son of Vulcan, which is sulfur that lives only on what it steals and takes from others, like fire that consumes and destroys everything without sparing itself. Finally it is consumed by a rust that destroys it in turn. This led the poets to say that Typhon was buried beneath the flames of Mount Etna, by which he was burned and consumed, or to compare it to Sisyphus fastened upon a rock. For it is so tightly bound by the hard bonds of its earthy sulfur that one can scarcely separate it from them; thus it seems born not only for its own destruction but for that of the whole world.

Spirits of orpiment.

In raw orpiment certain hidden spirits are found, resembling the demons of the Styx or the damned. They are wholly opposed to the first and purest spirits of the angels and the sun, and are as harmful and hostile as the others are favorable and beneficial to the whole universe. This is openly proclaimed by nature’s most declared enemies and by those who lay the most ambushes for

human life. They spare no one, because no one can prevail against them, since they are composed chiefly of quicksilver, vitriol, and sulfur or niter. Some have thought it fitting to compare it to Cerberus with his three mouths, or to Geryon with his three bodies. The mildest gold, which insinuates itself more readily than other poisons, surpasses vipers, asps, toads, spiders, and all other venomous animals. Thus everything thought deadly and pestilential in this sublunary world is said to flow over the whole earth—over plants, minerals, and scattered animals—from this star, which gathers the venom of all monsters and becomes the source of their death. Hence it is called a fire without flame, a flame without light, and a dark torch giving no daylight. Like infernal smoke, it burns and consumes everything presented to it; moreover, it burns without being consumed, and lives in its own flames like the salamander, immortal and incorruptible, yet corrupting and altering everything. At the same time it is more deadly than the blood of the Centaur Nessus, of which the poets relate that

Hercules poisoned his arrows. It owes its birth only to demons, who fashioned it in [uncertain Greek word beginning Erebo…]—that is, in the workshops of hell—and vomited it forth to destroy nature entirely.

After them come the spirits of Venus or copper, or of marcasites partaking of copper. They are opposed to the fortunate aspects, conjunctions, and revolutions of Venus in heaven and to the good spirits of copper. Resembling the infernal Furies and their companions or sisters, friends of death, they lay traps for the life of all things and contrive the death of all creatures, like Tisiphone, who gnaws her heart, whose hair is disheveled and filled with serpents, and whom envy makes wither where she stands. If we compare these black and infernal Furies with the green spirits or those of some other vitriolic marcasite, I do not know which are more pernicious. They are tinged with a yellow shading toward the greenish color of serpents; their teeth carry a most pernicious venom, and in every part of their bodies they conceal death’s sting, which has such power that, like the eagle which

devours Prometheus’s liver, it gnaws everything; and its body, infected, wastes away and is consumed. The same qualities must be attributed to them as we have assigned above to the deadly venom of quicksilver, sulfur, and vitriol, because it is composed of these three.

If the ancient sages and all the poets acknowledged Venus as mother of what was to be produced—as the one presiding over generations, tracing the organic and similar parts hidden in the seed, giving them their proper situation and suitable color—then, by the contrary reasoning, they feel horror when they see these infernal and pernicious spirits emerge from nature herself. Through a certain antipathy she represents only death, confusion, war, and darkness, and everywhere spreads the image of the first chaos amid all created things. Just as with her arrows she softens and dissolves the hearts of animals, already soft in themselves, and impresses a certain passion even upon insensible things. The poets gave Venus Adonis as her son, holding a bow in his right hand and a torch in his left, to