Note 472 — Chapter XI · FAUSTIAN AND APOLLINIAN NATURE-KNOWLEDGE

For the metals, “mercury” is the principle of substantial character (lustre, tensility, fusibility), “sulphur” that of the attributive generation (e.g., combustion, transmutation). See Struntz, Gesch. d. Naturwissensch. im Mittelalter (1910), pp. 73 et seq.

(It seems desirable to supplement this a little for the non-technical reader, by stating, however roughly and generally, the principle and process of transmutation as the alchemist saw them. All metals consist of mercury and sulphur. Remove “materiality” from common mercury (or from the mercury-content of the metal under treatment) by depriving it (or the metal) of “earthness,” “liquidness” and “airiness” (i.e., volatility) and we have a prime, substantial (though not material) and stable thing. Similarly, remove materiality from sulphur (or the sulphur-content of the metal treated) and it becomes an elixir, efficient for generating attributes. Then, the prime matter and the elixir react upon one another so that the product on reassuming materiality is a different metal, or rather a “metallicity” endowed with different characters and attributes. The production of one metal from another thus depends merely on the modalities of working processes.—Tr.)