(42) Ascanius saith: Too much talking, O all ye Sons of the Doctrine, leads this subject further into error! But when ye read in the books of the Philosophers that Nature is one only, and that she overcomes all things: Know that they are one thing and one composite. Do ye not see that the complexion of a man is formed out of a soul and body;

thus, also, must ye conjoin these, because the Philosophers, when they prepared the matters and conjoined spouses mutually in love with each other, behold there ascended from them a golden water!

The Turba answereth: WWhen thou wast treating of the first work, lo! thou didst turn unto the second! How ambiguous hast thou made thy book, and how obscure are thy words!

Then he: 1 will perform the disposition of the first work.

The Turba answereth: Do this. And he: Stir up war between copper and quicksilver, until they go to destruction and are corrupted, because when the copper conceives the quicksilver it coagulates it, but when the quicksilver conceives the copper, the copper is congealed into earth; stir up, therefore, a fight between them; destroy the body of the copper until it becomes a powder. But conjoin the male to the female, which are vapour* and quicksilver, until the male and the female become Ethel, for he who changes them into spirit by means of Ethel, and next makes them red, tinges every body, because, when by diligent cooking ye pound the body, ye extract a pure, spiritual, and sublime soul therefrom, which tinges every body.

The Turba answereth: Inform, therefore, posterity what is that body. And he: It is a natural sulphureous thing* which is called by the names of all bodies.

(12) For as nature, with the working, wrestling and rising up of its birth or geniture, stood in the time of the kindling, just such a matter attracted itself together. Now it may be asked, How then is a comprehensible or palpable son come to be out of an incomprehensible mother? Answer.

(60) Bonellus* saith: Know, all ye disciples, that out of the elect things nothing becomes useful without conjunction and regimen,* because sperma is generated out of blood and desire. For the man mingling with the woman, the sperm is nourished by the humour of the womb, and by the moistening blood, and by heat, and when forty nights have elapsed the sperm is formed. But if the humidity of the blood and of the womb were not heat, the sperm would not be dissolved, nor the foetus be procreated. But God has constituted that heat and blood for the nourishment of the sperm until the foetus is brought forth, after which it is not nourished, save by milk and fire, sparingly and gradually, while it is dust, and the more it burns the more, the bones being strengthened, it is led towards youth, arriving at which it is independent.t Thus it behoves you also to act in this Art. Know ye that without heat nothing is ever generated, and that the bath causes the matter to perish by means of intense heat. If, indeed, it be frigid, it puts to flight and disperses, but if it have been tempered, it is convenient and sweet to the body, wherefore the veins become smooth and the flesh is augmented. Behold it has been demonstrated to you, all ye disciples! Understand, therefore, and in all things which ye attempt to rule, fear God.

(113) And the spirit of the man, (understand the root of the love which, in the rising up of the life out of the water, riseth up through the fire), and also the spirit of the woman, both catch one another in that oil of the heart, where presently a mass, seed, or driving will or desire to the propagating of a man again arises in the mass.