The descriptions of the several necessary processes partook of such figurative language, as none but the adepts could possibly understand. Dr. Dee, in the fulness of his wisdom, thus instructs his disciples: “The contemplative order of the Rosie-cross have presented to the world angels, spirits, plants, and metals, with the times in astromancy and geomancy to prepare and unite them telesmatically. This is the substance which at present in our study is the child of the sun and moon, placed between two fires, and in the darkest night receives a light from the stars and retains it. The angels and intelligences are attracted by a horrible emptiness, and attend the astrolasms for ever. He hath in him a thick fire, by which he captivates the thin genii. That you may know the Rosicrusian philosophy, endeavour to know God himself, the worker of all things; now I will demonstrate in what thing, of what thing, and by what thing, is the medicine or multiplier of metals to be made It is even in the nature, of the nature, and by the nature, of metals; for it is a principle of all philosophy that Nature cannot be bettered but in her own nature. Common gold and silver are dead, and except they be renewed by art, that is, except their seeds, which are naturally included in them, be projected into their natural earth, by which means they are mortified and revived, like as the grain of wheat that is dead.” This is somewhat worse than what Mr. Burke denominated a gipsy jargon. The powder of transmutation, the grand means of projection, was to be got at by the following process, in which it was typified as the Green Lion: “In the Green Lion’s bed the sun and moon are born, they are married, and beget a king; the king feeds on the lion’s blood, which is the king’s father and mother, who are, at the same time, his brother and sister. I fear I betray the secret, which I promised my master to conceal in dark speech from every one who does not know how to rule the philosopher’s fire.” One would imagine, in the present day, that there was very little fear of being accused of too rashly divulging the important secret by such explanations. Our ancestors must have had a much greater talent than we have for finding out enigmas, if they were able to elicit a meaning from these mystical, or rather nonsensical, sentences.