The Great Art

The Great Art page 40
An unctious phlegm is diffused in Water, (Mémoire de l’ Académie de Berlin). M. Eller has
recognized it in his observations: “A water,” said he, “very pure and free from all heterogeneous
parts, (in the manner of the common chemist), can suffice for vegetation. It furnishes the earth, the
basis 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 certain
that there is no germ of plants, let us expose it to the air in a vase, and let us be careful to water it
with 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 easily
its 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 subtilized
portion; the Air of that which was less so; the elementary Water of that which was a little more
terrestrial; 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 the
Earth and heavier than Air, it is always mixed with both. At the least rarefaction it seems to abandon
the Earth to take the nature of the Air; it is condensed by the least cold, it quits the Air, and unites
itself with the Earth.
The nature of Water is rather humid than cold, because it is thinner and more open to the Light than
the Earth. Water has preserved the humidity of the Prima Materia and of chaos; the Earth has retained
its cold.
The siccity is an effect of cold as of heat, and moisture is the principal subject on which heat and
cold act. When the latter is powerful, it condenses the moisture; we see it in snow, ice and hail. From
this comes the fall of leaves in autumn. If the cold increases, winter succeeds, the moisture in the
plants congeals, the pores close, the stalk becomes weak through lack of nourishment: they finally
wither. If the winter is severe, it bears the dryness even to the roots: it attacks the vito-humidum; and
the plants perish. How can one say after this that cold is a quality of Water, since it is its enemy, and
since Nature does not suffer that an Element act upon itself. One speaks, it seems to me, more
correctly, when one says that the cold has burned the plants. Cold and heat burn equally, but in a
different 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 its
humidity. That which the Air receives from Fire, it communicates to Water, which in turn
communicates it to the Earth.
One may divide this Element into three parts; the pure, the purer, and the purest, (Cosmopol., of
Water); from the latter the heavens have been made; from the purer, the Air; and the simply pure has
remained in its sphere: it is the ordinary Water, which forms only one globe with the Earth. These
two 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 formed
a mud, and from this mud an animal.
In the production of vegetation the seeds putrefy and change into a slime before germinating. It is
then consolidated and grows into a vegetable body. In the generation of the metals, Sulphur and
Mercury 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 first
forms a slime of two substances, or principles, after having purified them. As the four Elements are
found in them, the Fire preserves the Earth from submersion and entire dissolution: the Air maintains
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