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The Mirror of Alchimy

Chapter 10: CHAP. VI. Of the accidentall and essentiall colours appearing in the worke.
By Roger Bacon
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About This Book

A compilation of alchemical treatises sets out definitions of the art, explains its two basic principles—mercurial and sulfurous substances—and presents a theory of how metals arise and aspire toward gold. It offers procedural guidance for selecting and preparing the matter for a philosopher’s stone or elixir, includes commentary on the Smaragdine Table and allied aphorisms, and contains a discursive essay on the relation between art and nature alongside practical chapters on laboratory operations such as decoction, fixation, purification, and methods for transmutation.

CHAP. VI.
Of the accidentall and essentiall colours appearing in the worke.

THe matter of the stone thus ended, thou shalt knowe the certaine maner of working, by what maner and regiment, the stone is often chaunged in decoction into diuerse colours. Wherupon one saith, So many colours, so many names. According to the diuerse colours appearing in the worke, the names likewise were varied by the Philosophers: whereon, in the first operation of our stone, it is called putrifaction, and our stone is made blacke: whereof one saith, When thou findest it blacke, know that in that blacknesse whitenesse is hidden, and thou must extract the same from his most subtile blacknes. But after putrefaction it waxeth red, not with a true rednesse, of which one saith: It is often red, and often of a citrine colour, it often melteth, and is often coagulated, before true whitenesse. And it dissolueth it selfe, it coagulateth it selfe, it putrifieth it selfe, it coloureth it self, it mortifieth it selfe, it quickneth it selfe, it maketh it selfe blacke, it maketh it selfe white, it maketh it selfe red. It is also greene; whereon another sayth, Concoct, it till it appeare greene vnto thee, and that is the soule. And another, Know, that in that greene his soule beareth dominion. There appeares also before whitenesse the peacocks colour, whereon one saith thus. Know thou that al the colours in the world, or yt may be imagined, appeare before whitenesse, and afterward true whitenesse followeth. Whereof one sayth: When it hath bin decocted pure and clean, that it shineth like the eyes of fishes, then are wee to expect his vtilitie, and by that time the stone is congealed rounde. And another sayth: When thou shalt finde whitenesse a top in the glasse, be assured that in that whitenesse, rednesse is hidden: and this thou must extract: but concoct it while it become all red: for betweene true whitenesse and true rednesse, there is a certaine ash-colour: of which it is sayde. After whitenesse, thou canst not erre, for encreasing the fire, thou shalt come to an ash-colour: of which another saith: Doo not set light by the ashes, for God shal giue it thee molten: and then at the last the King is inuested with a red crowne by the will of God.