must also observe the geometrical proportion to his matter; otherwise all labour is vain. I have now displayed my school-right to those who are sons of natural Hermetic philosophy.[^n61]
**CNT-JJF-P008** 1682 p. 56 · BLB-062
**German**
Ejusdem Censura Hermetica im Majo 1631. ad me.
**English**
A Hermetic judgement by the same, addressed to me in May 1631.[^n62]
**CNT-JJF-P009** 1682 pp. 56–57 · BLB-062, BLB-063
**German**
In allen Creatis haben wir das Superius & Inferius, das Superius ist Spiritus Mundi in formâ liquidâ & siccâ. Sicca forma est ⊖ Naturæ vel Balsamus Naturæ; Liquidà in formâ ▽æ; Hæc ▽a si in exaltatione Leonis extrahirt in plenilunio, est frigidissima, ex quâ congelat per se ☿ius Cabalisticus seipsum solvens, coagulans & figens Absque △e materiali, sine ullis sumtibus & laboribus beneficio △is Physici. Hic △is omnia corpora in primam materiam convertit generatur quidem in tempore æstivo in summo calore alius ☿ius Cabalisticus solaris, corporalis, (qui per fulmina (& hoc fulmen est ☿ius) arbores & turres destruens. In ▽ Pluviali, majali, tonitruali itidem latet sic ☿ vel ⊖. sed secundum tempore magis vel minus, quoad quantitatem paucis multa complector; est in 🜁e occultus vitæ cibus, quæ nos de nocte rorem, de die ▽am rarefactam vocamus, cujus Spiritus invisibilis congelatus melior est universâ terrâ; Paucis de Superiori, de inferiori magis pauca.
**English**
In all created things we have the upper and lower. The upper is the Spirit of the World in liquid and dry form. Its dry form is the Salt of Nature, or Balsam of Nature; its liquid form is water. If this water is extracted at the exaltation of Leo, at the full moon, it is very cold. From it Cabalistic Mercury congeals of itself, dissolving, coagulating, and fixing itself without material fire, without any expense or labour, through the benefit of natural fire. This fire converts all bodies into first matter. In summer, in the greatest heat, another Cabalistic Mercury is generated: solar and corporeal, destroying trees and towers through lightning—and this lightning is Mercury. Mercury or salt likewise lies hidden in rain-water, May water, and thunderstorm water, more or less in quantity according to the season. I encompass much in few words: there is a hidden food of life in the air, which by night we call dew and by day rarefied water. Its invisible spirit, when congealed, is better than the whole earth. These few words concern the upper; about the lower, fewer still.[^n63]
**CNT-JJF-P010** 1682 pp. 57–58 · BLB-063, BLB-064
**German**
Verum est Subjectum Catholicum omnes res generales generans, conservans, suscitans & gerens: ab hâc unicâ re omnia creata sunt & creantur. Nullus Philosophorum in publico nomen prodidit. Audi Amice, est Sal quoddam vel spuma Martis. Si nosti ex ⊖e isto, ⊖em fusilem rubicundum elaborare absque destillatione parvo labore, & cum illo solem vel omne Metallum & Mineram destruere, & in substantiam Salis redigere, Philosophiæ es addictus, & in minus quære & majores cole. Si ex Archæo Salem Mineralem vel Metallicum eodem modo absolveris, felicior es; In omni Regno quære Sal fusile, clarificatum, translucidum & tamen fixum, & sic teipsum & alios curabis; si hoc non intelligis, teipsum & alios perdes.
**English**
The true universal subject generates, preserves, awakens, and sustains all general things: from this one thing everything has been and is created. None of the philosophers has disclosed its name publicly. Listen, friend: it is a certain salt, or foam of Mars. If you know how, with little labour and without distillation, to prepare from this salt a reddish fusible salt, and with it destroy gold or any metal and ore and reduce it to the substance of salt, you are devoted to philosophy. Seek in lesser things and honour the greater. If you perfect a mineral or metallic salt from the Archaeus in the same way, you are more fortunate. In every kingdom seek a fusible, clarified, translucent, yet fixed salt; thus you will cure yourself and others. If you do not understand this, you will destroy yourself and others.[^n64]
**CNT-JJF-P011** 1682 p. 58 · BLB-064
**German**
Excerpta ex Anonymi Libro, genandt: Amor Proximi geflossen aus dem Oel göttlicher Barmhertzigkeit.
**English**
Extracts from an anonymous book called Love of One’s Neighbour, Flowing from the Oil of Divine Mercy.[^n65]
**CNT-JJF-P012** 1682 p. 58 · BLB-064
**German**
Wer das Astralische Saltz hat / so ists eine Arbeit 3. Tage / und wird im Schmeltz-Tiegel verrichtet vom Anfang / biß zum Ende / wiewol noch viel Knothen von der Arbeit dieser 3. Tage sind.
**English**
For one who has the astral salt, it is a work of three days, carried out in the crucible from beginning to end, although there are still many knots in the work of these three days.
**CNT-JJF-P013** 1682 p. 58 · BLB-064
**German**
Siehe / ob das ▽ nicht △ in sich hat / denn das △ in ▽ gewandelt / ist Blut und Geist / ▽ und Blut sind eins / und alle neugebohrne Erde besteht aus △rigen ▽ das Wasser ist die prima materia aller Dinge / es ist der Mutterleib / so alles neu gebühret / es ist nicht ohne Geist und Blut / darumb bringts auch alles alte in die neu geburth / und also werden aller himmlischen Dinge Fürbilder auch in der Natur und Kunst durchs Blut gereinigt.
**English**
See whether water does not contain fire within itself. For fire transformed into water is blood and spirit; water and blood are one, and all reborn earth consists of fiery water. Water is the first matter of all things, the womb which gives new birth to everything. It is not without spirit and blood; therefore it also brings everything old into rebirth. Thus the images of all heavenly things are also purified through blood in nature and art.
**CNT-JJF-P014** 1682 pp. 58–59 · BLB-064, BLB-065
**German**
Der ☿ius Sophicus ist eine neugebohrne materia prima spermatica, darumb gebiehrt er auch alles neu womit er in einer Conjunction gehet / und so nur eins ein Metall in ihm zerfliest / ists unmöglich ihn davon zu scheiden; ja ist unmöglich dasselbe Metall wieder in formam Metallicam zu bringen / weil in der materiâ primâ spermaticâ, allein aller Dinge generation, multiplication, auch neue Geburth ist / so müssen die Metall erstlich in materiam spermaticam gebracht werden / daß also eine Radicalis Mixtio oder Unio geschehen könte.
**English**
Sophic Mercury is a reborn, seminal first matter; therefore it gives new birth to everything with which it enters conjunction. Once a metal dissolves in it, it is impossible to separate Mercury from it; indeed, it is impossible to bring that metal back into metallic form. Since the generation, multiplication, and rebirth of all things lie in seminal first matter alone, metals must first be brought into seminal matter so that a radical mixture or union can occur.[^n66]
**CNT-JJF-P015** 1682 p. 59 · BLB-065
**German**
Alle vollkommne Medicin liegt warhafftig in der neuen Geburth / daß einige Curen geschehen durch rohe Dinge / ist darumb / daß das Centrum in vielen Dingen so hart nicht verschlossen / sondern der Archæus im Menschen / wenn er noch starck / leicht das gute vom Bösen scheiden kan / auch einige Præparationes dem operi sophico gar nah verwandt / so werden gute Dinge / particulariter und specificè (aber nicht universaliter) ausgericht.
**English**
All perfect medicine truly lies in rebirth. Some cures occur through crude things because the centre is not so tightly closed in many things, and the Archaeus in the human being, while still strong, can easily separate the good from the bad. Some preparations are also closely related to the sophic work; thus good things are accomplished particularly and specifically, though not universally.
**CNT-JJF-P016** 1682 pp. 59–60 · BLB-065, BLB-066
**German**
Man muß beym Centro alles geschlossen bleiben / denn die materia prima omnium rerum ist nur eine / die hat sich in Schreck in 4. Qualitates getheilet / als in 2. geistlichen und leiblichen Elementen. Die leiblichen sind der geistlichen Wohnhauß / und die geistlichen der leiblichen Leben und Bewegen und Leben; Das △ ist die Seele der 🜁 / und die Lufft ist des ▽ Geist. Die 🜁 gibt allen Dingen die Lieblichkeit / und ein coagulirtes Wasser / und das Wasser eine aufgelöste flüssige Erde / sonder Lufft ist kein Bewegen noch Leben / weder im ▽ noch 🜃 / weil die 🜁 allein das Bewegen aller Dinge ist / die 🜁 aber an sich selbst / als ein dünn gemacht rarificirts ▽ und das ▽ ein compactirte Lufft.
**English**
At the centre everything must remain closed, for there is only one first matter of all things. In a shock it divided itself into four qualities, into two spiritual and corporeal elements. The corporeal are the dwelling-house of the spiritual; the spiritual are the life and movement and life of the corporeal. Fire is the soul of air, and air is the spirit of water. Air gives all things their pleasantness and is coagulated water; water is dissolved, fluid earth. Without air there is neither movement nor life, whether in water or earth, because air alone is the movement of all things. Air itself is water made thin and rarefied, while water is compacted air.[^n67]
**CNT-JJF-P017** 1682 p. 60 · BLB-066
**German**
Alle Elementen descendendo durchs Luffts Kälte leiblich / also werden sie adscendendo [Zeichen fehlt] im Himmel aber descendendo in 🜃 verwandelt / wenn nun aus der 🜃 das △ durch Kunst geschieden wird / so hat man einen Ritter-Rock in der Chymischen Feldschlacht erhalten.
**English**
In descending, all elements become corporeal through the cold of the air. Thus in ascending they become [sign absent] in heaven, but in descending they are transformed into earth. When fire is separated from earth by art, one has won a knight’s coat in the chymical battle.[^n68]
**CNT-JJF-P018** 1682 p. 60 · BLB-066
**German**
Wie alle Morbi durchs Licht der Natur / als einen compendio totius Mundi geholffen können werden / also können sie auch per curam fidelium durchn Glauben / wie die Aposteln gethan / vollkommlich restituiret werden.
**English**
Just as all diseases can be remedied through the light of nature, as a compendium of the whole world, so complete restoration can also be effected through the cure of the faithful by faith, as the apostles did.
**CNT-JJF-P019** 1682 pp. 60–61 · BLB-066, BLB-067
**German**
Es ist eine Warheit in Zeit und Ewigkeit / und diese ist GOtt selbst; diese Warheit in ihre 3. Zeugen recht Recht erkennen / ist die rechte einige Weißheit / und dieser einiger Wahrheit Abbild microcosmice, und ihren Character macrocosmice, magicè, Cabalisticè und Philosophicè, ausarbeiten ist die einige rechte Kunst / umb welcher Willen alle Menschen geschaffen sind. Also wird der Mensch ein rechter Theologus, in welchen die Magia ein H. Licht oder Geist ist (2) Astronomus, darin die Cabala, als ein H. △ und Blut ist (3) als ein wahrer Medicus, als in welchen die Philosophia als ein H. Saltz / Oel oder ▽ ist. Also sind 3 Eins und Eins 3 / die von der Warheit zeigen in ihrer Harmonie.
**English**
There is one truth in time and eternity, and this is God himself. To know this truth rightly in its three witnesses is the one true wisdom. To work out the image of this one truth microcosmically, and its character macrocosmically, magically, Cabalistically, and philosophically, is the one true art for whose sake all human beings were created. Thus the human being becomes a true theologian, in whom magic is a holy light or spirit; secondly, an astronomer, in whom Cabala is a holy fire and blood; thirdly, a true physician, in whom philosophy is a holy salt, oil, or water. Thus three are one and one is three, bearing witness to truth in their harmony.[^n69]
**CNT-JJF-P020** 1682 p. 61 · BLB-067
**German**
Sebastian Sieben-Freund / Von Schleüditzsch zwischen Hall und Leipzig; 36. Jahr ausgewesen.
**English**
Sebastian Siebenfreund, from Schleüditzsch between Halle and Leipzig; away for thirty-six years.[^n70]
**CNT-JJF-P021** 1682 p. 61 · BLB-067
**German**
Tuchscheerers Sohn zu Verona im Kloster gelernt / Eibingen 3. Meilen von im Kloster / bey den Canonicis regularibus 3. viertel Jahr / allda in der Stille laborirte / mir nichts sagte / als was ich wissen solte / nur daß ich bißweilen mit zum Feuer sehen muste / denn ich wuste damals nicht / was universal / particular oder Lapis Philosophorum. Unterdessen reisete ich nach dem Groß-Cantzler von Pohlen / so wassersüchtig gefährlich / unterdessen informirt er mich das Werck zu treiben / gab völligen Bericht der Farben / da solt ich keinen Menschen dabey kommen lassen / In der 7den Woche sahe ich Zeichen / wie ich schrifftlich hinterlassen; Wäre (sagt er) eine Tinctur oder universal Medicin / so ihm zu Verona sein abgestorbener Eydes-Bruder auffn Todbette und geleisteten Cörperlichen Eyde in Schrifften anvertrauet / das müste er verschwiegen halten biß an sein Ende.
**English**
A cloth-shearer’s son; learned in a monastery at Verona; Eibingen, three miles from … in the monastery, with the canons regular for three-quarters of a year. There he worked quietly and told me nothing beyond what I was to know. I only had to attend to the fire with him at times, for then I did not know what universal, particular, or the Philosophers’ Stone meant. Meanwhile I travelled to the Grand Chancellor of Poland, who was dangerously ill with dropsy. In the meantime he instructed me how to conduct the work and gave a full account of the colours; I was to allow nobody near it. In the seventh week I saw signs, as I have left in writing. He said it was a tincture or universal medicine which his deceased sworn brother at Verona had entrusted to him in writing on his deathbed, after a solemn oath. He was to keep it secret until his own end.[^n71]
**CNT-JJF-P022** 1682 pp. 61–62 · BLB-067, BLB-068
**German**
Zu Hamburg im güldnen Löw / litte ein Schotte Tag und Nacht unleidliche Schmertzen und Pein / daß er geruffen / in die dritte Wochen sehr hatte viel Medicos und viel Medicin-Verständige gebracht: laborirte Podagra Chiragra und Arthritide, ich sahe ein klägliches Spectacul an ihm / daß uns die Augen übergingen / wie sanfft ich ihm zusprach / kriegt ich lange keine Antwort / endlich sahe er uns ernstlich an / und ließ das Haupt sincken / begehrte keiner Artzney mehr zu hören; sondern vom Todt: Sebastian sagte: Er solte GOtt anruffen und seine Noth klagen; Ihm folgen und seine Mittel nicht verschlagen. Er solte Morgen Abends wieder mit ihm speisen; forderte einen Römer oder Glaß mit Spanischem Wein / goß aus dem Büchslein seiner Medicin 3. Tropffen drein / der Wein ward alsbald roth als ein Blut / gab auch der gantzen Kammer einen lieblichen Geruch / als wenn sie von Zibeth, Moschus und Ambra wäre / vermischts mit einem güldnen Griffel / und gabs dem Patienten zu trincken / vermahnte alle zu ein andächtiges Vater Unser: Befahl ihm / fleissig sich zuzudecken und zu schwitzen; keinen Menschen aber biß Morgen / zu ihm zu lassen / denn nach 24. Stunden wolte er weiter rathen.
**English**
At the Golden Lion in Hamburg a Scot suffered unbearable pain and torment day and night, crying out. In the third week he had brought many physicians and people knowledgeable in medicine. He suffered from gout of the feet, gout of the hands, and arthritis. I saw such a pitiful spectacle that our eyes overflowed. However gently I spoke, I long received no answer. At last he looked at us earnestly, let his head sink, and wished to hear no more of medicine, only of death. Sebastian said he should call upon God, lament his distress, follow him, and not refuse his means. He should dine with him again tomorrow evening. Sebastian called for a römer or glass of Spanish wine and poured into it three drops of his medicine from its little container. The wine immediately became blood-red and filled the whole chamber with a pleasant fragrance, as if from civet, musk, and ambergris. He stirred it with a golden stylus and gave it to the patient to drink, exhorting everyone to say the Lord’s Prayer devoutly. He ordered the man to cover himself well and sweat, and to let nobody near him until morning; after twenty-four hours he would advise further.[^n72]
**CNT-JJF-P023** 1682 pp. 62–63 · BLB-068, BLB-069
**German**
Er hatte nach dem genommenen kein Wort noch Lebens-Zeichen mehr hören lassen / lag im harten Schlaff / daß er schnarchte: Seb. rückte ihn hart rümb; Patiens sah ihn an mit Bestürtzung / wuste nicht ob er im Traum läge / oder wie ihm geschehe: Seb. ließ ihn aus dem Bette heben / die Lacken hinweg thun (welche vom Schweiß und ausgetretenen 🜿o so starrten / als wenn sie gestärckt) und frische unterlegen. Wie er nun auf den Stuhl sitzt: fragt Sebastian: Wie er sich befinde: Sagt er: Der Medicus ist mehr Göttlich als Menschlich; so gantz haben mich meine Schmertzen verlassen / wiewol ich noch grosse Müde- und Mattigkeit in allen meinen Gliedern verspühre. Seb. foderte noch ein Römer Wein / darunter vermischt er noch einige Tropffen seiner Medicin / gab ihm die ein und ließ ihn noch 9. Stunden ruhen / biß es Zeit / daß sie zur Abendmalzeit schickten / fanden ihn noch schlaffend / weckten ihn auf / er sprang freudig rauß und ging aufs nöthigen mit uns zu Tisch / danckte GOtt mit heissen Thränen. Da bekam er sonderliche Kost so stärckte / als Crams- und andre Vögel:
**English**
After taking it he uttered neither a word nor any further audible sign of life, but lay in deep sleep, snoring. Sebastian turned him round roughly. The patient looked at him in bewilderment, not knowing whether he was dreaming or what was happening to him. Sebastian had him lifted from the bed, the sheets removed—they were as stiff from sweat and exuded tartar as if starched—and fresh ones put underneath. When he was sitting on the chair, Sebastian asked how he felt. He said, “The physician is more divine than human: my pains have left me so completely, although I still feel great weariness and weakness in all my limbs.” Sebastian called for another römer of wine, mixed a few more drops of his medicine into it, administered it, and let him rest for another nine hours. At the time for the evening meal they sent for him, found him still asleep, and woke him. He sprang out joyfully and, when urged, joined us at table, thanking God with hot tears. He received special strengthening food, such as fieldfares and other birds.[^n73]
**CNT-JJF-P024** 1682 pp. 63–64 · BLB-069, BLB-070
**German**
Es waren aber bey ihm 2. Studiosi Wittebergenses. Einer Nicolaus Clobes; Mathem. Candidatus. 2. Jonas Agricola Friburg und ein Zwickauer / ein böser Bube: Der Schotte von den andern instigirt; Er solle / wo er wieder befehlen möchte zu gebrauchen / umb das Secret der Medicin anhalten; thats über der Mahlzeit / aber mit Sebast. höchlichen verweisen; sagende: Er hätte sich keines Uberfalls wieder zu befürchten; Er solte GOtt und ihm dancken. Es war Lapis Philosophorum: und gestund: Es könte der Metalle transmutation geschehen; nahm ein Zinnern Löffel auf den obstant, instant der Studiosus schütte drein wenig Tinctur / hielts übers Licht / rieb die mit dem Finger im Löffel rumb / thät die Tinctur wieder mählich ins Glaß / so weit die Tinctur den Löffel berühret / so weit hat sie penetrirt / zu hohen ☉ verwandelt / begehrte der Schotte nochmals / so nicht Entdeckung / doch Communication wenigs von der Tinctur selbst die Alchymia zu defendiren; aber Seb. Siebenfreund / antwortete: Sufficiens Testimonium esse Corpus suum; ließ ihm doch den Löffel;
**English**
There were with him two Wittenberg students: one, Nicolaus Clobes, a candidate in mathematics; the second, Jonas Agricola of Friburg; and a man from Zwickau, a wicked fellow. The others urged the Scot to ask for the secret of the medicine, in case he should again need to use it. He did so during the meal, but Sebastian strongly rebuked him, saying he need fear no further attack and should thank God and him. It was the Philosophers’ Stone; Sebastian admitted that transmutation of metals could be accomplished. At the student’s insistence he took a tin spoon, poured a little tincture into it, held it over the light, and rubbed it round the spoon with his finger. He gradually returned the tincture to the glass. As far as the tincture had touched the spoon, it had penetrated and transformed it into high-grade gold. The Scot again requested, if not disclosure, then at least a little of the tincture itself, to defend alchemy. But Sebastian Siebenfreund answered that his own body was sufficient testimony. He did, however, leave him the spoon.[^n74]
**CNT-JJF-P025** 1682 pp. 64–65 · BLB-070, BLB-071
**German**
Insidiæ struebantur; hinc tendebamus Wittebergam, tiam mutantes ante stadam nobis propositam, per Lüneb. Magdeb. Nahmen den Tisch bey D. Joh. Maj. Poet. Prof. Stube bey Ernst Bachio, Philos. & Med. D. blieben 4. Monath noch im ersten Monath kamen obgedachte Studiosi zu uns: nachdem kam auch der Schotte mit D. Thurnheisern Phil. & Medicin. D. zu Berlin. kehrten im Grauen Apffel im Marckte ein; d. Maj. invitabatur nobiscum ad nuptias; ego ab amico fidelissimo per literas parentum avocabar. ille melancholiâ statim afficiebatur, præter consuetudinem ajebatque, sibi sanguinis guttulam, ceu △em ardentem cordi ejus incidisse, mox dum literas meas in manus sumsisset, mortem imminentem indicans, cum tamen non ægrotaret.
**English**
Plots were being laid. From there we made for Wittenberg, changing the route before our intended stage and going by Lüneburg and Magdeburg. We took our meals with Dr Johannes Maj., professor of poetry, and a room with Ernst Bach, doctor of philosophy and medicine. We stayed four months. In the first month the students already mentioned came to us; afterwards the Scot also came with Dr Thurnheiser, doctor of philosophy and medicine at Berlin. They lodged at the Grey Apple in the market. Dr Maj. was invited with us to a wedding. I was called away from my most faithful friend by a letter from my parents. He was immediately affected by unusual melancholy and said that a little drop of blood, like burning fire, had fallen upon his heart as soon as he took my letter into his hands. He indicated that death was imminent, although he was not ill.[^n75]
**CNT-JJF-P026** 1682 p. 65 · BLB-071
**German**
Post dies 4. rediens: percipiebatur Sebastianus à Studiosis in domum Strauchii ad forum sitam vesperi nuptiis finitis ad potum nocturnum ducebatur, hoc obrutus in lectum ponitur; post 2. horas cultro jugulum discindebant, & mortuum supra muros in fossam urbanam trajiciunt; quod per 2. demum annos compertum ancillâ infantem amissam quærente. Post hoc factum 4. hebdomades omnes discurrebant in mundum; aperto à me hypocausto reperiebam libellum absconditum, compactum in 24o.; in welchem ich die Handgriff / sonderlich das Universal / sammt beyden particularibus, ex eodem fonte prodeuntibus gefunden; aber Medicin und Tinctur war weg; Ich nahm sein hinterlassen Geld / reisete mit nach Böhmen / Mähren / Oesterreich / Steiermarck / Italien / und wieder heraus durch Schweitz und Schwaben / so weits Geld reichte.
**English**
On returning after four days, I learned that, when the wedding was over that evening, Sebastian had been taken by the students to Strauch’s house on the market for night drinking. Overcome by drink, he was put to bed. After two hours they cut his throat with a knife and threw his dead body over the walls into the town ditch. This was discovered only after two years, when a maid was looking for a lost child. Four weeks after the deed they all scattered into the world. When I opened the heated room, I found a hidden little book bound in twenty-fourmo. In it I found the manipulations, especially the universal work and both particular works proceeding from the same source. But the medicine and tincture were gone. I took the money he had left and travelled with it to Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Styria, and Italy, then back through Switzerland and Swabia, as far as the money lasted.[^n76]
**CNT-JJF-P027** 1682 pp. 65–66 · BLB-071, BLB-072
**German**
Nach einem halben Jahre tingirte Thurnheuser in der Marck Brandenburg öffentlich; currirte gleichfals glücklich unheilbahre Kranckheiten / betrog Leute mit Sophistischen Processen / begab sich in Italien / nahm ein böses Ende; Der Schotte wegen Sodomitischer Sünde vom Bischoff zu Canterburia in Engelland / verbrandt / zuvor aber mit dem Strick erwürgt; Der dritte / nemlich der Studiosus von Zwickau tingirte auch eine Zeitlang / hielt sich prächtig / biß vors Ende / da er in Schuld gerieth. Marggrafen Joh. Friedrich / gewesenen Administratoris und Ertz-Bischoffs zu Magdeburgs Gemahlin ist ein falscher Process gegeben. Weil aber die Marggräfin sich ohne Caution nicht einlassen wolte zum Verlag; ließ sich der Amt-Schösser von Weissenfelß zur Caution von diesem Betrieger bereden / der ihn vor dem mit Augen sehen tingiren / auf 4000. Rthlr. welche er auch / weil der Process falsch / bezahlen muste / gerieth in eusserste Armuth; Der Thäter wurde zu Dreßden Lebenslang im Graben in Eisen verschlossen condemnirt. Die andern beyde sind auf der Reise von Rostock aus / nach Stockholm / durch Schiffbruch verdorben / da doch alle die andern / so auf dem Schiff / mit dem Leben davon kommen sind.
**English**
After half a year Thurnheuser publicly performed tinging in the March of Brandenburg. He also successfully treated incurable diseases, deceived people with sophistical processes, went to Italy, and came to a bad end. The Scot was burned by the bishop at Canterbury in England for what the story calls “sodomitical sin,” having first been strangled with a rope. The third, the student from Zwickau, also performed tinging for a time and lived splendidly until at last he fell into debt. A false process was given to the wife of Margrave Johann Friedrich, former administrator and archbishop of Magdeburg. Since the margravine would not provide funding without security, this deceiver persuaded the district treasurer of Weissenfels—who had previously seen him tinging with his own eyes—to stand surety for four thousand reichsthalers. Because the process was false, he had to pay and fell into extreme poverty. The perpetrator was condemned at Dresden to lifelong confinement in irons in the ditch. The other two perished in a shipwreck while travelling from Rostock to Stockholm, although all the others aboard escaped with their lives.[^n77]
**CNT-JJF-P028** 1682 pp. 66–67 · BLB-072, BLB-073
**German**
Also ist ein Weg / ein Mittel der Particular Tincturæ, ♁. 🜍. [Sign: zwei schräg verbundene Kreise]. ☿. [Sign: Kreis mit senkrechtem Strich und rechtem Querstrich]. △. 🜁 Vini rubei vel albi Urinæ reliquorum quoque omnium Animalium, Vegetabilium & Mineralium solum, modò materia una, nempe Corpus fixum, Crystallinum, Diaphanum, darumb am Jüngsten Tage in der Gestalt alle Geschlechte der Erden / ja alle Geschöpff erscheinen / qui jam cupiunt indies dissolvi, und muß beklagen / überweisen / und wider uns Zeugniß geben werden / da nun der himmlische Geist tanquam inferius heraus geschieden / und aus den Banden / darin er liegt / ledig wird / qui est in omnibus rebus, und gesagter Weise ist Inferius sicut superius depuratum, und ein warhafftig receptacul verhanden / Spiritus ætherei, den himmlischen und lufftigen Geist / darin wir und alles leben und schweben / das Hauchen GOttes / der alles in allen / die Seele der Welt / das rechte Qv Es, die wachsende Krafft Bernhardi, die Influentiam rerum, als in einem Wasser sui generis & speciei zu fangen / so wol wie im Universal der Acker verhanden / imgleichen allhier (in particularibus) damit dem Saamen procediret wird Philosophico more.
**English**
Thus there is one way, one means of the particular tincture: antimony, sulphur, [two joined-circle sign], Mercury, [circular sign], fire, air; of red or white wine, urine, and likewise all other animals, vegetables, and minerals. There is only one matter, namely a fixed, crystalline, transparent body. Therefore at the Last Day all families of the earth, indeed all creatures, will appear in this form—those which now daily desire to be dissolved—and will have to lament, convict, and bear witness against us. When the heavenly spirit, present in all things, is separated out as the lower and released from the bonds in which it lies, the lower is purified like the upper, as described. A true receptacle is then present to catch the ethereal spirit: the heavenly and aerial spirit in which we and all things live and move, God’s breath, which is all in all; the soul of the world, the true “Qv Es,” Bernard’s growing power, the influence of things, as in a water of its own genus and species. Just as the field is present in the universal work, so here in particular works the seed is treated in the philosophical manner.[^n78]
**CNT-JJF-P029** 1682 p. 67 · BLB-073
**German**
FINIS.
**English**
END.
### The Short Preparation of Potable Gold
*Das ☉ Potabile zur Gesundheit wird gemacht wie folget*
German witness: 1682, printed pp. 68, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Source facsimile: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/pageview/4591618
Unattributed short preparation
**CNT-POTABILE-P001** 1682 p. 68 · BLB-074
**German**
Das ☉ Potabile zur Gesundheit wird gemacht wie folget:
**English**
The potable gold for health is made as follows:[^n79]
**CNT-POTABILE-P002** 1682 p. 68 · BLB-074
**German**
Nimm den 🜍 und ⊖ des ☉des und solvire die beyde in [Butyrum-Zeichen] ♁ii so wird der [Butyrum-Zeichen] ♁ii sich färben, denn so giesse 3. Theil [Sp.-Vini-Zeichen] [Weinsteinzeichen]at optimi dazu, und digerir es zum minsten 12. Tage biß es schön roth wird, so hastu ein wahres ☉ potabile. Der Spiritus Vini kan von dem [Butyrum-Zeichen] ♁ii auch von den extrahirten 🜍e nimmerwieder geschieden werden, eben so wenig als ▽ vom Wasser, denn das wahre Solvens kan von dem Soluto nicht wieder separirt und geschieden werden.
**English**
Take the sulphur and salt of gold and dissolve them both in butter of antimony: it will become coloured. Then add three parts of the finest tartarised spirit of wine and digest it for at least twelve days until it becomes a beautiful red, and you have a true potable gold. The spirit of wine can never again be separated from butter of antimony or from the extracted sulphur, any more than water can be separated from water; for the true solvent cannot again be separated and divided from what is dissolved.[^n80]
### The Last Testament of a Father to His Beloved Son
*Letztes Testament Eines Vaters Seinem liebsten Sohne hinterlassen*
German witness: 1682, printed pp. 68–80, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Source facsimile: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/pageview/4591618
Anonymous testament
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P001** 1682 p. 68 · BLB-074
**German**
SUB UMBRA ALARUM TUARUM. JEHOVA! Letztes Testament. Eines Vaters Seinem liebsten Sohne hinterlassen.
**English**
Under the shadow of your wings, Jehovah! A father’s last testament, left to his beloved son.[^n81]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P002** 1682 pp. 68–69 · BLB-074, BLB-075
**German**
Liebster Sohn, du solt wissen, daß ich durch die Gnade GOttes in Christo mit vielen und grossen Studiren, Nachdencken, Mühe und Arbeit, von den 20. biß in das 40. Jahr meines Lebens eine Wissenschafft und groß verborgen Geheimniß (so von viel 1000. Jahren hero unter den Weisesten der Welt verborgen und heimlich gehalten worden, und kein Mensch leichtlich wegen Mißbrauch mit guten Gewissen zu entdecken als allein denen so GOtt fürchtig, fromm, gottselig, und keinen Lastern ergeben sind) erlernet und überkommen, angesehen ich niemals umb Reichthumb und zeitlichen Gut, sondern allein umb Gnade in Christo JEsu, Weißheit, Verstand, Klugheit, Gesundheit und ewiges Heil und Wolfahrt meiner Seelen gebethen. Dancke derowegen dem Allerhöchsten GOtt und HErrn Himmels und der Erden, der mir solches gnädig offenbahret, mich darneben hertzinniglich erfreuet, daß an mir wahr worden, was Christus unser Seligmacher, Heyland und Mittler bey GOtt seinem Himmlischen Vater, und auch unser umb seiner willen gesagt, nemlich: suchet am ersten das Reich GOttes, so wird euch das ander alles zufallen.
**English**
Dearest son, you should know that through God’s grace in Christ, with much prolonged study, reflection, toil and work from the twentieth to the fortieth year of my life, I learned and acquired a knowledge and great hidden secret. For many thousands of years it has been concealed and kept secret among the wisest people in the world; because of its possible misuse, no one can readily disclose it in good conscience except to those who fear God, are upright and devout, and are given to no vices. I never prayed for riches or temporal goods, but only for grace in Christ Jesus, wisdom, understanding, prudence, health, and the eternal salvation and welfare of my soul. I therefore thank the most high God and Lord of heaven and earth, who graciously revealed it to me and deeply gladdened my heart, so that what Christ, our saviour, redeemer and mediator with God his heavenly Father—and, for his sake, ours also—said has proved true in me: seek first the kingdom of God, and all the rest will be added to you.[^n82]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P003** 1682 p. 69 · BLB-075
**German**
Damit du nun aber liebster Sohn solcher Gnade und Segens von GOtt unserm Himmlischen Vater in Christo JEsu mögest theilhafftig werden, so erinnere dich aus dem Catechismo.
**English**
Now, dearest son, so that you may share in such grace and blessing from God our heavenly Father in Christ Jesus, recall what you have learned from the catechism.[^n83]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P004** 1682 pp. 69–71 · BLB-075, BLB-076, BLB-077
**German**
Liebster Sohn! Noch ists übrig, daß ich dich warne, diesen so grossen Schatz in der Stille und einen schlechten bürgerlichen Leben und Stand ohne Pracht, Hoffarth und Überfluß zu geniessen, keinem Menschen davon etwas zu sagen, ja deinen eigenen Brüdern und Schwestern, Weib und Kindern, nichts zu sagen, damit du nicht in Leib- und Lebens-Gefahr, ja umb deine ewige Seligkeit kommest, halte deine Zunge im Zaum, und thue deinem armen Nechsten Hülffe in aller Stille und Verborgenheit, damit sie nicht erfahren, von wem ihnen solches herkomme, so wird solches GOtt, der ins Verborgene siehet, dir öffentlich vergelten. Offenbahre diese Wissenschafft deinen eigenen Kindern nicht, es wäre denn, daß dir GOtt einen Sohn gäbe, so fromm, Gottsfürchtig und von GOtt dazu beruffen, wo nicht, sage es lieber vor deinem Tode einem frembden, doch frommen, GOttfürchtigen, und würdigen Mann, welchen du durch lange Jahre hast kennen lernen und wol probiret, damit du das verliehene Talent nicht gantz mit dir in die Erde vergraben lässest, sondern wie andere damit wucherst, und ein Vater werdest Philosophischer Kinder: Das ist, daß es andre würdige aus deinen Schrifften nach GOttes Willen lernen und begreiffen mögen, und denen dürfftig Armen, da es nimmer an mangeln wird Gutes thun, und in ihrer Noth zu Hülffe kommen mögen; mir hat es kein lebendiger Mensch gesagt, noch durch Unterweisung gelernet, sondern habe es durch unaussprechliche Mühe und Arbeit, aus dem Büchern und tuncklen Schrifften der alten Weisen durch die Gnade und Liebe GOttes begriffen und gelernet.
**English**
Dearest son, it remains for me to warn you to enjoy this great treasure quietly, in a plain civic life and station, without splendour, pride or excess. Tell no one anything about it—not even your own brothers and sisters, wife and children—lest you endanger your body and life, and even your eternal salvation. Bridle your tongue, and help your poor neighbour quietly and secretly, so that they do not learn from whom the help comes; then God, who sees in secret, will reward you openly. Do not reveal this knowledge to your own children unless God gives you a son who is upright, God-fearing and called to it by God. Otherwise, before your death, tell it rather to an unrelated but upright, God-fearing and worthy man whom you have known and thoroughly tested over many years. Thus you will not have the talent entrusted to you buried entirely with you in the earth, but will put it to use, as others have, and become a father of philosophical children. That is, other worthy people may learn and understand it from your writings according to God’s will, and may do good to the needy poor—of whom there will never be a shortage—and help them in their distress. No living person told it to me or taught it to me by instruction. Through inexpressible toil and work, by God’s grace and love, I understood and learned it from the books and obscure writings of the ancient sages.[^n84]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P005** 1682 p. 71 · BLB-077
**German**
Denen es GOtt geben will, ist es klar und deutlich gnug beschrieben; denen er es aber nicht geben will, blendet er die Augen ihres Verstandes, und macht sie in dieser Sache zu Thoren. Befleissige du dich der Weißheit die für GOtt gilt, und und lasse alle andere Weißheit der Welt fahren. Begehre nicht Weltweise zu seyn, sondern trachte nach der Weißheit der Kinder GOttes, die den Weisen der Welt eine Thorheit ist. Trachte dahin, daß du für einen Thoren gehalten werdest von den Weisen und Klugen der Welt, denn also muß es seyn, der Weltweißheit ist eine Thorheit bey GOtt, und die göttliche Weißheit eine Thorheit in dem Verstand der Weltweisen und Macht der Sünden.
**English**
For those to whom God wills to give it, it is described clearly and distinctly enough. But where he does not will to give it, he blinds the eyes of their understanding and makes them fools in this matter. Apply yourself to the wisdom that has standing before God, and let all other worldly wisdom go. Do not desire to be wise in the world’s eyes, but seek the wisdom of God’s children, which is foolishness to the world’s wise. Seek to be considered a fool by those whom the world regards as wise and prudent; for so it must be: worldly wisdom is foolishness before God, and divine wisdom is foolishness to the understanding of the worldly wise and the power of sins.[^n85]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P006** 1682 p. 71 · BLB-077
**German**
Liebster Sohn, du solt auch nicht promiscuè alle Bücher so dir vorkommen, lesen, sondern die besten, und darin die unfehlbahre Warheit geschrieben ist. Vor allen andern Dingen in der Welt mache Profession von der Gottesfurcht. GOtt gibt niemand Gnade und Gaben, daß er sie verstecken, sondern seinem Nächsten zum besten und GOtt zu Ehren brauchen solle, ein erschrecklich Exempel hast du an Francisco.
**English**
Dearest son, you should also read, not indiscriminately every book that comes your way, but the best, in which unfailing truth is written. Above everything else in the world, make fear of God your profession. God gives no one grace and gifts so that they should hide them, but so that they should use them for their neighbour’s good and God’s honour. You have a terrible example in Francisco.[^n86]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P007** 1682 pp. 71–72 · BLB-077, BLB-078
**German**
Mein liebster Sohn! Hierin ist eine Vermahnung von mir geschrieben, wie du gegen GOtt und deinem Nächsten Christlich leben solt. Damit du aber alles wol verstehest, was hierin geschrieben ist, ist mein ernstlicher Wille und väterlich Bitten an dich, daß du dieses nicht eröffnen und lesen sollest, du seyst denn erst zu deinem rechten Verstand und zwantzigsten Jahren gekommen, auch niemand anders sol es erbrechen, als du selbst. Und so es iemand anders zu Handen kommen solte, bitt ich denselben, wer es auch ist, respectivè dienstlich, daß er dieses meinem ältesten Sohne selbst zu treuen Händen unerbrochen zustellen wolle. Weil hierin nichts ist, als nur eine treuliche Vermahnung an denselben meinen lieben Sohn.
**English**
My dearest son, I have written here an admonition on how you should live as a Christian towards God and your neighbour. So that you may properly understand everything written here, it is my earnest wish and fatherly request that you neither open nor read this until you have attained sound understanding and your twentieth year. No one but you yourself is to break its seal. If it should fall into anyone else’s hands, I respectfully request that person, whoever they may be, to deliver it unopened into the trusted hands of my eldest son himself, since it contains only a faithful admonition to my dear son.[^n87]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P008** 1682 pp. 72–73 · BLB-078, BLB-079
**German**
Lieber Sohn derhalben soltu wissen, daß das ♁ das rechte Bad des ☉is sey, die Weisen haben ihn genandt Examinatorem und den BrunnStylangem die Poëten aber schreiben, daß in diesem Bade der Vulcanus den Phæbum abgewaschen und gebadet habe, und ihn von aller Unreinigkeit und Unvollkommenheit gesäubert. Es ist aber das ♁ in seiner Generation und Geburth entsprungen aus dem allerreinesten und besten ☿io und 🜍e unter der Art des Vitrioli, in einer metallischen Form, Gestalt, und Schönheit. Das ♁ ist ein Mineral und eine Art des Vitrioli, doch das eine metallische Form und Glantz hat, welcher vom Geschlecht des Vitrioli aus dem besten und reinsten 🜍e und ☿io gebohren, so bey den Alten ♄ oder Bley geheissen ist worden, Besehe folgende Figur.
**English**
Dear son, you should therefore know that antimony is the proper bath of gold. The sages have called it the examiner and the fountain Stylangem; the poets, however, write that in this bath Vulcan washed and bathed Phoebus and cleansed him of all impurity and imperfection. In its generation and birth, antimony arose from the purest and best mercury and sulphur, of the kind called vitriol, in a metallic form, shape and beauty. Antimony is a mineral and a kind of vitriol, yet one with a metallic form and lustre. Born from the family of vitriol, from the best and purest sulphur and mercury, it was called Saturn or lead by the ancients. See the following figure.[^n88]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P009** 1682 p. 73 · BLB-079
**German**
Der Reichs- oder Welt-Apfel, welches das Zeichen des ♁ii ist, bedeutet die materiam den ♁. Der Siebenfache Stern bedeutet auch den ♁, und in ihm alle 7 metall unsichtlich in ihm verborgen, und aus ihm sichtlich gebohren werden, der schwartze Strahl des Sterns, den ♄ oder Bley und den ♁ selbst, in seiner sichtlichen Form, welches das Bley und Saturnus der Weisen ist, und die andern 6. metall unsichtlich unter seiner schwartzen Gestalt verbirgt. Denn alle metall können auch aus dem ♁ gemacht werden. Besehe Alexandrum von Suchten in s. Buch, so er ♁ii Mysterium geminum nennt, im andern Theil Fol. 428.
**English**
The imperial orb or world globe, which is the sign of antimony, signifies the matter, antimony. The sevenfold star also signifies antimony, with all seven metals invisibly hidden within it and visibly born from it. The star’s black ray represents Saturn or lead and antimony itself in its visible form: the lead and Saturn of the sages, which conceals the other six metals invisibly beneath its black appearance. For all metals can also be made from antimony. Consult Alexander von Suchten in the book he calls The Twin Mystery of Antimony, in the second part, folio 428.[^n89]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P010** 1682 pp. 73–74 · BLB-079, BLB-080
**German**
In dieser materia dem ♁o, ist Himmel und Erde, wie die Sphæra und Terræ globus auf beyden Seiten ausweisen und andeuten, auch ist darinnen die Weiße und Röthe 🜍is und ☿, wie der Adler und der Löw auf beyden Seiten anzeigen, ja alle 4. Elementa seynd in der Materia, denn in der Erden ist Erde und Wasser, im Himmel Feuer und Lufft; Dieses alles ist gleichsam wie mit einer Ketten in der Materia zusammen verbunden, und diese Materia nemlich das ♁ ist der Weisen ihr ☿ und das ▽, des ☉ und des ☽ und aller Metallen, welche ihr ▽ des Lebens draus schöpffen müssen und trincken, wie der Becher über dem Character des ☿ii ausweiset, da ☉ und ☽ heraus wachsen, und ♂ ♀ und ♄ ♃ zur Seiten stehen.
**English**
In this matter, antimony, are heaven and earth, as the celestial sphere and terrestrial globe on either side show and indicate. Within it also are the whiteness and redness of sulphur and mercury, as the eagle and lion on the two sides indicate. Indeed, all four elements are in the matter: earth and water are in the earth, fire and air in heaven. All this is bound together within the matter as though by a chain. This matter, antimony, is the sages’ mercury and the water of the Sun and Moon and of all the metals, which must draw and drink their water of life from it. This is shown by the cup above the character of mercury, from which the Sun and Moon grow, with Mars, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter standing at the sides.[^n90]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P011** 1682 p. 74 · BLB-080
**German**
Der schwartze Circul des ♄i, bedeut wieder das Bley oder den ♄, dadurch allemal die Weisen den ♁ verstehen, und die Hand dabey aus dem Himmel oder Wolcken schweret, daß das die rechte wahre Materia der Weisen sey, nicht zwar das gemeine Bley, sondern wie gesagt, das Bley der Weisen welches das ♁ ist. Die Sonne in dem schwartzen Circul deutet an, daß das ☉ in dem [Butyrum-Zeichen] ♄i i.e. ♁ii solvirt werden muß, denn der [Butyrum-Zeichen] ♁ii ist das solvens des ☉, darin fault das ☉ und wird gantz schwartz. Diß alles beschleußt der mittelste Circul in sich, weil derselbe zugleich das Zeichen des ♁ und des ☿ii der Weisen ist, wie erscheinet, wenn es aus der Figur allein also angesehen wird. [Zusammengesetztes Zeichen.]
**English**
The black circle of Saturn again signifies lead or Saturn, by which the sages always understand antimony. The hand beside it, emerging from heaven or the clouds, swears that this is the sages’ true and proper matter: not common lead, but, as stated, the sages’ lead, which is antimony. The Sun in the black circle indicates that gold must be dissolved in the butter of Saturn, that is, of antimony; for butter of antimony is the solvent of gold. In it the gold putrefies and becomes entirely black. The middle circle contains all this, because it is at once the sign of antimony and of the sages’ mercury, as appears when it is viewed by itself apart from the figure. [Combined sign.][^n91]
Combined sign of mercury and antimony
Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe 87 B 76050 printed p 74
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P012** 1682 p. 74 · BLB-080
**German**
So ist der Character oder Zeichen des ♁ii das Unterste, welches also alleine für Augen zu stellen. [Antimonzeichen.]
**English**
Thus the character or sign of antimony is the lower part, shown by itself in this way. [Antimony sign.]
The lower antimony sign
Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe 87 B 76050 printed p 74
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P013** 1682 p. 74 · BLB-080
**German**
Das Zeichen ☿ii aber allein ist das Oberste und erscheinet also alleine für sich. [Quecksilberzeichen.]
**English**
The sign of mercury by itself is the upper part and appears separately in this way. [Mercury sign.]
The upper mercury sign
Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe 87 B 76050 printed p 74
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P014** 1682 pp. 74–75 · BLB-080, BLB-081
**German**
Die Worte im Circkel nennen die materiam nicht mit dem gemeinen Nahmen, sondern mit dem rechten Nahmen Vitriol, denn es ist der Vitriol der Weisen eine Art und Geschlecht des Vitrioli unter einer metallischen Form, wie oben schon gemeldet ist.
**English**
The words in the circle name the matter, not by its common name, but by its proper name, vitriol. For the sages’ vitriol is a kind and family of vitriol under a metallic form, as has already been stated above.[^n92]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P015** 1682 p. 75 · BLB-081
**German**
Der gantze Process ist also:
**English**
The whole process is as follows:
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P016** 1682 p. 75 · BLB-081
**German**
Mache einen Regulum ♁ii mit ☉, den verpuffe oder detonire (wie die Chymici reden) mit 🜍, 🜕 und 🜿; was noch nicht alles calcinirt ist, detonire und calcinir wieder mit neuem 🜍e, 🜿 und 🜕o, biß der gantze Regulus mit dem ☉o calcinirt ist.
**English**
Make a regulus of antimony with gold. Deflagrate it, or “detonate” it (as the chymists say), with sulphur, nitre, and tartar. Whatever has not yet been entirely calcined, deflagrate and calcine again with fresh sulphur, tartar, and nitre, until the whole regulus, together with the gold, is calcined.[^n93]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P017** 1682 p. 75 · BLB-081
**German**
Denn so giesse auff die mit 🜍e, 🜕o und 🜿 calcinirte materiam destillirt Regen-Wasser warm, laß es über Nacht in der Wärme stehen, denn gieß es ab, und filtrir es durch grau Papier, wenn es klar ist, so sprütze klahren destillirten † vom Wein darin, so præcipitirt sichs Blut-roth, das laß sich wohl setzen, denn gieß das ▽ vom rothen 🜍e ab, und das nachbleibt und roth ist, welches der 🜍 ☉ und ♁ii ist, lasse sanfft trocken werden und behalts, aus dem überbliebenen Cörper und Remanenz, nachdem es wol reverberirt worden, muß man das ⊖ auslaugen, und mit Sp. Vini clarificiren, durch abdestillirung oder abrauchen des Spir. Vini bis es klahr und rein genug ist vid. Commentar. fol. 70. §. 20.
**English**
Then pour warm distilled rainwater over the matter calcined with sulphur, nitre, and tartar and leave it in warmth overnight. Pour it off and filter it through grey paper. When it is clear, introduce clear distilled spirit of wine: it precipitates blood-red. Let it settle well, then pour the water off the red sulphur. Allow what remains, which is red and is the sulphur of gold and antimony, to dry gently, and retain it. From the remaining body and residue, after it has been thoroughly reverberated, the salt must be leached out and clarified with spirit of wine, by distilling off or evaporating the spirit of wine until it is clear and pure enough. See the commentary, folio 70, section 20.[^n94]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P018** 1682 pp. 75–76 · BLB-081, BLB-082
**German**
Darnach sol man das Saltz mit dem 🜍e des ☉ vermischen, so daß man nehme einen Theil 🜍is, 1. Theil Salis und 1. Theil Butyri ♁ii und digerir und figir es, bis es roth ist; Das △ muß im Anfang linde seyn, bis die Schwärtze und Farbe erschienen, darnach muß das △ gestärcket werden bis es vollkommen weiß und roth wird. Wenn es nun fix ist, sol es mit ☉o fermentirt werden; 3. Theil ☉ zu 1. Theil der rothen Tinctur sol man mit einander fliessen lassen, so ist die Tinctur fertig. vid. in gemeldtem Tractat Comment. Pharmar. Cathol. Fol. 70. §. 20.
**English**
Afterwards the salt is to be mixed with the sulphur of gold: take one part sulphur, one part salt and one part butter of antimony, and digest and fix it until it is red. The fire must be gentle at first, until the blackness and colour have appeared; afterwards the fire must be increased until it becomes perfectly white and red. When it is fixed, it is to be fermented with gold: three parts gold and one part of the red tincture are to be melted together, and the tincture is ready. See the stated treatise, Commentary on the Universal Medicine, folio 70, section 20.[^n95]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P019** 1682 p. 76 · BLB-082
**German**
Die Augmentation und Vermehrung geschicht mit dem Butyro oder Spiritu ♁ii, welches einerley ist und mit dem 🜍 ♂tis und ♀is roth gemacht worden, denn das Butyrum ♁ii zeücht den 🜍 und Farbe aus dem [Balkenzeichen]irten 🜍e ♀is und ♂tis per modum digestionis und färbet sich damit roth. Auch färbet sich das Butyrum ♁ii von seinem eigenen Cinober, der sich in der Destillation des Butyri ♁ii in den Halß der Retorten angesetzt.
Das Glaß muß allezeit wol in der Arbeit verschlossen seyn mit Sigillo Hermetis i.e. oben zugeschmoltzen, und das Feuer sol keine Minute ruhen oder ausgehen, sondern mit höchsten Fleiß regieret werden, und unterhalten, biß zum Ende des Wercks.
**English**
The augmentation and multiplication is done with the butter or spirit of antimony (which are one and the same), after it has been made red with the sulphur of Mars and of Venus. The butter of antimony draws the sulphur and the colour out of the sublimed sulphur of Venus and Mars by way of digestion, and colours itself red with it. The butter of antimony also takes colour from its own cinnabar, which settles in the neck of the retort while the butter of antimony is being distilled.
Throughout the work the glass must always be well closed with the Seal of Hermes, that is, melted shut at the top. The fire must not rest or go out for a single minute, but must be governed and kept up with the utmost diligence until the end of the Work.[^n96]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P020** 1682 pp. 76–77 · BLB-082, BLB-083
**German**
Das Gewichte des 🜍is [Kreiszeichen]i und [Quadratkreuzzeichen] beschreibt Paracelsus, und ist also: Nimm 8. Loth [Kreiszeichen] 4. Loth 🜍 und 2. Loth [Quadratkreuzzeichen]i, misch es untereinander, dieses aber ist ein gewaltiges Schlag-Pulver, da man sich wohl muß mit vorsehen, denn so es alles allein im Tiegel zum Feuer gesetzt würde im Schorstein, muß man alsbald davon gehen, denn so gehet es an, so bald der † durchaus warm wird, und thut einen mächtigen Schlag, daß man nicht weiß wo ein Stück vom Tiegel blieben ist. Darumb muß man damit cautè umbgehen, wenn man das Pulver auff den geflossenen Regulum nach und nach träget, damit nicht zu viel auff einmahl genommen werde, welches die Erfahrung am besten lehren wird. Besser wird es angehen wenn der Regulus pulverisiret und mit dem andern Pulver wohl vermischt, Löffelweise in den Tiegel, so glüet nach und nach, getragen wird.
**English**
Paracelsus gives the weights of the sulphur, nitre and tartar, as follows: take 8 lot of saltpetre, 4 lot of sulphur and 2 lot of tartar, and mix them together. But this is a violent detonating powder, and one must be well on one’s guard with it. For if it were put by itself in a crucible on the fire in the chimney, one would have to leave at once. It goes off as soon as the crucible is warm right through and gives such a mighty bang that one cannot tell where any piece of the crucible has got to. So one must go about it cautiously when adding the powder to the molten regulus little by little, so that too much is not taken at once. Experience will teach this best. It goes better if the regulus is pulverised, mixed well with the other powder, and added a spoonful at a time, little by little, into the glowing crucible.[^n97]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P021** 1682 p. 77 · BLB-083
**German**
Das Butyrum ♁ii kan auch mit [Niterzeichen] und Vitriol so wol gemacht werden als mit dem ☿ [Sublimationszeichen]to, denn der ☿ [Sublimationszeichen]tus wird durch [Niterzeichen] und Vitriol gemacht, und ist ein groß Gifft und gefährlich damit umbzugehen, wiewohl das Butyrum ♁ii auch gifftig ist, man muß die Nase wohl verwahren, daß man den Geruch und Dunst bey Leibe nicht in sich ziehe und Schaden bekomme an Gesundheit und Leben.
**English**
Butter of antimony can also be made with saltpetre and vitriol just as well as with sublimate of mercury, because the sublimate of mercury is itself made with saltpetre and vitriol. It is a great poison and dangerous to handle, though the butter of antimony is poisonous too. One must guard one’s nose well, so that on no account does one breathe in the smell and the fumes and suffer harm to health and life.[^n98]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P022** 1682 p. 78 · BLB-084
**German**
Das gantze Schema oder Figur ist wie folget:
**English**
The whole scheme or figure is as follows:
The historical scheme in the Father’s Last Testament
Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe 87 B 76050 printed p 78
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P023** 1682 pp. 78–79 · BLB-084, BLB-085
**German**
Noch eins hab ich vergessen oben, so diese Figur anlangt, nemblich daß die Sonne oder ihr Circul schwartz ist, wie der Circul des ♄i oder ♁ii, das thun die Weisen darumb, damit sie andeuten wollen, daß ☉ und ♁ium ein Metall ist in der Kunst. Daher haben viel Philosophi das Gold Bley, und das Bley, verstehe das ♁ium ☉um genennt. Denn aus diesen beyden wird der Lapis Philosophorum gemacht, und das ♀ ist das erste Metall, daraus alle andere wachsen, denn wenn ein Metall zu dem Grad des ☉des kömmt, kan es von Natur nicht höher kommen, und ist zu der höchsten und endlichen Perfection kommen. Die Weisen halten deswegen das erste und letzte Metall, als ☉ und ♁ in ihren Wesen für ein Metall. vid. Tractat. de Pharmico Cathol. fol. 18. num. 2. Dieser Tractat ist in 4to. Lateinisch, da kanst du es lesen.
**English**
I forgot one further point above concerning this figure: the Sun or its circle is black, like the circle of Saturn or antimony. The sages do this to indicate that gold and antimony are one metal in the art. Hence many philosophers have called gold lead, and lead—understand antimony—gold. For the Philosophers’ Stone is made from these two, and Venus is the first metal, from which all the others grow. When a metal reaches the degree of gold, it cannot rise higher by nature, but has reached the highest and final perfection. The sages therefore regard the first and last metal, gold and antimony, as one metal in their essence. See the Treatise on the Universal Medicine, folio 18, number 2. This treatise is in Latin in quarto; you can read it there.[^n99]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P024** 1682 p. 79 · BLB-085
**German**
Das gantze Philosophische Werck ist in diesen kurtzen Worten begriffen:
**English**
The whole philosophical work is contained in these brief words:
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P025** 1682 p. 79 · BLB-085
**German**
Es glaube, wer es glauben wil,
Es ist die Welt, darauff ich ziehl,
Neptunus und Venus machen fliegen
Die Schlange die sonst muß unten liegen.
Mars zwinget die Welt durch Niter und Schwefel,
Bacchus erhält die Seel und geistliche Nebel.
Der Geist regiert, die Seele wirckt mit,
Die Erde als Bacchi Sitz vergesse nicht.
**English**
Let whoever will believe it:
It is the world at which I aim.
Neptune and Venus make the serpent fly
That otherwise must lie below.
Mars compels the world through niter and sulphur;
Bacchus preserves the soul and spiritual mist.
The spirit rules; the soul works with it.
Do not forget the earth as Bacchus’ seat.[^n100]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P026** 1682 p. 79 · BLB-085
**German**
Auslegung der Verse. ♁ ist prima materia aller Metallen, welche als eine Welt-Kugel abgebildet wird; also: ♁. Neptunus wird allhier das Saltz genennet, der Abgott Neptunus ist ein Saltz, so im ▽ oder See ist, denn aus der und Saltz ▽ wird das Saltz gemacht. Venus ist der Vitriol.
**English**
Interpretation of the verses. Antimony is the first matter of all metals, depicted as a world globe, thus: ♁. Neptune here is called salt; the idol Neptune is a salt found in water or the sea, for the salt is made from it and from salt water. Venus is vitriol.[^n101]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P027** 1682 p. 80 · BLB-086
**German**
Durch die Schlange wird der ☿ verstanden, der eine Schlang genennt wird, ♂ ist ein Kriegs-Held der mit Pulver und Schiessen umbgehet, das Pulver aber wird aus 🜍 und [Niterzeichen] gemacht. Durch die Welt verstehe den ♁ium, welcher hier eine Welt genennet wird. Bacchus ist der [Weinsteinzeichen] oder Weinstein, denn der [Weinsteinzeichen] muß auch bey den 🜍 und [Niterzeichen] seyn. Denn der [Weinsteinzeichen] erhält die Seele und 🜍 des ☉des, daß er nicht verschwindet und verlohren gehe mit dem ☿io.
**English**
The serpent signifies mercury, which is called a serpent. Mars is a warrior concerned with powder and shooting; the powder is associated here with sulphur and niter. By the world, understand antimony, which is called a world here. Bacchus is tartar, or wine stone, which must also be present with sulphur and niter. It preserves the soul and sulphur of gold so that it does not vanish and become lost with the mercury.[^n102]
**CNT-TESTAMENT-P028** 1682 p. 80 · BLB-086
**German**
Der Geist ist der Spiritus Saturni, das ist, das Butyrum oder Sp. ♁ii. Die Seele ist der 🜍 oder rothe Tinctura so ein Dunst oder Nebel genennt wird, & est revera vapor & fumus, sed siccus, wie an dem gemeinem 🜍e zu sehen. Die Erde, darin steckt der [Weinsteinzeichen] oder ⊖, denn des Bacchi Sitz ist die Remanenz, darin das Saltz ist, nachdem der 🜍 daraus gezogen ist; Was aber der [Weinsteinzeichen] für eine Eigenschafft mit den Metallen habe, besiehe den Tractat. Commentatio de Pharmaco Catholico in 4to. fol. 14. §. 9. fol. 19. §. 4. fol. 12. §. 5. FINIS.
**English**
The spirit is the spirit of Saturn, that is, the butter or spirit of antimony. The soul is the sulphur or red tincture, called a vapour or mist; it is indeed a vapour and smoke, but dry, as can be seen in common sulphur. The earth contains tartar or salt, for Bacchus’ seat is the residue in which the salt remains after the sulphur has been drawn from it. As for the property that tartar has in relation to metals, consult the treatise Commentary on the Universal Medicine, in quarto, folio 14, section 9; folio 19, section 4; folio 12, section 5. End.[^n103]
## Keyword Essays
### The Centre as an Agent
A geometrical centre is located by its relation to a circumference. This book turns that relation into an account of activity. The centre gathers powers, moves what surrounds it, and distributes nourishment. The soul’s disordered motion can sharpen its surrounding nature; a calmer will can draw it back into a different condition. Cosmology and ethical language thus use the same pattern without becoming identical statements.
The main treatise’s account of a salt hidden in slimy water gives the pattern material force. The centre is a local concentration through which light and movement pass. It depends upon a higher source even while it acts upon its own surroundings. Calling it universal therefore does not mean it is a self-sufficient substance detached from all relations. Nor does finding its name explain how it has been obtained.
For the reader, the useful question is what a centre does in each passage. Does it collect, feed, govern, illuminate or concentrate? Is its circumference a body, a world or a disorder of desire? Following those verbs makes the account more precise than treating every occurrence as a decorative synonym for an inward self. Compare [the main treatise](#CNT-MAIN) with [Centre](#LEX_CENTRE) and [Circumference](#LEX_CIRCUMFERENCE).
### One Root and the Three Kingdoms
The argument for a common natural foundation begins with familiar changes. Grass becomes animal nourishment; food becomes blood, bone and other bodily materials; dung nourishes plants; hard deposits form within the human body. These observations make fixed boundaries between animal, vegetable and mineral things look less secure. The text then argues that their deepest difference is not substantial but a difference of condition, form or perfection.
That extension matters. An example of digestion can support a question about continuity among kinds of matter, but it does not by itself demonstrate every claim of metallic transmutation. The speaker brings observations, analogies and asserted personal trials into one argument. The modern reader can distinguish those roles while still understanding why the argument seemed coherent to its speaker.
The companion discourses repeat the appeal to a common root, but shift the emphasis. The Delle narrative asks how the universal becomes corporeal and receptive. J. J. F. describes the separation of salt and spirit and a return to unity. These are related accounts, not interchangeable laboratory descriptions. Read [the Discourse on the Universal](#CNT-DELLE) and [the Philosophical Discourse](#CNT-JJF) beside the main work’s discussion of nourishment.
### Regeneration in Matter and Religious Life
Regeneration names a new condition of something already present. The universal salt is not treated as equally accessible or equally effective in every material. Its concentration and preparation matter. Likewise, the devout reader is asked to reform desire and conduct rather than merely acquire another technical secret. The language of rebirth binds these transformations through a shared pattern of opening, purification and renewed power.
The main treatise explicitly reads the regenerated salt as an image of resurrection and immortality. That is stronger than a casual metaphor, because the speaker describes creation and the Christian story as visible through the work. Yet a correspondence is not a statement that a material preparation and a person’s salvation are simply the same event. The text moves between comparison, religious assurance and claimed material action.
Neither a purely psychological retelling nor a set of extracted recipes preserves that movement. Ask what is being regenerated in the actual sentence, what its earlier state was, and which agent effects the change. The companion extracts make the same questions useful for seminal first matter and medicine. See [Regeneration](#LEX_REGENERATION), [Seed](#LEX_SEED) and [Soul](#LEX_SOUL).
### Calling Charity and the Limits of Seeking
The opening objection to fruitless alchemy is social as well as spiritual. A preacher, physician, craftsperson or ruler cannot justify neglecting present duties by promising to become generous after making gold. Food, clothing, work and care for a household give the rebuke its concrete setting. The possibility of a worthy investigator remains, but worthiness is tested through humility, self-examination and help to a neighbour.
The small gift is decisive. A drink of water or a small coin, given from love when larger means are lacking, is said to count alongside the rich person’s much larger gift. The argument breaks the supposed dependence of charity upon a future alchemical fortune. It asks for an act available now. This makes the ethical prelude part of the work’s account of knowledge, rather than a detachable pious introduction.
The testament also commands hidden charity while regulating the transmission of knowledge. Its worthy heir need not finally be a biological child. That does not make the work socially egalitarian in every respect: its literary household, gendered address and tests of religious fitness remain historical features. Read its obligations and exclusions together. See [Charity](#LEX_CHARITY) and [Secrecy](#LEX_SECRECY).
### Books Experience and the Speaking Voice
The collection repeatedly claims experience, but the kind of experience varies. Helbig distinguishes his own work from a final effect encountered through a friend. The main speaker asserts personal possession and demonstrations, yet withholds a continuation. The narrator of the Discourse on the Universal reports a guest’s teaching and acknowledges the loss of an opportunity to write down the practice. The testament claims difficult learning from the ancient books.
These distinctions can disappear when an editor paraphrases every statement as “the author proves.” A report of what someone heard differs from an assertion of what they made. A memorable narrated cure differs from a documented case. The Siebenfreund story also makes secrecy vulnerable to greed and violence; its moral shape does not independently corroborate its biographical allegations.
Books themselves receive different evaluations. The main work distrusts the reader’s capacity to find support for any preconceived opinion, while the companions invoke named works and remembered instruction. That variety is evidence of a collection with several voices. Following speaker, source and qualification lets the reader examine authority without requiring either blanket belief or blanket dismissal. Consult [the comparison note](#COMPARISON) for another case in which a later book changes the framing.
### Reading an Emblem through Its Own Explanation
The testament does not leave its engraving entirely mute. Its prose identifies the orb, planetary signs, animals, spheres, cup and black ray; its verse compresses a set of operations; its closing explanation assigns meanings to the mythological names. These passages should be the first controls on interpretation. They are more specific than a modern chart that assumes a single meaning for each symbol throughout alchemy.
The three small diagrams on page 74 also make a claim by visual decomposition. A combined character is separated into an upper and lower form. Reproducing only a generic mercury or antimony sign would hide that demonstration. The original forms are therefore retained alongside the translation, and the figure guide explains what the surrounding prose says they establish.
The circular inscription names an inward search and finding a hidden stone through rectification. It forms a VITRIOL acrostic. The testament then uses “vitriol” as a proper name within its own account of metallic matter. The inscription’s ingenuity does not by itself prove a chemical identity or settle an exclusively symbolic or material reading. Read [the figure guide](#FIGURE_GUIDE) with the testament’s own explanations before adding further associations.
## Short Glossary
### Alchemy
An art of investigating and transforming natural things. The main treatise judges its pursuit through motive, calling and service as well as through claims about matter.
### Antimony
A historical material name and sign central to the testament. Its identification there with the sages’ lead and vitriol must be read through that work’s explanations.
### Archaeus
An inward natural agent invoked in the companion extracts to explain separation and the powers of a living body.
### Art
Skilled or knowledgeable work that intervenes in natural processes. The collection also applies the word to a religiously qualified knowledge of the world.
### Astral salt
The upper, volatile member of the main treatise’s pair of salts. Its location in a paired argument matters as much as the adjective astral.
### Body
The corporeal or comparatively fixed member of a body–spirit–soul relation. Its assignment varies with the local account.
### Central salt
The concentrated or lower member of the main work’s paired account, identified there with a philosophical vitriol.
### Centre
A gathering point of powers that can nourish, move, govern or illuminate its surroundings; also a term used in the work’s ethical argument.
### Circumference
The surrounding circuit or field in relation to a centre. It can describe the world, a body or a movement of desire.
### Coagulation
A becoming fixed or corporeal within the source’s vocabulary. The texts apply it to spirits, waters and salts under different conditions.
### Dew
Water received from the air, given a particular role in the companion accounts of heavenly nourishment and natural activity.
### Digestion
A sustained process of change or maturation. Bodily digestion also supplies an argument about one nourishment becoming many materials.
### Element
One of the basic natural powers or states named as fire, air, water and earth. The collection’s assignments can be uneven; local wording controls the reading.
### Experience
Knowledge claimed through seeing, doing or encountering. A report of another person’s action and an assertion of personal trial have different scopes.
### Fire
A term for several agents, including common material heat, natural or philosophical activity, and a condition described in religious language.
### Fixation
The attainment of a comparatively stable condition in material previously described as volatile or easily changed.
### Hyle
First or underlying matter invoked in the Delle discourse’s account of a common root.
### Imagination
An active power of forming or directing conditions within the main work’s centre–circumference account, especially in its narration of the falls.
### Macrocosm
The greater world, interpreted in relation to the little world of the human being.
### Matrix
A receptacle or formative setting through which one common power becomes differentiated. The main treatise joins matrices with movements in explaining variety.
### Medicine
A preparation credited with correcting or renewing a condition. Claims about animals, plants and metals share vocabulary without thereby sharing proven efficacy.
### Mercury
A variable historical term: common quicksilver in some passages, a philosophical or seminal agent in others. The main work distinguishes philosophers’ mercury from the finished regenerated salt.
### Microcosm
The little world of the human being, receiving and concentrating powers of the greater world.
### Nature
The source and order of processes that art seeks to understand or assist. The speakers also appeal to nature to restrain excessive artifice.
### Putrefaction
An opening or change of an earlier condition that can prepare a further generation. It is one process within an argument, rather than a name for every transformation.
### Regeneration
A renewal or rebirth through which an existing matter or condition gains a different power. The texts connect it with religious patterns of resurrection and renewal.
### Salt
A central and variable term for natural power, fixed body, spirit or prepared material according to context. It cannot be reduced throughout the collection to table salt.
### Seed
A generative principle or matter through which further change is possible. The main text’s love-seed and the companion extracts’ seminal matter have particular local functions.
### Soul
A member of a relation among body, spirit and soul. In the testament’s explanation it names the sulphur or red tincture; elsewhere it belongs to a religious account of the person.
### Spirit
An active, mobile or subtle power described as breath, water or an agent within matter. Its identity depends on the passage and its relations.
### Sulphur
A historical principle and material name. The testament’s red tincture and metallic sulphurs should be understood through the operations and correspondences actually stated.
### Tartar
A wine-related material, called Weinstein in the testament. Its square-and-cross sign helps identify the Bacchus correspondence.
### Tessa
The main work’s special name for its matter or seed within the human being. The edition preserves the name without pretending that naming it identifies a modern substance.
### Tincture
A preparation credited with penetrating and changing another body. Its relation to colour, medicine and metals varies by context.
### Vitriol
A historical family and preparation name. In the main work it qualifies a central salt; in the testament it names a metallic matter through the emblem’s interpretation.
## Contextual Lexicon
Each entry provides a connected explanation, one exact complete sentence from the reviewed English translation, verified source forms, a place to read and related entries. The quotation remains historical evidence; the explanatory paragraphs are modern interpretation. The entries concern this collection and do not claim to fix one definition for all alchemical writing.
### Centre
The centre is where powers gather and from which they act. In the main work’s account, it illuminates and moves a surrounding field while depending in turn on a higher source. The term describes a relation of agency, not merely a hidden location waiting to be pointed out. The human being can be called a centre because nourishment and breath from the greater world meet within the little one.
Its ethical use follows the same relational pattern. An unruly movement is drawn back from circumference to centre, and desire is redirected. The natural and moral passages illuminate one another, while each retains its own object. Ask which surrounding field the centre governs and what feeds the centre itself.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P021](#CNT-MAIN-P021): “Now in the centre of every slimy water lies hidden a concentrated centre, called the salt of nature.”
Source forms: Centrum concentratum, sal naturæ.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Circumference](#LEX_CIRCUMFERENCE), [Motion](#LEX_MOTION).
### Circumference
Circumference names what surrounds a centre and receives its movement. The main treatise uses the word for the circuit or properties through which a will may act and for the restless state from which the reader is asked to withdraw. It therefore helps organise both an account of nature and an examination of conduct.
The geometrical image gives the argument direction: something moves outward, is gathered inward, or is distributed through a field. It is useful to retain that movement in reading rather than turn circumference into a loose word for external life. The source can describe disorder through this image without making every outward action a failure.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P008](#CNT-MAIN-P008): “Still your unruly inward movement and draw it out of the raging circumference into the quiet, gentle centre.”
Source forms: Circumferentz, Centrum.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Centre](#LEX_CENTRE), [Light](#LEX_LIGHT).
### Salt
Salt is the collection’s most persistent material word, but its range changes. The main work speaks of a salt-spirit active everywhere, salts differentiated by source and condition, and a regenerated salt credited with exceptional powers. The companions also call a fixed crystalline body salt. Those uses overlap through arguments about concentration, separation and renewed activity.
A reader should therefore ask which salt is meant, where it is found and what has happened to it. Commonness does not guarantee equal availability or usefulness from every source. A modern formula assigned at the beginning would settle questions that the historical work is still trying to pose. Local processes and qualifications offer a firmer guide.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P031](#CNT-MAIN-P031): “It can be readily extracted, yet, when taken from every sort of thing, it is not powerful enough for every purpose, especially for the so-called masterpiece of the wise.”
Source forms: Saltz Naturæ, leichtlich heraus zu kriegen.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Central Salt](#LEX_CENTRAL_SALT), [Astral Salt](#LEX_ASTRAL_SALT).
### Regeneration
Regeneration is a new birth or renewal that depends upon a prior condition. The companion extracts connect seminal first matter with the capacity to give new birth to another material. The main work describes a natural salt whose renewed state can act in ways the unprepared matter cannot. The word therefore carries a claim about changed power as well as changed appearance.
The religious correspondences are explicit. Creation, incarnation and resurrection are seen through the work, while the reader is also urged to reform desire and conduct. Understanding that connection requires attention to the object of each sentence. Material regeneration can be presented as an image of a religious event without supplying independent proof of either the material result or a person’s spiritual state.
Passage [CNT-JJF-P014](#CNT-JJF-P014): “Sophic Mercury is a reborn, seminal first matter; therefore it gives new birth to everything with which it enters conjunction.”
Source forms: neugebohrne, materia prima spermatica, neue Geburth.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-JJF).
See also: [Seed](#LEX_SEED), [Salt](#LEX_SALT).
### Spirit
Spirit names an active or subtle term in several local relationships. The companion account makes air the spirit of water, while the testament gives a specific antimonial interpretation to the spirit of Saturn. The main work moves between divine breath, the world-spirit and powers received by the human being. These are related uses with different agents and settings.
The surrounding verbs help distinguish them. A spirit may nourish, move, be separated, become fixed, or unite inseparably with another material. Translate those relations before deciding that the word names one substance. The collection’s spiritual vocabulary also has a religious register; it need not be replaced wholesale by either modern gases or inward feelings.
Passage [CNT-JJF-P016](#CNT-JJF-P016): “Fire is the soul of air, and air is the spirit of water.”
Source forms: Geist, Seele.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-JJF).
See also: [Soul](#LEX_SOUL), [Water](#LEX_WATER).
### Soul
The testament’s final explanation gives soul a particular material role: it is the sulphur or red tincture within the scheme. The word belongs there to an interpreted relation among spirit, soul and earth or residue. Its meaning is determined through the verse and the explanation that follows, not only through an ordinary modern meaning of soul.
Elsewhere, the main work discusses the soul’s desire, nourishment and fall in a Christian account of the person. Reading those passages beside the testament reveals a shared vocabulary without proving that every use has the same referent. The most useful question is how soul acts with spirit and body in the actual passage.
Passage [CNT-TESTAMENT-P028](#CNT-TESTAMENT-P028): “The soul is the sulphur or red tincture, called a vapour or mist; it is indeed a vapour and smoke, but dry, as can be seen in common sulphur.”
Source forms: Seele, 🜍, Tinctura, Dunst, Nebel, vapor, fumus.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
See also: [Spirit](#LEX_SPIRIT), [Regeneration](#LEX_REGENERATION).
### Light
Light is an agent of disclosure and change in the main work. It illuminates a centre and its surroundings, gives the reader a way to understand nature, and belongs to the theological account of creation. The invitation to know oneself is framed through this movement from concealed powers to something seen or recognised.
The moral language is equally active. Humility and love are associated with an inward darkness becoming light, while proud or disordered movement can turn sweetness into sharpness. These are propositions within the speaker’s religious natural philosophy. Reading light as mere ornament would lose their explanatory role; treating every use as the same physical phenomenon would also flatten the text.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P049](#CNT-MAIN-P049): “Then the Lord will favour you and turn the darkness of your inward being into light.”
Source forms: Finsterniß des Gemüths zu Licht.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Centre](#LEX_CENTRE), [Knowledge](#LEX_KNOWLEDGE).
### Fire
The Philosophical Discourse distinguishes universal or philosophical fire from ordinary material fires. The distinction affects its claims about season, ripening and coagulation. Other passages describe common heat, a bodily movement, lightning or a religiously charged sharpness. The word’s recurrence gives continuity to the collection while leaving several different kinds of activity in play.
The practical question for reading is which fire the sentence excludes or requires. A claim that the artist does little may assign action to nature’s own fire rather than deny that a material process occurs. The edition retains these qualifications, so a general fire vocabulary is read within the particular argument and passage where it occurs.
Passage [CNT-JJF-P005](#CNT-JJF-P005): “This universal fire is natural, not a material fire from wood, coals, sulphur, oil, lime, dung, and the like.”
Source forms: Universal-Feuer, natürlich, materialisch.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-JJF).
See also: [Motion](#LEX_MOTION), [Water](#LEX_WATER).
### Water
Water can be received rain or dew, a state of matter, a solvent, a spiritual water, or the liquid term in a pattern of rebirth. The companion extracts call it the womb that gives new birth; the main work describes a water-fire whose contrary names express concentrated power. Those claims demand context rather than a single definition imposed across the volume.
Watch especially what has been separated, condensed or joined. A substance called water may be contrasted with superfluous elemental water, while a water of life is assigned an active role. Preserving these distinctions lets a reader follow the argument without supplying an unstated chemical identity or a missing manufacturing step.
Passage [CNT-JJF-P013](#CNT-JJF-P013): “Water is the first matter of all things, the womb which gives new birth to everything.”
Source forms: Wasser, prima materia, Mutterleib.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-JJF).
See also: [Spirit](#LEX_SPIRIT), [Regeneration](#LEX_REGENERATION).
### Motion
Motion helps explain how one common power becomes many different things. The main treatise connects differentiation with matrices and movements; it also assigns changes of condition to gentler or sharper forms of activity. Motion thus belongs to the account of matter’s variety, not only to a visible displacement from place to place.
The ethical prelude also makes a disordered inward movement consequential. The reader is asked to moderate it and redirect desire. Such parallels give the text its characteristic passage between nature and conduct. They should be read through specific causes and effects rather than converted into a claim that every bodily state is a moral judgement.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P024](#CNT-MAIN-P024): “Everything grows and sustains itself from one root; the many differences arise solely from different matrices and movements.”
Source forms: Matrix und Bewegung.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Centre](#LEX_CENTRE), [Circumference](#LEX_CIRCUMFERENCE).
### Seed
Seed names a source of further generation. The main work describes a love-seed or fourth arising through the union of three powers, while the companion extracts give seminal first matter the capacity to regenerate what joins it. The word can therefore designate a condition or relation of matter as well as a familiar biological object.
In each case ask what produces the seed and what can arise from it. The comparison between plant growth and metallic change is part of the historical argument. Its familiarity gives that argument force, but does not independently demonstrate the alleged metallic result. The source’s sequence of preparation and renewed power remains more informative than a general slogan of growth.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P020](#CNT-MAIN-P020): “In every plant seed, before anything grows from it, the white part first becomes a tenacious slime.”
Source forms: Vegetabilischen Saamen, zäher Schleim.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Regeneration](#LEX_REGENERATION), [Tessa](#LEX_TESSA).
### Microcosm
The microcosm is the little world of the human being, read as a place where the greater world’s powers meet. Breath is received from above; nourishment from below. Digestion makes the body a scene of visible multiplicity arising from common food, and that activity helps the main work argue for a wider continuity of nature.
The call to self-knowledge follows this material account. It asks a reader to recognise the powers and matter already present within the human being, while retaining a religious requirement of humility. Isolating the maxim from its bodily and cosmological setting would change what the book asks the reader to know.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P044](#CNT-MAIN-P044): “Once you know the little world well, nothing in the great world will afterwards remain unknown to you.”
Source forms: kleine Welt, Grossen.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Macrocosm](#LEX_MACROCOSM), [Knowledge](#LEX_KNOWLEDGE).
### Macrocosm
The macrocosm is the greater world in relation to the human little world. The Delle discourse joins salts and spirits from both in an argument about one root and a receptive matter. It uses a relationship between scales to explain how an apparently local subject may receive a wider power.
The analogy requires differences as well as likeness. A body’s digestion, a field’s growth and a spirit received from the air do not become the same observed event merely because they are compared. Reading macrocosm together with microcosm preserves the traffic between scales while allowing each local process its stated conditions.
Passage [CNT-DELLE-P007](#CNT-DELLE-P007): “He said that it was the salt of the macrocosm obtained through the salt of the microcosm, Bernard’s doubled Mercury, the highest and most fixed: two mercurial substances from one root, namely the world’s hyle.”
Source forms: macrocosmi, microcosmi, Hyle Mundi.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-DELLE).
See also: [Microcosm](#LEX_MICROCOSM), [Universal](#LEX_UNIVERSAL).
### Tessa
Tessa is the main speaker’s name for the matter or seed described within the human being. It appears after the account of upper and lower powers and the image of the human mine. Its importance lies in the way it gathers the preceding discussion into a named subject of inquiry.
The name should not be mistaken for a demonstrated identification. The source itself continues by distinguishing salts and preparing a further offspring, and later withholds the continuation to the finished work. Preserving Tessa as a historical term keeps that sequence visible. It does not license filling the word with a proposed modern bodily substance as though the identification were already settled.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P050](#CNT-MAIN-P050): “The world in which the wise find their highest and nearest matter for their masterpiece—the human being—is the mine in which lie the ore-bearing opening and ore: the best and worst, most precious and least worthy water, air, and earth together, yet none of them alone; rather, a son and seed born from these three purest body, spirit, and soul within the human being for its good and necessities, and called TESSA.”
Source forms: TESSA, lote Loch und Ertz.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Seed](#LEX_SEED), [Centre](#LEX_CENTRE).
### Astral Salt
The astral or upper salt belongs to a pair developed in the main work. It is described as volatile, sweet and silvery, and is related to the saline mercurial spirit. These predicates establish its place in an argument about differentiated powers arising within a common matter.
Its relation to the central salt gives the description force. One term cannot be understood simply by removing it from the other and translating astral as an unrestricted promise of celestial influence. Read the preparation and union of the pair, along with the source’s distinction between philosophers’ mercury and the completed regenerated salt.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P052](#CNT-MAIN-P052): “The astral or upper salt is very volatile, sweet, and shines like fine ☽.”
Source forms: Astralische oder obere Saltz, flüchtig.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Central Salt](#LEX_CENTRAL_SALT), [Salt](#LEX_SALT).
### Central Salt
The central salt is the main work’s companion to the astral salt. It is called a philosophical vitriol and credited with a power of coagulation. The text also describes an unattractive covering that must be removed before its beauty appears. The figure of concealed worth therefore joins an account of preparation.
The phrase does not decide a modern chemical composition. It locates a member of a pair, describes what the speaker says it can do, and places it within a process of purification and union. Keeping those roles distinct helps the reader compare the main work’s vitriol with the different account of vitriol in the testament.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P052](#CNT-MAIN-P052): “The central salt is a vitriol of wonderful and inexpressible power, able to coagulate ☿ and make it into fine ☽.”
Source forms: Centralische Saltz, Vitriol.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Astral Salt](#LEX_ASTRAL_SALT), [Vitriol](#LEX_VITRIOL).
### Putrefaction
Putrefaction is a change that opens an earlier condition to a further work. The testament explicitly applies it to gold becoming black in butter of antimony; the main work describes a related blackening in its account of a water-fire, and the Delle narrative invokes putrefaction as an essential philosophical process. The term therefore gathers material descriptions and a model of productive breakdown.
Its use does not make every decay regenerative. Ask what is said to open, what remains and which later condition is sought. The collection’s analogies may join natural growth and art, but the local subject determines the claim. This keeps a familiar image from becoming an explanation that can be applied to every passage without evidence.
Passage [CNT-TESTAMENT-P011](#CNT-TESTAMENT-P011): “In it the gold putrefies and becomes entirely black.”
Source forms: fault, gantz schwartz.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
See also: [Regeneration](#LEX_REGENERATION), [Art](#LEX_ART).
### Art
Art names skilled intervention and a kind of knowledge directed towards natural processes. The main work permits an investigator to improve or worsen particular things through understanding and labour. The companion extracts enlarge true art into a way of knowing a single truth through several kinds of witness.
The artist’s role can also be restrained. Some passages assign the decisive action to God and nature and ask the practitioner to attend, choose or prepare a setting. The relation between art and nature is therefore a question of agency. Reading it through what the artist actually does is more precise than treating art as either unrestricted mastery or wholly passive observation.
Passage [CNT-JJF-P019](#CNT-JJF-P019): “To work out the image of this one truth microcosmically, and its character macrocosmically, magically, Cabalistically, and philosophically, is the one true art for whose sake all human beings were created.”
Source forms: Kunst, ausarbeiten, microcosmice, macrocosmice.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-JJF).
See also: [Knowledge](#LEX_KNOWLEDGE), [Motion](#LEX_MOTION).
### Knowledge
Knowledge begins with what lies before the reader, according to the main work’s admonition. The ordinary transformation of nourishment is placed beside the desire for a rarer metallic wonder. This ordering rebukes an appetite for novelty that has not yet understood familiar things.
The famous invitation to know oneself belongs to that account. It follows a discussion of the human being as a centre receiving upper and lower powers. Knowledge also has an ethical test in the source: the claimant’s motive and conduct matter. A modern reader can study that test historically while separately asking what evidence supports each assertion of trial, cure or transmutation.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P010](#CNT-MAIN-P010): “Therefore, dear friends, first learn to understand what lies before your noses before you seek to examine and comprehend unfamiliar things lying in the earth.”
Source forms: verstehen, examiniren und begreiffen.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Microcosm](#LEX_MICROCOSM), [Charity](#LEX_CHARITY).
### Charity
Charity is a present obligation in the opening argument, not merely a future use promised for alchemical wealth. The comparison of a small gift with a rich person’s larger gift makes intention and available means decisive. It also removes a common excuse for neglecting the neighbour while pursuing the stone.
The testament develops the same duty through hidden assistance and responsible transmission. Its concern for a worthy heir joins secrecy to service. These passages help explain why moral address occupies so much space in a book about nature: the conduct of the seeker is part of the speaker’s account of legitimate inquiry.
Passage [CNT-MAIN-P014](#CNT-MAIN-P014): “For a drink of water and a small coin given to one’s neighbour out of true love, when greater means are lacking, please God as much as a whole cask of wine or a hundred thalers given by a rich person.”
Source forms: wahrer Liebe, dem Nechsten.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-MAIN).
See also: [Secrecy](#LEX_SECRECY), [Knowledge](#LEX_KNOWLEDGE).
### Secrecy
The testament regulates who may receive knowledge and how it should be used. Its speaker warns a son against display, urges quiet help for the poor, and allows transmission to a worthy person outside the family if no suitable son exists. Secrecy therefore serves a stated social and religious purpose within the literary address.
It also meets a limit: an entrusted talent should not be buried entirely with its possessor. The collection’s several positions on openness become clearer when read together. A claim to speak plainly may coexist with a withheld continuation, and a warning against indiscriminate disclosure may coexist with a duty to teach. The edition preserves those qualifications rather than forcing one uniform doctrine of concealment.
Passage [CNT-TESTAMENT-P004](#CNT-TESTAMENT-P004): “Bridle your tongue, and help your poor neighbour quietly and secretly, so that they do not learn from whom the help comes; then God, who sees in secret, will reward you openly.”
Source forms: halte deine Zunge im Zaum, in aller Stille und Verborgenheit.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
See also: [Charity](#LEX_CHARITY), [Knowledge](#LEX_KNOWLEDGE).
### Antimony
Antimony is the matter named by the testament’s sign and explanatory prose. It is connected there with a metallic vitriol, the sages’ lead and the bath of gold. Its diagrammatic character is also decomposed into lower and upper forms, making the printed sign part of the argument.
The text expressly distinguishes the sages’ lead from common lead. The reader should therefore follow each qualification before equating antimony with another named material. The edition preserves its source diagrams and records inconsistent signs where they occur. A historical identification made inside an emblem is evidence of that work’s reasoning, rather than an independently verified modern formulation.
Passage [CNT-TESTAMENT-P008](#CNT-TESTAMENT-P008): “Antimony is a mineral and a kind of vitriol, yet one with a metallic form and lustre.”
Source forms: ♁, Mineral, Vitrioli.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
See also: [Vitriol](#LEX_VITRIOL), [Soul](#LEX_SOUL).
### Vitriol
Vitriol links a material vocabulary with a way of reading the testament’s engraving. The circular inscription forms a VITRIOL acrostic, and the prose calls vitriol a proper name for the matter represented. In the main treatise, the term also qualifies the central salt in a paired account.
These uses give the word a family of local relationships. They do not justify assigning every occurrence the same modern compound. Begin with the predicates: metallic form, central position, preparation and attributed power. Then compare how each work explains the name. The source’s own interpretation of its emblem should precede a later reader’s additional associations.
Passage [CNT-TESTAMENT-P014](#CNT-TESTAMENT-P014): “The words in the circle name the matter, not by its common name, but by its proper name, vitriol.”
Source forms: Vitriol, Vitrioli, Worte im Circkel.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
See also: [Central Salt](#LEX_CENTRAL_SALT), [Antimony](#LEX_ANTIMONY).
### Universal
Universal can name a subject present throughout nature, a spirit shared by many things, or a work credited with broad effects. The Delle discourse connects its universal secret with a common root while still distinguishing subjects close at hand from those less readily obtained. Breadth of presence does not make every starting matter equally useful.
The companion texts also distinguish universal from particular medicine or tincture. Their claims have different scopes, and a narrated particular effect does not automatically establish a universal one. Following the adjective through these qualifications lets the reader understand the ambition of the work while keeping its asserted reach separate from the evidence offered for it.
Passage [CNT-DELLE-P005](#CNT-DELLE-P005): “This Universal Secret, or Spirit of the World, is in all things and is their life, as it is the life of the human being.”
Source forms: Secretum Universale, Spiritus Mundi.
Read in context: [the historical work](#CNT-DELLE).
See also: [Salt](#LEX_SALT), [Macrocosm](#LEX_MACROCOSM).
## Relations within the Collection
**The seven historical sections in the governing copy**
| Section | Printed location | Principal reading question |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Historical title | Unnumbered | Which authorship and translation claims does the book make? |
| Helbig preface | 1–4 | What has the prefatory speaker personally done or experienced? |
| Main treatise | 5–38 | How are moral calling, the human centre and regeneration connected? |
| Delle discourse | 39–48 | How does a remembered conversation establish a universal matter? |
| J. J. F. discourse | 49–67 | How do propositions, extracts and testimony differ in authority? |
| Potable-gold preparation | 68, opening | How does a brief practical item stand apart from the following work? |
| Father’s testament | 68–80 | How are inheritance, secrecy and an explained emblem joined? |
### What Acts and What Receives
The centre moves its circumference, the spirit nourishes a body, a seed brings forth a further state, and a receptacle receives a power. These recurring relations make the collection readable across different works. They do not require every speaker to identify the same starting material. Begin by finding the subject and verb before making an equation between names.
The main treatise’s movement between upper and lower becomes the Delle narrative’s receiving field and the companion judgement’s distinction of salt and spirit. The testament then explains another set of relations through an emblem. Compare what is received, what is separated and what is said to act after union.
### What Makes the Work Legitimate
Calling and charity qualify the main work’s permission to investigate. The testament adds a regulated succession and a duty to prevent knowledge from being buried unused. J. J. F.’s narrative shows a secret becoming the object of greed and violence. Read these as different ways the collection gives knowledge a moral setting.
The speakers’ religious criteria are historical propositions. The modern reader can understand their place in the argument while examining the claims of experience independently. Worthiness within a story does not function as external verification of a cure or transmutation.
### Where an Equation Needs Qualification
The main treatise explicitly warns that philosophers’ mercury is not itself the finished regenerated salt. The testament distinguishes the sages’ lead from common lead. Such qualifications should travel with every summary. A glossary entry or extracted sentence that drops them may give a cleaner equation while making the historical text less accurate.
Inconsistent printed signs also deserve notice. The reviewed notes retain readings that do not fit an expected doctrine rather than silently impose a uniform theory. The collection is most useful when its variations remain available for comparison.
## Guide to the Historical Figures
The four reproductions belong to the Father’s Last Testament: three small signs on printed page 74 and a large engraving on page 78. Their original positions are preserved beside the relevant passages. The guide begins with visible form and the testament’s own prose and verse; further associations are distinguished from those supplied by the source.
**Visible elements and the testament’s own explanations**
| Visible feature | Explanation in the testament |
| --- | --- |
| Central compound character | Related to both antimony and the sages’ mercury; decomposed in the three small signs |
| Sevenfold star and black ray | Antimony with seven metals concealed; the black ray linked with the sages’ lead |
| Celestial sphere and terrestrial globe | Heaven and earth within the matter |
| Lion and eagle | Redness and whiteness named in the explanation |
| Cup with Sun and Moon | Metals drawing the water of life from the matter |
| Hand from the clouds | An oath that this is the true matter, as the prose presents it |
| Black solar and Saturnine circles | A stated relation of gold, antimony and the sages’ lead within the art |
The inscription reads VISITA INTERIORA TERRAE RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTUM LAPIDEM: “Visit the inward parts of the earth; by rectifying, you will find the hidden stone.” Its seven initial letters form VITRIOL. This is the inscription actually visible here; an extended formula ending in further words is not silently substituted.
The small signs matter because the prose argues from their structure. The combined character is shown first; its lower antimony sign and upper mercury sign follow separately. The exact source crops preserve the doubled outlines and forms that a generic Unicode character approximates. Their reproduction does not require a newly invented symbolic system.
The closing verse introduces Neptune, Venus, the serpent, Mars and Bacchus. The following explanation identifies them locally with salt, vitriol, mercury, a martial analogy and tartar or its residue. Read that explanation before consulting a general symbol dictionary. Compare the poem with its own prose explanation and the earlier passage, allowing material and symbolic meanings to coexist without assuming that each quantity has a demonstrated symbolic decoding.
For the historical explanations, read [the testament](#CNT-TESTAMENT). For the interpretive method, see [Reading an Emblem through Its Own Explanation](#ESSAY_SIGNS).
## Supplied Note on the Signs
The following note accompanied the supplied English translation. Its readings and reservations are reproduced as supplied and remain distinct from the historical author’s words. The local annotations identify tentative sign readings; this commentary does not establish modern chemical identities.
The printer uses alchemical characters with Latin case endings attached, and I have rendered them as words. The triangle is fire, the sun-sign is gold, and Mars and Venus are iron and copper. The triangle on a cross is sulphur. Its endings (-is, -e) require Sulphuris and Sulphure, so I have read it that way in the augmentation passage as well as in the recipe. The regulus itself is spelled out in the text.
The circle with a bar is nitre (Nitri). The square on a cross, with the ending -i, I take as tartar (Tartari). The dagger-like sign on p. 77 is the crucible, which fits the masculine der Tiegel. The barred sign before -irten, -to and -tus abbreviates “sublim-”. That gives “sublimed sulphur” and Mercurius sublimatus, the sublimate of mercury.
One reading needs checking against the original. In the butter-of-antimony paragraph, the sign looks like the same nitre sign used in the recipe. However, sublimate is usually made with common salt and vitriol. The sign for salt differs only in having a horizontal bar instead of a vertical one, so at this type size it is worth a closer look.
Pharmar. in the reference is probably a misprint or misreading for Pharmac.
## A Note on the English Printing of 1696
The London printing for J. Harris is a later English witness to the main treatise. Its title states that Low Dutch publication preceded it in 1694. The comparison here establishes its structure and selected textual boundaries; it is not a claim to an exhaustive collation of every English sentence. Its English wording has not served as the reading text of this new translation.
**Selected verified differences between the German and English books**
| Feature | German 1682 | English 1696 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Title judgement | Commonly and properly called the Philosophers’ Stone | For the most part improperly called the Philosopher’s Stone |
| Introductions | Helbig’s preface dated 12 September 1682 | Addresses signed E. Brice and H. C. K.; preface of the Belgic interpreter |
| Main work | Printed pages 5–38 | Printed pages 29–90 |
| Companions | Delle, J. J. F., short preparation and testament follow | Publisher advertisements follow the main work |
| Closing | Final thanksgiving ends Amen | Additional eight-line devotional verse after Amen |
The English translator’s address occupies printed pages 3–7 and is signed E. Brice. The address at 9–26 is signed H. C. K.; the Preface of the Belgic Interpreter follows at 27–28. The main work begins at 29, ends at 90, and is followed by advertisements at 91–94. These introductions cannot simply be treated as a translation of Helbig’s four-page preface.
The proper/improper difference changes a judgement, not merely spelling. The fresh translation therefore preserves German eigendlich as “properly” and reports the later English title separately. The additional closing verse likewise belongs to the later book’s reception. It has not been inserted under the name of the German speaker.
The different scope is especially important for this edition. The Delle narrative, J. J. F. discourse, short preparation and testament are available in the linked German collection. Their absence from the 1696 book is not evidence that they are missing from the German source. It is a difference between two historical book arrangements. See [the 1696 facsimile](#BIB_ENGLISH) and [the bibliographic transcription](#BIB_NEWTON).
## Reading Routes
### A First Reading
Read the [introduction](#INTRODUCTION), [Helbig preface](#CNT-PREF) and [main treatise](#CNT-MAIN) in order. Mark each change from admonition to prayer, from cosmology to the body, and from disclosure to withholding. Then read the glossary terms that recur in those transitions.
### Matter and the Work of Nature
Follow [Salt](#LEX_SALT), [Seed](#LEX_SEED), [Regeneration](#LEX_REGENERATION) and [Motion](#LEX_MOTION) through the main text and both discourses. Compare the conditions under which art acts, nature acts and a receptacle receives. Use [the relations](#RELATIONS) to keep those questions distinct.
### Experience and Transmission
Compare Helbig’s qualified testimony, the visitor narrative in [the Universal discourse](#CNT-DELLE), the Siebenfreund story in [J. J. F.](#CNT-JJF), and the inheritance rules in [the testament](#CNT-TESTAMENT). Ask what each speaker claims to have seen, heard, made or read.
### The Emblem and Its Explanation
Read the testament’s moral address before its technical section. Then follow its three small signs, engraving, final verse and explanation. Keep the [figure guide](#FIGURE_GUIDE) beside the source. Only after that first reading compare the main work’s different uses of salt, mercury and centre.
## Discussion Guide
1. How does the opening account of neglected duties change the meaning of the later permission to investigate nature?
2. Which verbs make the centre an agent, and how does its activity differ from that of its circumference?
3. Where does the argument move from ordinary nourishment to a claim about the common foundation of the three kingdoms? What additional evidence is asserted?
4. How does Helbig distinguish his own work from a final result encountered through a friend? What does his concluding assurance add?
5. What does the main work disclose about its matter, and what does it expressly withhold about continuing to the finished work?
6. How does the Delle narrative use a walk, a conversation and the departure of a visitor to frame knowledge?
7. Where do headings inside J. J. F. signal a new extract, dated judgement or narrative voice?
8. How does the testament reconcile secrecy with charity and with the duty not to bury an entrusted talent?
9. Which parts of the engraving are explained by the source itself? Which interpretations would require additional evidence?
10. How do the 1696 English title and introductions change the reader’s approach, and why should those differences remain separate from the 1682 reading text?
## Selected Annotated Bibliography
The German witness governs the reading text. The English facsimile supports a limited reception comparison. Modern research informs attribution, while a later epistle collection is identified through its catalogue only. These different kinds of consultation are stated in the entries.
### The Governing German Collection
Attributed to Ali Puli, Centrum Naturae Concentratum, oder Ein Tractat von dem Wiedergebohrnen Saltz. [S.l.]; Leipzig: Martini, 1682, as catalogued. Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050. Governing copy for the title, preface, main work and all companion material. The catalogue’s transmission and attribution statements are historical metadata, not independent verification of the claimed Arabic exemplar. https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/titleinfo/4524850
### The Digital Page Sequence
Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, IIIF presentation manifest for record 4524850. Used to identify actual source canvases and image references, including the unnumbered title and numbered pages 1–80. Covers and blanks are distinguished from the reading text. https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/i3f/v20/4524850/manifest
### The Historical English Comparison
Alipili, Centrum Naturae Concentratum; or, The Salt of Nature Regenerated. London: printed for J. Harris, 1696. Public Internet Archive facsimile. The address is signed E. Brice; separate material is signed H. C. K. Structure and selected differences checked in the images; no claim to complete line-by-line collation. https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_centrum-naturae-concentr_alipili_1696
### The English Title in a Scholarly Bibliography
The Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project, Indiana University, Bibliography, entry for Alipili, Centrum Naturae Concentratum, 1696. Provides a title-page transcription and link to a digitised copy; useful for checking imprint and the title’s stated Low Dutch 1694 transmission. https://newton.dlib.indiana.edu/bibliography
### Research on Hellwig and the Attributed Author
Vera Keller, “The Centre of Nature: Baron Johann Otto von Hellwig between a Global Network and a Universal Republic, ” Early Science and Medicine 17 (2012), 570–588, especially 579. Used for the cautious attribution statement and historical context, not as a substitute for the German copytext. Author-hosted article consulted. https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/3/3809/files/2013/08/ESM_017_05_570-588_Keller_off-13la9wu.pdf
### A Later Collection of Epistles
Warburg Institute, Innes collection catalogue, entry for J. W. Hamilton-Jones’s English The Epistles of Ali Puli, London: John M. Watkins, 1951, p 17. The catalogue identifies Centrum as the third epistle. Catalogue consulted for scope; the later translation has not been used as the source of this edition. https://resources.warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/Innes_Catalogue.pdf
### The Library Rights Statement
Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe identifies the 1682 digitisation with Public Domain Mark 1.0 and requests acknowledgement of the library. The historical source and exact figure crops are credited accordingly. https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/titleinfo/4524850 Meaning of the mark: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
## Source and Editorial Credits
Governing source: Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 87 B 76050, Centrum Naturae Concentratum, 1682, record 4524850. The library’s digitisation and catalogue are acknowledged for the source text and the four exact figure crops. The historical source is marked Public Domain Mark 1.0. https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/Drucke/content/titleinfo/4524850
The readable German transcription, English translation and modern supporting apparatus were prepared with AI assistance for Diotimos Editions in 2026. English for Testament P019–P021 follows a supplied translation; the accompanying note on signs is reproduced separately as supplied commentary. The edition uses newly set text and faithful cropped historical figures. Modern annotations and interpretations remain distinguishable from the historical voices.
All seven historical sections and all 81 source locations are accounted for, and all 145 historical units have German and English text. No editorial text omissions remain. The ordinary calcination on page 75, its following reference and the later passage on pages 76–77 are included. Running heads, catchwords, signatures, ornaments and later reader additions remain outside the historical reading text under the stated transcription policy.
The 1696 English printing supplied structural and selected reception comparisons. Its additional addresses and final verse have not been silently incorporated into the German text. Historical citations without a verified exact edition remain identified as such in the annotations.
## Subject Index
Links lead to whole works or supporting discussions. The historical reading text supplies stable passage identifiers for closer comparison across formats.
### Air
[breath and the greater world](#CNT-MAIN).
### Alchemy
[calling and ordinary duties](#ESSAY_CHARITY).
### Antimony
[the testament’s material and sign](#LEX_ANTIMONY).
### Arabic transmission
[historical title-page claim](#INTRO_ATTRIBUTION).
### Art
[agency and intervention](#LEX_ART).
### Astral salt
[upper salt in the main work](#LEX_ASTRAL_SALT).
### Bacchus
[tartar and residue in the verse](#FIGURE_GUIDE).
### Body
[the little world](#CNT-MAIN).
### Books
[learning and competing voices](#ESSAY_AUTHORITY).
### Calling
[qualifications of the seeker](#ESSAY_CHARITY).
### Central salt
[philosophical vitriol](#LEX_CENTRAL_SALT).
### Centre
[agency and dependence](#LEX_CENTRE).
### Charity
[present gifts and neighbourly duty](#LEX_CHARITY).
### Circumference
[the surrounding field](#LEX_CIRCUMFERENCE).
### Coagulation
[natural conditions and fixation](#CNT-JJF).
### Creation
[cosmogony and threefold division](#CNT-MAIN).
### Delle Martin
[visitor and remembered instruction](#CNT-DELLE).
### Dew
[heavenly nourishment](#CNT-DELLE).
### Digestion
[one food and many materials](#ESSAY_KINGDOMS).
### Elements
[relations and inconsistent printed signs](#CNT-JJF).
### English printing
[1696 scope and selected differences](#COMPARISON).
### Experience
[seeing hearing and making](#ESSAY_AUTHORITY).
### Figures
[source forms and explanations](#FIGURE_GUIDE).
### Fire
[material and philosophical activities](#LEX_FIRE).
### Fixation
[a stable condition](#CNT-JJF).
### Gold
[the separate historical preparation](#CNT-POTABILE).
### Helbig
[preface and qualified testimony](#CNT-PREF).
### Hellwig
[modern attribution context](#INTRO_ATTRIBUTION).
### Hyle
[the common root](#CNT-DELLE).
### Imagination
[fall and centre–circumference agency](#CNT-MAIN).
### J J F
[compiled discourse and extracts](#CNT-JJF).
### Knowledge
[ordinary things and self-knowledge](#LEX_KNOWLEDGE).
### Lead
[common and philosophical lead](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
### Light
[disclosure and activity](#LEX_LIGHT).
### Macrocosm
[the greater world](#LEX_MACROCOSM).
### Medicine
[historical claims and testimony](#CNT-JJF).
### Mercury
[diagrammatic decomposition](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
### Microcosm
[the little world](#LEX_MICROCOSM).
### Motion
[differentiation and desire](#LEX_MOTION).
### Nature
[what acts and what receives](#REL_AGENCY).
### Neptune
[local salt correspondence](#FIGURE_GUIDE).
### Powder and quantities
[historical scope and interpretation](#TEXT_LIMITS); [supplied note on signs](#SIGN_READING_NOTE).
### Putrefaction
[opening and change](#LEX_PUTREFACTION).
### Regeneration
[renewed condition and power](#LEX_REGENERATION).
### Salt
[variable historical uses](#LEX_SALT).
### Secrecy
[transmission and its limits](#LEX_SECRECY).
### Seed
[generative matter](#LEX_SEED).
### Siebenfreund Sebastian
[narrative and allegations](#CNT-JJF).
### Soul
[local material and religious uses](#LEX_SOUL).
### Spirit
[breath and subtle agency](#LEX_SPIRIT).
### Sulphur
[tincture and colour](#CNT-TESTAMENT).
### Tessa
[the main work’s named matter](#LEX_TESSA).
### Universal
[presence and scope](#LEX_UNIVERSAL).
### Vitriol
[names and the acrostic](#LEX_VITRIOL).
### Water
[states solvents and rebirth](#LEX_WATER).
## Annotations
[^n1]: The historical title is reproduced as a claim made by the 1682 printing. The main work is credited in this edition to “Attributed to Ali Puli”; neither this authorial identity nor the Arabic and Portuguese stages are thereby authenticated. The historical designation “Moor” belongs to the title’s persona and is not a verified modern biographical description. Helbig is a name-form of Johann Otto von Hellwig.
[^n2]: The conversion narrative and the chain of translations are assertions of the prefatory speaker. Modern attribution research questions the work’s purported foreign origin. “Mahometisch” is retained in translation as historical religious language; the present edition does not adopt its implied account as established biography.
[^n3]: The preface openly distances its speaker from the ensuing account of creation while explaining why that account has been retained. This difference between voices is part of the historical text and should not be smoothed into a single doctrinal position.
[^n4]: The phrase “habe ich seine vermeynte Meynung” is elliptical. The translation supplies “grasped” to make its sense readable; no corresponding German verb is silently inserted in the source text. The speaker distinguishes his own work from a result experienced through a friend.
[^n5]: The print gives “6000. Rthlr.” followed by the lead sign, not an explicit statement of 6,000 parts by weight. Rthlr. abbreviates Reichsthaler. Its precise quantitative force here is left unresolved; no modern mass or concentration is inferred. The lead and gold signs are preserved in the facing source. This is a historical claim of transmutation, not an independently verified result.
[^n6]: The pronoun refers back to the centre or universal spirit. The pair “great and little world” organises the analogy between the wider cosmos and the human being. The undefined materials are not replaced with a proposed modern chemical substance.
[^n7]: This final assurance must be read with the preceding admission that the speaker has not himself achieved the final result. The date belongs to this preface; it does not independently date a supposed Arabic exemplar.
[^n8]: The opening connects the pursuit of alchemy with vocation and the biblical language of 1 Timothy 6:6–10. “Talent” means both an entrusted gift and, through the parable of the talents, a responsibility; it does not establish an actual priestly institution of nature.
[^n9]: The sign ☉ denotes the Sun and, in the metallic register, gold. The promises of free government, ministry, law, and medicine are reported as the unsuccessful seekers’ self-justifications.
[^n10]: Teppiche literally means carpets or coverings. In the account of Paul’s manual labour it refers to the traditional understanding of his work as a tentmaker; compare Acts 18:3.
[^n11]: The “soft, lovely whisper” echoes the gentle sound in Elijah’s encounter with God, 1 Kings 19:12. Centre and circumference here describe inward ethical and devotional movement before becoming terms in the text’s natural philosophy.
[^n12]: The metal signs are regularised as ♄ lead, ♃ tin, ♀ copper, ☽ silver, ♂ iron, ☿ mercury, and ☉ gold. The author’s comparison is between metallic transmutation and the far more differentiated transformations of digestion and generation. ⊖ represents the printed salt sign, not gold or the Sun. “Haven” is rendered as suet from its pairing with fat; the old spelling is retained in the facing German. The penultimate metal glyph on printed p. 10 is an ambiguous h-like shape; ♂ is a contextual normalisation within the six-metal sequence, not an exact reproduction of that shape. The clear Mars sign on p. 12 is separately preserved.
[^n13]: “Unsalt” preserves the author’s deliberate reversal of salt into its corrupted opposite; it is joined to the Latin corrosio. The bodily and chemical language carries an ethical argument, with a possible echo of the divine rejection in Revelation 3:16.
[^n14]: The printed ♀ sign is retained, even though a modern reader might expect a different metal to bear the fiery qualities. The sequence is a moral analogy, not a chemical identification of the soul. “Tincture” retains the alchemical sense of imparting a transforming quality.
[^n15]: The author combines Psalm 127:2 and Matthew 6:33 in his own wording. “As if in a dream” translates the printed formulation rather than substituting the wording of an English Bible.
[^n16]: The prayer draws extensively on Wisdom 9, adapting its appeal for wisdom to the natural philosopher’s vocation. Its explicitly Christian ending belongs to the German text and must not be treated as proof of an Arabic original.
[^n17]: The following is the text’s speculative sacred cosmogony. “Burning cold” and the conversion of light into darkness are retained as deliberate features of its account, not corrected into modern physical explanations.
[^n18]: The source prints “der HErr” (“the lord”) at the transformation into earthly water. This difficult expression is retained rather than silently replaced by “air” or “heaven.” The correspondences are body–earth–fixed, spirit–water–flowing, and soul–air–volatile; they should not be replaced by the more familiar sulphur–mercury–salt triad.
[^n19]: The first sentence is internally defective: the printing has no negative before “Animale” but does have “nicht” before “ein viscosum.” The surrounding argument plainly requires that propagation depend on a viscous seed. The translation retains the printed contradiction rather than silently supplying “No animal…” or removing “not.” “Opened at its root” renders radicaliter aufgeschlossen, a dissolution of a thing’s underlying constitution.
[^n20]: This paragraph constructs its salt-spirit through a chain of scriptural allusions, including “salt is good” (Mark 9:50), the questions of Proverbs 30:4, and the language of Psalms 135:6–7 and 104:24. The identification of these passages with one natural intermediary is the author’s interpretation, not their literal subject throughout.
[^n21]: The German repeats “die” before “Zerschneidung”; the translation reads the construction once. The sequence presents the alchemical work as a mirror of Christian sacred history, including incarnation, passion, resurrection, and judgement. Its promises of health and wealth remain historical claims of the author.
[^n22]: The distinction limits the preceding assertion of one common power: the universal spirit sustains established creations; it is not here said to originate wholly new kinds at will.
[^n23]: △ represents the printed fire sign. The opposition between essential unity and accidental difference uses philosophical terminology: “accidental” means a difference in attributes rather than in fundamental substance. The passage records the author’s medicinal theory and asserted results.
[^n24]: The special signs are retained in standard Unicode forms: 🜅 aqua fortis, 🝕 urine, and 🜹 sal ammoniac. “Crayfish eyes” are the calcareous gastroliths traditionally used in medicine, not the animal’s organs of sight. The claimed weight increase and permanent golden colour are the author’s examples; neither establishes actual transmutation.
[^n25]: 🝆 represents the oil sign, printed as three small circles; 🜍 represents sulphur. “Talc” is the historical material name, whose early modern range need not coincide precisely with the modern mineral. “Parted silver” means silver separated from gold. The sequence supplies examples for the author’s argument that substances cross the three kingdoms.
[^n26]: The German repeats part of the clause beginning “in denenselben”; the translation gives the sense once. The compressed sentence “die Animalia Stercus und Urin auch Vegetabilien essen” is understood in context as animal excrement feeding plants, continuing the argument for circulation between kingdoms. The report of gold among a skull’s teeth is transmitted as a claim, not verified here.
[^n27]: Saturn ordinarily names lead in alchemical usage, but the source lists both Saturnus and plumbum; both are retained. No undisclosed recipe or verified experimental result can be reconstructed from the assertion alone.
[^n28]: The printed phrase leichtlich heraus zu kriegen is positive: “readily obtained.” It is retained even though p. 21 had qualified the ease of obtaining the salt everywhere. The following clause restricts the fitness and power of salt taken from different sources, particularly for the philosophers’ masterpiece.
[^n29]: The Latin adapts Virgil’s Aeneid 6.129, where the order is hoc opus, hic labor est. The elemental signs here are water (▽), earth (🜃), and fire: the printing writes the fire sign followed by “er,” a sign-and-letter spelling of Feuer. The apparently unusual set is retained; air is not silently substituted.
[^n30]: The source’s description of Hebrew chajim as a dual serves its two-lives interpretation. Hebrew ḥayyim is grammatically a plural-form noun meaning “life”; its form does not establish the proposed twofold physiology or theology. “Properties” renders Eigenschafften, the powers or qualities gathered in the human centre.
[^n31]: “Ate away their blessedness and died to heaven” interprets the compressed “selig gegessen und himmlisch gestorben” through the immediately following account of the soul’s suffocation. The passage describes the loss of heavenly life, not an exemplary or blessed death.
[^n32]: “Imagination” is an effective formative power in this account, operating between a centre and its encompassing properties. It should not be reduced to the modern meaning of private fantasy, nor read as a demonstrated capacity to command matter.
[^n33]: The “great world” and “little world” are macrocosm and microcosm. The latter here is the human being, whose digestion the author treats as a separation of nourishing salt from rejected residues.
[^n34]: This is the text’s historical claim for an Egyptian natural-philosophical origin of “Know yourself.” The Greek maxim is traditionally associated with Delphi. The author’s genealogy and dismissal of moral readings are not independently established by the passage.
[^n35]: The first-person claim to have seen twenty-eight books of Hermes is preserved as testimony asserted by the narrator. It does not identify an extant corpus or establish a securely recoverable historical journey. “The other world” is left open rather than supplied with a modern location.
[^n36]: The rejected cornerstone adapts Psalm 118:22 and its Christian reception. “Masters of Israel” also carries biblical language; here it is included in the narrator’s criticism of learned interpreters.
[^n37]: The unusual “lote Loch” is rendered “ore-bearing opening” from its mining context; it is not assigned a definite anatomical location. TESSA is retained as the text’s name for its matter, without an unsupported expansion of the word or a forced modern chemical identity.
[^n38]: The German combines signs and Latin endings: ☿ium stands for Mercurium and ♀em for Venerem. The English expands these grammatical forms while preserving the standalone ☿ whose parts the author explains. “Philosophical Venus” names a function in this alchemical account, not an unqualified assertion that ordinary copper is intended.
[^n39]: The printing has the abbreviated or defective “heß” before Kleide; the English renders the contextual sense, “ugly.” The text distinguishes volatile astral salt from central vitriol while relating them through generation; these names do not by themselves identify laboratory substances.
[^n40]: The source explicitly distinguishes philosophers’ mercury from the finished regenerated salt or philosophers’ stone. Its earlier revelation of the matter therefore does not amount to a complete operational account of the final work.
[^n41]: The heckle is the toothed implement used to comb flax; being dragged through it is an image of hostile criticism. The “philosophers’ curse” refers to the traditional prohibition or denunciation of revealing the art, which the narrator disclaims because he claims knowledge from God rather than books.
[^n42]: The closing thanksgiving adapts Daniel 2:21–23. The author’s claim that his writing is “sun-clear” belongs to its rhetoric of disclosure, even though substantial operational matters remain withheld.
[^n43]: Primum ens means “first being” or “first essence.” The Latin and German are combined in the source heading; “Theophrastus” refers to Paracelsus. The formulation here belongs to the transmitted discourse.
[^n44]: The narrator’s date is 1589, as printed on p. 39. The first-person host and the visitor Martin de Delle are distinct figures within the story. The figure “23.” is retained as twenty-three; the source does not supply a noun after it.
[^n45]: The church-and-chapel remark is the narrator’s sardonic aside about the interruption. “Matins” retains his figurative expression for missing the crucial morning encounter; it does not establish a monastic setting.
[^n46]: “The philosophers’ Nothing” is an alchemical expression within the narrative, not a declaration that the matter is literally nonexistent. The names Josaphat and Archelaus are retained without assigning unverified works to them. “It has filled the whole circuit of the earth” recalls Wisdom 1:7.
[^n47]: This passage combines the Emerald Tablet’s parentage of Sun and Moon with Isaiah 45:8, the Gospel sayings at Matthew 4:4 and 5:13, and an alchemical adaptation of 1 Corinthians 15:42. “Volatile” and “fixed” are the speaker’s additions to the Pauline contrast, not words of the biblical verse. The source explicitly names Dorn but gives no work or page. The salt, water, and fire signs are translated in context; no modern chemical identity is implied.
[^n48]: The closely set incertis can be read as “uncertain,” or segmented as in certis, “within certain.” This translation follows the unseparated reading; the alternative would give “confined within certain limits of nature.” Its Mercury-and-wood phrase adapts the proverb about not carving a Mercury from every kind of wood. “Particular works” contrasts limited preparations or effects with the universal work claimed by the discourse.
[^n49]: The source’s macaronic syntax repeats “Mercury of the microcosm” and then shifts between two and three principles; the translation preserves that structure rather than silently constructing a consistent formula. “Bernard” is not securely identified by the text itself. Hyle is primordial matter; “golden seed” translates the source’s Saamen Auri without making it ordinary metallic gold.
[^n50]: The enigmatic verse is retained as verse, without turning it into an operational recipe. A sign on p. 44 encloses three dots in a rounded triangular or three-lobed outline; its identity is uncertain and it is described rather than assigned a speculative substance. The sulphur sign occurs on either side of the Sun/Moon alternatives. “Bury” renders Grab; the compressed line remains obscure.
[^n51]: The named books and authorities belong to the story’s claim of concordance. They do not establish that the visitor or narrator actually consulted particular identifiable editions. “Vitri” is the printed place-name; no modern identification is imposed.
[^n52]: The Latin closing description is grammatically uneven, particularly its shifts of tense and subject; these are preserved rather than silently repaired. The source juxtaposes thunderstorm water with May dew, without resolving whether they are alternatives. “Fusible” renders flüssig in the comparison with wax; it does not mean that a solid salt is already a liquid.
[^n53]: The source itself glosses Sun and Moon as gold and silver here. “Peacock’s tail” denotes the claimed display of many colours during the work. Federweiß, literally “feather-white,” is a historical material-name often used for fibrous mineral matter; its exact substance is not specified in this passage.
[^n54]: Telesm is retained as a technical name for the universal power or perfected work, recalling the Emerald Tablet’s telesma. The floral ornament below this sentence is printing decoration; the catchword anticipates the next discourse.
[^n55]: The initials J. J. F. are printed beneath the discourse’s heading and are not expanded here into an unverified author’s name. The “ice-cold fire” is an intentional paradox in the source. Nicodemus recalls the discussion of being born again in John 3. Nebelius is named without a bibliographic reference.
[^n56]: “Anatomy” here means analysis or opening-up of matter, rather than solely bodily dissection. The passage names body, spirit, and soul as the three principles; the translation does not replace them with a presumed chemical formula. “Universal” translates Catholicus elsewhere in this discourse as well; it is not a denominational label.
[^n57]: The reported weights are retained without balancing them: 1½ + 4 + 4 is 9½ rather than the stated initial ten pounds. The author also calls a longer Latin expression “three words”; the numerical description is not silently corrected. The claims of medical power and the polemic against Galenic medicine are the historical writer’s, not verified therapeutic findings.
[^n58]: The source’s antimony sign is a circle with a cross above it, represented here by ♁. The compressed clause beginning hi Liquor is construed as “this liquor … corrects antimony and becomes its equal”; its syntax is uneven. The text itself contrasts treatment of plants without material fire with the use of elemental fire for dry mineral and metallic bodies. Its claims about deer’s blood and human materials are preserved as historical claims, not endorsed remedies.
[^n59]: The fuel-list’s S-over-chevron sign is rendered by the corresponding sulphur sign. “Spirit of wine” and “essence of wine” are the text’s related but not automatically interchangeable terms. The assurance that a glass can be taken “without harm” is the author’s claim; the passage establishes neither composition nor safety. The final clause “und das △ Universale Philosophorum” is elliptical; the English supplies “[is]” rather than making the universal fire another unprinted dative object of “related.”
[^n60]: The source’s list after “very red powder” is syntactically incomplete; the translation retains the listed liquids without inventing a missing procedure. The three-circle oil sign is represented by 🝆. Cancer and Capricorn supply the seasonal correspondence stated by the text; no modern date conversion is imposed.
[^n61]: “School-right” renders Schul-Recht, the writer’s claim to standing in the art. The cross-shaped sign following Eisen indicates crosswise binding. The water sign before Leim is read as water with clay or adhesive lute; the source does not give a composition for the sealing material. “Heterogeneous” means of a different nature from the matter, not chemically impure in a modern analytical sense.
[^n62]: Ejusdem means “by the same”; the heading supplies the date May 1631 and an unnamed recipient, “me.” It does not independently identify J. J. F. or date every part of the surrounding compilation.
[^n63]: “Exaltation of Leo” is the source’s wording. It is retained without imposing an astronomical correction or supplying a calendar date. The description of lightning as Mercury belongs to the discourse’s cosmology; Mercury here is not simply the modern element mercury.
[^n64]: “Foam of Mars” is left as the historical name used here; Mars may denote iron, but the phrase alone does not establish a modern chemical composition. Archaeus is retained as the text’s term for an originating or governing natural principle. The advice in minus quære & majores cole is compressed and could also suggest restraint in inquiry and respect for one’s elders. The final warning is part of the original judgement.
[^n65]: The heading expressly introduces extracts from another, anonymous work. The text that follows should not automatically be treated as original prose by the person whose initials head the discourse. Handwritten reader’s numbers and notes in the digitised copy are not part of the printed text.
[^n66]: Sophic means pertaining to wisdom or the philosophers’ art. “Seminal” translates spermatica, the discourse’s analogy of a generative seed; it is not a claim that the material is literally animal semen. “Radical” means at the root or essential level.
[^n67]: The source prints the unusual phrase in Schreck, rendered “in a shock,” and repeats Leben, “life.” Its division into “two spiritual and corporeal elements” is compressed; four qualities have just been named, but the translation does not insert an unprinted second “two.” The first sentence is grammatically irregular and is construed as requiring enclosure at the centre. The sign in “Die 🜁 gibt allen Dingen…” is the upright barred triangle of air in this printing, even though its description as coagulated water may suggest earth. That apparent inconsistency is retained; the later barred inverted triangle is correctly rendered as earth.
[^n68]: There is a blank in the printed line after adscendendo, where the syntax calls for something into which the elements are transformed. The digitised copy has a reader’s red manuscript addition nearby; this edition marks the printed gap rather than silently incorporating that later annotation. Ritter-Rock, “knight’s coat,” is the source’s martial metaphor for achievement.
[^n69]: H. is expanded as “holy” in this theological context. The triad of spirit, blood, and water recalls the witnesses in 1 John 5:8, as received in early modern Christian interpretation. The printed text does not here supply a biblical citation.
[^n70]: The place-name and the statement of thirty-six years away are retained as transmitted. The narrative that follows is fragmentary and not independently verified biography.
[^n71]: The opening is a sequence of fragments in the source: it does not clearly connect “Eibingen, three miles from” to a completed place-name or establish whose learning and residence are meant. The ellipsis marks this syntactic break rather than omitted recoverable prose. The subsequent switches between “I” and “he” are retained. Eydes-Bruder means a sworn brother, not necessarily a blood relative.
[^n72]: This is a reported cure story involving an unidentified tincture, not evidence of its composition or medical efficacy. A römer is a type of wineglass. Civet, musk, and ambergris are comparisons for the fragrance, not ingredients stated to have been added.
[^n73]: The source’s sign before the Latin ending -o is read as the historical tartar sign, here represented by 🜿. In early modern medicine “tartar” could name a supposed pathological deposit; it need not mean the modern culinary substance. The narrative’s claim that the sheets were stiffened by it remains a reported observation, not a diagnosis.
[^n74]: The source says “two” students but then adds a man from Zwickau; that inconsistency is retained. Friburg is not further identified here. The awkward obstant, instant is construed as the student’s insistence. The alleged conversion of tin to gold is part of the narrative’s testimony, not independently established transmutation.
[^n75]: The printed Latin tiam is defective and is construed as viam, “route.” The abbreviation d. Maj. is taken as a reference to Dr Maj., named just before it; the source supplies no day or month numeral. The names are retained in their transmitted forms without identifying every person with a documented historical figure.
[^n76]: The murder account, its chronology, and the discovery of the body are allegations within the transmitted story. The Latin construction beginning Post dies 4. rediens is uneven; “I learned” supplies its implicit narrative connection. In 24o. identifies the small book format, not a claim that it contained twenty-four pages.
[^n77]: These punitive endings belong to the moral structure of the story. Its named-person allegations, execution claim, official titles, and apparent inconsistency between individual deaths and “the other two” are not independently authenticated here. “Sodomitical sin” records the historical accusation rather than adopting it as an editorial judgement. Tinging denotes the claimed action of a tincture on metals.
[^n78]: The closing list is syntactically compressed. One sign consists of two diagonally joined circles and differs from the three-circle oil sign printed on p. 55; another consists of a circle with an internal upright and a rightward cross-stroke. Both are described rather than assigned a speculative substance. The printed Qv Es is abbreviated and is retained instead of silently expanding it to “quintessence.” The phrase “live and move” recalls Acts 17:28. The passage returns to its field-and-seed analogy, without supplying a new independent operation.
[^n79]: This short preparation precedes the testament on the same printed page. It is preserved as a distinct item; no author is named here. “Potable gold” is a historical medicinal designation, not an assurance that the resulting material is safe to ingest.
[^n80]: The source uses signs for sulphur, salt and gold. The small butter mark followed by the antimony sign and a Latin ending is represented as [Butyrum-Zeichen] ♁ii; its reading as butter of antimony is confirmed by the testament’s explanation on page 74. The spirit-of-wine mark is followed by the square-and-cross tartar sign and the ending “at optimi.” The English reads this contextually as “the finest tartarised spirit of wine”; the print does not explicitly say rectificati. The same square-and-cross sign is identified with Weinstein, tartar, on page 80. These historical names do not establish a precise modern compound or an experimentally verified preparation. The claim that a true solvent is inseparable from its solute belongs to the historical argument.
[^n81]: The Latin motto invokes divine protection. The anonymous speaker’s paternal address and claimed personal history are features of this separate testament; they are not evidence that Ali Puli wrote it.
[^n82]: The twenty-year period is the testament speaker’s autobiographical claim. It supplies no independently established date of composition. The concluding assurance echoes Matthew 6:33.
[^n83]: The printed sentence refers to the catechism without supplying a catechetical passage before the next address. The edition preserves that transition rather than inserting a reconstructed lesson.
[^n84]: “Schlecht” here means plain or unostentatious, not morally bad. The passage combines secrecy with charitable use and a duty of transmission; it does not simply order permanent concealment. “Philosophical children” is explicitly explained as worthy readers taught through writings.
[^n85]: The source repeats “und”; the English does not reproduce the accidental doubling. Its contrast between divine and worldly wisdom draws on Pauline religious language. The difficult final wording “Macht der Sünden” is retained in sense rather than silently replaced with a smoother theological formula.
[^n86]: “Francisco” is not further identified in this passage. Assigning a particular biography or anecdote to him without evidence would add information the source does not give.
[^n87]: “Erbrechen” concerns opening a sealed document here. The restriction to the eldest son and the twentieth year belongs to the testament’s literary situation.
[^n88]: The antimony sign ♁ is used throughout this passage; the original outline is shown in the source diagrams below. Its asserted identity with a vitriol and the sages’ lead is part of the testament’s own vocabulary, not an equation with ordinary lead or one modern substance. “BrunnStylangem” is the difficult printed name; it has not been silently replaced with a presumed classical fountain. Phoebus names the solar figure in the poetic comparison.
[^n89]: The repeated clause “in ihm” is retained in the source text. The English supplies “represents” in the elliptical black-ray clause. The reference to Alexander von Suchten and its folio number are the testament’s citation; this edition has not used it as a verified locator in a specified printing.
[^n90]: The paragraph itself explains the emblem’s spheres, animals, cup and planetary characters. These are historical correspondences inside the testament. Translating the names does not turn the diagram into a modern chemical chart.
[^n91]: The small butter sign is represented by the explicit descriptive token [Butyrum-Zeichen] rather than an invented Unicode identity. “Butter of antimony” is a historical preparation name; this passage does not specify one modern formulation. The following exact source crops preserve the diagrammatic forms that ordinary type cannot reproduce faithfully.
[^n92]: The circular inscription reads VISITA INTERIORA TERRAE RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTUM LAPIDEM. These seven word initials give VITRIOL. No additional words yielding VITRIOLUM are printed in this engraving. The prose’s naming claim is preserved without treating the acrostic as proof of a modern chemical identification.
[^n93]: The source pairs verpuffe with detonire and adds “as the chymists say.” Here those words occur in a calcination process: the stated endpoint is the calcined regulus with gold, followed by the extraction and separation in the next paragraph. Historical detonire does not by itself establish modern high-explosive detonation. The quoted “detonate” preserves the author’s wording, while “deflagrate” conveys its calcination context; the passage does not identify an explosive preparation as its intended product. These historical names do not establish a modern chemical identity for the resulting material.
[^n94]: The opening reference repeats the materials of the preceding calcination passage. It is restored from the historical source rather than supplied in editorial brackets. The dagger-like spirit sign is rendered by † in the source and expanded contextually in English. “Reverberated,” “sulphur,” and “salt” retain their historical senses. The source’s abbreviated commentary reference is not assigned a modern bibliographical identity here.
[^n95]: “Fixed” names the condition sought in the historical process; the colour sequence is retained without validating the claimed tincture. The reference prints Pharmar.; Pharmac. in the supplied note is a conjectural correction, not a verified bibliographical identification.
[^n96]: The barred abbreviation has -irten attached here and Latin endings -to and -tus in the later butter-of-antimony paragraph. The supplied translation reads the abbreviated stem as sublim-, giving “sublimed sulphur” here and the related mercury forms below. The German transcription uses the neutral shape descriptor [Balkenzeichen] here rather than silently expanding the mark into a reconstructed word. This is an adopted textual reading; “sulphur,” “cinnabar” and the other material names retain their historical senses and do not establish precise modern chemical identities.
[^n97]: The English in the augmentation passage, this paragraph and the following discussion of butter of antimony follows the supplied translation adopted for this edition. The historical attribution to Paracelsus remains unverified. “Violent detonating powder” is retained as that translation’s rendering of Schlag-Pulver within the account of calcination and tincture work; the phrase alone establishes neither a military purpose nor a precise modern chemical identity. Descriptive German sign tokens preserve shapes ordinary type cannot reproduce; the separately labelled supplied note records readings and reservations rather than settled identifications. Quantities and directions may carry material and symbolic meanings together: procedural form alone does not establish an exclusively material or symbolic authorial intention. The later language of spirit, soul and earth permits a reading concerned with inner transformation, although the text also explains these terms materially; no symbolic decoding of each quantity or direction is established here.
[^n98]: The German token [Niterzeichen] is a tentative label for the circular printed character. The supplied English calls it saltpetre, but the accompanying sign note asks whether the bar’s orientation here could instead indicate salt. That reservation remains open; no correction based on a presumed modern preparation is made. The abbreviated mark with Latin endings -to and -tus is represented descriptively in German and follows the supplied sublimate terminology in English. The source itself warns of poisonous materials and vapours; its historical wording does not establish a modern formula or an adequate method of protection.
[^n99]: The source says explicitly that the identity is “in the art.” It distinguishes an alchemical relation from the assertion that ordinary gold, lead and antimony are simply identical. Its title and format reference to a Latin treatise remains a historical citation rather than a verified identification of a particular edition. The sentence calling the first metal Venus follows the actual ♀ sign on page 79. This differs from the surrounding identification with antimony; the edition preserves the difference rather than silently correcting it. The printed abbreviated title at this point reads de Pharmico Cathol.
[^n100]: The English preserves the verse’s propositions and sequence rather than manufacturing a rhyme that changes them. The text immediately supplies its own interpretation; the mythological names should be read through that interpretation before further symbolism is proposed.
[^n101]: The terse salt-water clause is printed “denn aus der und Saltz ▽”: after “aus der” there is no repeated noun or further water sign. The English takes the reference back to the preceding See, sea, without reconstructing a missing manufacturing process. Neptune and Venus are identified by this source itself, not by a universal dictionary of alchemical symbols.
[^n102]: This explanation identifies the poem’s military-powder analogy at the level of its named materials. The earlier powder passage supplies the local context for this analogy. “Tartar” is the historical wine-related material name, not a modern identification of the entire preparation. The square-and-cross sign is represented as [Weinsteinzeichen] and is explicitly called Weinstein in this source. The final sign in the paragraph is mercury, not antimony.
[^n103]: The square-and-cross tartar sign is represented by [Weinsteinzeichen] where an ordinary Unicode match would be misleading. It precedes the salt sign in the earth clause and recurs in the later question about its properties. “Dry vapour” and “soul” belong to the explanation’s historical vocabulary. The closing references, including folio 12, section 5, are printed locators supplied by the source; the edition does not silently resolve them to an unverified book.