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object:6.03 - THE PRODUCTION OF THE QUINTESSENCE

3. THE PRODUCTION OF THE QUINTESSENCE
[681] Much of Dorns argument moves in the sphere of symbols and soars on winged feet into the clouds. But that does not prevent his symbols from having a more mundane meaning which appears more or less accessible to our psychology. Thus, he knew that even the wise man could not reconcile the opposites unless a certain heavenly substance hidden in the human body came to his help, namely the balsam, the quintessence, the philosophic wine,70 a virtue and heavenly vigour71in short, the truth. 72 This truth was the panacea. It is only indirectly hidden in the body, since in reality it consists in the imago Dei imprinted in man. This imago is the true quintessence and the virtue of the philosophic wine. The latter is therefore an apt synonym, because wine in the form of a liquid represents the body, but as alcohol it represents spirit, which would seem to correspond with the heavenly virtue. This, although divided up among individuals, is universal; it is one, and when freed from its fetters in the things of sense it returns to its original state of unity. This is one of the secrets of nature, whereby the spagyrics have attained to higher things.73 The wine can be prepared from grain74 and from all other seeds.75 The extracted essence is reduced to its greatest simplicity by assiduous rotary movements,76 whereby the pure is separated from the impure:
Then you will see the pureness floating to the top, transparent, shining, and of the colour of purest air. . . . 77 You will see the heretofore spagyric [i.e., secret] heaven, which you can bedeck with the lower stars, as the upper heaven is bedecked with the upper stars. . . . 78 Will now the unbelievers, who have imitated the Physicists, marvel that we handle in our hands the heaven and the stars? . . . For us, therefore, the lower stars are all individuals produced by nature in this lower world by their conjunction with heaven, like [the conjunction] of the higher with the lower elements.79 Now I hear the voice of many raging against us, and crying out, Avaunt! let those men be destroyed who say that heaven can conjoin itself to earth
[682] The caelum therefore is a heavenly substance and a universal form, containing in itself all forms, distinct from one another, but proceeding from one single universal form. Wherefore, he who knows how individuals can be led on to the most general genus by the spagyric art, and how the special virtues, one or more, can be impressed upon this genus, will easily find the universal medicine. . . . For since there is one single and most general beginning of all corruptions, and one universal fount of regenerating, restoring, and life-giving virtues, who, save a man bereft of his senses, will call such a medicine in doubt?80
[683] Through the alchemical treatment of the grana (or grape-pips),
our Mercurius is concocted by the highest sublimation [exaltatione]. The mixture of the new heaven, of honey,81 Chelidonia,82 rosemary flowers,83 Mercurialis,84 of the red lily85 and human blood,86 with the heaven of the red or white wine or of Tartarus, can be undertaken. . . . 87 One can also make another mixture, namely that of heaven and the philosophical key,88 by the artifice of generation.
[684] Here even Dorn remarks that the reader will hold his breath, adding:
It is true that these things are scarcely to be understood [vix intelligibilia] unless one has full knowledge of the terms used in the art, and these we consider we have defined in the second stage, treating of meditative knowledge. Meditative knowledge is thus the sure and undoubted resolution by expert certitude, of all manner of opinions concerning the truth. But opinion is an anticipation [praesumptio] of the truth, fixed in the mind and doubtful. Experiment, on the other hand, is manifest demonstration of the truth, and resolution the putting away of doubt. We cannot be resolved of any doubt save by experiment, and there is no better way to make it than on ourselves. . . . We have said earlier that piety consists in knowledge of ourselves, and hence we begin to explain meditative knowledge from this also. But no man can truly know himself unless first he see and know by zealous meditation . . . what rather than who he is, on whom he depends, and whose he is, and to what end he was made and created, and by whom and through whom.
[685] God made man to partake of his glory and created him in his image. Even as we were created of the basest and most worthless clay, despised of all, so and no otherwise, by reason of the prime matter whereof we consist, are we more prone to everything vile than to him who out of vile matter created us of old to be most precious creatures, adorned with glory and honour little less than the angels. From the basest matter God created gold and precious stones. Therefore, knowing our nature and our origin, we should abstain from pride, for God looks not upon the person but upon poverty and humility and hates pride. Only he who made the water and the wine can change the one into the other, and so also the earth into a living soul, and he endued it with his image and likeness for the certainty of our salvation. Nevertheless we became rebels through the sin of Adam, but God was reconciled with us. Who will be so stony [lapideus], when he shall revolve in his mind the mystery of the divine goodness, as not to be reconciled with his enemy, however great the injury he received from him? He who knows God will know his brother also. This is the foundation of the true philosophy. And he who observes all this in himself and frees his mind from all worldly cares and distractions,89 little by little and from day to day will perceive with his mental eyes and with the greatest joy some sparks of divine illumination. The soul, moved by this, will unite with the body:
At length the body is compelled to resign itself to, and obey, the union of the two that are united [soul and spirit].90 That is the wondrous transformation of the Philosophers, of body into spirit, and of the latter into body, of which there has been left to us by the sages the saying, Make the fixed volatile and the volatile fixed,91 and in this you have our Magistery. Understand this after the following manner: Make the unyielding body tractable, so that by the excellence of the spirit coming together with the soul it becomes a most stable body ready to endure all trials. For gold is tried in the fire. . . . Draw near, ye who seek the treasures in such diverse ways, know the rejected stone which is made the head of the corner. . . . In vain do they labour, all searchers after the hidden secrets of nature, when, looking for another way of ingress, they seek to reveal the virtues of earthly things through earthly things. Learn not heaven therefore through the earth, but learn the virtues of one by those of the other. Seek the incorruptible medicine which not only transmutes bodies from corruption to their true disposition [temperamentum], but preserves those so disposed [temperata] for any length of time. Such medicine you can find nowhere but in heaven. For heaven, by virtue of invisible rays coming together from all sides in the centre of the earth, penetrates, generates, and nourishes all elements, and all things that arise from the elements. This child of the two parents, of the elements and heaven, has in itself such a nature that the potentiality and actuality [potentia et actu] of both parents can be found in it. What will remain there till today [i.e., in the centre of the earth], save the stone in the spagyric generation?92 Learn from within thyself to know all that is in heaven and on earth, and especially that all was created for thy sake. Knowest thou not that heaven and the elements were formerly one, and were separated from one another by divine artifice, that they might bring forth thee and all things? If thou knowest this, the rest cannot escape thee. Therefore in all generation a separation of this kind is necessary. . . . Thou wilt never make from others the One which thou seekest, except first there be made one thing of thyself 93


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