Ripley reviv'd, or, An exposition upon Sir George Ripley's hermetico-poetical works containing the plainest and most excellent discoveries of the most hidden secrets of the ancient philosophers, that were ever yet published / written by Eirenæus Philalethes ...

Of Dissolution now will I speak a word or two, Which sheweth out what erst was hid from fight, And maketh intenuate things that were thick also, By virtue of our first Menstrue clear and bright, In which our Bodies eclipsed been of light, And of their hard and dry compaction sub∣tilate, Into their own first Matter kindly retro∣gradate.

HAving run through the Chapter of Calcination, I now come to handle Dissolution, which as I said before, is the first beginning of the Spirits activity, and it is the first half of

the Wheel which turns up the Spirit, and down the Body; the second hath a con∣trary operation, for it makes the Body active, and Spirit passive: so then Calci∣nation hides the profundity of the Body, which Solution discovereth. It is then nothing else but a boiling of hard and dry Bodies in our Mercury, in a conve∣nient Fire, so long till they be dissolved and made thin; then the same Fire makes them fly, and flying they condense and return in drops on the Body, and moisten it: This is Solution and Sublimation to∣gether, for the Water circulating upon the Body, doth soften it, and by often returning doth at length bring it to its own nature of moisture. In this Resolu∣tion, according to Artephius, the Sun loseth its colour and is darkned, and the Moon doth not give her light, for all things are turned into their confused Chaos, or first Matter, in which the Ele∣ments with their qualities are hurried together.