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 ...

Separation thus must thou oftentimes make, Thy Waters dividing into parts two, So that the subtle from the gross thou take, Till the Earth remain below in colours bloe; That Earth is fixed to abide all woe. The other part is spiritual and flying, But thou must turn them all into one thing.

BUt to return to our Work of Subli∣mation, which is as was touched be∣fore, the Key of the whole Work, by which Separation is made uncessantly each day and hour.

Thus are the Waters divided from the Waters, that is, the Waters above from them which are below; for part of the Water ascends up like a fume, and con∣geals

and runs down the sides of the Glass in drops like veins, and part re∣mains still below with the Body, and with it boils visibly, and that unces∣santly.

By this Work thou hast the subtle or thin parts of the Body, and the thin parts of the Water, ascend and mingle; and the gross part of the Body, and the gross part of the Water, mixt below, the one by subliming together, and the other by boiling together: thus is thy Body be∣low compounded of two even the most fixed parts of Sol, with the grosser parts of Lunaria; and thy Water of two parts, the Soul of Sol, and the Spirit of Lunaria, which is the true mystical ground of Fixation.

Thus by subliming in a continual Va∣pour whatever is Spiritual and Heaven∣ly, both in the Water and in the Body lightly ascending, and in the upper part of the Glass taking the nature of a Spirit, what is more gross, earthy and corpo∣real, will in the bottom take the nature of a Body, whose colour, the Soul being separated, will be as Black as Pitch.

This Body is a middle substance be∣tween the Body and the Water, a Limus, a new Body, or Adamica terra, a medium between fixed and not fixed; it is not so fixed as to be equal to Sol, nor yet so volatile as the Mercury, but it is suffi∣ciently fixed to endure a Fire requisite for this Work, and to suffer all the pain and woe of this our Purgatory, in which it abides six weeks without fumes or vapour.

But as for the Spirit, that is a tender thing, nor is it able to endure the Fire, but flys from it, and abides in the upper∣most part of the Glass; only so long as the fumes arise, the ascending do still meet with them which are above, till at last making over great drops, they fall down; and when the fumes cease, as much of the Spirit as the Concave of the Glass will hold without running down, stays above until intire Calcination be perfected, and then they are drawn down by a Magnetical virtue: So that here is all the mystery of the proportion of the Glass to the Matter, namely, that it be so big, and no bigger, as in its Concave

will hold up a competent quantity of Water, (after Calcination to water the dry pores) while the Body below rots into Atoms.

Then shall you bring back the Water upon the Earth, and circulate again so long till there be a total joyning, till the Spirit become the Body, and the Body become the Spirit, and all be made true Fire or Tincture; of which Conjunction this true Separation is the cause, and without it it cannot be made.