admixtures, is changed into a mercurial body with consummate clearness. This is the Mercury of the Philosophers which generates gold, and is the second part of the primal matter. The third part of the primal matter of gold, or of the tree from which gold ought to grow, as a rose from a rose-seed, is salt, crystallized to the highest degree, and so highly separated and purified from all its acridity, bitterness, acetosity, aluminous, and vitriolic character, that it no longer has anything of the kind appertaining to it, but is carefully illuminated in itself to the very supreme point, and advanced to the highest transparency of the beryl. These three ingredients in conjunction are gold, which is decocted in the way of which we have already spoken.
Moreover, the genus of gold is not single, but manifold. Its grade is not one only, but Nature of herself gives thirty-two degrees to the finest gold. In our Art, twenty-four degrees are found for establishing the best gold. The cause of this is that gold in its tree is like a cow in the pastures, or like Epicurus in the kitchen. As soon as he has gone out all vigour and animation become fallen and diminished. So is it with gold: because if it be reduced so as to be the first matter of man, then, as if gone out of its kitchen, it at once loses eight out of the thirty-two degrees to which allusion has been made. But there are diversities in the kitchens, too, some being better and others worse. Accordingly as the gold falls into this one or the other, so it is either increased or diminished in degrees from twenty-six degrees as a maximum down to ten degrees as a minimum. The grades below this are too pale and not recognisable. For it is the nature of gold to be either light or dense. This happens from some impediment which occurs from the stars or other elements which aid in the decoction. As one man is more dense or more subtle than another, so neither does gold always attain its complete grade, principally for this reason that too much body, or Salt, or Mercury, has been added, from which fault and error are sure to arise. Too much Salt causes too great paleness. Too much Mercury makes the gold too much the colour of corn. Too much Sulphur confers excessive redness. And it must be remembered, too, that sometimes the weights are unequally divided. Nature sometimes errs as well as men. If this happens, the grade is unequal. It reaches a point from twelve to twenty-four. But if the superfluous weight be removed (as it can be by Art), say, by antimony, by quarta, as it is called, by regal cement, or by other means, the irrelevant weights are removed and the twenty-four degrees remain. Let not the Alchemist, then, attempt rashly to graduate gold, which is done in this way. For the weight in excess is unfit to assume its degree and to be reduced to a just standard. But what is not good of its kind cannot be exalted. Yet it may be that gold which is too pallid in its decoction may be graduated. But a principal item of knowledge with regard to this is that it does not lose its body in regale, antimony, and quarta. Indeed, it persistently retains both its colour and its weight. This is a property of good gold.
