The stone, the hidden thing, so powerful, is also called the Azoth in the West. Azoth is traced by Orientalists to one of two words — el-dhat (or ez-zat), meaning essence or inner reality; or else to zibaq, mercury. The stone, according to the Sufis, is the dhat, the essence, which is so powerful that it can transform whatever comes into contact with it. It is the essence of man, which partakes of what people call the divine. It is ‘sunshine’, capable of uplifting humanity to a next stage.
We can go much further than this. Three elements went toward the production of the dhat, after being submitted to the ‘work’, which is a translation of the word amal. These elements are sulphur (kibrit, homonym of kibirat, ‘greatness, nobility’); salt (milh, homonym of milh, ‘goodness, learning’); and mercury (zibaq, sharing the radix for ‘to open a lock, to break’).