Arts · Alchemy · Principles

Principles

A principle here is not a rule but a constituent: what a body is made of, underneath the metal or the flesh you can see. Alchemy inherits two of them, and Paracelsus makes it three. Everything the art claims to be able to do follows from that, because if all metals are the same two things mixed differently, then changing one into another is a matter of correcting the mixture.

The older two: quicksilver and sulphur

all mettalls are engendred of Argent-uiue and Sulphur, and how that their impuritie and vncleannesse doth corrupt, and that nothing may be mingled with mettalls which hath not beene made or sprung from them, it remaineth cleane inough, that no strange thing which hath not his originall from these two, is able to perfect them, or to make a chaunge and new transmutation of them
The Mirror of Alchemy, Chap. III — London, 1597

In plain English Every metal is held to be made of two principles — quicksilver (argent-vive) and sulphur — mixed pure or impure, fixed or unfixed. That is the theory the seven metals and their planets sit on.

This is why the seven metals and the seven planets are one table rather than two. If a metal is a proportion of the same two principles, the metals form a series from lead to gold, and the series can be matched against the planets. This study's metals carry that pairing already, with the sources that state it.

Paracelsus makes it three

EVERY thing which is generated and produced of its elements is divided into three, namely, into Salt, Sulphur, Mercury. Out of these a conjunction takes place, which constitues one body and an united essence. This does not concern the body in its outward aspect, but only the internal nature of the body.
The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Appendix I, Concerning the Three Prime Essences, ch. I — Waite's English, 1894

In plain English Paracelsus adds salt to the older pair, and makes the three the inward composition of everything, not a recipe: a body's outside is not what is being described.

Learn the form which is peculiar to these three. One is liquor, and this is the form of mercury ; one is oiliness, which is the form of sulphur ; one is alcali, and this is from salt. Mercury is without sulphur and salt ; sulphur is devoid of salt and mercury ; salt is without mercury or sulphur. In this manner each persists in its own potency.
The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Appendix I, Concerning the Three Prime Essences, ch. I — Waite's English, 1894

In plain English Each principle is known by what it is like: mercury is the liquid, sulphur the oily, salt the alkaline. None of them contains the other two.

  1. Mercury liquor

    The principle of fusibility and volatility — what is liquid in a body. Not the metal quicksilver, though alchemy writes both with the same sign.

    The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Appendix I, Concerning the Three Prime Essences, ch. I

  2. Sulphur oiliness

    The principle of combustibility — what burns, and what is oily in a body.

    The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Appendix I, Concerning the Three Prime Essences, ch. I

  3. Salt alcali

    The principle of solidity — what is left in the ash. Paracelsus adds it to the older two.

    The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Appendix I, Concerning the Three Prime Essences, ch. I

Read the second passage carefully: it is a test, not a metaphor. Each principle is identified by what it does in a body — what runs, what burns, what stays behind as ash — so that a physician could ask which of the three a given complaint belonged to. Paracelsus was a physician, and the appendix these lines come from says in its own footnote that it sets the doctrine out in connection with the origin of diseases.

The three also sit under the signs the art writes with, where sulphur and salt have characters of their own and mercury shares the planet's. Their glossary entries are here: Sulfur in alchemy, Mercury in alchemy, Salt in alchemy.