Pernety - A Treatise On The Great Art.pdf - cyjack.com

The Great Art page 39Of the EarthThe Earth is naturally cold, because of its participating more of the nature of the opaque and darkPrimal Matter. This cold makes the body, heavier and denser; and this density renders it lesspenetrable to Light, which is the principle of heat. It has been created in the midst of the waters, withwhich it is always mixed; and the Creator seems to have made it dry on its surface, only to render itsuitable for the abode of Vegetables and animals.The Creator has made the Earth spongy, so that the Air, Water and Fire might have free access, andthat the interior Fire, which was infused into it by the spirit of God before the formation of the Sun,(Cosmopol. Tract 4), could press from the center to the surface by its pores the virtues of theElements, and exhale those humid vapors, which corrupt the germs of things by a slight putrefaction,and prepare them for generation. These germs thus prepared receive the celestial and vivifying heat,and even attracted by a magnetic love, the germ develops, and the seed produces its fruit.The heat peculiar to the Earth, is fit only for corruption. Its moisture weakens it, and could producenothing unless aided by the celestial heat, pure and without mixture, which leaves to generation, byexciting the action of the internal fire, by developing it, by expanding it, and by drawing it, to speakthus, from the center of the seed, where it lies torpid and concealed. These two heats by theirhomogeneity work in concert for the production and preservation of the Mixts.All cold is contrary to production. When a matter is of this nature, it becomes passive, and is fit forproduction only as long as it is aided and corrected by an outside force. The Author of Nature,designing the Earth to be the womb of the composites, warms it consequently, continually by the heatof the Celestial and Central Fire, and joins to it the humid nature of Water; so that, aided by the twoprinciples of generation, the warm and the humid, it is not sterile, and becomes the Vase in which areconceived all the generations, (Cosmo. ibid). One says for this reason, that the Earth contains theother Elements.It can be divided into two classes, the pure and the impure. The first is the basis of all thecomposites, and produces all by the mixture of Water and the action of Fire. The second is thegarment of the first; it enters as an integral part in the composition of individuals.The pure is animated by a Fire which vivifies the Mixts, and preserves them in their manner ofbeing, as long as the cold of the impure does not rule, or as long as it is not too much excited andtyrannized over by the artificial and elementary fire, its fratricide. That which is visible in the Earth isfixed, and that which is invisible is volatile.Of WaterThe density of Water holds the middle place between that of the Air and that of the Earth. It is theMenstrum 32 of Nature, and the vehicle of the germs. It is a volatile body, which seems to flee from theattacks of fire, and evaporates at the slightest heat. It is susceptible of all forms, and more changeablethan Proteus. Water is a mercury, which, partaking sometimes of the nature of a terra-aqueous body,sometimes of that of an aqua-aerian body, attracts and seeks the virtues of things superior andinferior. It becomes, by this means, the messenger of the gods and their mediator; through it ismaintained the commerce between the heavens and the earth.32 Or Solvent - “One has also given the name of Menstrum, however improperly, to Vegetable and Metallic Waters, whichare regarded as the feminine principle of these two reigns, and in which is placed the matter to be dissolved.” Pernety, Dict.Mytho-Herm., p292.