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moisture combines with the metallic liquid, it loses its proper quality and is entirely corrupted. The metallic essence
of the perfect metals you cannot obtain in a separate form; for their liquid and elementary fire are welded together
by so perfect a process of coction, and so closely united with their earth, that neither fire nor water can avail to
separate them, seeing that the fire has no power over them, and no foreign moisture can combine with, or corrupt,
the liquid of perfect metals. All your labour will be in vain: the coction has done its work so well that you will never
be able to undo it.
Hence, the Ancients said that there was no sulphur in anything but in the metals, and hence also they called the
metallic liquid quicksilver. But names do not alter facts: the fact is that the elementary fire must be so united to its
elementary liquid by natural coction that they become indivisible. For the liquid protects the fire against combustion,
so that both remain fixed and unchanged in common fire. This perfected substance the Ancients have well called
Elixir, or fire which has undergone a process of perfect coction: for that which before was crude and raw is
"cooked," or digested by the process of coction. That element which, by its imperfection, causes base metals to be
broken up and disintegrated by fire, has been digested and perfected by natural heat.
For this reason you must not grudge the labour which the proper performance of this heating process demands,
seeing that it includes purification, sublimation, dissolution, and all the other chemical processes enumerated by the
ancient alchemists. All these you may safely dismiss from your mind, as they can cause you nothing but trouble,
loss, and waste of time. My purpose in writing this faithful admonition is to caution you again and again to beware
of those pitfalls with which the contemptuous obscurity of the Ancients has so plentifully beset the path of the
ingenuous enquirer. I also desired to suggest to you the true substance, and the one true method and have throughout
endeavoured to express myself in a style as free from allegorical obscurity as possible. I have recalled you from your
wanderings in the pathless wilderness, and put you in the right way. Now you must beseech Almighty God to give
you the real philosophical temper, and to open your eyes to the facts of nature. Thus alone you will be able to reach
the coveted goal.
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