“It is aqua sicca, a heavenly water, aqua rarefacta et condensata, which evokes different colours but does not wet your hand: it makes black like soot, makes white like snow, and makes red like blood. It is everywhere but still you cannot see it: it is the centre and moisture of the stone as well as its calidum radicale: the green lion, but also the volatile dragon. Through the fiery nature and property of its magical water, it is spiritualised, so that like a silver spring it rises into the air and becomes completely resplendent and pure through aqua foetida (fetid water). It is glorified in the dark tomb to be resurrected and come forth again. This is the nymph bath into which the sun and moon descend to bathe, so that they can finally, through the copulation of the art, be so strongly joined to each other that they can never again be torn apart.” - Alchemy - The divine work
"Without the permanent water nothing happens. It is called the Water of Life / also the Juice of Napelli / therefore it says in the Turba / that the Water is the Quicksilver drawn from all the elements / from which all things are made."
— Compendium alchymist. novum, sive, Pandora explicata & figuris jllustrata, das ist, Die edelste Gabe Gottes, oder, Ein güldener Schatz, c. 1706