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and it hath at present an accidental imperfect form, which is the meanthrough which it passeth to its transcendent perfection.These Menstrue therefore know, I thee reed.Labour with all thy might to attain the skill of these two first MenstruumsTheoretically and Practically; the first is to be by thee prepared andproportioned in the beginning, before thou attempt any thing. When thouhas the true Nymphs Bath, then joyn this Spouse with her belovedHusband, and see if she will make his Body fall to sunder in impalpableAtoms: Then let Saturn be thy Chamberlain, and let him gather togetherthese dissevered members, and of them make one broth, in which isblackness compleat, after which followeth greenness; and then shalt thouknow that thy Compound is by the living God endowed with a vegetableSoul.Without the which neither true CalcinationDone may be, nor true Dissolution.He who knoweth not the Mystery of these two Menstrues, can never attaineither to Calcination or Dissolution of the Philosophers: The Mystery of thefirst consists in the actuating of thy Vinegar with the Blood of our GreenLyon, and the Soul of the Fiery Dragon, which is by seven Eagles, whichare seven Cohobations and Depurations of thy feminine Sperm, till itconceive a spiritual seed, or true natural heat, to animate thy young King.The Mystery of the second Menstrue consists in the true proportion of thyfirst Water, with its own Body, and the administration of true heat external,by which the combat between the Eagles and the Lyon may be stirred up;thus shall the Duel be ended, the Lyon rent in pieces, and the Carrion of itsCarcass shall kill the eagles; and out of these Atoms shall the second Waterbe made apparent by Dissolution.With the third Humidity most permanent.The third Menstrue is by Artephius called the second Water, for our secondhe doth joyn together with the first; although where he doth particularizethe three Fires, he doth then distinguish three Menstruums.The like course many Philosophers have used in the description of theirOperations, some omitting the first, or at least confounding it with thesecond, for the greater obscuring of the Art.But we have beyond what any have hitherto performed) particularlyinsisted upon the three in order, and have taken more pains in the discovery48