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

The Great Art page 87The great secret of the Work, therefore, is to whiten the Latten and to leave all books alone, so asnot to be embarrassed by reading them, for this reading could give rise to ideas of useless andexpensive work. This whiteness is the Perfect White Stone; it is a precious body, which when it hasbeen fermented and has become white Elixir, is full of an exuberant Tincture which it has theproperty of communicating to all the other metals. The Spirits, at first volatile, become fixed. Thenext body is resuscitated beautiful, white, immortal, victorious. This is why it has been calledResurrection, Light, Day, and all other names which can indicate whiteness, fixity, andincorruptibility.Flamel has represented this colour in his Hieroglyphic Figures, by a woman surrounded by a whiteroll, to show, says he, “that REBIS will begin to whiten in this same manner, whitening first at theextremities, then all around this white circle. The Ladder of Philosophers (Scala Philosoph.) says:The sign of the first part of the Whiteness, is when one sees a certain little capillary circle, that is tosay, one passing over the head, which will appear around the matter on the sides of the Vessel, in acolour approaching orange.”The Philosophers, according to the same Flamel, have represented this Whiteness under the figureof a glittering sword. “When thou wilt have bleached, adds the same author, thou has conquered theenchanted Bulls who threw from their nostrils fire and smoke. Hercules has cleansed the stables fullof filth and blackness. Jason has poured the liquor upon the Dragon of Colchis and thou hast in thypower the Horn of Amalthœa which, so long as it is white, can cover all the rest of thy life with glory,honour and riches. In order to obtain it, thou must have fought valiantly, and as a Hercules for thisAchelous, this humid river (which blackness, the black water of the river Esep), is endowed with avery great strength, moreover it often changes from one to another.”As Black and White are, to speak thus, two extremes, and as two extremes can be united only by amean, the matter on leaving the black colour, does not become white immediately; the grey colour isintermediate because it participates of the nature of both.Philosophers have given to it the name of Jupiter, because it succeeds the black which they havecalled Saturn. This has caused d’Espagnet to say, that the Air succeeds the Water after it has finishedits seven revolutions, which Flamel has called Imbibitions 67 . The matter, adds d’Espagnet, being fixedin the bottom of the Vase, Jupiter, after having put Saturn to flight, takes possession of the kingdom,and assumes its government. At his advent the Philosophical Child is formed, is nourished in thematrix, and finally is born with a face beautiful, brilliant and white as the moon. Therefore this whiteMatter is a universal remedy for all the maladies of the human body.Finally the third principal colour is Red. It is the completion and the perfection of the Stone. Thisredness is obtained simply by the continuation of the coction of the Matter. After the first work, it iscalled Masculine Sperm, Philosophic Gold, Fire of the Stone, Royal Crown, Son of the Sun, Mine ofCelestial Fire.We have already said that most of the Philosophers begin their Treatises on the Work with the RedStone. Those who read these works, could not pay too much attention to this; for it is a source oferrors for them, as much because they cannot divine in what manner the Philosophers then speak, asbecause the operations and the proportions, of the matters, which are in the second work, and themaking of the Elixir, are very different from those of the first. Although Morien assures us that thesecond operation is only a repetition of the first, yet it is well to notice, that what they call Fire, Air,Earth and Water, in one instance, are not the same things as those to which they give the same names67 IMBIBITION, or cohobation, or Sublimation, is the time of the operation when the Matter gives off vapours whichcondensng fall as a rain upon the Sophic Earth remainging the bottom of the Vessel and moistens it, until it is perfectlysaturated.Pernety. – Dict. Mytho-Herm.