I have a little before demonstrated, that the superiour element of fire, as the Sun, Moon, and the other Starrs, send down their invisible vertues and fiery beams into the earths center, where they are congregated, and cause huge heat, and being not permitted there to rest, leap back again, and are scattered throughout the universal Globe, and impregnate it with various and wonderful Crescentials, which are called Minerals by the Philosophers, cherishing and perfecting them in various forms. The reason and manner of which thing I will here in a few words unfold.
Every spiritual thing, come it from whatsoever body it will, is invisible and impalpable, nor can any thing be made of it alone, but it’s forced to remain a spirit, until it meets with a subject whereto it may adhere, be united, and by the benefit thereof be turned into a Corporeal Nature, and pure, answerable to the purity of the subject and spirit, the spirit is in the room of seed; but the subject answers to the earth or matrix in which the spirit is concocted, into a sensible body suitable to its own nature. But ’tis to be known, that the manner of Metallick conception and generation, is far different from that of the Vegetable and Animals: For in most Vegetables that have arrived to their perfection, nature works out a seed for a farther propagation and encrease, being the most excellent part of the herb, which at the Springs Entrance being committed to convenient earth, produceth a new plant in all points like unto the former, from whence it sprang, by which doing new seeds of the same plant, are always conserved. Although indeed some plants are not propagated by the seed, but by the root. Yet they are very few, and in such, the root it self serves instead of seed. And that in some places Plants grow out of the earth, without the assistance of either seed or root, its done by the help of the Elements, in whom the same force of impregnating the void earth and production of Plants, is at this Instant, as was at first, when they generated and brought them forth in the beginning of the World. In like manner is there a twofold production of Animals, the one done by a proper sperm, by which they are propagated, the other is a production of some little Animals, upon the world’s stage, even without Sperm, by putrefaction only, and the mutual action and passion of the Elements.
These two waies have footing also in Minerals, the one is the Universal impregnation made by the Starrs in the beginning of the world, the other is Daily. And even as the first generation of Vegetables and Animals is to be accounted far more excellent than that which is accidental and quotidian, so is it with Minerals likewise. As some Vegetables arrive to their perfection, and perish sooner than other some, so do metals and minerals also; and by how much the sooner and quicker growth they have, by so much the sooner do they perish; and so on the contrary. And as a rational and movable Animal is a thousand times in his nobility and fixity beyond a Vegetable, so also doth a Mineral, by reason of his fixity, far transcend any Animal; which wants an immortal soul.
Now when the Vegetables, Animals and Minerals, fatally terminating their period, are corrupted, and return into a nothing, each Element takes to it self what is its own. The Starrs, the Spirit, the Earth, keeps the body which it formerly gave, and the Principles of the thing do each return unto their Fountains from whence they at first did flow.
And in this manner is there perpetual Death and Regeneration of things, by the testimony of Experience.
There are many ways by which Metals are brought to light, viz. by huge Fires: if by Accident and Carelesness of Shepherds, a Wood catcheth fire, the Earth by reason of the intollerable heat Gapes, and the molten Metal flows forth and is detected: sometimes also vehement Earthquakes discover them.
Besides, the Veins of Metals are found out when deep Wells and Pits are digged, or by the Plowing in the Fields, they are sometimes dig’d up, and their Veins discovered: strong Rivers washing away the Earth and Sand, do sometimes open their Veins; the Fruits of which being found in the Banks, give cause of searching after them.
They are also discovered by means of an Animal, even an Horse, by pawing with his foot, beating away the Earth uncovers the Vein, which happen’d at Goslaria in Ramelsbug; even Hogs searching after Acorns, have diged up Mine-pits; or a pure Metal lifts up it self into the Aire in the likeness of a Reed, by which means the exceeding rich Mines of Silver at Kuttenberg in Bohemia, was by a Monk manifested to the World, who walking in the Wood gathered a Silver Reed growing out of the Earth, and put it in his Cowle, and declared the thing in the Convent.
Sometimes also most vehement storms pulling up very great Trees by the roots do open veins. Most frequently a Corruscation gives undoubted testimony of Veins, which being enkindled by the warm air, runs a long some space, in the likeness of a blew flame; nor is the finding out of the process of Veins (not lying over-deep buried) very difficult if you rightly consider, for they continually breath forth a warm Sulphureous vapour, upon which, not only the Grass growing is thiner than is elswhere wont to be, but even the Trees that grow upon them are dwarf-like, have paler and thiner Leaves than other Trees elsewhere planted have.
Likewise where the Dew, Hoar-Frost, sooner melts and vanisheth, ’tis a testimony that a Metal is thereunder; the cause of which melting, is the warm vapours attending from the Veins.