Liber Terrae - Chapter 49

Verses

The alchemist took black earth in his hand and said, “Here is the beginning, because proud men always search upward.”

The apprentice asked for gold. The master gave him compost.

“This stinks,” said the apprentice. “Then transformation has announced itself honestly,” said the master.

What rots is not merely destroyed; its arrangement is revoked.

The seed enters darkness before it can perform green alchemy.

Bones become mineral. Leaves become soil. Ore becomes sword. Sword becomes rust. Rust enters soil again.

Earth is the great laboratory whose furnace burns too slowly for impatient magicians.

Above and below are not places only. They are directions of interpretation.

Heaven gives pattern; Earth gives resistance; manifestation is their quarrel made visible.

The body is an alembic with poor seals.

Breath enters, blood circulates, food is broken, heat escapes, and still the owner boasts, “I am a single thing.”

Solve and coagulate: every meal solves one form so another may coagulate as you.

Therefore eating is terrible Hermeticism practiced without robes.

The philosopher’s stone is mocked because men want eternity to look expensive.

Yet the common stone has already survived empires without instruction.

If you would transmute Earth, begin by seeing that Earth has been transmuting you since birth.