The Secret Work of the Hermetic Philosophy

36Just as those who sail between Scylla and Charybdis face danger on either side, so those who long for the prize of the golden fleece are exposed to no less danger as they are carried between the two threatening reefs of the philosophers' sulphur and mercury. The more perceptive, through constant reading of serious and trustworthy authors and by the sun's illumination, have gained knowledge of sulphur. Yet they remain at the threshold of the philosophers' mercury. Writers have diverted it through so many turns and meanders and wrapped it in so many equivocal names that it is more likely to meet the seeker in a sudden movement of the mind than to be found through reasoning or toil.