The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

called the elixir of Oralie, or the first sulfur of nature, indicating the second operation.

The first dissolution of the matter or bodies into water and their sublimation into the white sulfur of nature, as we have said above, are contained in the fable of Andromeda, which remains for us to explain. This white sulfur of nature, sublimed into the head of the alembic, shows us Andromeda fastened to the rock, for it has the form of a stone. The mercurial water remaining at the bottom of the vessel is the dragon, armed with hard and ancient scales, born of the first water called the philosophers’ sea. It is ready to devour the victim, toward whom it advances eagerly, and would already swallow her into its stomach with its ravenous tooth, were Perseus not to swoop from the air upon the monster and destroy it beyond hope of rescue. Perseus is the solar spirit hidden in the white sulfur impregnated with the tincture of Mars—as shown by his helmet and breastplate made of excellent steel—and rendered spirit or quintessence through sublimation, as likewise shown by the winged buskins and the horse Pegasus. With his sword he cuts part of it to pieces: that is, through the power of this dissolving water; and he transforms the rest into