Centrum Naturae Concentratum OR THE Salt of Nature Regenerated For the most part improperly called THE Philosopher's Stone Written in Arabick by Alipili a Mauritanian born of Asiatick Parents Published in Low Dutch 1694. and now done into English 1696. By a Lover of the Hermetick Science That which hath been is named already and it is known that it is Man Eccles 6. 10. LONDON Printed for J. Harris at the Harrow in Little Britain 1696. Price One Shilling The English Translator TO THE READER I Cannot but recommend this little Book of high worth and value to the serious consideration of all Men and heartily desire they may seek and find that inestimable treasure that deeply lies hidden in themselves which this small Tract with great clearness demonstrates and lays before them The highest wisedom consists in this for Man to know himself because in him God has placed his Eternal Word by which all things were made and are upheld to be his light and life by which he is capacitated to know all things both in Time and Eternity This is that precious thing which Adam and Eve brought out of Paradise with them for their consolation and refreshment and left it through their Offspring to posterity For it was given them after their lamentable fall as the highest pledge of the grace and favour of God and inbreathed into them as a new centre of their light and life to comfort them in their banishment for this alone having all power and virtue in it self and being the central virtue and power in all things or uniting it self with them in an indissolable band of love and union was able to comfort them in their toil and misery to take away all their spots and desilements contracted by the fall and at last through death bring them into Paradise again and make them partakers of a greater glory than they had before which was performed in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God and Man This as it is the highest treasure so it comprehends and contains in it all other inseriour blessings for so the Holy Scripture tells us in him is hid all the treasures of wisedom and knowledge Therefore let the high inquirers and searchers into the deep Mysteries of Nature learn first to know what they have in themselves before they seek into forinsick matters without them and by the divine power within them let them first heal themselves and transmute their own Souls then may they go on prosperously and seek with good success the mysteries and wonders of God in all natural things let them retire into the inmost centre of their own hearts and with their whole desire as with the magnet of their Souls attract and imbibe the Divine Spirit there which will readily enter and intimately mix it self with the Soul and radically and sweetly dissolve it and turn all its harsh fierce corrosive rough and bitter essences into a most pleasant sweet meek and friendly gentle frame and temper and of all the adverse contrary properties will make one harmonious quintessential heavenly nature and thus will they be inseparably united and the divine beams of light and love from the center of the Soul as the Sun in the Firmameut will throughly penetrate and illuminate the whole Microcosm and the blessings from above and beneath the upper and the uether springs will be his portion But I would not detain the Reader any longer I shall only add that our Author being on Addept and having obtained his skill by the alone Grace of God and not by Man may well be allowed his liberty of speech and his sharp reproofs may be the better received and tho' he seems to gainsay most of the Philosophers as to his matter yet he tells us it is his own experience which he has wrought with his own hands and is to this day a possessor of the great Mystery Providence brought the Copy into my hands which having seen I thought it might be an acceptable piece of service to get it publish'd in our modern tongue and tho' some may slight and reject it yet others I hope will value it and find benefit from it for whose sake and for which end I undertook this labour and commit it my self and them to the blessing and protection of Almighty God in his Son Jesus Christ our Lord in whom I subscribe my self a friend and lover of all men E. Brice TO THE READER THose hungry and thirsty Souls after Gold courteous Reader are deservedly to be driven hence in the first Entrance for he shall not find what he seeks who is incited thereunto by the pleasing allurements of covetous desires let him who appears before the Lord with his Prayers and Desire consider his own Heart whether it be pure and alienated from wicked desires if not he will receive his answer from that principle which moves him to ask and will have his desire according to the impurity of his heart but that the heart be pure and right there is required much light and much purifying fire to go before and much constant humility for subtle fraudulency is hatefull to the holy Deity and he that with it comes before the face of God will be detected and shall receive such help as he deserves In short instead of the pure spirit an impure and fraudulent spirit will meet him armed with greater deceit hypocrisie and appearance of light than he himself is that Oracle will give to him an answer in his prayer and by occult inspirations will lead him into the labyrinths of a thousand phantasies and seduce him Like seeketh its like and to what a man in his own nature does most nearly approach that seemeth best and divine unto him that also does most nearly approach to man and scts it self in the place of God and will give counsel to him that asks For as every one is such a God will he have and such a word in the very Sons and Daughters of God according to the maturity of the spirit more or less was the word more or less covered and veiled with an aenigmatical and typical speech the internal genuine sense whereof none can well understand but those to whom the veil of the Mosaical law and figures is revealed The Israelites received the divine word under the voice of a Trumpet and beholding God by Moses seen in clarity veiled under the coverings of thick darkness and thundrings were afraid who if they had with Moses been tincted with the virtue of the sweet light verily they had not seen the darkness but the glory and majesty which in a manner appeared to Peter in Mount Thabor whence it is that they which speak from aeternity for the most part are lyers in time because of the too great distance between them when Man takes that in a human manner which ought to be understood in a divine What therefore is to be done First to seek the renewing of his wretched heart in God in
been called by a divine spirit to a divine light who being drawn by true humility search into the wonders of nature and desire to communicate and make them known to their Neighbour who being filled with unfeigned and sincere love in the poverty of their knowledge and that little of the gifts of God granted to them are found faithfull in the least things but rather I exhort them to it and stir them up to go forward servently and in simplicity of heart follow that light which in this darksome way Ikindle in this little Book But they ought throughly to examine themselves without any flattery or self-love whether they are ordained for this Art Whether above all things he love God and his Neighbour as himself and whether he will freely help the poor because a drop of water and one mite seasonably given in ones poverty and from a true love to our Neighbour is as great in the sight of God and will have as great a reward as a large quantity of wine and money given by the rich If their life agrees with this rule they may go on to the full knowledge of nature and obtain their desired end They lose their labour and cost who with great carefulness rise early and sit up late and eat their bread in anxiety For the Lord bestows it on them that love him while they sleep who seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness that is he who patiently endures divine judgments and in all judgments though he be judged and his soul is grieved and even against nature is forced to endure yet always he acknowledges and understands that God is just good and mercifull and does acquiesce in his justice and desires not to enter into the Kingdom but by the fiery trial purification and obedience to the word his reason being made silent the passions of his mind tamed and subdued by a power supernatural to him all other things shall be added But I shall here speak no more of the holy silence nor use many words of the nature of this Mystery but will set upon the thing it self with the help of God And because I am certain that the wise will observe their duty but the foolish shall get nothing I will begin after the finishing of this Prayer O God our Father thou Lord of every good thing thou who wouldst make all things by thy word who hast formed Man by thy wisedom that he should rule over every Creature which thou hast made give me wisedom which is always round about thy throne neither drive us back from thy face for we are thy Servants and the Sons of thine Handmaid weak and infirm and of few days full of errour and unconstant neither are we fit or able without thy help to render unto thee in this our office that talent which of thy bounty thou hast committed to us with that increase we ought All perfection is from thee and thy wisedom but there is no capacity or worth in us send unto us and enlighten us with thy wisedom which cometh from above send her with a ray from thy holy Heaven from the Throne of thy Glory send her that she may be with and labour with us that we may know thy will grant that she may lead us by her glory that the works of our hands may be accepted with thee for nothing can be accepted by thee that is not wrought by her in us and so it will come to pass that we shall see thy truth in thy creatures to be admired O Lord our Cogitations are full of error and doubts and darkness environs our judgment Send thy holy spirit from on high and enlighten us that we may always go in the right way that we may perform thy will to the honour of thy holy Name and prosit of our Neighbour through Jesus Christ Amen WHen that matter wherein Lucifer held his Reign and Center had with him and his Angels or out-going Powers put on the nature of burning and corroding fire by a too great and inordinate motion whereby he desited to exalt his light and render it equal with the Deity and from the nature of light was turned into obscure darkness There was progenerated from the light in the first place Air then from the Air a Mist and last of all from the Mist a Viscous Water And here doubtless this Water through the bitter vehement and stinging cold the light being taken from it and further and further would have departed had suffer'd the force and power of an horrible Coagulation unless God had a-new sent in a ray of his divine light for a new Center and conveyed it through the whole matter for the Devil shall no more be the Center of this World the agonizing matter perceiving the splendor and sweetness of this light began to awake The bitterness of the corrosive greedy and austere power moving thus strongly decreased and the stupified matter as it were in a fright began to conside in the form of a glutinous Water God would not that the whole Heaven Mansion and Kingdom or Matter wherein Lucifer reigned should be utterly destroyed which before the Fall had its word light and motion from him as from the Center For this Matter was not made such by its own will but by constraint in the ardent imagination of the overruling spirit or intelligence For this spirit did with force exercise his rule and magical power in the Matter From thence the sweetness of the light departing to its original left the corrosive darkness to the burning desire of the spirit and the most kind motion of the heat was changed by the horrible attraction and vehement compaction of the Cold. The serene face of Heaven did put on the sorrowfull countenance of the terrestrial Water and Waterish Earth But God willing to bring the Idea of the world which from eternity he had a knowledge of in his mind into figures began to make something new in which he could set forth the manifestation of himself and have complacency in it Therefore he began a new Creation and by his spirit with his word expanded the Matter and divided it into three which working together in one harmony an effluvium from one to one by one thing should be the beginning of all things yet so that one of those three cannot consist without the other two so there is made out of this one Chaos or viscous Water a fixed fluid and volatile Body Spirit and Soul Earth Water and Air. The fluid spirit is too unconstant the volatil soul too subtile the fixed body too gross to receive that infused power of the light to its motion But when from this threefold union a fourth generation ariseth there is the seed of love and the center of vertues and powers a center that cannot properly be named Water for it is a viscous Earth in which is the Water of Nature and yet it is not Earth because it floweth and maketh moist neither is it
Air because it may be handled and rests in stillness and yet it is Air Earth and Water together the birth of a triple union of Air Earth and Water The various Creatures arise from heat moving it self in the Animal Vegetable and Mineral Kingdom which thus from unity return again to triplicity and appear under the figure of Air Water and Earth Infinite is this process of Nature there is not a Materia whether Vegetable or Mineral can propagate and multiply its self unless its Seed be first made a viscous Water or is already such all the Animals are progenerated and procreated by such a Water in all vegetable Seeds that viscous whiteness appears before any thing can grow from it The very Minerals and Metals proceed from such a viscous Water and must of necessity return to it Thus without any addition in themselves they ought by the Artist to put on a better nature If any Animal Mineral or Vegetable arrive to a radical solution instantly will apppear either a viscous Water or Earth Therefore the ends of things do excellently agree with their beginnings But now in every viscous Water there lies hid intimately in the Center a hidden Center concentrated which I call by the name of the Salt of Nature This Salt is the Light of the World Every where where it fixes its seat it drives its circumferences to motion it does illuminate strengthen and uphold them in their motions But this very Salt without the Divine Spirit of Nature does adhere and is annexed to the invisible speaking of the Divine word and by this light is nourished and moved This is that Salt which Christ among all created things only caled good And it is that Spirit which ascends up into the Airy Heaven and which again descends which restrains the Winds and holds them in the Fists of its power which gathers together the Waters into their places This Spirit of Salt is the medium of all things by which the highest are knit with the lowest and keep in harmony From both the Natures both superiour and inferiour it hath nutriment in abundance and in like manner doth give and divide its plenty to all things By it and through its virtue Vegetables and Minerals do grow and by it the divine Power doth perform whatsoever he will in the Firmament in the Air the Earth the Sea and all in deeps By this he commands the Clouds to appear from the ends of the Earth This Spirit is the cause and beginning of the Lightning and the Clouds he commands the Winds to come from hidden places This Spirit is the Instrument by which God wills that terrible thundrings be heard from the Clouds For this cause the satness of the Earth is in it and wonderfull plenitude of benediction Without this nothing in nature can subsist It is found every where the poorest as well as the King seeks his nourishment from it and conservation of his vital Spirit O Lord how great and wonderfull and how many are the works of thy hands Thou hast ordained all things wisely The Earth declares thy goodness and fullness who sillest all things Praise ye the Lord. Hallelujah From this Salt if it be regenerated by an Artist a wonderfull and noble thing proceedeth which maketh every corrosive thing sweet every weak and infirm thing sound and strong This thing giveth both Riches and Health and in this life it deserves the name of a most pretious Treasure Neither is there a greater thing amongst visible things which exist in this time than this which sometimes the Lord bestows upon some men for a special cause It is a Type and Image of the Resurrection and Immortality and our Heavenly Father by the operations and existence of this Essence hath in great perspicuity made plain unto us the understanding of the highest Mysteries I have seen by this thing as through a Glass the Image of the Creation and the distribution and ordination of that Mass which they call the Chaos the amicable Seed or Effluvium of the 3 Principles the separation of that Seen into various forms I have also seen by this thing how the Eternal Word was made Flesh I have seen the internal splendour of his glorious light and the veil of the Humane Flesh by which as by a Cloud that glory was cover'd how he walked among the Pharisees doing many Miracles and because his appearance was in so mean a figure they inflicted on him the highest contempts and torments and last of all undergoing death he entred into the Sepulchre and with a glorious and clarified Body ascended up into Heaven and from thence how by his Spirit he freed his Brethren and Sisters from infirmities and how even to this day by the holy Effluvium of his light and tincture he flows into prepared and faithfull Souls and there makes all holy things holier and better and at length perfects them until the day of the universal and last Judgment and the time of the new World Great are the works of God he that sets his mind upon them will find his delight in them He hath left the monument of his wonders with us he who is for ever mercifull and kind Hallelujah But although this Salt as has bin said is every where and in all places according to number weight and measure every where the matter of every thing yet it cannot so easily be sound neither is it out of all things fit to all things He that desires to make Gold he ought to be carefull to go about it by Gold or the nearest matter to Gold say the more wise and it is their opinion that the change of any one thing into a better cannot proceed unless it be in its own species kind and likeness and so they have believed that Animai Vegetable and sharp powers avail nothing to the perfection of Metals but are altogether unprofitable but they affirm that every of the three Kingdoms as they call them is in its own nature separated and divided from the other This is a perverse opinion in him who desires to shew the way in which I will not goe But I say this that all things come grow and proceed from one root but the only diversity of the matter and motion causeth the diversity of the subjects One virtue and power filleth the universal orb of the Earth and Heavens and bringeth it self into forms and figures gross and subtile sweet and sour hard and soft Animal Vegetable and Mineral But I cannot at this time pass over this in silence that that Spirit and Universal Salt of Nature though it be nearest to the breath of the divine speaking and ministers to all things its increated power yet it can produce nothing new but is only made use of by the word of God sustaining and upholding all things for the sustentation conservation and motion of those works which sometime began to have their being by the alone word of God creating them Here those Doctors are to be