Page:Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus Vol I (IA cu31924092287121).djvu/182



N the creation of the world, the first separation began with the four elements, when the first matter of the world was one chaos. From that chaos God built the Greater World, separated into four distinct elements, Fire, Air, Water, Earth. Fire was the warm part, Air only the cold, Water the moist, and, lastly, Earth was but the dry part of the Greater World.

Now, that you may learn our method in this Eighth Book as briefly as possible, you must know that we do not propose to treat herein concerning the Separation of the Elements in all natural things, since we have fully and perfectly taught concerning these arcana in our Archidoxa on the Separations of the Elements. But here we touch only on the separation of natural things, where some one thing is singly, and by itself, materially and substantially separated and segregated, when two, three, four, or more have been mingled in one body, and yet only a single matter is touched and seen. And here it frequently happens that corporeal matter of this kind can be known by nobody, nor be designated by an express name, until the process of separation is instituted. Then sometimes from a single matter two, three, four, five, or more, proceed, as by daily experience in Alchemy is made evident. By way of example for you, there is electrum, which by itself is not a metal, but still conceals all the metals in one metal and body. If this, by alchemical art, be anatomised and separated, all the seven metals, and these pure and unmixed, proceed from it, namely, gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron, quicksilver, etc.

But in order to understand what separation is, you should know that it is nothing else but the segregation of one thing from another, whether two, three, four, or more have been mixed: I mean the segregation of three principles, as mercury, sulphur, salt, and the extraction of the pure from the impure, or of the pure and noble spirit and quintessence from the dense and