There is a detailed account of how, on June 7th, 1780, Cagliostro made silver in a Masonic Lodge in Warsaw, as one of the members recorded a description of the experiment.
Cagliostro made me weigh out a pound of quicksilver which had been my property and had been already purified. Before that he had bidden me distil some rainwater till all liquid had evaporated leaving a deposit which he called Virgin Earth or secunda materia. Of this there remained about 16 grains. On his instructions I had also prepared an extract of lead.
After all these preparations were complete he went into the lodge, and he entrusted me with the task of carrying out the whole experiment with my own hands. I did this under his instructions in the following way: The Virgin Earth was put into a flask, and half the quicksilver was poured over it. Then I added 30 drops of the lead extract. When the flask was then shaken a little, the quicksilver appeared to be dead or frozen stiff. I then poured lead extract into the remaining quicksilver, but this quicksilver remained unaltered. So I had to pour the two lots of quicksilver together into a larger flask. After I had shaken the quicksilver, however, for some time, all assumed the same consistency. Its colour turned dirty grey.
The whole was now shaken into a bowl which it half filled. Cagliostro next gave me a small piece of paper, which proved to be only the outer wrapping of two others. The innermost contained a shining carmine-coloured powder, weighing perhaps one-tenth of a grain. The powder was shaken into the bowl, and Cagliostro then swallowed the three wrapping papers.
While this was going on I filled up the bowl with plaster of Paris, which had already been prepared with warm water. Though the bowl was already full, Cagliostro took it out of my hands, added some more plaster of Paris, and pressed it firmly with his hands. Then he gave it back to me to dry it over a charcoal fire.
The bowl was now placed in a bed of ashes over the wind furnace. The fire was lit and the bowl left over it for half an hour. It was then taken out with a pair of tongs and carried into the lodge. The bowl was there broken, and in the bottom lay a lump of silver weighing fourteen ounces and a half.
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“unlesse you change the bodies into no bodies, and the nobodies againe into bodies, you are not come yet to the right art, for the body becomes first an aqua Mercury incorporal and afterwards the Water and the Spirit in the changing and so both become one body; some also say change the natures quite and cleane and you will finde what you seeke; and that's true, for we make of that which is grosse a subtle and quick thing, and of a body we make water, and of that which is moist we make a dry thing, of the water we make the earth, and thus wee change the true natures and make of that which is corporall a spirituall thing and of a Spirituall a corporall thing, and wee make that which is above like that which is below, and that which is below like that which is above, the Spirit is turned to a body, and the body to a Spirit; and therefore its said in the beginning, the Word was a Spirit, and that word the Spirit was with God, that is with himselfe, and God was that word, he himself was the Spirit, and the word the Spirit was made flesh, the Spirit has assumed the true body, and so that above became true as that below, the Spirit has become a mettallick in the body, and that which was below, that is, the body, is become mettallicke with the Spirit”
Arnold de Villa Nova
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher
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