Page:Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus Vol I (IA cu31924092287121).djvu/330



of each a sufficient quantity; and boil to the thickness you know to be sufficient.

Place in a glazed vessel, and boil with the aforesaid lixivium until it be well reddened. Then distil, calcine the remains, repeat operation, and do the same twelve times, or even more, till one part of it becomes red and the other remains white. Let that whiteness be distilled by itself so long as it does not burn. Then mix with oil of tartar, and let it fix the mercury. It will congeal it if it be boiled therein, and will be fixed by sublimation and putrefaction, so that one part tinges a hundred parts. Take the red part of that oil, place it on silver foil, and let it stand for a week. Afterwards purify by ashes, and you will have good and excellent Sol. Or boil mercury in the same and a similar result follows. Hamelius first made a lixivium, and says that out of ten pounds there is scarcely one of tartar. Let it be very acid.

Take mercury, and pound it with egg-shells. Boil it with oil of tartar, and, afterwards sublimate it. Repeat this fifty times. Then take that mercury, and imbibe it with oil of Luna. Having done this, add a little of the oil of tartar and sublimated mercury. Mix all together and put in a flask, well luted, on a gentle fire for 24 hours, and then for four hours on a fierce fire. You will then find a stone which will perform wonders. Dissolve this in water, and the water tinges to Luna. Dissolve in it as much Luna as possible, and afterwards coagulate.

Take of the dust of the metal 1 quartal; borax, tartar, 1 quartal each; imbibe with oil of tartar, and afterwards dissolve.

If stelliones are distilled by descent, they yield an oil, of which it is said that it should fix mercury and convert it into Sol.

We believe that the ashes of a stellio should convert Luna into Sol, if they be projected on Luna.

If you pour into their stomach, by means of a reed, a quantity of Mercurius vivus, put it into a luted vessel, and burn it, you will find fixed mercury, which is Luna. Take particular notice of these stelliones.