EPHEMERA

From On Further Nature of the Elements, a late work of the great Archimedes, collected from that master Scholar in the first years of the Great Library. Available on the Codex.

I have many times been asked to explain the nature of the divine fluid of quintessence, the unseen barrier through which all things must pass to change form. I direct your study to the minerals of the earth. The baser metals are found below the surface, in the darkness and silence, and are lumpen and unformed. The finer metals and minerals—silver, gold, all precious ores and gems—are found in an organic structure of life. They grow, treelike, slowly through many years, rising up through the invisible richness of quintessence, and are transmuted from the base to the precious as they rise toward heaven.

All things live. That which begins as inorganic becomes organic through the divine power of quintessence. And so we must learn to control this unknowable element, to discover how to make metals, minerals, the organic and inorganic alike transmute and transfigure, above and below the earth.

This knowledge is obscure, but it must be sought. It must be codified, taught, and revered, for only through this great work will the secrets of the world be revealed.

And those who seek it, I call Obscurists, who will cast the light of quintessence upon the darkness.

Let us now discuss how the principle of First Matter may be used to create new forms, with the help and guidance of the gods.