CHAPTER V.

Concerning the Chief and Supreme Essence of Things.
The Magi In their wisdom asserted that all creatures might be brought to one unified substance, which substance they affirm may, by purifications and purgations, attain to so high a degree of subtlety, such divine nature and occult property^ as to work wonderful results. For they considered that by returning to the earth, and by a supreme magical separation, a certain perfect substance would come forth, which js at length, by many industrious and pro- longed preparations, exalted and raised up above the range of vegetable substances into mineral, above mineral into metallic, and above perfect metallic substances into a perpetual and divine Quintessence,* including in itself the
• Man was regarded by Paracelstu as btauelf in a speciAl manner the true Quintessence After G«l had created all the elenienu^ stat^, and every other created thingf and had disposed tbciu according to His will, He proceeded^ lastly, to the forming of pian» He extracted the essence out of the four elements into ooie moss ; He extincted also the
The Aurora of the Philosophers.
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essence of all celestial and terrestrial creatures. The Arabs and Greeks, by the occult characters and hieroglyphic descriptions of the Persians and the Egyptians, attained to secret and abstruse mysteries. When these were obtained and partially understood they saw with their own eyes, in the course of experimenting, many wonderful and strange effects. But since the super- celestial operations lay more deeply hidden than their capacity could penetrate, they did not call this a supercelestial arcanum according to the institution of the Magi I but the arcanum of the Philosophers* Stone according to the counsel and judgment of Pythagoras* Whoever obtained this Stone overshadowed it with various enigmatical figures, deceptive resemblances, comparisons, and fictitious titles, so that its matter might remain occult. Ver>* little or no knowledge of it therefore can be had from them.