Mary the Prophetess
Transcribed from the British Library MS. Sloane 3641
folios 1-8. The original text was printed in a number of compendia in Latin and
German, the Auriferae artis 1572, Alchymia vera 1604, Arnaldus de
Villa Nova Opus Aureum 1604, Lumen chymicum novum 1624 and in the
sixth volume of the Theatrum chemicum 1659.
The practise of Mary the Prophetess in the Alchymicall
Art.
Aros the Philosopher had a meeting with Mary the Prophetess
the Sister of Moyses, and approaching to her, he paid her respect and said unto
her. O Prophetess, I have truly heard many say of you that you whiten the Stone
in one day.
And Mary said, Yea, Aros, even in a part of one day.
Aros
said: O Lady Mary, when will the Work be which you affirm? How shall we whiten
and afterwards add blackness?
Mary said; O Aros, oftentimes Nations have dyd
about this part. Know you not, O Aros; that there is a water or a thing which
whitens Hendragem?
Then Aros answering said to her. O Lady it is so as you
say, but in a long time.
Mary answered, Hermes in all his Books has said that
the Philosophers whiten the Stone in one hour of the day.
Aros said to her,
Oh how excellent is that?
Mary said, it is most excellent to him that is
ignorant of it.
Aros said, if men have all the four Elements, he [Hermes]
said that their fumes might be compleated, and complexioned, and coagulated, and
retained in one day, untill they doe fullfill the consequence (i.e. attain the
end).
Mary said, O Aros, by God, if thy senses or understanding were not
solid, you should not hear these words from me, untill the Lord should fill my
Heart with the grace of his divine Will. Nevertheless take the Allum of Spain,
the white gumm and the red gumm, which is the Kibric of the Philosophers, and
their Sol and the greater Tincture, and marry Gumm with Gumm togeather with a
true Matrimony. Mary said, make them like a running Water, and vitrify this
water which has been laboured or wrought upon for one day, out of the two
Lubechs, upon the fixed body, and liquefy them by the secret of Nature in the
Vessel of Philosophy. Did you understand us?
Yes Lady.
Mary said, Keep
the fume and take care that none of it fly away. And let your measure be with a
gentle fire such as is the Measure of the heat of the Sun in the Month of June
or July, and stay by your Vessel and behold it with care how it grows black,
grows red, and grows white in less than three hours of the day, and the fume
will penetrate the body, and the Spirit will be bound up, and they will be like
milk, incerating, and liquefying and penetrating: and that is the
secret.
Aros said I do not say that this will be allways.
Mary said unto
him: Aros, and this is more wonderfull concerning this, that it was not among
the Ancients, nor did it come to him by curing, or by the Medicinall Art and
that is take the white, clear and honoured Herb growing on the Hillocks, and
pound it fresh as it is in its Hour, and that is the true Body not flying from
the Fire.
And Aros said it is the Stone of Truth?
And Mary said yes. But
yet men know not this regimen (rule or way of working) with the speediness
thereof.
Aros said, and what afterwards.
Mary said, vitrify upon it Kibric
or Zibeic and there are the two fumes comprehending the two Lights, and project
upon that the complement of the Tinctures of the Spirits, and the weights of
Truth, and pound it all, and put it to the Fire, and you shall see wonderfull
things from them. The whole goverment consists in the temper of the Fire, O how
strange it is, how it will be moved from one colour to another, in less than an
hour of the Day, untill it arrive at the mark of redness and whiteness, and cast
away the Fire and permit it to cool, and open it and you will find the clear
pearly Body to be of the Colour of the Poppy of the Wood mixt with whiteness and
that is it which is incerating, liquefying and penetrating, and one golden piece
thereof, the weight of a small golden Coin, falleth upon a thousand thousand and
two hundred thousand. That is the hidden secret.
Then Aros fell down upon his
face.
And Mary said to him, Lift up your head Aros: because I will shorten
for you the thing, as that clear body which is thrown upon the Hillocks, and is
not obtained by putrefaction or motion. Take and pound it with Gumm Elsaron, and
with the two fumes because the Body comprehending or retaining them is Gumm
Elsaron and grind it all. Therefore approach because it all melts. If you
project its wife upon it, it will be as a distilling Water, and when the Aire
shall strike it, it will be congealed and be one body, and make projection of
it, and you will behold Wonders: O Aros that is the hidden secret of Scholia;
and know that the said two fumes are the Root of this Art, and they are the
white Kibric and the humid calx, but the fixed Body is of the Heart of Saturn
comprehending the Tincture, and the Fields of Wisdom or of Scholia. And the
Philosophers have named it by many and all names, and received or gathered from
the Hillocks it is a clear white Body, and these are the medicine of this Art,
part is procured and part is found upon the Hillocks; and know Aros that the
wise men have not called it the Fields of Wisdom, or of Scholia, unless because
Scholia will not be compleated but by it; and in the Scholia there are nothing
but wonderfull things. For there also enters into them the four Stones, and its
true regimen is as I have said. And that is first Scoyare, Ade, and Zethet; by
that make your Allegory as Hermes has done in his Books Scoyas, and the
Philosophers have allways made the regimen longer, and have resembled the work
to every thing which ought not to make the work, and they make the Magistery to
be in one year, and this but onely for hiding it from the ignorant people,
untill it be confirmed in their Hearts and their senses (till they believe the
Art),: because the Art will not be compleated except only in Gold; because it is
the great secret of God: and they who hear of our secrets doe not verify them
(nor believe them to be true), by reason of their ignorance. Did you understand
Aros?
Aros said yes. But tell me about that vessel, without which the Work
will not be accomplisht.
Mary said that the Vessel of Hermes which the
Stoicks have concealed, and it is not a Necromanticall Vessel, but it is the
Measure of your Fire.
Aros said: O Lady you have obeyed (been a scholar) in
the Society of Scoyari: O Prophetess, have you found among the Secrets of the
Philosophers, which they have set down in their Books, that any one can make the
Art out of one Body?
And Mary said: Yes: which Hermes has not taught, because
the Root of Scholia is a body which cannot be made smooth or plain and incurable
(unconquerable) and it is a poyson mortifying all bodies, and it pulverises them
and coagulates Mercury with its odour. And shee said, I swear to you by the
eternall God, that that poison when it is dissolved untill it is made a subtile
Water, I care not by what dissolution it is done, does coagulate Mercury into
Luna with the strength of Truth, and it falls into the Throne of Jupiter, and
forms him into Luna. And the Science is in all Bodys, but the Stoicks, by reason
of the shortness of their lives, and the Length of the Work, have concealed
this; and they found out these tinging Elements, and they increased them, and
all the Philosophers teach them, except the Vessel of Hermes, because it is
divine, and of the Wisdom of the Lord hidden from Nations: and they who are
ignorant of it, know not the Regimen of Truth, because of their Ignorance of the
Vessel of Hermes.
Mary briefly soundeth forth
Strange things like
Thunder round the Earth.
She with two Gumms makes the Bottome stay
What
else would fly away.
Three things if you three hours attend
Are chained
together in the End.
Mary the Light of dew, and Art has got
In three hours
to tye the Knot.
Pluto's daughter, it is she
Who bindeth Loves
confederacy
Joyned with three seeds she does aspire
To be exalted in the
Fire.
