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

The Great Art page 40An unctious phlegm is diffused in Water, (Mémoire de l’ Académie de Berlin). M. Eller hasrecognized it in his observations: “A water,” said he, “very pure and free from all heterogeneousparts, (in the manner of the common chemist), can suffice for vegetation. It furnishes the earth, thebasis of the solidity of plants: it diffuses in it that inflammable, or oily part, which one finds in it.”Let us take some earth, after having been washed in lye and parched by fire, in which we are certainthat there is no germ of plants, let us expose it to the air in a vase, and let us be careful to water itwith rain water, it will produce little plants in great number; proof that it is the vehicle of germs.As Water is of a nature closely approaching that of the First Matter of the World, it becomes easilyits symbol, or image. The chaos, whence all was derived, was like a vapor, or a humid substance,similar to a subtle smoke. Light having rarefied it, the heavens were formed of the most subtilizedportion; the Air of that which was less so; the elementary Water of that which was a little moreterrestrial; and the Earth, of the densest, and as fæces, (Raymond Lully, Testam, Anc. Theor.).Therefore Water partaking of the nature of the Air and Earth, is placed in the middle. Lighter than theEarth and heavier than Air, it is always mixed with both. At the least rarefaction it seems to abandonthe Earth to take the nature of the Air; it is condensed by the least cold, it quits the Air, and unitesitself with the Earth.The nature of Water is rather humid than cold, because it is thinner and more open to the Light thanthe Earth. Water has preserved the humidity of the Prima Materia and of chaos; the Earth has retainedits cold.The siccity is an effect of cold as of heat, and moisture is the principal subject on which heat andcold act. When the latter is powerful, it condenses the moisture; we see it in snow, ice and hail. Fromthis comes the fall of leaves in autumn. If the cold increases, winter succeeds, the moisture in theplants congeals, the pores close, the stalk becomes weak through lack of nourishment: they finallywither. If the winter is severe, it bears the dryness even to the roots: it attacks the vito-humidum; andthe plants perish. How can one say after this that cold is a quality of Water, since it is its enemy, andsince Nature does not suffer that an Element act upon itself. One speaks, it seems to me, morecorrectly, when one says that the cold has burned the plants. Cold and heat burn equally, but in adifferent manner; heat by expanding, and cold by contracting the parts of the Mixts.That which Water presents to us visibly is volatile; its interior is fixed. The Air tempers itshumidity. That which the Air receives from Fire, it communicates to Water, which in turncommunicates it to the Earth.One may divide this Element into three parts; the pure, the purer, and the purest, (Cosmopol., ofWater); from the latter the heavens have been made; from the purer, the Air; and the simply pure hasremained in its sphere: it is the ordinary Water, which forms only one globe with the Earth. Thesetwo Elements united make all, because they contain the two others. From their union is born a mud,which Nature uses to form all bodies. This mud is the Matter from which will evolve all generations.It is a kind of chaos, in which the Elements are confounded. Our first father has been formed from it,as well as all the generations which have followed him. From the sperm and the menstrum is formeda mud, and from this mud an animal.In the production of vegetation the seeds putrefy and change into a slime before germinating. It isthen consolidated and grows into a vegetable body. In the generation of the metals, Sulphur andMercury resolve into a viscous Water, which is a true slime. The decoction coagulates this Water,fixes it more or less, and from it results the minerals and the metals. In the Sophic Work, one firstforms a slime of two substances, or principles, after having purified them. As the four Elements arefound in them, the Fire preserves the Earth from submersion and entire dissolution: the Air maintains