Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy - A Bardon Companion

The whole art depends on it;
For he who has the vapor of this thing,
Has the gilded splendor of the Red Lyon,
The pure and clear Mercury.
And he who knows the red Sulfur which it contains,
Has within his power the whole foundation (32).
Basil Valentine, more intimately defining the nature of the First Matter, declares it to be comparable to
no manifested particular whatever, and that all description fails in respect of it, without the light of
true experience. And Rupecissa says the same: and Ripley, that is not like any common water or
earthy material, but a middle substance, --- Aquosa substantia sicca reperta, --- partaking of extremes
celestial and terrestrial; and though it may seem contradictory so to speak of a fist matter, as of a
middle, or third; yet this is done in respect to its generation by active and passive relations of the
Universal Spirit, whence it proceeds as a third, yet homogeneal from its radix; Lully also calls it
tertium, and compounded in this sense; and Basil Valentine, ---
Corpus anima spiritus in duobus existit,
Ex quibus tota res procedit:
Procedit ex uno et est res una,
Volatile et fixum simul colliga,
Sunt duo et tria et saltem unum
Si non intelliges, nihil obtines (33).
And Vaughan, for example of a modern authority, say that the First Matter is indeed the union of
masculine and feminine spirits; the quintessence of four, the ternary of three, and the tetract of one;
and that these are his generations, physical and metaphysical. The thing itself, continues he, is a world
without form, a divine animated mass of complexion like silver, neither mere power nor perfect action,
but a weak virgin substance, a certain soft prolific Venus, the very love and seed of nature, the mixture
and moisture of heaven and earth (34). As Sendivogius likewise declares, --- Our water is heavenly,
not wetting the hands, not of the vulgar, but almost rain water (35); and by such familiar analogies as
tears, rain, dew, milk, wine, and oil, the fermental principle of the spirit and her distilled quintessence
are very ordinarily denoted. We conclude these verbal instructions with the following summary
passage from the ancient book of Synesius, and the New Light --- It is, says this esteemed author,
speaking of the same Matter, a clear Light, which fills with true virtue every mind that has once
perceived it; it is the nucleus and bond of all the elements which are contained in it, and the spirit
which nourishes all things, and by means of which nature operates universally; it is the virtue, true
beginning, and end of the whole world; in plain terms, the quintessence is no other than our viscous
celestial and glorious soul drawn from its minera by our magistery. But nature alone engenders it; it is
not possible to make it by art; for to create is proper to God alone; but to make things that are not
perceived, but which lie in the shadow to appear, and to take from them their veil, is granted to an
intelligent philosopher by God, through nature. And this Latex is the sharp vinegar which makes gold
a pure spirit, seeing she is even that blessed water which engenders al things, Our subject is presented
to the eyes of the whole world, and it is not known! O our heaven, O our water, O our mercury, O our
slat nitre, abiding in the sea of the world! O our vegetable; O our sulfur, fixed and volatile; O our
caput mortuum, or dead head, or foeces of our sea! Our water, that wets not the hands; without which
nothing grows or is generated in the whole world! And these are the Epithetes of Hermes, his Bird,
which is never at rest. It is of small account, yet no body can be without it, and so thou hast discovered
to thee a ting more precious than the whole world; which I plainly tell thee is nothing else than our sea
water, which is congealed in gold and silver, and extracted by the help of our chalybs, or steel, by the
art of philosophers, in a wonderful manner by a prudent son of science.
Thus obscure, after all, is the true Matter of the Alchemists; and if we presume to add here, that it is
the simple generated substance of life and light, immanifestly flowing throughout nature, and define it
as that without which nothing that exists is able to be, we are not for this yet wiser how to obtain or