CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE MERCURY
Mercury, a very well-known Metal, is a liquid body which runs like Water, composed by N ature of a viscous and very subtile substance, with much Humidity, because of which it is very heavy, very lustrous and very cold (according to most Authorities). There are not lacking sorne who affirm that it is very hot, in view of the effects resulting from its great Subtility and Penetration, which enable it to pass not only through Flesh but also through the hardest Eones. It is also thought to be hot, because, as is well known, Corrosive Sublimate is a poison on account of this being hot in the highest degree. SolimĂĄn (Sublimate) is nothing more than Mercury, though essentially altered by the admixture of metals with which it was cooked and sublimed; and it is a fact that Corrosive Sublimate may be (and it is) reduced back to real Mercury in a way which will be described later. But, leaving this to those who investigate the Properties of the Elements, the fact is that Mercury has so much in common with the other Metals that, although it is not any one of them, it is convertible into all, not only on account of the Principies of which it is composed (as most Philosophers affirm, and as they prove by the facility with which it unites and incorporates with all other Metals), but also because it can be wholly transmuted into real Metal, like those which N ature bore, and behaves like Metals under the action of heat and the hammer. Raymond explains a number of ways by which it may be converted into Gold and Silver. There is a very easy way, explained in the discourse of Eliana, for converting it into true Lead. Although judgment may be suspended as to the credit to be given to Writings 81
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