[40] As writes Espagnet in his _Hermetic Arcanum_, canons 64 and 65: “The Means or demonstrative signs are Colours, successively and orderly affecting the matter and its affections and demonstrative passions, whereof there are also three special ones (as critical) to be noted; to these some add a Fourth. The first is black, which is called the Crow’s head, because of its extreme blackness, whose crepusculum sheweth the beginning of the action of the fire of nature and solution, and the blackest midnight sheweth the perfection of liquefaction, and confusion of the elements. Then the grain putrefies and is corrupted, that it may be the more apt for generation. The white colour succeedeth the black, wherein is given the perfection of the first degree, and of the White Sulphur. This is called the blessed stone; this Earth is white and foliated, wherein Philosophers do sow their gold. The third is Orange colour, which is produced in the passage of the white to the red, as the middle, and being mixed of both is as the dawn with his saffron hair, a forerunner of the Sun. The fourth colour is Ruddy and Sanguine, which is extracted from the white fire only. Now because whiteness is easily altered by any other colour before day it quickly faileth of its candour. But the deep redness of the Sun perfecteth the work of Sulphur, which is called the Sperm of the male, the fire of the Stone, the King’s Crown, and the Son of Sol, wherein the first labour of the workman resteth. “Besides these decretory signs which firmly inhere in the matter, and shew its essential mutations, almost infinite colours appear, and shew themselves in vapours, as the Rainbow in the clouds, which quickly pass away and are expelled by those that succeed, more affecting the air than the earth: the operator must have a gentle care of them, because they are not permanent, and proceed not from the intrinsic disposition of the matter, but from the fire painting and fashioning everything after its pleasure, or casually by heat in slight moisture” (see _Collectanea Hermetica_, edited by W. Wynn Westcott, vol. i., 1893, pp. 28 and 29). Very probably this is not without a mystical meaning as well as a supposed application in the preparation of the physical Stone. [Illustration: PLATE 6. ALCHEMISTIC APPARATUS. A.--An Athanor. B.--A Pelican. _To face page 38_]] CHAPTER III THE ALCHEMISTS[41] (A. BEFORE PARACELSUS) Hermes Trismegistos.