“To grasp the invisible elements, to attract them by their material correspondences, to control, purify and transform them by the living power of the spirit, this is true alchemy.”

Paracelsus

Mercury is mentioned everywhere, in every alchemical work, and is supposed to perform everything – Mercury is the subject and matter of the Stone

A Lexicon of Alchemy

The coniunctio (conjunction) takes place in the new moon, in the underworld…In the deepest depression, in the deepest desolation, the new personality is born.

von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology

While Maria-Louise von Franz is not an alchemist, she studied the Art with energy and flare along with Jung and her translation and interpretation of the Aurora Consurgens is intuitively perceptive.

The alchemical operation consisted essentially in separating the prima materia, the so-called chaos, into the active principle, the soul, and the passive principle, the body, which were then reunited in personified form in the coniunctio or ‘chymical marriage’… the ritual cohabitation of Sol and Luna.

- C.G. Jung Mysterium Coniunctionis

One becomes two, two becomes three, and by means of the third and fourth
achieves unity; thus two are but one….
Invert nature and you will find that what you seek…
Join the male and the female, and you will find what is sought…

- Maria the Jewess, 300 A.D

Alchemy is the art of manipulating life, and consciousness in matter, to help it
evolve, or to solve problems of inner disharmonies.
- Jean Dubuis

“He who is born in imagination discovers the latent forces of Nature. . . Besides the stars that are established, there is yet another — Imagination — that begets a new star and a new heaven.”

Attributed to Paracelsus, the alchemist and physician who made groundbreaking advances in the field of medicine in the early 16^th century.