The Son then asks, Father, which of these is more worthy than the other; whether is it the heaven or the earth? Hermes replies, Both need the help one of the other; for the precepts demand a medium. But, saith the Son, if thou shalt say that a wise man governs all mankind? But ordinary men, replies Hermes, are better for them, because every nature delights in society of its own kind, and so we find it to be in the life of Wisdom where equals are conjoined. But what, rejoins the Son, is the mean betwixt them ? To whom Hermes replies, In everything In nature there are three from two: the beginning, the middle, and the end. First the needful water, then the oily tincture, and lastly, the faeces, or earth, which remains below But the Dragon inhabits in all these, and his houses are the darkness and blackness that is in them and by them he ascends into the air, from his rising, which is their heaven. But whilst the fume remains in them, they are not immortal. Take away, therefore, the vapour from the water, and the blackness from the oily tincture, and death from the faeces; and by dissolution thou shalt possess a triumphant reward, even that in and by which the possessors live.
Know then, my Son, that the temperate unguent, which is fire, is the medium between the faeces and the water and is the Perscrutinator of the water. For the unguents are called sulphurs, because between fire and oil and this sulphur there is such a chose proximity, that even as fire burns so does the sulphur also.
Oily Tincture of Iodine.—Formula.—The following formula is given by Greuel for an oily tincture of iodine: Iodine 10; castor oil, strong alcohol, of each 45 parts. Amer. Drugg., Sept. 1885, 169; from Arch d. Phar., 1885.
Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association at the ..., Volume 34 By American Pharmaceutical Association. Meeting
It is this vital perscrutinator, the internal fire of the sulfur of thy water, as Eirenaeus calls it, that, investigating scientifically, operates the whole change. And it is happily provided against intruders, lest the casket should be rifled of its rich offering, that they only who have obtained this passport can attain to the Magistery of life; since they only, literally speaking, can enter in through the narrow gate, as in the Mysteries we have already described. And the discovery is difficult, and reputed tedious by many who have spared no labor either of body or mind in the research --- reclusa resedet longius, as the poet says; it is far off, gotten in the penetralia, as it were, the flower of human intellect, triply imprisoned in the dark body’s hold. This it is the business of the philosopher to open and set free; and this is the security, that he must be a lover of Wisdom who can set her free.
Mary Anne ATWOOD Hermetic Philosophy & Alchemy: A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery
Comments