es seven operations of the work. "... It is now
necessary to know the degrees and steps to transmutation, and how many
they are. These steps are then no more than seven. Although some count
still more, it should not be so. For the most important steps are seven.
The further ones, however, which might be reckoned as steps are comprised
under the others, which are as follows: calcination [sublimation],
dissolution, putrefaction, distillation, coagulation, and tincturing.
Whoever passes over these seven steps and degrees comes to such a
marvelous place, where he sees much mystery and attains the transmutation
of all natural things." In the "Rosarium" of Johannes Daustenius [Chap.
XVII] the seven steps are represented as follows: "And then the corpus [1]
is a cause that the water is retained. The water [2] is the cause of
preserving the oil so that it is not ignited on the fire, and the oil [3]
is the cause of retaining the tincture, and the tincture [4] is a cause of
the colors appearing, and the color [5] is a cause of showing the white,
and the white [6] is a cause of keeping every volatile thing [7] from
being no longer volatile." It amounts to the same thing when Bonaventura
describes septem gradus contemplationis [seven steps of contemplation],
and David of Augsburg [13th century] the "seven steps of prayer." Boehme
recognizes 7 fountain spirits that constitute a certain gradation and in
the yoga we also find 7 steps, which are described in the "Yoga Vasistha"
(cf. Hath. Prad., pp. 2 ff). It may easily happen that the domination of
the number 7 is to be derived from the infusion of the scientific
doctrines (7 planets, 7 metals, 7 tones in the diatonic scale) and yet it
may depend on an actual correspondence in the human psyche with nature--who
can tell? Most significant is the connection of the 7 steps of development
with the infusion of the nature myth in the alchemistic theories of
"rotations." For the perfection of the Stone, rotations (i.e., cycles) are
required by many authors, in which the materia (and so the soul) pass
through the spheres of all the planets. They have to be subjected
successively to the domination (the regimen) of all seven planets. This is
related to the ideas of those neoplatonists and gnostics according to
which the soul must, on its way (anodos) to its heavenly home, i.e., to
its celestial goal, pass through all the planetary spheres and through the
animal cycle. (Cf. Bousset, Hauptpr. d. G.,