Paracelsus: The Aurora of the Philosophers

The Aurora of the Philosophers opens by attributing the origin of arts to Adam, who knew all things after the Fall and predicted the world's destruction by water. His successors engrave natural arts on two stone tables; Noah later finds one under Mount Araroth after the Deluge, describing the firmament, globe, and planets. Universal knowledge divides into astronomy, magic, cabala, and alchemy. Abraham carries the Art from Canaan into Egypt; Jacob paints sheep by magic; Moses, Daniel (who expounds "Mene, Mene, Tecelphares"), Elias, and others practice cabalistic arts. The Persians admit only Wise Men as kings; the Wise Men from the East seek Jesus. Hermes is named Trismegistus, as is Zoroaster. Chapter II states the Greeks drew learning from the Egyptians, but, dissatisfied with Moses's law, fell into fables; Homer, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Thales, Anaxagoras, Democritus followed, mixing fictions; this philosophy passed to the Latins and spread through Europe. Chapter III describes shared knowledge among Chaldeans, Persians, Egyptians under differing names. Pythagoras and Anaxagoras gathered only fragments; Moses, Abraham, Solomon, Adam, and the wise men from the East were true Magi. Chapter IV distinguishes Magic (natural secrets) from cabala (divine mysteries), naming Trithemius, Bacon, Agrippa; it discusses the Gamahea, the Divine Ternary, Quaternary, Septenary, and Denary. Chapter V concerns bringing creatures to one substance, the Quintessence, and the Philosophers' Stone named by Pythagoras. Chapters VI–IX catalogue errors seeking the Stone in vegetables (celandine, Lunaria, Martagon), animals (blood, eggs, urine, lizards, trouts; Mercurius speaks to King Calid), and minerals, declaring the preparations of Geber and Albertus Magnus sophistical.

The text passes judgment on the sublimation of Mercury by mineral spirits and dismisses John de Rupescissa's treatise on the White and Red Stone as deceitful dreams. It warns against Geber's sophistry—sevenfold sublimations, revivifications of Mercury, salts of urine—and notes that some have tried fixing Mercury with sulphurs of metals and been deceived; the author reports seeing Mercury counterfeit silver but fail the test. Chapter X catalogues failed attempts: pressing oil from sublimed Mercury, purging vitriol to a Red Sulphur, coagulating Mercury with alum, fixing arsenic to whiten copper, and mixing counterfeit Venus with Luna to sell to goldsmiths, making false coiners. It describes boiling sulphur white, making cinnabar and hepar, and warns against sophisticated oils and tinctures. The author promises to reveal philosophy in three arcana: arsenic, vitriol, antimony. Chapter XI describes arsenic's three spirits and joining the tingeing spirit to spirit of Luna, digested thirty-two days, then projection for white Luna. Chapter XII and XIII treat vitriol's green colour, redness, the Supercelestial Marriage of soul and body, and multiplication of the oil. Chapter XIV treats antimony, the bath of gold in which Vulcan washed Phoebus, describing its dissolution, sublimation, distillation into red oil, and combination with oil of Sol. Chapter XV describes projection and the animation of Venus with arsenic and tartar, adding Luna and ferment. Chapter XVI concerns the universal matter, the transmutation of vegetables into minerals, the three primal elements Mercury, Sulphur, Salt, and Nature's separating fire. Hermes states the Sun and Moon are the roots of the Art; the Son of Hamuel calls the Stone coagulated water in Sol and Luna. Two Stones exist: white and red.

The text states the Stone has two matters, Sol and Luna, joined in marriage, which cannot generate without a third thing: Mercury, composed of body, spirit, and soul. Philosophers call the Stone animal, name it their Adam carrying Eve, and distinguish their Mercury from common Mercury. Almadir describes extracting Mercury; Mercurius calls the Stone an orphan. Chapter XVII treats preparation, dismissing the common preparations of Geber, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Rupescissa, and Polydorus, affirming fire and Azoth suffice and Nature performs all operations. It calls the wine-dissolution process of monks—Lully, Richard of England, Rupescissa—erroneous, denies man can separate the elements, and explains the terms putrefaction, Crow's Head, distillation, coagulation, calcination, ceration, and fixation. Chapter XVIII concerns the vessel: it rejects Aristoteles the Alchemist's triple vessel, affirms one vessel governed by heavenly bodies, cites Anaxagoras foretelling a stone falling from heaven, notes the Cabalists' geometrical proportion, and lists instruments. Chapter XIX concerns the secret fire ("Let fire and Azoc suffice"), listing failed methods (horse dung, coal, lamps, ants' eggs, etc.), condemning Thomas Aquinas as blasphemous and warning against Arnold de Villa Nova, then citing Almadir, Salmanazar, and Almadir again. Chapter XX concerns ferment and weight, citing Hermes's "Book of the Seven Treatises" and Arnold on elemental proportions, describing Sulphur's role, and concluding with thanks to God. The Aurora ends. The NOTES give publication history (Basle 1575, editor Gerard Dorne) and append passages from De Caducis, Philosophia Sagax, De Imaginibus, and others on science, magic, Gamaheu stones, the Quintessence, coagulation, arsenic, and vitriol.

Extracts describe vitriol: green when soft, hardening to stone when excocted, turning red as sulphur predominates (De Pestilitate); its use in Medicine and Alchemy, preparation, and three extracted oils (De Vitriolo); its hidden golden spiritual force yielding potable gold (De Morbis Amentium). Antimony is made into oil with vitriol water and sal ammoniac, and distilled with sal gemmae into wound-healing red oil. Man is fashioned from the limbus, the microcosmus, a dual and Great Limbus grounded in God's word, containing heaven, earth, water, air.