as cinnabar. When you have it in that form you ought to rejoice; for it is the beginning of wealth for you. This reverberated sulphur tinges any silver very deeply so as to turn it into most precious gold, and the human body it tinges into its most perfect condition of health. Of so great virtue is this reverberated and fixed sulphur.
The mortification of all salts, and whatever is of a salt nature, is the removal and distillation of their watery and oleaginous part, and besides of the spirit of salt; for if these are taken away, they are called afterwards dead earth, or caput mortuum.
The mortification of gems and corals is that they shall be calcined, sublimated, and dissolved into a liquid, as the crystal. The mortification of pearls is that they be calcined and resolved in sharp vinegar in the form of milk.
The mortification of the magnet is that it be smeared with oil of mercury or touched by common mercury. Afterwards it attracts no iron.
The mortification of flints and stones is calcination.
The mortification of marcasites, cachymiæ, talc, cobalt, zinc, granites, zwitter, vismut, and antimony, is sublimation, that is, their being sublimated with salt and vitriol. Then their life, which is the metallic spirit, ascends with the spirit of salt. Let whatever remains at the bottom of the sublimatory be washed, that the salt may be removed from it, and you will have dead earth wherein is no virtue.
The mortification of arsenicals, auripigment, orpiment, realgar, etc., is when they are made fluid with salt nitre, are turned to oil or liquid on marble, and fixed.
The mortification of undulous things is a coagulation of the air.
The mortification of aromatic substances is the removal of their good odour.
The mortification of sweet things is that they shall be sublimated with corrosives and distilled.
The mortification of carabæ, resins, turpentine, and gum is their being reduced to oil or varnish.
The mortification of herbs, roots, and the like is that their oil and water shall be distilled from them, the liquid squeezed out in a press, and afterwards the alkali extracted.
The mortification of woods is their being turned into charcoal or ashes.
The mortification of bones is their calcination.
The mortification of flesh and blood is the removal of the spirit of salt.
The mortification of water is produced by fire: for the heat of fire dries up and consumes all water. So the mortification of fire is by water; for the water extinguishes the fire and takes away from it its force and effectiveness.
Thus you are sufficiently informed, in few words, how death is latent in all natural things: how they are mortified and reduced to another form and nature, as also what virtues flow from them. Whatever else is necessary to say we will set down in our book concerning the Resuscitation of Natural Things.
