into dust or stone. But the Solution of heat dissolves all fat and sulphurous bodies; and whatever the heat of fire dissolves this the cold coagulates into a mass, and whatever the heat coagulates, this the air and the cold again dissolve. This also should be known, that whatever the air or the cold chamber dissolves, is of great dryness, and holds concealed within itself a corrosive fire. So whatever is dissolved in fire, and by its heat, has in itself sweetness and cold, but not fire. Thus, and in no other way, is Solution to be understood.
Putrefaction[1] is the fourth step, under which are comprised Digestion[2] and Circulation. Now Putrefaction is a very important step which might deservedly stand first, only that would be contrary to the just order and to the mystery which lies concealed here, and is known to very few. For these steps should follow one another in turn, as has been said, like the links in a chain, or the rounds of a ladder. For if one of the links of the chain were taken away, the chain would be broken and the captive would escape. And so, too, if one of the rounds of the ladder should be removed from the middle and put in the highest or the lowest place, the ladder too would be broken, and many would fall headlong from it and endanger their lives. So understand here that these steps follow one another in a just order; otherwise the whole work of our mystery would be perverted, and all our toil and pains frustrated and rendered void. Putrefaction is of so great efficacy that it blots out the old nature and transmutes everything into another new nature, and bears another new fruit. All living things die in it, all dead things decay, and then all these dead things regain life. Putrefaction takes away the acridity from all corrosive spirits of salt, renders them soft and sweet, transmutes their colours, separates the pure from the impure, and places the pure higher, the impure lower, each by itself.
Distillation is the fifth step to the transmutation of all natural objects. Under it are understood Ascension, Lavation, Imbibition, Cohobation, and Fixation. By Distillation all waters, liquids, and oils are subtilised, the oil is extracted from all fat substances, the water from all liquids, and in all phlegmatic substances the oil and the water are separated.
Moreover, many things in Distillation are fixed by Cohobation, especially if the substances to be fixed contain water within them, as vitriol does. When this is fixed it is called colcotar. Alum, if it is fixed with its own water, is
- ↑ Putrefaction is the handmaid of separation.—Modus Pharmacandi, Tract I. Putrefaction is a new qualitative generation.—De Modo Pharmacandi, Tract III. The firmament produces colours, corruptions, and digestions of nutriment, of nature, etc. And putrefaction produces a succession of colours rapidly.—Ibid. All putrefaction is essentially and excessively cold.—De Tartaro, Lib. II., Tract II., c. 7. Putrefaction is the separation of virtue, and at the same time is almost a conservation.—De Naturalibus Aquis, Lib. IV., Tract 2.
- ↑ Digestion is putrefaction.—De Pestilitate, Tract I. By the process of digestion, what is bad and unprofitable in a substance is separated so that the substance remains in its essence, as it was created. In so far as it has become vitiated, digestion causes it to purge itself, so that it labours to return into its essence.—De Tartaro, Lib. II., Tract II., c. 2. Between digestion performed in the earth and the digestion which takes place in the body of man, there is this difference, that the earth separates nothing, in the sense that it does not cast out anything excrementitiously; it digests, putrefies, generates, and augments by the power and ministry of the stars. There is no excremental separation, but there is a separation of seed into salt, sulphur, and mercury. Yet this is not precisely a deprivation of the earth, because the earth contains in itself salt, sulphur, and mercury. The earth, moreover, requires no nutrimental support after the manner of human beings, but the seed is sown in it just as the male seed is sown in the female womb. The earth generates, augments, and multiplies by means of its own indwelling Archeus.—De Pestilitate, Tract II.
