Water not wetting the hands

Meaning

Phrase.

The paradoxical description recurs among the names of the indispensable life-bearing water. In the epilogue it is surrounded by Mercury, nitrous salt, vegetable thing, sulphur and the little bird of Hermes; Saturn later calls it the proper name of the water of life. The phrase marks a source-specific enigma rather than a physical test by which this lexicon identifies a modern substance.