Chap. XXX

Yet one Royal Medicine of Vulgar Gold.

Make one Ounce of Gold more or less, irreducible by the benefit of Salts. Then to such irreducible or unmeltable Gold, add as much by weight of the fixed Salt of the Eagles Feathers burnt. Put these into a firmly coated Glass, and place the Glass in an Earthen Pan full of Sand; which Pan set in the Fire that it may be red hot. But after it hath stood in such a Degree of heat, for four or five hours, let it cool. Then take your fixed Sol out of the Glass, and it will be like white Chalk. This white Sol taken out of the Glass put into a good Crucible, upon which lute another, and then set it in a Wind Furnace, where having stood four or five hours, without any extream heat, let it cool. Then your Gold will be transmuted into a Tincture intensly red. Grind this red Salt to a most subtil Powder, and pour on Spirit of Wine to extract his Tincture. The tinged Spirit pour off, and pour on other, that it may also extract. Abstract the Spirit of Wine from the Tincture, and in the bottom a red Saline Liquor will remain, which is to be accounted a true Aurum Potabile: because it is not possible by any way whatsoever to extract any Gold from thence. This Operation begun, I once absolved without Errour; but many times afterward trying my Work, did not succeed so prosperously as at the first time. Yet I rather ascribe the Errour to my self, than to Art, plainly judging, that no other way more swift, more easie or more preparable, can be obtained a most readily profitable Tincture for diseased, humane and metallick Bodies. Yet I add this. If thou sufferest the common and now ductile Sol to be and remain Gold; and sparing labour and charge for making it irreducible, do onely make choice of such Stones for your Operation, such as without Charges you may get, and by nature partake of irreducible Gold. Then indeed you may much more easily find what you intend. For whatsoever Tinctures of a golden Disposition are incited in those Stones, they notwithstanding in this operation lose it, altogether wax white, and at length totally red again. Which being beheld by me, I never saw in all my Life a more wonderfull Sight. Hence Philosophers have always said: Whosoever can so destroy vulgar Sol, as it can never be again reduced into Sol, he hath attained to a very great Mystery. Also they further say: Whosoever knows not how to make our Sol (which is vulgar Sol rendred irreducible, or such as hath not yet felt the force of Fire, and in Stones is by Nature irreducible) white, he also cannot make it red. But now that is done this way. Therefore you need not doubt that besides medicinal Remedies, some other Eminent Works may thence be made. Which I leave more deeply to be searched into by those, who are yet strong and able to endure labour. As for my own part, I esteem the Pleasures and Riches of this World to be worse than nothing; and seek onely Incorruptibles, which can neither be stolen by Thieves, nor gnawn by Moths and other Vermine, nor be destroyed by any force of the Elements.