ies, all fables, all poesy, all arts and sciences.]" (P. 77.)

Artephius [Hapso]: "Without the antimonial vinegar [conscience] no metal
[man] can be whitened [inwardly pure].... This water is the only apt and
natural medium, clear as fine silver, by which we ought to receive the
tinctures of Sol and Luna [briefly, if also inexactly, to be paraphrased
by soul and body], so that they may be congealed and changed into a white
and living earth." This water desires the complete bodies in order that
after their dissolution it may be congealed, fixed and coagulated into a
white earth. [The first step is purification, releasing, that is,
otherwise also conceived as calcination, etc.; it takes place through
conscience, under whose influence the hard man is made tender and brought
to fluidity.]

"But their [sc. the alchemists] solution is also their coagulation; both
consist in one operation, for the one is dissolved and the other
congealed. Nor is there any other water which can dissolve the bodies but
that which abideth with them. Gold and silver [Sol and Luna as before] are
to be exalted in our water, ... which water is called the middle of the
soul and without which nothing can be done in our art. It is a vegetable,
mineral, and animal fire, which conserves the fixed spirits of Sol and
Luna, but destroys and conquers their bodies; for it annihilates,
overturns and changes bodies and metallic forms, making them to be no
bodies, but a fixed spirit."

"The argentum vivum [living silver] is ... the substance of Sol and Luna,
or silver and gold, changed from baseness to nobility.

"It is a living water that comes to moisten the earth that it may spring
forth and in due season bring forth much fruit.... This aqua vitae or water
of life, whitens the body and changes it into a white color....

"How precious and how great a thing is this water. For without it the work
could never be done or perfected; it is also called vas naturae, the
belly, the womb, receptacle of the tincture, the earth, the nurse. It is
the royal fountain, in which the king and queen [[Symbol: Sun] and
[Symbol: Moon]] bathe themselves; and the mother, which must be put into
and sealed up within the belly of her infant, and that is Sol himself, who
proceeded from her, and whom she brought forth; and therefore they have
loved one another as mother and son, and are conjoined together because
they sprang from one root and are of the same substance and nature. And