[30] Thomas Norton: Ordinall of Alchemy (see Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, edited by Elias Ashmole, 1652, p. 18).
Norton here expresses the opinion, current among the alchemists, that each and every thing has its own peculiar environment natural to it; a view controverted by Robert Boyle ([§ 71]). So firm was the belief in the growth of metals, that mines were frequently closed for a while in order that the supply of metal might be renewed. The fertility of Mother Earth forms the subject of one of the illustrations in The Twelve Keys of “Basil Valentine” (see [§ 41]). We reproduce it in plate 3, [fig. A]. Regarding this subject, the author writes: “The quickening power of the earth produces all things that grow forth from it, and he who says that the earth has no life makes a statement which is flatly contradicted by the most ordinary facts. For what is dead cannot produce life and growth, seeing that it is devoid of the quickening spirit. This spirit is the life and soul that dwell in the earth, and are nourished by heavenly and sidereal influences. For all herbs, trees, and roots, and all metals and minerals, receive their growth and nutriment from the spirit of the earth, which is the spirit of life. This spirit is itself fed by the stars, and is thereby rendered capable of imparting nutriment to all things that grow, and of nursing them as a mother does her child while it is yet in the womb. The minerals are hidden in the womb of the earth, and nourished by her with the spirit which she receives from above.
“Thus the power of growth that I speak of is imparted not by the earth, but by the life-giving spirit that is in it. If the earth were deserted by this spirit, it would be dead, and no longer able to afford nourishment to anything. For its sulphur or richness would lack the quickening spirit without which there can be neither life nor growth.”[31]
[31] “Basil Valentine”: The Twelve Keys (see The Hermetic Museum, vol. i. pp. 333-334).
PLATE 3.
