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 ...

After the Chapter of Natural Separation, By which the Elements of our Stone disse∣vered be, The Chapter here followeth of secret Con∣junction, Which Natures repugnant joyneth to perfect unity, And so them knitteth that none from others may flee, When they by the Fire shall be examinate, They be together so surely conjungate.

HAving run through the Chapter of Separation with a plain stile, we shall now come to the life of all, which is Conjunction; for we seek not a thing which may be capable of Se∣paration, but which may abide in all tryals, the parts being impossible to be

separated one from another, for so our Tincture ought to be, or else it will be wholly unprofitable for our purpose. For Separation is but the middle motion, by which we pass from the unary simpli∣city of Gold, to the millenary plusquam perfection of our Stone; before which can be attained, there must be a loosing of the Compages of the Body, that so the Spiritual Fire, or Tincture may be set loose; which being loosed, will certainly multiply it self with that by which it was dissolved, with which it is necessary that it should Radically be mixed and united, so as that both the dissolvent and the dissolved may make one together.

This then is the benefit of our Water, that it doth not only reduce, open and mollifie our Body, and cause it to send out its Seed, but it is actually recongea∣led with the fermental virtue of this se∣minal influence of Gold, that it becomes together with the Body, one new Body perpetually united.

So that although our Water be vola∣tile when it is first taken, yet notwith∣standing after it hath first made the Body

no Body, but a Spirit, in which spiritua∣lizing the Virtue or Tincture is augmen∣ted; after that the Body by Congela∣tion, makes this no Spirit but a Body, by which the fixity is advanced mightily, so that both will endure all Fire.

For it is not only an apparent union that is made, but real, so real that the Spirit and the Body pass one into ano∣ther, penetrating each others dimensions, the Spirit being one with the Body, and the Body being the Spirit, the Form swallowing up the Matter in unity, so that all becomes really Tincture.