CHAPTER 11,

Concerning the Ultimate and Primal Matter of Minerals.
The first principle with God was the ultimate matter which He Himself made to be the primal, just as a fruit which produces another fruit. It has seed ; and this seed ranks as primal matter. Likewise, out of the ultimate matter of minerals the primal element was made, that is, it was made into seed, w^hich seed is the element of water. This resolves it, so that it becomes water. It has been entrusted to it by Nature, or so arranged that it should produce the ultimate matter, and this is in water. Nature, therefore, takes under its own power and separation whatever there is in water ; and what- ever relates to a metal it puts on one side by itself for each particular metal. So also for gems, stones, the magnet, and other things of that kind^ each separately and according to its own kind. For as God has appointed to the wheat its proper time for harvest, and the autumntide for fruits, and to other things like these in their elements, so for the element of water He has
* It U needful far nuvn to be bom a d time from a virgin, not frDm a wife, by water and by the spirit. For the spiifit vivifies that flcsJj whereii) iberc is m) death pv»»ible for evcx^ The 6«>h wherein death abides profiu nothing, and nothing towards ftteriud talvalioD can it confer upon man*— *AVbVtfA^M Sag^Jt^ Lib, IL, c. x.
92 The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus,
willed that there shall be a proper season of har\^est and autumntide ; and for all other things, each according to its kind, He has foreordained times for the collection of their fruits. So, then, the element of water Is the mother, seed, and root of all minerals ; and the Archseus therein is he who disposes every- thing according to a definite order, so that each comes to its ultimate matter, which at length man receives as a sort of artificial primal matter : that is, where Nature ends, there the Art of man begins, for Nature's ultimate matter is man's primal matter. After such a wonderful method has God created water as the first matter of Nature, so soft and weak a substance, yet from it as a fruit the most solid metal, stones, etc— the v^ry hardest from the ver>^ softest : — and so that from the water fire should issue forth, beyond the grasp of man's intelligence, but not beyond the power of Nature- God has created wonderful offspring from that mother, as appears also in men ; if they be looked at even in their mother, each will be found peculiar in his intellect and his properties, not according to his body, but according to his own state of constitution.