The Primum Ens Melissa, one of the most famed items of Paracelsian pharmacopeia, has been widely circulated in modern spagyric texts, albeit almost entirely represented by a single source from biographer Franz Hartmann, who was not a laboratory spagyrist himself. 

Comparing the writings of Hartmann to the original Paracelsian recipe and another reference point found in the early 20th-century text "The Book of Formulas," this presentation explores alternative understandings of how this work unfolds and follows the Alchemical maxim "one vessel, one matter."