De Lapide Philosophorum: the Philosopher's Stone

Therefore, stay with the Great Art, or the great Elixir, as your foregathers did. When you have accomplished that, you may try other operations of Nature with greater confidence. But if you do otherwise, you are not following my advice. To begin with, take in hand the Great Work, because there is no worry in it. Nothing in it is distilled, dissolved, coagulated or purified. In it there are no unknown works or things, no impure things that have faces. Nor do you calcine as there is no need for it. You do not separate any Elements, because they are pure. It is one species, one thing, one vessel, one furnace, and one work, to the White and to the Red. Therefore, no danger will befall this work. It is nothing but a woman?s work and merely child?s play. Ignorant men cannot understand this simply because this work is so easy. This because the Great Work dissolves, purifies, coagulates, sublimates, and congeals itself! It also makes itself easy to melt, just like wax, and perfects itself into that which it is supposed to become.