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

The Great Art page 45Of the Operations of NatureSublimation, distillation and concoction are three instruments or methods of operating which Natureemploys to perfect her works. By the first she throws off the superfluous moisture, which wouldsmother the Fire, and hinder its action in the earth, its matrix.By distillation she returns to the earth the moisture of which vegetation, or heat, have deprived it.Sublimation is made by the elevation of vapours in the air, where they are condensed into clouds. Thesecond is made by rain and dew. Fair weather succeeds rain, and rain fair weather, alternately; acontinual rain would inundate everything: perpetual fair weather would wither all. Rain falls drop bydrop, because if poured down too abundantly it would destroy all, as a gardener who would water hisgrains by bucket full. Thus Nature distributes her benefits with weight, measure and proportion.Concoction is a digestion of the crude humours instilled in the bowels of the Earth, a ripening, and aconversion of this humour into food by means of its secret fire.These three operations are so connected, that the end of one is the beginning of the other. The aimof sublimation is to convert a heavy thing into a light one; and exhalation into vapour; to reduce athick and impure substance, and to despoil it of its fæces; 35 to cause these vapours to assume thevirtues and properties of superior things; and finally to free the Earth of a superfluous humour whichwould hinder its productions.Scarcely are these vapours sublimated, when they are condensed into rain, and spiritual andinvisible though they were, they become a moment after a dense and aqueous body, to fall again onthe Earth and to soak it with the celestial nectar by which it has been impregnated during its abode inthe air. As soon as the Earth has received it, Nature works to digest and to ripen it.Each animal, the lowest worm, is a little world in which all these things take place. If man seeks theworld outside of himself, he will find it everywhere. The Creator has made an infinity of them fromthe same matter; their form alone is different. Thus humility becomes Man, and glory belongs to Godonly.Water contains a ferment, a spirit, a life, by which it has become impregnated while wanderingthrough the air, which proceeds from the superior natures to the inferior, and which is finallydeposited in the bosom of the Earth. This ferment is a germ of life, without which men, animals andvegetables could not live and could not produce. Everything in Nature breathes; and man does notlive by bread alone, but by this aerial spirit which he continually inhales.God and Nature, His minister, alone know how to command the primal material elements of bodies.Art could not approach them. But the three, which result from them, become sensible in theresolution of the Mixts. Chemists name them Sulphur, Salt and Mercury. 36 These are the elementsprincipied. Mercury is formed by the mixture of Water and Earth; Sulphur, of Earth and Air; Salt, ofAir and Water condensed. The Fire of Nature is added to these as a formal principle. Mercury is35 Which Sir Ripley calls Terra damnata, it is also designated as Caput Mortuum. They are the heterogenous parts of aComposite, those which remain from the body after the elimination of its pure philosophical elements.E.B.36 Sulphur in a metal represents its colour, combustability, its faculty of attacking other metals, its hardness.Mercury its brilliancy, volatility, fusibility, malleability.Salt mean uniting Sulphur and Mercury. - Sulphur, Mercury, Salt are consequently abstract words serving to designate theensemble of properties.F. Jollivet-Castelot: Comment on devient Alchimiste, Paris, 1897.The Universal Sulphur is invariably considered as the father. To a certain point of view, Mercury is the mother, and Saltthe child.Stanislas de Guaïta: La Clef de la Magie Noire, p. 727.