From Idres Shah 1) The truth, certainty, truest, without untruth. 2 )What is above is like what is below. What is below is like what is above... 4) Its parents are the Sun and Moon. 5) It was borne by the wind and nurtured by the Earth. 6) Every wonder is from it 6a) and its power is complete. 7) Throw it upon earth, 7a) and earth will separate from fire... 8) Through wisdom it rises slowly from the world to heaven. Then it descends to the world combining the power of the upper and the lower... 10) This is the power of all strength- it overcomes that which is delicate and penetrates through solids. 11a) This was the means of the creation of the world. ...thus ends the revelation of the work of the Sun. (Shah 1964: 198).

6a) perfect in its powers, the animator of lights. 7) This fire will be poured upon the earth... 7a) So separate... the subtle from the gross,.. 8) It ascends from the earth to the heavens (and orders the lights above), then descends again to the earth; and in it is the power of the highest and the lowest. 9) Thus when you have the light of lights darkness will flee away from you.

Burckhardt: "the undivided, invisible Light... refracted into multiplicity by the prism of the Spirit"... On #4 Hortulanus: " As one animal naturally generates more animals similar to itself, so the Sun artificially generates Sun by the power of multiplication of...the stone.... in this artificial generation it is necessary that the Sun have a suitable receptacle, consonant with itself, for its sperm and its tincture, and this is the Luna of the philosophers" Albertus Magnus: by this Hermes "means the levigatio [making light weight] of the material, raising it to the properties of Air. And why he says the wind carries the material [of the stone] in its belly is

in other readings the 層isdom' is held to refer to #8 and the product of the Separation which thus ascends with 層isdom'.

...Albertus Magnus: Hermes says "the powers of all things below originate in the stars and constellations of the heavens: and that all these powers are poured down into all things below by the circle called Alaur, which is, they said, the first circle of the constellations". This descent is "noble when the materials receiving these powers are more like things above in their brightness and transparency; ignoble when the materials are confused and foul, so that the heavenly power is, as it were oppressed. Therefore they say that this is the reason why precious stones more than anything else have wonderful powers." While the "seven kinds of metals have their forms from the seven planets of the lower spheres"

Hortulanus: "the stone is divided into two principle parts by the magistry, into a superior part which ascends above and into an inferior part which remains below fixed and clear. And these two parts moreover are concordant in their virtue since the inferior part is earth which is called nurse and ferment, and the superior part is the spirit which quickens the whole stone and raises it up. Wherfore separation made, and conjunction celebrated, many miracles are effected." Schumaker: "If the moon is associated with water... and the sun with fire, the prima materia is understood to have been generated by fire, born of water, brought down from the sky by wind, and nourished by earth".

Hortulanus: "It is plain that wind is air, and air is life, and life is spirit... And thus it is necessary that the wind should bear the whole stone.... [However] our stone without the ferment of the earth will never come to the effect, which ferment is called food" Ripley says "our child shall be born in the air, that is the belly of the wind" On #6 Burckhardt: the word talisman is derived from Telesma. Talismans work by corresponding to their prototype, and by making a "祖ondensation', on the subtle plane, of a spiritual state. This explains the similarity between the talisman, as the bearer of an invisible influence, and the alchemical elixir, as the 素erment' of metallic transformation". On #7 Hortulanus: The stone is perfect and complete if it is turned into earth "that is if the soul of the stone itself.... is turned into earth, namely of the stone and is fixed so that the whole substance of the stone becomes one with its nurse, namely the earth, and the whole stone is converted to ferment" Schumaker: if the prime matter is to be used it must be fixed into a substance "capable of being handled".