Paracelsus: Coelum Philosophorum, or Book of Vexations · 7 of 14 · tr. Arthur Edward Waite
Section 1g
It works essentially where otherwise there is no hope.
It accomplishes that which is deemed impossible.
What appears beyond belief or hope emerges into truth after a wonderful fashion.
NOTE ON MERCURIUS VIVUS.
Whatever tinges with a white colour has the nature of life, and the properties and power of light, which causally produces life.
Whatever, on the other hand, tinges with blackness, or produces black, has a nature in common with death, the properties of darkness, and forces productive of death.
The earth with its frigidity is a coagulation and fixation of this kind of hardness.
For the house is always dead; but he who inhabits the house lives.
If you can discover the force of this illustration you have conquered.
Tested liquefactive powder.
Burn fat verbena.
Recipe.
– Salt nitre, four ounces; a moiety of sulphur; tartar, one ounce.
Mix and liquefy.
WHAT IS TO BE THOUGHT CONCERNING THE CONGELATION OF MERCURY.
To mortify or congeal Mercury, and afterwards seek to turn it into Luna, and to sublimate it with great labour, is labour in vain, since it involves a dissipation of Sol and Luna existing therein.
There is another method, far different and much more concise, whereby, with little waste of Mercury and less expenditure of toil, it is transmuted into Luna without congelation.
Any one can at pleasure learn this Art in Alchemy, since it is so simple and easy; and by it, in a short time, he could make any quantity of silver and gold.
It is tedious to read long descriptions, and everybody wishes to be advised in straightforward words.
Do this, then; proceed as follows, and you will have Sol and Luna, by help whereof you will turn out a very rich man.
Wait awhile, I beg, while this process is described to you in few words, and keep these words well digested, so that out of Saturn, Mercury, and Jupiter you may make Sol and Luna.
There is not, nor ever will be, any art so easy to find out and practise, and so effective in itself.
The method of making Sol and Luna by Alchemy is so prompt that there is no more need of books, or of elaborate instruction, than there would be if one wished to write about last year's snow.
CONCERNING THE RECEIPTS OF ALCHEMY.
What, then, shall we say about the receipts of Alchemy, and about the diversity of its vessels and instruments?
These are furnaces, glasses, jars, waters, oils, limes, sulphurs, salts, saltpetres, alums, vitriols, chrysocollae, copper-greens, atraments, auri-pigments, fel vitri, ceruse, red earth, thucia, wax, lutum sapientiae, pounded glass, verdigris, soot, testae ovorum, crocus of Mars, soap, crystal, chalk, arsenic, antimony, minium, elixir, lazurium, gold-leaf, salt-nitre, sal ammoniac, calamine stone, magnesia, bolus armenus, and many other things.
Moreover, concerning preparations, putrefactions, digestions, probations, solutions, cementings, filtrations, reverberations, calcinations, graduations, rectifications, amalgamations, purgations, etc., with these alchemical books are crammed.
Then, again, concerning herbs, roots, seeds, woods, stones, animals, worms, bone dust, snail shells, other shells, and pitch.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The passage is explicitly focused on the transformation of Mercury into Luna and the production of gold through alchemical processes.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage maps white to life/light and black to death/darkness, and uses planetary correspondences (Saturn, Mercury, Jupiter → Sol, Luna) as a structured system of analogical relations between registers.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The instruction 'If you can discover the force of this illustration you have conquered' signals that the outer alchemical language conceals an inner operative truth accessible only to the prepared reader.
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The white/black, life/death, light/darkness pairing presents opposites as two poles of a single scale (life-death) with the alchemical work operating between them.