The Secret Work of the Hermetic Philosophy

31The whole crowd of would-be philosophers sweats and torments itself over the art of extracting a tincture from gold. They believe that the tincture can be separated from the sun and, once separated, increased in power. Yet

31.2Hope at last mocks the farmers with empty ears of grain.

31.3The solar tincture cannot be entirely separated from its natural body. No elemental body compounded by nature can be more perfect than gold, whose perfection proceeds from the strong and inseparable union of pure, tinging sulphur with mercury, both most aptly prepared for it by nature. Nature denies art a true separation of these. If some permanent liquid is extracted from the sun through the violence of fire or waters, it must be regarded as a portion of the body liquefied or forcibly dissolved, not as a separation of the tincture. For the tincture follows its body and is never separated from it. This is a deception of the art unknown to the practitioners themselves.