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Turba Philosophorum

The Seventy-First Dictum
Alchemical trans. Arthur Edward Waite • c. c. 12th century (Waite translation 1896)
71
Bracus* saith: How elegantly Mundus hath described this sulphureous water! For unless solid bodies are destroyed by a nature wanting a body, until the bodies become not-bodies, and even as a most tenuous spirit, ye cannot [attain] that most tenuous and tingeing soul, which is hidden in the natural belly. And know that unless the body be withered up and so destroyed that it dies, and unless ye extract from it its soul, which is a tingeing spirit, ye are unable to tinge a body therewith.