transcribed from the Manly P Hall collection
Take, in the name of God, of the purest Mercury sublimate, sublimed three or four times, and revive it with an equal weight of quicklime and half as much crude tartar, distilling your quicksilver over her retort.
If it should not prove perfectly pure, bright like the firmament, purify it further by washing it with sea salt & vinegar, and with water. then dry it and strain it through leather.
Take of this pure mercury 3 parts, and of fine, pure gold in leaves 1 part: put them together into a glass mortar and grind them well together for as long time until the whole is become a soft āāā. [n.b. symbol for Amalgam]
When you have done this (in a warm glass mortar) then add nine parts more of your purified mercury and put all into such a vessel as you have seen with me. Put the āāā at the bottom and pour the remaining mercury upon it. Place the glass in sifted ashes so that the globular part may be buried in them.
Place the whole in a moderate heat and let the old man (☉) sweat in the bath until the, at first, visible ☿ disappears, and the hidden [sulphur symbol] (of the ☉) becomes manifest in black, white & red. And all this is but one labour, one regimen, one vessel and one oven.
If your warmth is sufficiently moderate in 40 days there will appear on the top a blackness resembling pitch, which is the caput corvi and the mercury of the wise. God be praised and thanked! Amen.
Absolved by me Johannes Gier, born at Rodenbergen (in Holland),
but at present living in Cologne, in the year of our Lord
1512.
Finis.
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