Primary Matter
"Hermes says that spirits can't enter bodies unless they be purified and then only enter by means of water. Aristotle says: I don't think that the metals can be transmuted, unless they be reduced to primary matter that is to say, purified of their own corruption through calcinations". (Albertus Magnus in A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom by W. Perry)
"If you don't find in Morieno what is written in Arnau de Vilanova, neither in Paracelsus nor in other philosophers, don't accuse of error neither some or others, because all reached the end through different means, although all of them worked with the same primary matter ". (Huginus a Barma, Saturnia regna)
"In plain terms, it is the unveiled Deity apart from all vesture. The middle substance or chain between these two (extremes) is that which we commonly call Nature. This is the scala of the great Chaldee which doth reach from sub-natural darkness to the supernatural fire. These middle natures came out of a certain water, which was the sperm or First Matter of the great world. And now we will begin to describe it. Let him receive who can". (T. Vaughan, Lumen de Lumine)
"Hoang-ti said: Yin and Yang are the Tao of heaven and earth. They form the constituent Matter, the chain and the plot of all beings, the productive principles, the father and the mother of all, of the transformation, the root, the origin of life and death". (Hoang-li-nei-king)
"It is the verb that diversifies the primary substance , and is the silence that unifies it again. Thus, art that gives form to matter is a noble function of man because it brings him closer to his creator". (L. Cattiaux, The Message Rediscovered 13, 49)