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Popular Culture Spoilers
The last bullet point in the spoilers regarding the game Elden Ring spoils a relatively large plot point only revealed towards the end of the game. Elden Ring is still a new release, so I'd like to have that part removed, at least for the time being.
Item now tak the pott out of the earth and carye it secreatlie into zour chal. mer, where zou meane to worke, and look merely into the pott, for in it zou may behold the substance of Rebis converted into watter: this is that Rebis so muche talked off, this is blaker than blak, this is our stone, the stone that is not named in any booke, bot one freind reveales it to ane vther, and so they keep it by tradition closs amongst thame selffs only; in treuth this is that great stone of which all the great doctors and philosophers speik so obscurely, thairfoir look cheerfully into the pott and be merry now, for zou sall have greater cause of joy heerefter.
1657 William Johnson Lexicon Chymicum: Cùm Obscuriorum Verborum, Et Rerum Hermeticarum
p. 2 Abeßi, Idem quod Rebis. Nempe ultima ciborum materia.
pp. 63-64 Chrysocolla, terra viridis. Græcis & Latinis est Chrysocolla, quasi gluten auri. ... Dicitur azot, Rebis, aqua Sulphuris, vinum anineum, Flos, &c. Ruland. pag. 148. enumerat sex species Chrysocollæ.
p. 121 Lapis Rebis, Lapis de montanis, est Testudo, Rebis
p. 172 Rebis, excrementum alvi. Rebis, lapis rebis, est Capilli. Rebus vero, est ultima rerum materia.
We have particularly three Conjunctions, all which must be known by him who intends to compleat this Maftery.
The first is gross, which I touched before; it is the Amalgamation of Sol with our Mercury, which because the mixture is made of two things, it is called Conjunction diptative; and the Compound is now called Rebis, that is, two things, according to the verse, Res Rebis est Vina confecta. ... To this if thou hast attended, thou shalt know the extent and full Latitude of this Conjunction; this is a manual work, and the last manual work, next to the putting and sealing of it in the Egg, that thou hast, before thou hast attained the first degree of the Mastery.
The Second manner is called Triptative, Which is a Conjunction of things three, Of Body, Soul and Spirit, that they not Strive, Which Trinity thou must bring to Unity,
The next Conjunction that follows this in order, is when thou haft so administred and regulated thy Fire, that thy Spirits shall so ascend and circulate, until they have extracted out of the fixed Body its most digested virtue, or subtle Soul, which is Sulphureous, or of great Firiness. Then shall the Spirit and Soul descend, and shall unite it self with the Body; then shall the Air be converted into Dust, according to the process of noble Sandivogius, where they shall lye contumulate for six weeks without breath; and after when the Spirit of life shall enter into them, the Spirit and Soul shall by their mighty force carry aloft the Body with them, so that it shall go out and return with them, for now these three are made one.
30. There may be a certain fixed Unctuosity extracted from gold, without a Phylosophick Dissolution of the Gold into Mercury, which serveth instead of a ferment generating Sol and Luna; and that is performed by way of abreviating the Work, which Geber calleth Rebis.
And Richard the Englishman says: "The stone is one, the medicine one, which, however, according to the philosophers, is called Rebis (Two-thing), being composed of two things, namely, a body and spirit [red or white]. But over this many foolish persons have gone astray, explaining it in divers ways." Rebis is two things, and these two things are one thing, namely, water joined to a body, by which the body is dissolved into a spirit, that is, mineral water, out of which it was first made; and this body and spirit make up one mineral water, which is called Elixir, that is to say, ferment; for then water and spirit are one thing, of which is composed a tincture and medicine for purging all bodies. And thus, according to the philosophers, we have the nature of sulphur and mercury above ground, while underground they become gold and silver.
Hence the sophists* gathered that this philosophical matter was in the blood of animals or of man. Sometimes, too, because they are nourished by vegetables, others have sought it in hairs, in salt of urine, in rebis; others in hens' eggs, in milk, and in the calx of egg shells, with all of which they thought they would be able to fix Mercury. Some have extracted salt out of fœtid urine, supposing that to be the matter of the Stone. Some persons, again, have considered the little stones found in rebis to be the matter.
From the preceding, it seems to me that, depending on the source alchemist, "rebis" may have meant (a) excrement (b) some intermediate alchemical product (c) some final alchemical product. The word "rebis" may be a pure synonym for the philosopher's stone, or a subtly different aspect for the same underlying concept, or something fundamentally different. Perhaps some alchemists didn't use the term or the concept at all. Perhaps some modern neo-alchemists and writers of alchemy-themed fiction have developed the idea in other ways. What the 1617 image meant to its creator and how it was interpreted later may conform to various of the preceding. jnestorius(talk)02:29, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most advice on making the [philosopher's] stone ... involved combining two substances ... variously [personified as] King and Queen, Sun and Moon, Gabritius and Beya [...or termed] Philosophical Mercury and [Philosophical] Sulfur. The two-ingredient starting material sometimes goes under the name of rebis, from the Latin for "two-thing."
