Paracelsus: The Book Concerning the Tincture of the Philosophers · 8 of 13 · tr. Arthur Edward Waite
Section 1h
This is the Catholicum of the Philosophers, by which all these philosophers have attained long life for resisting diseases, and they have attained this end entirely and most effectually, and so, according to their judgment, they named it The Tincture of the Philosophers.
For what can there be in the whole range of medicine greater than such purgation of the body, by means whereof all superfluity is radically removed from it and transmuted?
For when the seed is once made sound all else is perfected.
What avails the ill-founded purgation of the sophists since it removes nothing as it ought?
This, therefore, is the most excellent foundation of a true physician, the regeneration of the nature, and the restoration of youth.
After this, the new essence itself drives out all that is opposed to it.
To effect this regeneration, the powers and virtues of the Tincture of the Philosophers were miraculously discovered, and up to this time have been used in secret and kept concealed by true Spagyrists.
HERE ENDS THE BOOK CONCERNING THE TINCTURE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS.
NOTES 1 The Arcanum of a substance is not the virtue ( virtus ) but the essence ( vir ) and the potency ( potentia ), and is stronger than the virtue; nevertheless, an old error of the doctors conferred the name of virtues upon the potential essences.
- Paramirum , Lib.
IV.
Many things are elsewhere set forth concerning the Quintessence, but what is described is really a separation or extraction of the pure from the impure, not a true quintessence, and it is more correctly termed an Arcanum.
- Explicatio Totius Astronomiae .
2 The office of Vulcan is the separation of the good from the bad.
So the Art of Vulcan, which is Alchemy, is like unto death, by which the eternal and the temporal are divided one from another.
So also this art might be called the death of things.
- De Morbis Metallicis , Lib.
I., Tract III., c.
1.
Vulcan is an astral and not a corporal fabricator.
- De Caduco Matricis , Par.
VI.
The artist working in metals and other minerals transforms them into other colours, and in so doing his operation is like that of the heaven itself.
For as the artist excocts by means of Vulcan, or the igneous element, so heaven performs the work of coction through the Sun.
The Sun, therefore, is the Vulcan of heaven accomplishing coction in the earth.
- De Icteritiis.
Vulcan is the fabricator and architect of all things, nor is his habitation in heaven only, that is, in the firmament, but equally in all the other elements.
- Lib.
Meteorum , c.
4.
Where the three prime principles are wanting, there also the igneous essence is absent.
The Igneous Vulcan is nothing else but Sulphur, Sal Nitrum, and Mercury.
- Ibid.
, c.5.
3 The Book of the Revelation of Hermes, interpreted by Theophrastus Paracelsus, concerning the Supreme Secret of the World, seems to have been first brought to light by Benedictus Figulus, and appeared as a piece de résistance in his "Golden and Blessed Casket of Nature's Marvels", of which an English translation has been very recently published.
("A Golden and Blessed Casket of Nature's Marvels".
By Benedictus Figulus.
Now first done into English from the German original published at Frankfort in the year 1608.
London: James Elliott and Co.
8vo., 1893).
§ Ask Guru about this passage →Themes
Alchemical Workpraxis
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 explicitly defines the Tincture of the Philosophers as a transformative process that purges the body and regenerates nature.
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