“Therefore, as Aristoteles Chyrricus rightly says: ‘Divide your Stone into the four elements, rectify them, and join them into One, and you will have the whole magistery.’ This One, into which the elements must be reduced, [...] is the mediator, making peace between enemies, that is, the elements, so that they may agree and be converted into one another and love one another; indeed this alone accomplishes the squaring of the circle, long sought by many, found by few. For with its rays it strikes all the angles of the elements, and by a long revolution it turns this angular, ‘quadrate’ form into a circular form conformed to itself—enough on this.” - Excerpt from the Hermetis Trismegisti Tractatus vere Aureus cum scholiis (1610):
"Convert the natures of the Elements and thou shalt find what thou seekest. To convert the natures is to make a body a spirit in our Magistery, first we make of gross thin, and of a body water, and by consequent we make that which is beneath as that which is above, and the contrary, for the bodies dissolved are reduced to the nature of spirits, and they be never separated asunder, like as water is mixed with water, and truly all the regiment and work is none other, but water permanent having in himself all things which we need." — Georgius Aurach de Argentina, Donum Dei
"The thing is one in number, and one essence, which Nature strives to transform, but with the help of Art, into two, and twice two: mercury and sulphur impart nourishment to themselves. Spirit, and soul, and body, and four elements: the fifth which they furnish is the Philosopher's Stone. Select your substance without guile, let it be double, and let its splendour be of pure mercury. Take sulphur free from every foreign substance, and consume it in a fiery furnace." — The Golden Tract Concerning The Stone of the Philosophers, c. 1678 by Anonymous