The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

and freezes the other part through the power of Minerva’s mirror, which turns everything to stone. But before beginning this bloody combat against so cruel an enemy, one must have recourse to Minerva or to the nymphs who guide wisdom, and learn from them how to avoid and arrest the flames and mortal poison it shoots from its nose and ears. One must cut off the head of Medusa, guarded by her sisters, and tear from it an eye and a tooth. That is to say, one must separate Mercury’s pure and clear substance, expressed by the eye and tooth because of its purity and its power of dissolving watery and earthy substances. Medusa’s head must be cut off: in other words, the metallic spirit of gold must be dissolved, from which are born Crisaes and Pegasus, the spirits of gold and quicksilver. Furthermore, before undertaking this combat, so famous and so celebrated, he must put the buskins upon his feet, arm himself with the helmet and breastplate of the young man represented in the first emblem, and arm himself with a sword of the most highly purified steel and with the goddess Minerva’s mirror; that is, before one possesses this