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The Mirror of Alchimy

Chapter 22: CHAP. IX. How the volatile Stone may againe be fixed.
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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. IX.
How the volatile Stone may againe be fixed.

AFter all these things, this stone thus exalted, must be incerated with the Oyle that was extracted from it in the first operation, being called the water of the stone: and so often boyle it by sublimation, till by vertue of the firmentation of the earth exalted with it, the whole stone doo againe descende from heauen into the earth, and remaine fixed and flowing. And this is it which the Philosopher sayth: It descendeth agayne into the earth, and so receyueth the vertue of the superiours by sublimation, and of the inferiours, by descension: that is, that which is corporall, is made spirituall by sublimation, and that which is spirituall, is made corporall by descension.