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but this only Water in the world, which by a bare boiling can be converted into Earth,
because the Mercury of the Wise carries in its centre its own Sulphur, which coagulates it.
The terrification of the Spirit is the only operation of this work. Boil them with patience;
if you have proceeded well, you will not be a long time without perceiving the marks of
this coagulation; and if they appear not in their time, they will never appear; because it is
an undoubted sign that you have failed in some essential thing in the former operations;
for to corporify the Spirit, which is our Mercury, you must have well dissolved the body
in which the Sulphur which coagulates the Mercury is enclosed. But Hermes assumes that
our mercurial water shall obtain all the virtues which the philosophers attribute to it if it
be turned into earth. An earth admirable is it for fertility -- the Land of Promise of the
Wise, who, knowing how to make the dew of Heaven fall upon it, cause it to produce
fruits of an inestimable price. Cultivate then diligently this precious earth, moisten it
often with its own humidity, dry it as often, and you will no less augment its virtue than
its weight and its fertility.
THE FIFTH KEY
The Fifth Key includes the Fermentation of the Stone with the perfect body, to make
therof the medicine of the Third order. I will say nothing in particular of the operation of
the Third work; except that the Perfect Body is a necessary leaven of Our Paste. And that
the Spirit ought to make the union of the paste with the leaven in the same manner as
water moistens meal, and dissolves the leaven to compose a fermented paste fit to make
bread. This comparison is very proper; Hermes first made it, saying, that as a paste
cannot be fermented without a ferment; so when you shall have sublimed, cleansed and
separated the foulness from the Faeces, and would make the conjunction, put a ferment to
them and make the water earth, that the paste may be made a ferment; which repeats the
instruction of the whole work, and shows, that just so as the whole lump of the paste
becomes leaven, by the action of the ferment which has been added, so all the
philosophic confection becomes, by this operation, a leaven proper to ferment a new
matter, and to multiply it to infinity. If you observe well how bread is made, you will find
the proportions also, which you ought to keep among the matters which compose our
philosophical paste. Do not the bakers put more meal than leaven, and more water than
the leaven and the meal? The laws of Nature are the rules you ought to follow in the
practice of our magistery. I have given you, upon the principal point, all the instructions
which are necessary for you, so that it would be superfluous to tell you more of it;
particularly concerning the last operations, about which the Adepts have been less
reserved than at the First, which are the foundations of the Art.
THE SIXTH KEY
The Sixth Key teaches the Multiplication of the Stone, by the reiteration of the same
operation, which consists but in opening and shutting, dissolving and coagulating,
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