takes place in animals from the whole circumference to the kidneys, which form the body’s center; conversely, in plants, from the center of every part of the body, they form in the air, which is the kidney of plants. It follows that all parts are steeped in this divine seed of immortality, which perpetuates them; or, when it has completed the work of their perpetuation and regeneration, it is stripped of corruptibilities and they return to their first purity and incorruptibility. This germinative spirit teems with impurities in which it is enveloped and from which it can scarcely free itself, although it needs them to advance corruption. Yet it is never overwhelmed by corruptibilities of matter so great as to stifle it, even if enclosed within the hard and fixed body of metals, where it remains weak, like a weight without force and fit for nothing, lying numb within as long as it remains imprisoned there. The obstacles preventing its action must therefore be removed, and things that help and accelerate it introduced

but to display its purity and the simplicity of the matter it possesses, it nevertheless needs certain qualities through which it traverses the different paths of alteration in order to generate. Although separating what she separates in plants and animals belongs to nature’s duty, functions, and capacity, metals enjoy this privilege only after a long succession of years. Thus, since metals might be purified still better by assisting nature in this, imitating her in some things and surpassing her in others, they thought to try to extract from these impurities the incorruptible essence in which the flower and germ of the metal is imprisoned. From this they took proofs of the renewal, generation, and glorification of the race to be perpetuated, and foretold what will happen at the end of the ages through that universal conflagration which will renew and rectify everything.

If we wish to seek the deep roots that put forth these seeds of immortality, and

examine how deeply seminal forms are plunged into the marrow of matter, we must have recourse to experience. We shall then perceive that no spirit can efface or extinguish it. We have seen, and several people have seen, these forms reborn from the ashes of things after the incineration of matter. This is what the investigators of this science, men of weight, have tested: by distillation they drew water from chancres and vipers until the remaining matter was reduced to ashes, and produced countless chancres and vipers by sprinkling this water upon the calx and applying a suitable digestion. A person of our cabala performed the experiment before an assembly of trustworthy people and showed by what means forms reborn from the ashes of plants were attracted. I have performed it myself, and have found that metals dissolved by our vegetative water received the form of stars; everyone perceives this