own nature, which
is all goodness, sweetness, and perfection. This is that Divine power
which turns water into wine; sorrow and anguish into exulting and
triumphant joy; and curses into blessings. Where it meets with a barren
and heathy desert, it transmutes it into a paradise of delights; yea, it
changeth evil into good, and all imperfection into perfection. It restores
that which is fallen and degenerated to its primary beauty, excellence and
perfection. It is the Divine Stone, the White Stone with the name written
upon it, which no one knows but he that hath it. [Cf. Rev. II, 17. 'He
that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To
him that overcometh will I give to eat [nutritio] of the hidden manna, and
will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no
man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.' Also III, 12: 'Him that
overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go
no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of
the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of
heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.' Cf. also XIX,
12, and XXI, 2. The White Stone with the new name is also joined with the
new earth. Because of this it is important that the new Jerusalem is
'prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.'] In a word, it is the
Divine Nature, it is God himself, whose essential property it is to
assimilate all things with himself; or [if you will have it in the
scripture phrase] to reconcile all things to himself, whether they be in
Heaven or in Earth; and all by means of this Divine Elixir, whose
transforming power and efficacy nothing can withstand...." (H. A., pp. 133
ff.)

At the end of the work there ensues the union of sun and moon, typifying
God and man. As in the Vedanta the teaching of the holy books of India,
the Upanishads, so in alchemy, the difference between the one soul and the
All Soul is of no importance. For every one who succeeds in overcoming the
fundamental error, in which we are all implicated, the difference
vanishes, and the two things previously separated coalesce. In reality
there is only the one thing: God.

Irenaeus writes: "... The fire of nature assimilates all that it nourishes
to its own likeness, and then our mercury or menstruum vanishes, that is,
it is swallowed by the solar nature [The soul of man dissolves and is
taken up by the divine or All Sou