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is not only very fitting, but it furthermore gives the sons of science a precise knowledge
of the operations of the Third Key.
9. Our Water is a living Spring which comes out of the Stone by a natural miracle of our
philosophy. The first of all is the water which issueth out of this Stone. It is Hermes who
has pronounced this great Truth. He acknow- ledges, further, that this water is the
foundation of our Art.
10. The philosophers give it many names; for sometimes they call it wine, sometimes
water of life, sometimes vinegar, sometimes oil, according to the different degrees of
Preparation, or according to the diverse effects which it is capable of producing.
11. Yet I let you know that it is properly called the Vinegar of the Wise, and that in the
distillation of this Divine Liquor there happens the same thing as in that of common
vinegar; you may hence draw instruction: the water and the phlegm ascend first; the oily
substance, in which the efficacy of the water consists, comes the last, etc.
12. It is therefore necessary to dissolve the body entirely to extract all its humidity which
contains the precious ferment, the sulphur, that balm of Nature, and wonderful unguent,
without which you ought not to hope ever to see in your vessel this blackness so desired
by all the philosophers. Reduce then the whole compound into water, and make a perfect
union of the volatile with the fixed; it is a precept of Senior's, which deserves attention,
that the highest fume should be reduced to the lowest; for the divine water is the thing
descending from heaven, the reducer of the soul to its body, which it at length revives.
13. The Balm of Life is hid in these unclean faeces; you ought to wash them with this
celestial water until you have removed away the blackness from them, and then your
Water shall be animated with this Fiery Essence, which works all the wonders of our Art.
14. But, further, that you may not be deceived with the terms of the Compound, I will tell
you that the philosophers have two sorts of compounds. The first is the compound of
Nature, wherof I have spoken in the First Key; for it is Nature which makes it in a
manner incomprehensible to the Artist, who does nothing but lend a hand to Nature by
the adhibition of external things, by the means of which she brings forth and produces
this admirable compound.
15. The second is the compound of Art; it is the Wise man who makes it by the secret
union of the fixed with the volatile, perfectly conjoined with all prudence, which cannot
be acquired but by the lights of a profound philosophy.
16. The compound of Art is not altogether the same in the Second as in the Third Work;
yet it is always the Artist who makes it. Geber defines it, a mixture of Argent vive and
Sulphur, that is to say, of the volatile and the fixed; which, acting on one another, are
volatilized and fixed reciprocally into a perfect Fixity. Consider the example of Nature;
you see that the earth will never produce fruit if it be not penetrated with its humidity,
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