The Earth Element

The Earth is of great worth in its quality, and dignity.

The other 3 Elements, especially the fire, rest in this Element.

It is the most excellent Element to conceal and discover those things which are intrusted to it.

It is gross, porous, heavy relative to its smallness, but light in respect of its Nature.

It is also the Center of the world and of the other Elements.

Its Center passes the axel tree of the world, and of both poles.

It is porous as a sponge, and brings forth nothing of it self, but all things whatsoever the other three distill, and project into it, it receives, keeps all things that are to be kept, brings to light all things that are to be brought to light.

It brings forth nothing of itself. But it is the receptacle of other things. It is that in which everything that is brought forth abides. By heat of motion this Element is putrefied in those things, and is multiplied.

The pure is separated from the impure. The heavy part in the thing is hidden. The heat drives the light parts of this Element unto its surfaces.

It is the nurse and matrix of all seed and commixtion.

It can do nothing else, then preserve the seed, and what is made of it, until it is ripe.

It is cold, dry, tempered with water. It is fixed and visible from the outside.

But it is volatile and invisible from the inside.

It is a virgin, and the Caput Mortuum left after the creation of the world, which shall hereafter at divine pleasure bee calcined, after extraction of its moisture, that of it a new Crystalline Earth may be created.

This Element is divided into:

• a pure part
• an impure part

The water makes use of the pure to bring forth things. But the impure remains in its globe.

This Element is the hiding place, and mansion of all treasure.

In its Center is the fire of hell, preserving this fabric of the world in its being.

This by the expression of water into the air.

That fire is caused, and kindled by the primum Mobile, and the influences of the Stars: the heat of the Sunne tempered with the air meets with this heat for the ripening, and drawing up of those things, which are already conceived in its Center.

Moreover, the Earth partakes of fire which is the intrinsical part of it, neither is it purified but in the fire. And so every Element is purified with its intrinsic part.

The part inside of the Earth is the intrinsic part. Its Center is the highest purity mixed with fire, where nothing can rest. It is as it were an empty place, into which all the other Elements do project their virtues, as has been spoken in the book of the 12 Treatises.

I call the Earth Element as a Spunge and a receptacle of other things.