Page:Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus Vol I (IA cu31924092287121).djvu/186

 this way, the metal is thoroughly digested and (so to say) refined or purged from all its dirt and scoria. Mineral ores of this kind will sometimes contain more than one metal, as is very often the case: for example, copper and silver, copper and gold, lead and silver, tin and silver, etc., may be found in one mineral ore; and the sign of this circumstance will be apparent if the metallic regulus, after being dealt with in the reverberatory, be resolved in a small vat after the proper fashion and mode. All the imperfect metals in it are separated, such as copper, iron, tin, lead, and so they pass away in smoke together with the lead (of which there should be added twice as much as of the regulus), and then only fine silver and gold remain in the vat. A similar result is attained, too, if the metallic rex is liquefied and poured upon the lumps. By that method of fusion the intermixed metals are separated. That which is best and weightiest always sinks to the bottom, while the lighter mounts above.

Two or three metals in admixture can also be separated in acrid and strong water, and one can be extracted from the other, and extended and resolved. But if both metals are resolved together, one of them in that resolution, as sand or calx, can be diverberated and depressed with salt according to the usual method, and so separated.

Besides this, metals can also be separated by fluxion according to the following process. Reduce the metals to a state of flux. When this has been done, throw in for every pound of the metal one ounce of the most perfectly sublimated and refined sulphur. It will there be burnt, and in the course of that operation it will attract to itself, on the surface, one metal, the lightest, whilst it will leave the heavier at the bottom. Let them stand in this way until cool. So in the one regulus two metals will be found, not, as before, mixed together, but opposed to each other, and separated by the sulphur as if by a wall, even as oil cuts off two bodies of water, so that that they cannot join and be commingled. In the same way sulphur acts with these metals. Sulphur, therefore, is an arcanum, worthy of the highest esteem.

Volatile and fugitive metals, such as gold and silver, if they are to be separated from their minerals, since they can neither be treated in the fire nor with strong waters, should be amalgamated, separated, and extracted by means of Mercurius vivus. Afterwards the Mercurius vivus must be abstracted and separated from the calx of the gold or silver by the grade of distillation.

In this way, other metals, too, as gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, and substances prepared from these, as red electrum, white magnesia, aurichalcum, lead ashes, laton, casting brass, part with part, etc., and whatever transmuted metals of this kind there are, must be abstracted and separated from their extraneous substances by means of Mercurius vivus. For this is the nature and quality of Mercurius vivus, that it is amalgamated with metals and wholly united with them, but more quickly or more slowly with one than with another, according as the metal is more or less akin to its nature.

In this scale the principal is fine gold, then fine silver, the third lead, the