s,
determined by a sexual complex. Also there occurs the idea that we must
derive a male activity from the gold, a female from the silver, in order
to get from their union that which perfects the mercury of the metals.
That may be the reason that, for the above mentioned pair that is to be
united, the denotation gold and silver ([Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol:
Silver]) prevailed. Red and white = man and woman (male and female
activity), we found in the parable also when studied psychoanalytically.

In the "Turba philosophorum" "the woman is called Magnesia, the white, the
man is called red, sulphur."

Morienus says. "Our stone is like the creation of man. For first we have
the union, 2, the corruption [i.e., the putrefaction of the seed], 3, the
gestation, 4, the birth of the child, 5, the nutrition follows."

Both constituents come from one root. Therefore the authors inform us that
the stone is an only one. If we call the matter "mercury," we therefore
generally speak of a doubled mercury that yet is only one.

Arnold (Ros., II, 17): "So it clearly appears that the philosophers spoke
the truth about it, although it seems impossible to simpletons and fools,
that there was indeed only one stone, one medicine, one regulation, one
work, one vessel, both identical with the white and red sulphur, and to be
made at the same time."

Id. (Ros., I, 6): "For there is only one stone, one medicine, to which
nothing foreign is added and nothing taken away except that one separates
the superfluities from it."

Herein lies the idea of purification or washing; it occurs again. Arnold
(Ros., II, 8): "Now when you have separated the elements, then wash them."

The idea of washing is connected with that of mechanical purification,
trituration, dismemberment in the parable, grinding (mill), and with the
bath and solution (dissolution of the bridal pair). "Bath" is, on the
other hand, the surrounding vessel, water bath. Arnold (Ros., I, 9): "The
true beginning, therefore, is the dissolution and solution of the stone."
Fire can also cause a dissolution, either by fusion or by a trituration
that is similar to calcination. They are all processes that put the
substances in question into its purest or chemically most accessible form.

Arnold (Ros., I, 9): "The philosophical work is to dissolve and melt the
stone into its mercury, so that it is reduced and brought back to its
prima materia, i.e., original condition, purest form."

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