Page:Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus Vol I (IA cu31924092287121).djvu/172

 Mercurius, the fat is Sulphur, and the ash is Salt. For that which smokes and evaporates over the fire is Mercury; what flames and is burnt is Sulphur; and all ash is Salt. Now, when you you have these three principles together, place them in a venter equinus, and putrefy for the time required by each respectively. If afterwards that matter be buried, or poured into a rich soil, you will see it begin to revive, and a tree or a little log will be produced from it, which, indeed, is in its nature much higher than the original one.

This is really wood, and is called resuscitated, renewed, and restored wood. It was from the beginning wood, but mortified, destroyed, and reduced to coals, to ashes—to nothingness; and yet from that nothingness it is made something, and is reborn. Truly in the light of Nature this is a great mystery, that a thing which had altogether lost its form, and had been reduced to nothingness, recovers that form and becomes something from nothing—something which afterwards is much nobler in its virtue and its efficacy than it had been at first.

But, in order that we may speak generally concerning the resuscitation and restoration of natural things, this should be understood as the principal foundation—that to each thing may be again conceded that which had been taken from it and separated in mortification. It is difficult to explain this specifically here; so we will conclude this book, and in the following book make these things more clear with regard to the transmutations of natural things.