The metrical account of Sir Edward Kelly’s work in the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum informs all who are broiling in the kitchen of Geber to burn their books “and come and learn of me,” for they can no more compound the Elixir Vitæ and the precious stone than they can manufacture apples. The progenitor of magnesia, wife to the gold of the philosophers, is not a costly thing. The philosophical gold is not common but Hermetic sulphur, and magnesia is essential mercury.
The Testamentum Johannis Dee Philosophi Summi ad Johannem Gwynn, transmissum 1568, is lucidly worded as follows in its reference to the magnum opus:—
“Cut that in Three which Nature hath made one,
Then strengthen yt, even by it self alone;
Wherewith then cutte the powdered sonne in twayne,
By length of tyme, and heale the wounde againe.
The self same sonne troys yet more, ye must wounde,
Still with new knives, of the same kinde, and grounde;
Our monas trewe thus use by Nature’s Law,
Both binde and lewse, only with rype and rawe,