The total Dissolution of no dry Body already dissolved into a Liqour, can be perfected, or a disunion of its Essential parts be made, without its putrefaction. Wherefore this ought to be done to the matter of our Menstruum, for its compleat Depuration, equally as to Gold, for its plusquam perfection; as we have said before. But every moist body is corrupted and putrified in a light or gentile heat. Hence our matter being resolved into a moist, viscous, and unctous Substance, is to be farther promoted and disjoyned by digestion. That the subtile parts may be elevated from the gross, and the Pure from the Impure, by Sublimation. For the perfecting those Operations, Nature affordeth us only two Mediums, viz. Fire and Water. The Combustible and Volatile parts are Separated by Fire. But the Earthy and Feculent by Water.

-153 Chymical Aphorisms

The first word in this great work is the bodies transmutation into Mercury and this the Philosophers have called a dissolution. And this Artificiall and ingenious dissolveing is the bulwark of this art. Hence saith Rosarey, Unlesse you dissolve the bodies, Your Labor is in vaine. Therefore the dissolving of the Philosophers is not a drinking in but the bodies transmutation into water. Nor is it called a Philosophical dissolving unlesse it becomes cleare as Mercury, so thou wilt have an element, which is the water.

-Chymical Treatise

It is Jehovah who, seeing how the world is falling to decay, and near to its end, doth hasten it again to its beginning, inverting the course of Nature, and so what heretofore hath been sought with great pains and dayly labor He doth lay open now to those thinking of no such thing, offering it to the willing and thrusting it on the reluctant, that it may become to the good that which will smooth the troubles of human life and break the violence of unexpected blows of Fortune, but to the ungodly that which will augment their sins and their punishments.

-Confessio Fraternitatis

Therefore dear Son, when thou art in thy work, see first thou have the black colour, and then art thou sure thou dost putrefy and proceedest the right way, patience and tarrying be necessary in our work. O Blessed Nature and blessed is thine operation, for of imperfect thou makest perfect with true putrefaction, which is black and obscure. Then after thou shalt make to spring new, and divers things, which thy viridity or green lion makest divers colours appear.

-Donum Dei

Here is required by how long time the stone is to be turned into blackness and what is the figure of true solution of the stone when blackness appeareth the first time it is figure of putrefaction and solution of the stone, but when it is vanished away and clearly gone it is a sign of the whole putrefaction of the stone and of the dissolution thereof, or else it is demanded if the black clouds endure in the foresaid stone by the space of 40 days, I answer sometimes it doth more, and sometimes less, this variation chanceth of the variety and quantity of the medicine, and according to the wisdom of the worker, wherefore the more quantity requireth more time, and the less the less.

-Donum Dei

Take fresh, pure, quick, white and clear, Tye him hands and heels so near, With a most puissant cord and yoke, That he may be mortified and choked. Reduce him by his like homogeneous Nature, To his first Being, or primogeneous feature, Within the close Chamber or House of Putrefaction, According to Dame Nature’s indication: Then you will have a living spiritual Fountain, Flowing bright and clear from Heaven’s Mountain, Feeding on its proper flesh and blood, Therewithall increasing to an endless Flood.

-Hydropyrographum Hermeticum

Our vessel being warily heated at the first for fear of its cracking, an ebullition of the contained matter is brought on, so that the moisture is alternately circulated in white fumes above, and condensed below, which may continue for a month or two, nay longer, increasing the heat gradually to another degree, as your matter discovers a disposition for fixing, by the vapor continuing at longer intervals condensed, and rising in a lesser quantity, of an ash color, or other dark shades, which it will assume as a medium to perfect blackness, the first desirable stage in our harvest. With darker clouds, but quickly dissipated, and growing less in quantity, till the whole substance resembles molten pitch, or the aforesaid bituminous substance, bubbling less and less, resting in one entire black substance at the bottom of your glass. This is called the blackness of black, the head of the crow, etc., and is esteemed a desirable stage in our philosophical generation, being the perfect putrefaction of our seed, which will ere long show its vital principle by a glorious manifestation of Seminal Virtue.

-On The Philosopher's Stone

By the same way of putrefaction, all Minerals may be altered, and so of every fixed thing (a due matter being added) may be made an Elixir, for our Mercury white and red must be joined with fixed things which want Mercury; and this way the Metalline Bodies may be brought into a metalline form, namely a Vitrified Powder, as also Egg-shells, which when they are perfectly calcined, will endure fire more than Sol; and thereof being well and artificially tinged, Philosophers have made Sol in the space of one day, which nature cannot do underground in a thousand years; A thing hard and incredible to the unlearned; yet true and most certain, and confirmed by the testimony of many men.

-Philosophia Maturata

Now I have shown you that this operation is at no great remove from the living things, nor was anything over born or endowed with spirit or growth except for putrefaction and change of appearance. Thus it is that an authority has said that this operation avails nothing until after decay. And again he said that this matter must putrefy before it can be poured or made fluid, without which nothing will be attained.

-The Book Of Morienus

But every seed is useless if it remains as it is, if it does not decay and becomes black; because corruption always precedes generation. It is this way that Nature proceeds in all its operations, and when we want to imitate it, we must also blacken before whitening, without which we will only produce rejects.

-The Light Coming Out Of The Darkness By Its Own

Our stone is a thing rejected, but found in dunghills, (i.e., in putrefaction, or the matter being putrefied) containing in itself the four elements, over which it triumphs, and is certainly to be perfected by human industry. Digest forty days in igne philosophorum.

-The Root Of The World

The first work is the reducing the body into water, that is, into mercury. And this the philosophers called dissolution, which is the foundation of the whole art. This dissolution makes the body of an evident liquidity, and absolute subtility; and this is done by a gentle grinding, and a soft and continued assation or digestion.

-The Root Of The World

When the matter has stood for the space of forty days in a moderate heat, there will begin to appear above, a blacknesse like to pitch, which is the Caput Corvi of the Philosophers, and the wise men’s Mercury. Blacknesse once seen, thou mayst be sure a True Conjunction of the principles is made.

-Zoraster's Cave

When in the work blacknesse appears, know that thou hast found the right way of working. Then rejoice, for God has given thee a very Great and pretious Gift.

-Zoraster's Cave

Nature begins all her Actions from Separation. Mortification is the first step to Separation, and the only way to that End: for, as long as bodies remain in their old Origin, Separaton without putrefaction, or mortification, cannot reach them.

-Zoraster's Cave

Putrefaction is made by a most Gentle fire hot and moyst, and no other, so that nothing Ascend. Desponsation and Conception is made by a kind putridnesse in the bottom of the vessel.

-Zoraster's Cave

Black colour, which is first and it is the key of the Beginning of the Work. This mass thus Blackened is the Key and sign of perfect invention.

-Verbum Dismissum

No corruption, that is, no mutation or passage of one form into another can be made, without the mediation of Putrefaction, (which is the sole mean and way to Generation) nor any putrefaction be had, without some Mercury, or Argent vive, which is the special delator, or conductor of the vegetant faculty, called by the Philosophers, The viridity of Nature.

-Zoraster's Cave