The same authority assures us, with regard to the actual nature of the prima materia, that it is one only and self-same thing, although it is a natural compound of certain substances from one root and of one kind, forming together one whole complete homogeneity. The substances that make up the philosophical compound differ less among themselves than sorrel water differs from lettuce water. Urbiger asserts that the true and real matter is only “a vapour impregnated with the metallic seed, yet undetermined, created by God Almighty, generated by the concurrence and influence of the astrums, contained in the bowels of the earth, as the matrix of all created things.” In conformity with this, one earlier writer, Sir George Ripley, describes the stone as the potential vapour of metals. It is normally invisible, but may be made to manifest as a clear water. So also Philalethes cries in his inspired way:—“Hear me, and I shall disclose the secret, which like a rose has been guarded by thorns, so that few in past times could pull the flower. There is a substance of a metalline species, which looks so cloudy that the universe will have nothing to do with it. Its visible form is vile; it defiles metalline bodies, and no one can readily imagine that the pearly drink of bright Phœbus should spring from thence. Its components are a most pure and tender mercury, a dry incarcerate sulphur, which binds it and restrains fluxation.... Know this subject, it is the sure basis of all our secrets.... To deal plainly, it is the child of Saturn, of mean price and great venom.... It is not malleable, though metalline. Its colour is sable with, with intermixed argent, which mark the sable field with veins of glittering argent.”[D]
The poisonous nature of the stone is much insisted on by numerous philosophers. “Its substance and its vapour are indeed a poison which the philosophers should know how to change into an antidote by preparation and direction.”[E]
No descriptions, supplied ad infinitum by the numberless adepts who were moved by unselfish generosity to expound the arcana of alchemy, for the spiritual, intellectual, and physical enrichment of those who deserved initiation, expose the true nature of the prima materia, while the vas philosophorum in which it is contained and digested is described in contradictory terms, and is by some writers declared a divine secret.
Given the matter of the stone and also the necessary vessel, the processes which must be then undertaken to accomplish the magnum opus are described with moderate perspicuity. There is the Calcination or purgation of the stone, in which kind is worked with kind for the space of a philosophical year. There is Dissolution which prepares the way for congelation, and which is performed during the black state of the mysterious matter. It is accomplished by water which does not wet the hand. There is the Separation of the subtle and the gross, which is to be performed by means of heat. In the Conjunction which follows, the elements are duly and scrupulously combined. Putrefaction afterwards takes place,
“Without which pole no seed may multiply.”
Then in the subsequent Congelation the white colour appears, which is one of the signs of success. It becomes more pronounced in Cibation. In Sublimation the body is spiritualised, the spirit made corporeal, and again a more glittering whiteness is apparent. Fermentation afterwards fixes together the alchemical earth and water, and causes the mystic medicine to flow like wax. The matter is then augmented with the alchemical spirit of life, and the Exaltation of the philosophic earth is accomplished by the natural rectification of its elements. When these processes have been successfully completed, the mystic stone will have passed through three chief stages characterised by different colours, black, white, and red, after which it is capable of infinite multiplication, and when projected on mercury, it will absolutely transmute it, the resulting gold bearing every test. The base metals made use of must be purified to insure the success of the operation. The process for the manufacture of silver is essentially similar, but the resources of the matter are not carried to so high a degree.
According to the “Commentary on the Ancient War of the Knights,” the transmutations performed by the perfect stone are so absolute that no trace remains of the original metal. It cannot, however, destroy gold, nor exalt it into a more perfect metallic substance; it, therefore, transmutes it into a medicine a thousand times superior to any virtues which can be extracted from it in its vulgar state. This medicine becomes a most potent agent in the exaltation of base metals.
Among the incidental properties of the perfect mineral agent is the conversion of flints into precious stones, but the manufacture of gold and of jewels is generally declared to be the least of the philosophical secrets, for the spirit which informs the mysterious prima materia of the great and sublime work can be variously used and adapted to the attainment of absolute perfection in all the “liberal sciences,” the possession of the “whole wisdom of nature, and of things more secret and extraordinary than is the gift of prophecy which Rhasis and Bono assert to be contained in the red stone.”
FOOTNOTES:
[C] Baro Urbigerus—“One Hundred Aphorisms demonstrating the preparation of the Grand Elixir.”