the primacy amongst the students of nature,
will nowhere find a greater or better field of study than himself.
Therefore will I here follow the example of the Egyptians and ... from
certain true experience proclaim, O Man, know thyself; in thee is hid the
treasure of treasures."

A seminalist has concluded from this that the prima materia is semen, a
stercoralist, that it is dung.

George Ripley describes the subject of the philosopher's stone as follows:

"For as of one mass was made the thing,
Right must it so in our praxis be,
All our secrets of one image must spring;
In philosophers' books therefore who wishes may see,
Our stone is called the less-world, one and three."

The stone is therefore the world in little, the microcosm, man; one, a
unity, three, [Symbol: Mercury] mercury, [Symbol: Sulphur] sulphur,
[Symbol: Salt] salt, or spirit, soul, body. Dichotomy also appears,
mercury and sulphur, which can then generally be rendered soul and body.
One author says, "We must choose such minerals as consist of a living
mercury and a living sulphur; work it gently, not with haste and hurry."
[Cf. Tabula Smaragdina 9, "suaviter" ...]

Hitchcock (H. A., p. 42): "The 'one' thing of the alchemists is above all
man, according to his nature [as a nature] essentially and substantially
one. But if the authors refer to man phenomenally they speak of him under
different names, indicating different states as he is before or after
'purification' or they refer to his body, his soul or his spirit under
different names. Sometimes they speak of the whole man as mercury, ... and
then by the same word perhaps they speak of something special, as our
mercury which has besides, a multitude of other names ... although men are
of diverse dispositions and temperaments, some being angelic and others
satanic, yet the alchemists maintain with St. Paul that 'all the nations
of men are of one blood,' that is, of one nature. And it is that in man by
which he is of one nature which it is the special object of alchemy to
bring into life and activity; that by whose means, if it could universally
prevail, mankind would be constituted into a brotherhood."

The alchemist says that a great difficulty at the outset of the work is
the finding or making of their necessarily indispensable mercury, which
they also call green lion, mercurius animatus, the serpent, the dragon,
acid water, vinegar, etc.

What is this mysterious mercu