The CIRCLE!! its basic layout is composed of a circle inscribed with a hexagon (which represents balance, perfection and unity) which inturn is inscribed with the triangle representing FIRE. There are nine other alchemic symbols. I would have put the actuall symbol on the picture... but it would have been rather difficult to explain exactly which element goes with whitch symbol!
SO...

The # on the Circle above corresponds with the # below:
1 bismuth
2 mercury
3 white arsenic
4 magnesium
5 gold
6 (not sure will find)
7 sal armonic
8 copper
9 platinum

[I'll be putting up a short descripiton of each element (alchemy-wise) soon]

Now on to the writing and its explanations

BLUE WRITING- this is the outer circle. the inner and middle circles are exactly the same, only they break off - it'll be marked where in the passage:

Pale white and black with false citrine  imperfect white and red. The peacock  s feather in bright colours, the rainbow in (End Inner Circle) the sky above.  The spotted panther, the green ) lion the crow s beak blue as lead. These shall appear (Middle Circle End) before  you in perfect white. (Outer Circle End)

EXPLANATION: the alchemists often used animals as symbols of certain steps and processes. To obtain the philosophers stone there were a set of stages that would occur in a certain order these were:

Blackening - Black Crow, Raven, Toad
Whitening - White Swan, White Eagle.
Greening - Green Lion.
Rapid cycling through iridescent colours - Peacock's Tail.
White Stone - Unicorn.
Reddening - Pelican feeding young with its own blood, cockerel.  <forms a "Red Stone"

and then a few final processes
for more indepth babble about it if you like 3-page long readings:  http://www.levity.com/alchemy/animal.html

now go read the outer circle again! does it actually make sense now? heh heh, just wait theres more!


NEXT

GREEN writing:
Pale white and black with false citrine (end)

EXPLANATION- its a repeat of the outer circle but it cuts off

PURPLE writing:

After the perfect white follows the grey (end)

Explanation- tack it onto the whole version of the outer circle! but the question.. is there more that was cut off?  well apparently in ep. 8 when ed gets his full name theres babble on that page which part of it reads: "These shall appear before you in perfect white, with many others. After the perfect white follows the grey and false citrine also. And after these shall appear the [covered/illegible] substance invariable, Then you shall "

ORANGE WRITING:

And after these shall appear the substance (end)

Explanation: its just another part of the paragraph above! ^.^

So the entire paragraph would read:

"Pale white and black with false citrine imperfect white and red. The peacock 's  feather in bright colours, the rainbow in the sky above.  The spotted panther, the green lion the crow s beak blue as lead. These shall  appear before  you in perfect white, with many others. After the perfect white follows the grey and false citrine also. And after these shall appear the substance invariable, Then you shall...."

TURNS OUT... this paragraph is taken from Ripley's Recapitulation of the Twelve Gates, the eighth paragraph.. the text has been altered somewhat for sound n such.. but its still the same. I have a link to it in the authors comment thing if you want to see the original

And now lia shall be dragged off to the mental ward muttering about green lions and peacocks tails! I hope these hourse of work helped or at least made someother Fangeek happy ^.^ if you have ANY QUESTIONS or anything i'd be happy to babble on for hours and hours and hours and hours to you about FMA!! ^___________^

COMING SOON: Xenotime