The Philosopher’s Gold
“The philosopher's gold may be bought at a low price” - Aphidius. The Golden Tract Concerning The Stone of the Philosophers
“All that is bought at a high price is false. With little gold we buy much” - Morienus. The Golden Tract Concerning The Stone of the Philosophers
"To produce gold one must have gold”
"Know ye then, O Sons of Science, there are seven bodies, of which gold is the first, the most perfect, the king of them, and their head, which neither the earth can corrupt nor fire devastate, nor the water change, for its complexion is equalised, and its nature regulated with respect to heat, cold, and moisture; nor is there anything in it which is superfluous, therefore the philosophers do buoy up and magnify themselves in it saying that this gold, in relation of other bodies. is, as the sun amongst the stars, more splendid in Light; and as, by the power of God, every vegetable and all the fruits of the earth are perfected, so gold by the same power sustainneth all." - Aureus or the Golden Tractate of Hermes Trismegistus
"The Rosicrucian philosophers say that in the impregnable fortress of truth is contained the true and undoubted Philosophers' Stone, that treasure which, uneaten by moths and unstolen by thieves, remaineth to eternity, though all things else dissolve, set up for the ruin of many and the salvation of some. To the crowd this matter is vile, exceedingly contemptible and odious, but to the philosophers it is more precious than gems or gold. It loves all, yet it is well-nigh an enemy to all; it is to be found everywhere, yet scarcely anyone has discovered it. It is the one thing proclaimed by veritable philosophers, which overcomes all, is itself overcome by nothing, searches heart and body, penetrates everything stony and solid, strengthens all things delicate, and establishes its own power on the opposition of that which is most hard. It is the way of truth, and there is no other path to life. It is the true medicine, rectifying and transmuting that which is no more into that which it was before corruption, even into something better, and that which is not into that which it ought to be. The gold of the philosophers with which the wise are enriched is not that gold which is coined." - Arthur Edward Waite, Appendix III: “A Short Lexicon of Alchemy” in The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus (1894)