Wine and its first preparation Although the Wine has fermented, and has acquired an already exalted virtue immediately after being expressed from the grape, it still remains a mixed one, that is to say , a substance capable of being dissected into a quantity of different parts, which will be as many new beings that Art will bring to light, the most active of which, by a virtue magnificent, will come together to compose our Universal Medicine, after they have appeared in the form of acid spirits, ethereal spirits, salts, both fixed and volatile, to the entire exclusion of passive principles; namely earth & water, the last two being principles of corruption & death: in all sublunary beings, are also the thorns of our Work, & the separating art is only used to clear them:
But after we have separated them from the passive principles, our Art will teach us to purify them each separately, to use them to intrinsically purify the active principles, by joining them with them. This is the key to Kabalistic Science, knowing how to use phlegm and earth to reduce the other principles to the elementary state.
Our first job is therefore to put the wine in fermentation, to break the link of its vinous mixture.
For this subject take, say, twenty four pints, Paris measure, or more if you will, of the best wine of Burgundy; for each pint, take raw white tartar, fixed salt of tartar, of each half ounce in powder: spirit of common wine, also half ounce, and new wine lees, quite thick, one ounce: put all this together in the manure in several large balloons, a good third of the ship empty, & blocked with a vessel of encounter, the joints well fought: we will leave them there for two months. Comment on what above.
Do not be surprised if I name in the following the acid spirit, vinegar, our spirit of wine, because it is the most active, and the first principle of the mixture.
He is also the last in resolution: Quod est primum in compositione est ultimum in resolutione, say the Philosophers; unlike the common spirit of wine, which is also a spirit; but he is not so active. The Philosophers have recognized it in this way; & according to their intention, raw tartar, which contains a powerful acid, will effort against the alkalis contained in the substance of the wine; and by shocking them, will shake them so strongly, that all the liquor will be disturbed, and become disproportionate, being helped by the external heat.
The fight will be all the greater , as the salt of dry & arid tartar that we add to it, receiving in its pores the points of the acids which are harsh, these will excite new shocks, while the parts of the The tender & delicate ethereal oil, taking advantage of the agitation, will get rid of the phlegm which will surround them: starting from the center of the liquor, as lighter, will gain the top of the mixture; that's why they will strike the sense of smell first when we unblock the vessels, which is done more strongly after fermentation than before, because they are extroverted & pushed by the bubbling towards the circumference, seeking to escape, as more volatile parts mixed.
Ethereal matter, commonly known as wine spirit.
In all kingdoms, we begin to separate the volatile part from the fixed part. It must be observed that in the vegetable kingdom, it is the sulfurous part which rises first; in the mineral, it is acid; & in animals, it is volatile salt: this means active principles, and not phlegm, nor of the earth, which are the passive ones.
Since therefore in the vegetable kingdom, the essential form, or the soul of the mixed, consists of volatile, unctuous, airy moisture, it must be very well purified and separated from the other principles.
This ethereal oil is different from the coarse one, in that the former is very volatile, and is drawn from fermented liquors: the latter is more fixed, and will be elaborated subsequently, to become similar to the first, to which it will be joined, and will form only one substance.
The oil, or ethereal spirit, does not come out pure from the beginning by distillation, but a little mixed with phlegm: it is first distilled alone, without adding anything, at a very low bath heat, which the finger can withstand, separating the phlegm from the heaviest substance which remains at the bottom of the still and which is added at each distillation aside, rejecting what is completely earthy, and has no taste of salt, keeping what is saline: but this salt is drawn with the phlegm of the mixed.
As for mineral fees, anything that is vaporizable sulphurous is worthless; unlike our vegetable kingdom, as well as in the animal kingdom, oil is the soul of our subject; which can only join its body, that is to say, the fixed salt, with the spirit, which is the middle & acid part, as we will see later: & this acid is called medium conjunctionis.
The first rectifications in general of the ethereal spirit are four in number, to which nothing is added to the bain-marie: so that the heat is reduced at each distillation, and when the liquor distils, insipid, and that the veins no longer appear in the still, we remove the phlegm from the cucurbit, to join it with that which we have reserved from the previous distillations. After these first four distillations, fixed tartar salt must be added , well purified by calcination, filtration & evaporation, & this depuration must be repeated after each distillation, with distilled water, or phlegm of the mixed.
The dose of salt of tartar is half a pound, with three pounds of ethereal spirit: it will then happen that this salt will attract to itself the phlegm which embarrasses the spirit, and this salt will swell and take charge of this phlegm , who will abandon the spirit; & by this means, this ethereal spirit will become lighter, & very exalted.
This is what is commonly called the spirit of tartarized wine , which is not yet perfect for ourwork.
We will observe between each rectification, to put the ethereal matter to infuse for several days, stove, or over a baker's oven, starting from the first, especially as by this means, the phlegm separates better in distillations.
It should be noted that when the salt of tartar is drawn from the curcurbite just as it was put there, without being dissolved, it is a sign that there is no longer any phlegm among the ethereal spirit, & that thus this spirit is sufficiently rectified.
But every time that this salt of tartar has been removed from cucurbit, it must be distilled in a sand bath, to bring out the oleaginous and coarse part, which this salt has contracted from the ethereal spirit, and this part coarse will be put, with the coarse oils that will have been reserved, because it is the order of this work to join, paria cum paribus, the congeneric essences together, in order to lose nothing of the principles of the mixed.
The salt of tartar, before it is used for its intended purpose , must be so purified that it leaves no feces on the filter.
I will also say that it is much easier to do the arcana of plants and animals than that of minerals, because the latter do not abandon their principles so easily in the analysis.
The well-purified ethereal spirit does not see itself distilled into water, nor does it fall by drops into the container: he never fails to fill it; this is what I experienced: It is then truly airy or ethereal. In addition, it penetrates six doubles of paper with the lute without wetting it: it is then necessary to use the pig's bladder with the paper, to lute the vessels.
If the wine is good, the twelfth part of the ethereal spirit must be removed before rectifying it on the salt of tartar.
Then from what above, take a glass bottle, & mix in the said spirit, you seal the bottle hermetically; & after having reversed the neck at the bottom, you surround the bottle of ice, which will have been crushed into pieces like the tip of the little finger, of which you will make a bed; & on this bed, another bed of common salt, then one of crushed ice thicker than salt; thus, stratum super stratum, up over the matras, or vessel which will contain the liquor to be iced, & make a small hole in the ice below the vessel, to let flow a little water which comes out of the ice when all the parts close together and combine to form a uniform substance, and the vessel which will contain said ice must be cylindrical; like wood, and thus leave the material to rest for twenty- four hours, or three days, which is the time during which the ice has had its effect.
Helmont says that, Summum frigus & summus celor reducunt corpora ad elementalem naturam (Very cold & very hot they bring the bodies back to their elemental nature).
Perhaps by this means a frog enclosed in a vessel with ice would be reduced to a transparent mucilaginous substance, which would be the Gluten of aquatico of Paracelsus: Pro cancri medela (Medicine for cancer): And Vanhelmont says that the frog returns in great cold to its raw material.
To return to our ethereal spirit, we will know that the number of rectifications will be sufficient: not only when the fixed salt no longer dissolves there, as we said, but when burning a little of this spirit on gunpowder , it will ignite after the entire consumption of this oil, & put the powder in a glazed earthenware or glass bowl; because in the taking in a silver spoon, as I have done; the spoon heating up, consumed the little phlegm that remained mixed with the quintessence: the powder caught fire, although the spirit was not perfect.
You can still experience it by dipping a small cloth in the liquor, then setting it on fire: if it burns, the spirit will be totally good.
I add that to have the ethereal spirit of wine without fire, it is necessary to put a glass capital at the mouth of each barrel, when the new wine begins to ferment at the harvest, adapt a container between the capital and the barrel , with loam when we have enough, we will rectify it in our own way.
Degrees of heat, external and internal fire
When the first time you want to put your material in a water bath, as it will be raw & indigestible, accompanied by its passive principles, you will heat the water more boldly; but above all that it does not boil, so as not to burn the germ of the liquor. Besides, a little heat will never spoil anything, and too much will destroy everything. I believe, for the best, that water can always be endured at the fingertip.
The first putrefaction, before everything else, will be done with horse manure for two months; then after the first distillation, that is to say, between the first & the second distillation, put the material in digestion for another month; between the second & the third, for three weeks; between the third and fourth, for fifteen days; between the fourth & fifth, for eight days; between the fifth and the sixth, for four days; between the sixth and the seventh, for two days: all this will make one hundred and twenty days or approximately.
Care must be taken that the heat is even, and never interrupted; because the work would have to be started again. But there 's not much work.
Here are seven degrees of putrefaction which ripen matter, and give it an advantageous disposition to become all celestial.
We clearly see that a longer putrefaction is necessary first, because the matter is completely coarse; & to renew the heat, it is necessary to add hot manure again every eight days; others do this putrefaction in a water bath: but manure seems to me to suit better. You also need to know the difference between digesting, or fermenting & circulating. When you want to ferment or digest, you have to take a blind still; & to circulate, you need a pelican or circulator in the shape of a gourd, with two hollow handles: so that through these two pipes, the material enters the belly of the circulator, glass stopper of proportion: in addition, the vessel must be half full, or two thirds at most; and when pulling it out of the muck, do not move the vessel too much, lest the fermenting material break it, and do not unblock it until it has cooled; because being still hot, a lot of spirit dissipates.
The difference that there is still from the circulatory system is that the upper part must be out of the manure, about a third of the vessel in the air, so that the cold condenses the vapors and makes them fall back onto the liquor. Circulation can also be done in a bain-marie, in ashes, or in grape marc.
a very sweet odor will emerge from the circulatory system, which will fill the entire room in a moment; & when tasting it, we will feel an enchanted sweetness, nothing burning or acrid like the spirit of ordinary wine.
Now it is necessary to circulate in this way so many times that we find the spirit having the above-mentioned qualities.
Raymond Lully, Liv. I. Chap, 2. speaking of vegetable mercury , confirms what I have just said.
He adds to Liv. I. Chap. 3. that we can extract the quintessence from all spoiled wines, provided that they are not sour.
To stick the containers with the cucurbits, mix a little common salt with clay, horse droppings, diluted in water: they are left to rot some time beforehand, with which the reddish clay is diluted.
I endeavor to explain manipulation, that is to say, the work of the hand, because I believe that curious people who are not entirely familiar with Chemistry, who will moreover be disinterested, having good will, may come to practice; because the average of the Doctors who will be occupied considerably, will not have time for it. Apothecaries will find it better to make ordinary compositions, to sell senna, cassia and other common remedies, which I do not despise; but whose health and illnesses are maintained: it is therefore for lack of remedies that cure radically, & as I said, by the first intention of nature, if we use these.
In order not to depart from our subject, which consists of the regime of fire, I will say that this work must imitate nature, which is never idle; for while there is a disengagement of the active principles from the passive ones, and of the heterogeneous matters contained in the liquor by the internal movement, excited and maintained by the external fire, if there is an interruption: or reprieve at this movement, the active principles will join the passive ones, and will be imprisoned, so to speak, With regard to too great a fire, there will be no more resource; because the gross parts of the mixture having been retorrided, will contain the volatiles so closely, that we will no longer be able to detach a pure and elementary spirit from the mass, and we will always remove sharp parts, of which the subtle ones will be enveloped like them are felt in the common wine spirit drawn by the coil.
I said that equal heat is necessary, especially since the different movements producing different modifications in the liquor will bring about alteration. It is therefore important that the shaking of the internal parts of the composite does not are neither too violent nor too slow. If they are slowed down, the active principles will find it difficult to settle : if there are strong jolts, there will be no separation of the active principles, which will remain confused with the passive ones. This mechanics demonstrates perfectly what happens in the human body when the liquors are in trouble, and gives the Spagyric Physician a real knowledge of the internal causes of illnesses, at the same time as it teaches him how to remedy them.
Besides the external fires of which we have just spoken, the Philosophers have recognized other internal ones; know, three sorts of volatile fires, like oil, or ethereal spirit; another coarse oil, also combustible, & a liquid acid spirit, or volatile salt called ammonia.
The internal fixed lights are two; namely, the acid concentrated in the alkali of the same mixture.
The first three fires are wet and drinkable: the other two are dry.
After the ethereal spirit has been put on ice, then distilled, it must be circulated in the pelican, or other vessel, for three weeks, or at most a month, which is done by lamp fire, with ashes: then we separate the rest of the tasteless or phlegm, by distillation in a vaporous bath, which will give the pure element of the volatile oil ethereal, which is called superior quintessence, suitable to receive the union of the coarse oil after it will have been well rectified, and then of the fixed sulfur, by means of the mercurial acid spirit; it is thus after that by decortion, everything is annealed in a single fixed sulphur, which is the fire of nature in the earth, which is its own fixed domicile; thus the superior discovers itself to be the same as the inferior, and the inferior as well as the superior, which being united together, make a medicine of a single thing, which has the power of the superiors and inferiors, and whose strength is whole when it is converted into a fixed earth, where all the elements are concentrated, and only the quintessence remains, of which the sun, that is to say, the fire of nature or the sulfur of the Philosophers is the father, and the moon, that is to say the mercurial, the mother, that the wind, that is to say, that the volatile spirit carried in its belly during sublimation & solution, The second fire is humid, & is found in plants ; it is their coarse oil, which is also flammable.
The third volatile fire of plants is their acidic spirit & their volatile salt, which perform their operations in the same manner as the spirit & ammonia salt of urine.
What should be noted is that some plants give more volatile salt, proportion of the quality of the mix they received at the beginning; because strictly speaking, volatile salt is only a portion of fixed salt mixed with the acidic mercurial spirit, of fixed fires, of plants.
The first is discovered in acidic salt, from which the Artist can extract through the retort a spirit of salt or nitre, which he uses if he wishes for objects, either mercurial or sulphurous. And finally, the last fire which is discovered in plants is the fixed salt which remains in the ashes when they have been burned, and which is released by means of phlegm or distilled common water , and it is called fixed with good reason, especially since it dissolved, even the Earth fixes, and makes it reach a fixed and fire-resistant material like glass.
The volatile fires, well purified from the earth and phlegm, immediately unite with those of their nature; namely, the sulphurous with the sulphurous, and the mercurials with the mercurials; so that the three upper fires are reduced to two liquors, one mercurial saline, the other sulphurous.
The mercurial dissolves the fixed of its nature and quality, and the sulphurous also dissolves the fixed of its nature; so that by this means everything is reduced in two by decoction; the two coagulate, & fix in one, which is our quintessence, of which we make the great circulation, and then the alkaest of his reign; & finally, the alka is universal, not the conjunction of the alka is of the three kingdoms of nature, & it is always the fire of nature which dominates over all the others, & finally unites them into one of its nature; this is why he works so many miracles in this state of his proximity, to the first radical beings of created nature.
Note also that in the last rectifications of the ethereal oil on the salt of tartar, it will be able to extract somewhat of its like, which is fixed in this alkali, which I recognized by burning a spoonful of this spirit in a small earthenware pot, as floured with the volatile salt contained in this spirit, which had exhaled & attached to the walls of this pot, coming from a part of the volatilized fixed salt; so that I regarded this as a small beginning of the volatilization of the salt of tartar which Vanhelmont praises as a successor to alkaest.
After all the above preparations, our ethereal oil being reduced to its elemental purity, & also joined with the coarse oils which will have been attenuated by art, & restored to its nature, it will be nothing more than a quintessence of which we will make the conjunction with salt & vegetable mercury, which is the acid, to fix them together to the fires sages. The vegetable stone being perfect, must be dissolved in ten times as much ethereal oil, part of which will have been reserved for multiplication.
Common & elementary phlegm.
In order not to transpose the operations, as we have demonstrated the manner of extracting the ethereal spirit in its ultimate purity, & that an abundant phlegm remained after the distillation of this spirit, it is now necessary to withdraw this phlegm, & the separate from other accompanying materials; for this subject, it must be distilled in a very moderate water bath, so that the acids do not rise with it. We will continue this distillation as long as the liquor which distilled will be tasteless; & when it begins to taste , having a little acid, stop distilling, & put all your phlegm aside; you will find in the bottom of the still, an acid liquor with the coarse oil, the salt & the other matters which remain of the wine.
Now this phlegm that you have distilled and set aside must be rectified and purified of a certain quantity of the essential parts of the mixture that it has taken with it; because here is a difficulty of the work that all the first operations are never pure or sincere, and for that it is necessary to redistill this phlegm without addition, two or three times; repeat until there is nothing left in the bottom of the still, reducing the heat with each distillation; that the liquor from the bottom of the still be as sweet as that which passed first through the mouth of the still.
Finally, it is necessary to have a vegetable ground deprived of any salt, ie, completely exanimated of its principles; & in a word, that it be made elementary, that is to say, porous, light, tasteless & discontinuous, of white color.
We will teach how to make it such in Chap. of elemental earth . This earth mixed with the phlegm, will serve to retain, pulling to itself like a magnet, what there will be of the other principles of the subject remaining among the liquor, oil, or some other heterogeneous matter, by recohobing it in a bain-marie.
And after this distillation, having calcined the remaining earth, if there is any fixed salt retained in this earth, it will be separated by mixing in phlegm, and the salt will remain after the distillation of this phlegm, and will be reserved, to put it with the fixed salt, which will be removed from the mixture, which will be homogeneous to it and of the same nature: paria cum paribus.
We therefore see by this mechanics that the earth having detached the oil and the salt from the phlegm, the oil is consumed by the calcination, and the salt is taken up again by means of the phlegm. The earth becomes again virgin & exanimated, & the Artist makes it a magnet for the plant kingdom.
Water and earth are passive principles, the vessels or retinacles of the other elements, which they contain very closely, and from which it is difficult to separate them. However, we should not worry much about the acidities and oleaginosities which appear in the separation of the phlegm, remaining with the salt in the rectifications of the ethereal oil and the salt. Phlegm easily abandons these empires in rectifications on elemental earth.
Vinegar, Wine or common mercurial Principle, & the radical.
After the separation of ether spirit & phlegm, which we have led to their perfection, we separate by distillation over the fire of ashes or sand, all the vinegar, until there remains only a thick, oily silt.
We rectify this vinegar in a non-boiling bain-marie; so that only phlegm rises, with which some acid parts and ethereal oil do not fail to rise.
For it should be noted that the rectification of vinegar is completely opposite to that of the ethereal spirit, which rises first, and the spirit of vinegar remains below the phlegm in the curcurbite; consequently, it is the phlegm that one will have drawn that will have to be set aside.
part of its phlegm, by the first rectification, we expose it to the air four or five days sheltered from the sun & the rain, until the acid taste comes to it.
Then we rectify this vinegar seven more times, interposing after each distillation four or five days of circulation in a bain-marie, in manure, or else in hypocausto, or on a baker's oven; because phlegm, being lighter than the spirit, is separated from it by less heat.
But the acidic spirit, which the Philosophers call Aura Physica, will only obey the bath of ashes or sand; however after having distilled the phlegm, separate the feces that remain at the bottom of the cucurbit.
As for the last rectifications of our acid spirit, after the first seven, we finish making the others, by distilling it on the exanimate earth, & completely deprived of its salt & its sulfurs by calcinations, lotions & repeated filtrations after each distillation.
Note well that this earth thus prepared, and which serves to purify our acid, cannot serve to purify ethereal matter, because it is not its retinaculum. We have already said that it is always necessary to put apart, and together, the congeneric matters, the salines with the salines, the oily ones with the oily ones, the phlegmatic ones, &c.
In the vegetable, the acid and the coarse oil must ferment with the fixed salt, so that this oil becomes attenuated; & convertible into ethereal. We can use the spirit of tartar to replace that which has dissipated through the staves of the barrel, and to strengthen the mercurial spirit of our work. Note that the two vinegars, namely, the radical & the first, are of the same nature, & join together after they have been well rectified by digestions & distillations, each separately.
We have said that it is necessary to calcine the feces which remain after the rectifications of the acids, and to put each substance back with its congener.
of the suitable quantity which must be put on the spongy fixed salt, there is a certain latitude, as in all the temperaments of the mixed ones: so that in this one, we can proportion from three of acidic spirit, against one from fixed, & even go up to ten parts of mind; but in proportion as there is a greater quantity of spirit, the longer it takes for coagulation to take place: hence why some say they have completed their stone in three, four, six or eight months. This comes from the different action, virtue & weight of the elements from which Trevisan's passage came:
Potentia terrestris secundum tempus dilatum est pondus in has materia. The power of the earth according to the time of the expansion of the weight these thingsWhat I have just said concerns the proportion of the acidic spirit to the salt, for the conjunction, no doubt, with the athanor. When we push the salt impregnated with acidic spirits through the retort, to get all the spirits out, we must put distilled rain water in the container, so that they are incorporated into the said water, and do not do not return to their mass: then these spirits are separated from the said water, rectifying it by distillation in a water bath.
It will be said in passing that the bulk of a hazelnut of the salt fixed above, completed and perfect, put in a barrel or barrel of spoiled wine, completely restores it. The Philosophers called spirit that which has the virtue of retaining the body and the soul, that is to say, which unites them together; & it is the function of our acidic spirit, & it is the same in the mineral kingdom, where the mercurial part is retained by the sulphurous part.
When the phlegm was separated from its vinegar, I did not find this vinegar very acidic, and the reason immediately seemed very convincing to me, in that everywhere where the alkali salt and the acids are found together, they unite so closely that they can only be separated by the light of a street lamp; this is why in the process of rectifying these spirits, it is necessary to rectify them alone, by evaporating the phlegm with bath heat, & distilling the rest with sand fire; & finally, complete the rectification on the exanimate earth.
After which, this acid is able to be joined to the fixed salt stripped of all its spirits by strong distillation; & these last spirits, which emerge from the crystalline salt at a vehement fire, are of the same nature as the other acids released & rectified before, with which they are joined; & these rectified acidic spirits being combined with said fixed salt, unite very closely together, & form after a long digestion with athanor, a volatile salt, which is nothing other than a combination of the fixed & the volatile; & it's at the athanor where you will have the volatilized alkali.
Here is this great secret which serves to make the salt of tartar volatile:
And note well that the indissoluble union of the acid spirit with said salt is the true matter of perfection of all bodies, even of the most perfect metals. You can judge from this that your acidic spirit is not lost, but it is enveloped, part of it in thick, black marc, and another part in water or phlegm. For him who is enveloped in water, separation from it is easy by bathing; & with regard to that which is enveloped in the marc or black residence, & in the fixed salt, the separation must be done in the way that we separate the elements of raw tartar impregnated with wine at big street light. Put in a retorte of lutee glass, or Beauvais earth, with a large glass container, two or three pounds of raw tartar, the vessel half full; being at the lamp-stove, give it a gentle fire for the space of an hour, with the damper closed; after which time, you will open it with one finger for an hour , so that the vessel heats up gently and evenly, and then you will open it with three fingers for three hours: finally, you will open it completely the space of five hours, & the operation will be finished: then let the vessels cool slowly, after having extinguished & suppressed the fire.
comes out first, if a moderate fire is given at the beginning; that if you give it violently, the spirits come out together with the phlegm; then pushing the fire, the fixed spirits come out with part of the oil, which can be recognized by a large quantity of white vapors in the container: Finally, the black and stinking oil, mixed with yellow, comes out and makes the end of the operation, which is finished and the vessels cooled, we gently separate the container from the retorte, by the application of lukewarm water, to soak the lut, which is mixed with common salt, and we preserve the coarse oil that is at the bottom of the container, above which swim spirit & phlegm, which have yellow & black oil beneath them.
The oils separate from the rest through the funnel & the filter; but the phlegm is separated from the acidic spirit by a slow distillation in a bain-marie, where the phlegm comes out first, & thus you will have the spirit of tartar well separated, which will be softer after the rectifications, especially since by this means, the raw salt, which at first gave it a spongy acidity, will have been volatilized.
If you do not have a sufficient quantity of sour spirit or vinegar, you will easily find these principles in spoiled wines, which you can take & distill. After having taken your vinegar, you will transport your vessel to the fire of ashes, which will elevate the spirit. What's left at the bottom is called vinegar extract; and putting it in a retort, you will draw out the radical vinegar over high heat, which dissolves and draws out the vitriol from metals. It is also possible to separate an essential salt from this extract , after dissolution, filtration & mediocre evaporation. After which, putting it in the cold for a few weeks, we will find saline crystals there.
We therefore find enough to have a quantity of acidic spirit in the distillation of vinegar, and a quantity of salt in tartar, and we find these things abundantly everywhere. In the distillation of tartar, one can receive the last stinky & black oil separately, by changing the container. Now let us explain the reason why it is not easy to separate phlegm from vinegar taken from a vinegar maker; it is that he uses the lees of spoiled wine, which he boils on the fire; & in this boiling, the greater part of the phlegm evaporates : the acid remaining in the vessel which makes the vinegar, joined to some leaven or ferment that it adds, which would be foreign to our work. But to achieve further purification of our mercury or acidic spirit, you will place it on a good quantity of dry, elemental earth.
& arid, deprived of all salt; & if you lack some, you can take new tile powder, which will separate the phlegm from the spirit in the distillations & rectifications; or you can use filings of iron, or other metal, which retaining & joining easily with the said spirits, will retain them, & the phlegm which is mixed will rise by a mediocre heat, & then the spirit will be detached from the filings, and will be distilled at more violent heat, according to the more or less strong composition of these metallic bodies, which you will use for this artifice, as we see in the spirit of sulfur, which having dissolved the metals, & These vitriolized ones are separated using violent heat, after the phlegm has been raised by moderate heat.
Note carefully this secret, and the cause of this sympathy of metals with acid mercury, which even makes a kind of mixture with them, and only leaves them by force of fire. For this same reason, the distillation of acidic spirits should not be done in varnished or leaded vessels, as they attach to anything metallic; and being retained there, what would distil would only be phlegm, unless a violent fire was used, which is not necessary in everything.
Therefore, for these kinds of separations, vessels of glass or stoneware, which do not drink anything, and are not perspirable: And let us not imagine that the Potters' varnish is a true vitrification; because it is reducible to metal, as I know, and thus it still has the principles to serve as a magnet, and retain those of the vegetable; & even more, mineral.
When we rectify the acidic liquor which has been concentrated in the filings, everything passes, as we said , over a hunting fire, in a single distillation in the container, and nothing metallic rises, which is not dissolved by this spirit, but always remains metal, without alteration, where the vulgar error of the Sophists is discovered, & shows that these menses are not the radicals of the metallic too fixed & too united in its elementary parts.
The proportion of filings is that the liquor exceeds five or six finger widths on top. However, it is easier to rectify the acid spirit on its own elemental earth, or failing that, on the powder of new tiles, reddened in the fire. The sour spirit contains one sixteenth part of oily volatile salt. If the acid spirit does not easily enter the fixed salt, to volatilize it, it is because it is not well purified: therefore, it still needs to be rectified.
We must conclude from this that it is the purity of the elements which gives them strength. We can still extract an acid from the cream of tartar made faithfully, which will serve for our work. Everything above is a manipulation of the acid or mercurial spirit of the mixture, as well circumstantiated as I could do. I know the imprecations that are made against the Authors. As I know some who have given the public the way to decompose certain remedies, and that by following their method we have not been able to succeed, I certify that I am not of this character.
Coarse, yellow & black fetid Oils.
After having sufficiently detailed the manner of extracting oil, subtle or ethereal, from wine, in the second Chapter, I It seems that it will be a well-established order to speak here of the coarse oil taken from the mixture that we are treating. This black & coarse oil, which horrifies all those who smell it, because of its stench, could you believe that, being elaborated by Chemistry, it becomes sweet, with an enchanting smell, & similar to the first oil or ethereal spirit, with which it will become one body? as I will demonstrate below.
We said that after drawing the first spirit of wine, then its phlegm, then its vinegar, there would remain at the bottom of the curcurbite a thick, black and stinking matter. Now take this material, and put it in a retort: it still contains some acidic spirits mixed with earthiness; you will separate the phlegm & the acid, then will come the black oil mixed with yellow.
We will observe the degrees of fire, and the other circumstances such as I reported them in the previous Chapter, to the distillation of Tartar. When you have your black oil, you need to know where this blackness & stench comes from, to remove it. I will tell you that in all resinous, oily & flammable substances, fired by a strong expression of fire, there always remains a soot or sooty excrement produced by the retorridation of the fatty & sulfurous parts of the mixture, mixture of salt & earth which comes close to chimney soot : this is why, just as we analyze this soot, we must analyze our black oil. So put it in a glass retort, adapting a very large container, give the fire from degree to degree, as we said for the oil of tartar, a phlegm will come out first, then an acid spirit, then a flammable & yellow oil, which will be followed by a black oil; separate your phlegm from the acidic spirit by the bain-marie; & the two oils, namely, the yellow & the black, by the fire of sand, & from your dead head you will remove a salt, which you will purify.
He A land will remain, which you will examine, as you did with the other lands remaining after the distillations which preceded.
And in this, it must be noted that the most odoriferous flowers , gums and plants are not exempt from this soot or impurity that they exhibit on fire, which is repugnant to our sense of smell; & it is this excrement which is the death of the mixed, as it is the cause of the illnesses which occur to us when our minds are not exalted enough to endure & digest it: This is what the Doctor must know, to separate it medicine , so that it is pure, and does not contain anything contrary to our nature.
For rectification of oils coarse, which are yellow and black, and to remove the empire from them, it is already said that each element is purified by that which is most intrinsic to it; & as the intrinsic of sulfur or oil, it is the arena or the elementary virgin earth , & deprived of its salt, it is this which must be used, by putting these oils in the retort separately, with this well-purified earth, and to have these oils distilled in this way.
But because the empire will not be completely erased, it will still be necessary to rectify these oils separately on very powdery spirit of common salt, of which there is enough, with which we will put them into fermentation each separately: we will give a moderate fire, which is known by those who have distilled these oils and spirits: for these require a stronger fire, and must not come out until the oil has passed through the first entirely.
There are some who better estimate the acid spirit of the same kingdom, to make these rectifications: but as the oil retains nothing of the spirit of salt, which on the contrary by its acids freezes the coarse parts of the oil, I find no difficulty in using it , because it enters the work only auxiliary.
However to cleanse your minds of the filth they contracted in the rectification they made of the oil, from which they have retained the soot, they must be distilled on the bare bones of a few dead heads, plants purified of their salt, and even more properly if you have some of the same mixture. You will take care to obtain a good quantity of residences or black faeces, in which the soul of the ethereal spirit resides: because indeed, the black oil that is drawn from it becomes, through subsequent elaborations, even more precious and more necessary. to sharpen the ethereal spirit, with which it must be joined. It will be easy to have of common & vulgar wine to distil, or lower. We will ferment it for some time on raw tartar, which are materials municipalities. Glaubert tried to remove the empire with the spirit of salt; but he did not know everything, and could not succeed: others have rectified him with the common spirit of vinegar; others with a stag's horn.
None of this could take away the feteur. So there is a lot of work; but the fruits that we must expect are not small: because the end of these purifications is not to have elements purely and simply, to demonstrate what they are; but it is to manage to have the fire of essential vegetal nature of the quintessence, which can come into act only after the circulation & conversion of all the united elements into a single incorruptible vegetal substance. And as it is sufficiently explained that there is a great correspondence between all the philosophical arcana & the loving secret of the fire of nature, in the three kingdoms, we must judge what the essential & actual vegetable fire will have to operate on the mineral nature, which is lower, seeing that the vegetable, following the order of nature, is placed on the mineral, and the animal on the vegetable; & especially since superior natures are inclined to give aid to inferior ones, you must have a strong sense of what the quintessence will be able to do when it is satisfied & impregnated with its own fixed & central fire put into action as vegetation. Philosophers call this substance the sky, the vegetable menstruë; because just as Heaven is incorruptible, & gives movement to sublunary & elementary natures, likewise our quintessence, which is superior to mineral nature, excites & sets in motion of vegetation the natural fire of mineral nature, its lower. Nam creator altissimus, creavit tres mineras inter mineralia est una, silicet solis & lunae inter vegetabilia est vitis, inter animalia est apis. (For the supreme creator created three minerals among minerals there is one, the flint of the sun & the moon among vegetables is the vine, among animals is the bee.)
It is from these minerals that we draw the true arcana, which correspond to each other: but there must be a medium between the vegetable fire and the mineral. It does not concern our work. All spirits fix with the lime of their species.
Fixed and volatile salts
When the yellow & black oils are drawn through the retort, in the manner that we taught in the previous Chapter, there remains a black & dry earth which must be calcined in a crucible, not so violently so that it can be vitrified; for salt is the principle of all liquation: this is why the crucible will be covered with a tile, with a small hole in the middle only, to give air:
so that if there is still some small portion of volatile salt hidden in the ashes, it has reason to attach itself to the sides of the crucible, from where it can be removed by raising it with phlegm of the same mixture, and so that it is separated from its earth: then we will evaporate the phlegm after having filtered it. Then we will join it with one of the two principles, with which it will become completely volatile: we will try to sublimate it alone separately. With regard to the fixed salt, you will take your black earth; being powdered, you will dilute it with phlegm of the same mixture, & leave it for twenty-four hours in an almost boiling water bath: then filter, coagulate until a film, evaporating until crystallization, & separate the feces that will remain on the filter, that you put aside, to calcine them & start to dissolve, filter, coagulate the salt again with the phlegm of the mixture, as long as all the salt is separated from the earth, & no feces will remain on the filter; & when your salt is dissolved in its phlegm without residence, it will be like clear & pure transparent water: finally, it will be evaporated. It will be suitable to join with the upper elements.
The phlegm after that which will have been used for these salt solutions, must be rectified on virgin & exanimate vegetable soil : then this phlegm will be distilled in a bain-marie, which will become suitable for such operations again.
You will notice that after putting your earth on a heat bath, and you have filtered it, you must take what will remain on the filter, and calcinate it again as you did the first time, repeating this until you remove your insipid phlegm from your earth. It has been said that well-purified fixed salt must be used in the distillation of the ethereal spirit, to retain the phlegm, which otherwise always rises with the spirit. It must be observed that the earth exanimate or stripped of its salt, will not be used for ethereal matter, especially since it is not its retinacle, but rather the very depurated fixed salt.
We must therefore look at this earth as a particular magnet of its reign: unlike the general, who must be drawn from all three reigns. Fixed salt among chemists is called gold, because it is of a sulphurous nature. This fixed salt serves to ferment with the acid and the oil, as has been said in the preceding Chapters. When the salt of tartar has contracted some oleaginousness after having been with the ethereal oil, to remove it we put this salt with a retort over a stronger heat in the sand bath. Fixed salts in general become volatile by stripping them of their terrestrial parts, for example, make a strong wash of well-purified salt of tartar, pour over it, in parts, spirit of salt, to the point that the liquor does not ferment more, & be drunk with this spirit; that if you take care, you will see the earth precipitate salt of tartar: then filter the liquor which will float, make it evaporate & crystallize, grind it in a marble mortar with as much salt of tartar; it will raise an oily volatile salt.
It can be done better with our spirit of vinegar.
Schroder despises the calcination of tartar to the azure heat , as much because there is, so he claims, too great a dissipation of the spirits, as because only the earthly part of the mixture remains. To which we can answer, that there is no soil left with well-purified salt; that if there were, vitrification would follow. Moreover, these corpuscles of fire, which he supposes to be internal in matter , do not remain there, but give an arrangement to the parts of the salt of tartar, which become igneous and elementary. We have said that the rectified acids, being joined with the depurated fixed salt, unite very closely together, and form after a long digestion with athanor, a volatile salt, which is nothing other than a combination of the fixed & volatile.
The fixed salt with the mercurial spirit elementary, are two neighbors which symbolize, & from their union proceeds our salt nitre or ammonia, which being a alkali volatilized by digestions & sublimations, the weight of the volatile carrying that of the fixed, gives a medium of conjunction which unites the soul, that is to say, the ethereal or sulphurous oil, with the body, which is the fixed salt, and from these three, through digestion, the mercurial sulphurous saline trinity is made, which is the key to our work. The fixed salt which was used for the depuration of the ethereal spirit must be recalcined & purified each time this spirit is rectified.
The elementary principle salt in the mixed, is fixed in its nature, any salt which is or is volatile, is not simple nor elementary, but it is only volatile because there is mercury or spirit mixed acid with it: so that we can separate it if we retain what is saline by adding a homogeneous fixed salt in sufficient quantity with the volatile salt, which the common people call ammonia salt, from which we will notice the great affinity of acid mercury, & salt fixed principle, of which an average mixture is made in the form of volatile salt ammonia, after due decoction & fermentation. And there is only this mercury alone, well purified & rectified, capable of entering the center of the fixed salt, of fermenting it, attenuating it; & by this means, separate it & deliver it entirely from the earth principle of corruption & stupidity of the action of said salt, for then she is able to take back her soul, which is in the purified ethereal oil. In the first distillation of the oily residence or marc of the vinegar, some parts of volatile salt will rise to the neck of the retort, which will have to be separated, and put with one of the two vinegars.
Volatile salt is nothing more than a portion of mercurial spirit, which removes part of the fixed salt. Fixed salt is the last fire, called fixed because it dissolves the earth, & makes it fixed by vitrifying it. We must not forget the feces from white wine, to have subsequently volatile salt, which we will need to sharpen our mercury in its first meetings with the fixed salt. Basil Valentin says: Spiritus vini volatilia efficit, quia ipse volatilis est, spiritus verò aceti figit minerales & vegetabiles medicinas, ut res fixas aggredi & fixos morbos sanare possint.
Schroder says that some mix the spirit of raw tartar with its fixed salt; from which a great effervescence ensues, and by this means they claim to acquire a volatile and penetrating spirit. I say that it is an abuse to hope to be able to extract a concentrated thing, and extrovert it from the bowels of one's mixed body without long work. What Schroder himself recognizes is not possible; for he says in the same place: Digestio & rectificatio spiritus super sal fixum, volatile ejusdem, quoniam sic sal tartari fixum attracts acidum olei quod ante a concentrabat acidum in olei forma, quo concentrateo prodit sal volatile (Digestion & rectification of the spirit fixed on salt volatile of the same, since it thus attracts fixed salt of tartar the acid of the oil which before concentrated the acid in the form of oil, at which concentration it produces a volatile salt).
It is one of the best means, he says, to obtain the volatile salt , to use digestion & rectification of the spirit on the fixed salt, &c. I notice that several Authors have only shreds & badly reported parts, detached from our work, & do not stop giving them to the Public as finished works. The oily volatile salt of Sylvius was a salt & a rectified oil of philosophically conjoined animals , & left nothing of it to the Public.
of volatilized tartar, was the one that led to the alkaest.
We have no trouble recognizing it here. Moreover, the fixed salt of tartar must be crystalline, and dissolve entirely into elemental water, without leaving any earthiness: It has a very sharp, spicy taste. This salt in this state is, however, not yet entirely rectified, to be able to form its union with the acid spirit and the oil; because notwithstanding all these preparations, it must still be sublimated: finally, this salt must be put in the athanor in the sand fire until it becomes red, and is fixed; & this fixation being made, you have the inseparable vegetable stone, whiteness in one of your vessels, & sunshine when it is fixed rodent in another.
Mixed & elemental earth.
In the last Chapter, we dealt with the salts, both fixed and volatile, of our subject, & demonstrated how they had to be extracted from the earth: it is now appropriate to speak of this earth, to recognize its nature & essence, & distinguish its properties. It seems that there is a contradiction in wanting to praise the earth, and to find utility in it, after having made known the trouble it gave to Artists, so to speak, to plow it.
Yes, way we take it: if we look at it as elemental, we will find it full of richness; because it will contain within itself these precious salts of which we have spoken; as also these oils which contain immense virtues, and a mercury which is the sugar of our work, the mediator of all our elements. If this earth is considered as a pure & simple element, we cannot express how much strength it has to complete the purification of the principles that have been separated from it, & free them entirely from their filth & superfluities.
So that if Paracelsus calls her dead and alive, whatever the implication appears, there is none; because it is alive when it contains all the active principles, with which the author of nature gave it being. It is dead when it is stripped of these same principles. But this earth is still reborn, stripped as it is: not only when we revive it of its active principles, but also when we expose it to the air, from which it receives a new life, by permeating the universal spirit;
And I have no difficulty in persuading myself that leaving it for some time thus exposed to the air, it does not reject and cannot grow, even extraordinary plants, being indeterminate for the genus or for the species, assuming this Virgin land, & unsown.
Let's return, to the place where we take it, crucible, from where we draw it to obtain the salt, by lotions, filtrations & evaporations, observing to dissolve this salt in the phlegm proper to its mixture, at least in the last extractions; because if you want to use distilled rainwater, which can be done instead of phlegm, you will be free to do so for the former only.
I would also say that any earth is good for our use, provided it comes from a vegetable, being well purified and stripped of its principles; that nevertheless the one that we draw from our subject will always be to be preferred. Now to make it elementary, it is not enough to calcine it once: we must reiterate this operation with phlegm, so many times that it does not manifest any saltiness to the taste nor to the sense of smell. When we put phlegm in it to impregnate it, this phlegm must overcome the earth by two fingers across it, then we put it to digest in a water bath for twenty-four hours: others retain this earth in digestion in the water bath. athanor for twenty-four hours, before putting her with her phlegm.
Ut appetat vehement suum humidum (To desire his strong wetness). This is what I recommend doing, then putting it in a bain-marie. When we reanimate this earth with its coarse oil or vinegar, to make it retain their filth, we must not overload it too much, but only make it consistent. clear porridge.
After we have made this mixture to reanimate the earth, you will allow it to be impregnated with athanor for twenty-four hours, then you will distill your material; namely, vinegar or mercurial acid, in a water bath, and oil, in a sand or ash bath, depending on the number of times it has been rectified and softened before; for in all subsequent rectifications the heat of the fire must always be diminished. And not only does the earth serve to purify the acid and oily principles, but it is very useful for purifying phlegm; because by distilling it on the acidic, dry & well elemental earth exanimate, it retains the empire and the other bad qualities with which this phlegm is impregnated, and which remain in the earth after the distillation of this phlegm in a bain-marie. And each time after the earth has retained the excrementous parts of phlegm, or other principles, it must be purified by new calcination, leaching, lotion & desiccation, & returned to a new elementary state, & even this earth must be made to reverberate to the last operations of our work. One can also make use, as we have said elsewhere, of a new tile powder reddened in the fire; but it is good to use it only for the first purifications.
fifth principle of the mixed, having reached the elementary state, or virgin earth, is a substance reduced to a friable, discontinuous, white, light consistency, of no odor or flavor, especially since this principle, which we call passive, does not enter into our work, any more than phlegm, which only serves as intermediaries.
Conjunctions & Quintessences.
To make our particular alkaest, or conjunction of the three principles, sulfur salt & mercury, as we understand by salt the fixed salt: for example, tartar, by its sulfur, its ethereal & coarse oil; & by its mercury, its vinegar or acute spirit, which is drawn from all things thus acidic: in which one cannot be mistaken that the acid part is always the mercurial spirit: of which three principles, the union can only be made after, that each apart, they have been very well purified & separated from their chains, which are phlegm & earth; & when once they are conjoined after having been thus perfectly purified of their passive principles, they remain inseparable, quacumque arte, they dissolve all things, & cannot be dissolved.
They have been ingested everywhere, and cannot be mixed or altered by any foreign substance. Notice that when the empire of the coarse oils is quite removed by the rectification of the acid spirit on it, reiterated three or four times, or else as long as the empire passes: after that the matter is ready for the conjunction with the ethereal oil, which little by little sublimates it, removes it, & makes only one: thus from five substances we make three, from three two, and from two one.
In the conjunction, we must be careful not to put too much of one and too much of the other, nor too little of one and the other. It is good to know that the three volatile principles, which are phlegm, acid spirit and oils, in their perfect purification, must be transparent, diaphanous, and without color: the color comes only from salt, which in its last depuration is red after its reverberation, leaving no more earthly feces after several different solutions, calcinations, filtrations & repeated coagulations, which is annoying, however necessary before coming to the conjunction of salt with acid mercury, from which come then the decoction, the colors black, gray & white, after which follows the red by further digestion, & conjunction of the soul or ethereal spirit.
We can never succeed in uniting the body with the soul without the acidic spirit, and by a true solution and sublimation of the body, which union takes place in the second generation, and is only formed pure principles. The vulgar Philosophers, or the Chemists of the lower class, may well cohob the ethereal oil on its salt, to dissolve & volatilize it, all that the oil can do in these cohobations & digestions, is only to attract some fixed sulfurities mixed in the salt, & to leave in its place some phlegm, which the salt retains by its dryness, to liquefy, with which phlegm it also makes a deposit on this salt, of some acid dross, or other impure atoms which were contained in the ethereal spirit, & then the external fire is used to separate the phlegm by calcination, solution, filtration & coagulation, which restores the salt to its purity. It is an important and well-advanced work to reduce all the superior parts to two, which are the spiritual oleaginity and the supreme acidity without phlegm; one is about as long & difficult as the other.
This pontic & vitriolic acidity is the heaviest of all the elements or principles of the mixture; it is the true mercury or radical vinegar, of which it is spoken above as an acidic and heavy principle, that the very spirit of well-rectified vitriol is only acquired like the spirit of vinegar, by concentration of it on well purified & dried tartar salt , him as long as he is completely drunk with it, after several cohobations & distillations, by which one withdraws the phlegm from the spirit: which spirit joins with the salt, & this is repeated as long as the salt no longer retains anything acid; & that it comes out in the distillation as acid as when it was put there.
This done, we put the salt of tartar thus impregnated in the unglazed earthenware retort of Beauvais, & we pass the spirit into the receptacle on the lamppost; some mix the said salt impregnated with acidity with clay, in order better to separate the spirit; but this addition does not please me; because besides that it can retain many spirits, infect.
Now this separation being made of the true acid spirit, it is rectified once or twice, and then it radically dissolves its body or fixed salt, and joins inseparably with it, by physical digestions, to the athanor; it is the foundation of the last operation with the oil, which also joins inseparably with these two in almost the same way. Balduinus, in a small hermetic treatise, on Auro aurae, which is very curious, teaches a way of calcining the salt of tartar in a very violent fire, and reducing it in a short time to the elementary state, making it take on the azure color, then green, & finally red, by a violent fire.
Vanhelmont, Liv. de Duelech, speaking of the salt contained in the spirit of wine, says that being rectified with the salt of tartar, this salt retains barely half an ounce of a pound. Here we must understand the acid spirit of the wine which is concentrated in the salt, which is the retinacle of the acid, and from which the average spirit is formed, or the ammoniac salt of the Philosophers. To return to Balduinus, he declares himself entirely for nitre, from which he forms his alkaest, from which he also draws a luminous phosphorus, a Balsancus mundi, and other very good remedies; but what is quite singular, he says that he maintains and shows everyone, every year during the height of winter, a garden in a room filled with all kinds of verdant plants, bearing fragrant flowers like the loveliest of spring.
He also shows a thermometer that he built from his blood, reduced to quintessence, all the changes of which combined and agreed with the various degrees of health, and the different dispositions that he felt within himself, also predicting that when he would come to die, this essence would perish. I make this digression on the occasion of the salt of tartar, which Balduinus reduced, as well as the nitre salt, to the elemental state.
Theory affecting our Work.
Although I give notions that seem to me to be quite easy to understand and manipulations that are easy to carry out, I will not fail to put here everything that comes to mind to clarify more fully and strengthen the ideas that 'we must train ourselves before starting this work.
It must be admitted that practice in Chemistry is an absolutely necessary part; but reasoning must also come to the aid of the Artist, to lead his enterprise to perfection. This is why the Philosophers say that Chiron was Jason's Master & Tutor & that without the strength of Hercules, he would never be reached Colchos, & would not have won the golden fleece as a reward for his work.
Chiron is the practice of solving mixed; the twelve labors of Hercules are the true picture of the operations which the Artist must employ in the purification of the essential principles; & finally Jason, who is theory & reason, having found the instruments of nature, that is to say, the first matter, & the form of its kingdoms, enters even deeper into the labyrinth.
Now after having tamed the bulls, which threw fire and flames, put the serpent to sleep by fixing the mercurial substance, killed the minotaur of dual nature, he finally finds the golden fleece, which is the fire of fixed nature in the center of the labyrinth, which he removes & wins for the price of his victory. And then he has more advanced knowledge than Medea had, whom he abandons; & retracing his steps, led by a light superior to reason, which only groped along the path of analysis, walks uprightly, with certainty towards composition with the golden fleece, which is the true & unique agent which gives life to the dead, & brings together all the parts of the body torn apart by the solution.
All these mysterious fables clearly show the depth of the knowledge of Cabalistics, and at the same time the error of the Sophists, who draw insipid water and dead earth, which are only the accidents in true Philosophy, which has other secret liquors, and other lands than those of the Sophists. This land, or nectar, was found by the Adepts, who made it their immortal spiritual principles separated from all corruptible accidents. It is in these underground caverns that the ancient Egyptians found the means to compose their perpetual lamps, their feathery aluminum, which serves as a wick for the immortal fire of fixed sulfur, where the incombustible & inevaporable oil comes circularly to water it & maintain this fire of the Vestal Virgins, this living fire & secret, which does not burn the hands of those who touch it:
It is the fire of our concentrated philosophical sun, which can only be kindled by the rays of our volatile sun, which vivifies everything, & repairs all defects & illnesses of his children. But let's leave these allegories there.
I am surprised that Galen wavered in his feelings regarding the quality of vinegar, sometimes calling it hot, sometimes cold. The Chemists could have informed it by the resolution they make of it; that is to say, when phlegm predominates in vinegar, and it has not yet been analyzed, it is truly cold: but when it is reduced to salt, to oil & in spirit, all that is hot, to speak the language of ancient Medicine.
This is the solution to Galen's difficulty , without traveling the world, as he said he would gladly do to learn it. The mercury or acidic spirit which represents the fluid, placed on the fire, ordinarily rises first in the distillation, sometimes in small quantities, and particularly when the spirit has little spirit, and is compact; but if the mixed abounds in spirit, then the mercury rises abundantly by a mediocre fire, as is seen in the distillation of vinegar, which being very acidic, the spirit comes out easily with the phlegm.
It should be observed that with strong acid liquors, the phlegm comes out the first with a sour part of the mind; but in liquors in which oil or quintessence abounds, we see the opposite , because the inflammable quintessence rises first , like ethereal oil: from which you may infer that mercury rising with phlegm the first, it is the most extrinsic & least radical of the elements, except phlegm. But to this, we will tell you that sometimes what is most radical in the composition comes out first in the resolution: not because of its nature, but according to its consistency. I call the most radical what is used first by the universal form, to lay the first foundation of the elements, which is the first in order, on account of the other elements, as being their participated, for without the flowing moisture of mercury, nothing would germinate or flow, nothing would not interfere in particular; because all the other elements flow through the participation of mercury, which is the first flow.
And this prerogative being due to mercury, it comes out first in resolution, in order to abandon the mixed to corruption, withdrawing veiled from an ethereal body, which holds the character of all the other elements; & it is the schamain, which in an igneous water, or aqueous fire; because under this name, all the faculties of the elements are included; namely, the fixed & the volatile: under the fixed there is fire, earth & salt; & under the volatile there is sulfur & water.
I said veiled, because the first forms, which are mercury, fire & air, never show themselves to us (being incorporated) except through bodies, & the nature of bodies, through which we see them, we discover sufficiently if they are the participated or participants of a first form. If participated, then this form veils itself from salt, as from a fixed salt & from water, as from a volatile participant of its first form, of such a nature is the vinegar of all acid spirits.
asks, in passing, that I show him this first form, this mercury or chemical spirit, I will ask him, in exchange, that he show me the fire & air of the vulgar Philosophers. If therefore of the four sensitive & corporeal elements, they could only show me earth & water (still rather difficultly) why with corporeal salt & sulfur, do they refuse to admit a third incorporeal & chemical, which is the mercury?
That if the participating forms of this primary matter, such as fire and air, are veiled with a fixed only, like fire, which is veiled with salt and arena only, & not salt & oil together; because salt & sulfur together are incompatible with fire, since fire being fixed, it expels volatile sulfur and air, and retains salt, and air, which is a germ of fire, receives it and joins it to water, as fire receives salt & seal it to the arena. This is the case with fermented oils; for the fire veils itself from this rectified oil, and brings it out first when the mixtures abound.
That if you blame this multiplication of the elements, because it will seem to you to be without necessity, I reply that the necessity is so great, that without this septenary number of elements, you would not be able to explain or reduce to a multiform order, the multiplicity of the uniform nature, & you would not know reduce neither sulfur nor salt to any of the vulgar elements; for they are resolved only in themselves, and are purely simple bodies, as well as their earth and their water. This is why, as these beings cannot be explained in simplicity , it is better to reduce them to a multitude conforming to their nature, rather than abandon their essences, as empty and inexplicable in nature.
The elementary oil & water evaporate little by little by the heat & activity of the air, which removes their moist parts, & reduces them to dryness; but it is not the same with our acid spirit, which being exposed to the air, instead of volatilize, has the virtue of attracting from the air a quantity of moist parts, which come to corporify with it, and increase its volume, by joining with its own substance: for example, that we fill a vial with our spirit purified acid , if we put this flask in an earthen dish, we will find after a while almost as much liquor in the dish as in the uncovered and uncorked flask, which will nevertheless be completely full. It is true that this acid will no longer be so pure, because of the mixture of its parts with those which are vaporous and humid with the air; & to explain this phenomenon, having been deprived, by art, of abundant humidity, which naturally accompanied them, seek to regain it?
And especially since these acidic spirits are heavier than the vaporous and humid parts of the air, it seems to me that this is the reason why these condense, and are retained with the purified vinegar, from which we then can separate them in a water bath at low heat: so that these aqueous vapors having been distilled, there will remain at the bottom of the still the same quantity of spirits as there were previously in the flask, before it had been exposed to air, which proves that the acid, being heavier, attracts the humidity of the air, for which it is greedy, and this same greed which is found in the ethereal spirit, causes it to seek its humidity in the air by evaporating.
Oil is an inflammable principle, and burns entirely without residence. The spirit is all acid, the most penetrating substance of the whole body from which it is extracted: it is called spirit par excellence; & the Philosophers, will know, which is a strong and subtle substance, which moves everything. Without it no fermentation can take place, since it is it which, acting on the salt of the mixture, or other added, causes a boil which attenuates the different parts of the mixture:
so that after that, they separate easily, which could not be done without fermentation. We see further, that after the exact purification of the said elements, the separation from one another, being rendered elemental, this acid spirit mingles with all in particular, which the ethereal oil cannot do, which cannot join with the salt without the aid of the spirit, nor with the earth, except roughly; but the said spirit ferments it in a moment with boiling. To further prove his penetration & vivacity, not only does he insinuate himself into the principles of his reign, but he still penetrates into animals, fossils & metals, even in gold, which can only be opened and corroded by heterogeneous things by this spirit. Elemental salts can only be quickly raised by its means.
We should not be surprised if after fermentation, the materials change their disposition: so that the salt and the earth, from being fixed, become volatile, not by the violence of fire, which would be more capable of fix them even more; but by the intervention and means of the fermenting acid spirit, it divides them into small parts, and joins with them so essentially, that it is as if stuck to them; & especially since it is volatile by its nature, after having linked these fixed elements, he takes them away, and makes them similarly volatile, after having contracted a strong union with them. And when the Artist, or the true Physicist, wants to undertake to fix them together once again , after they have been sublimated together, he uses the incontestable means of Hermetic Philosophy, which teach us that if the volatile, it is namely this acidic spirit, overcomes the fixed in quantity, which can only be done by fermentation, it elevates it and carries it with itself; but if the said spirit is too weak, or in too small quantity, in comparison with the fixed body, it is retained, by means of a due fermentation.
On the occasion of this maxim philosophical, that the volatile takes away the fixed, and that the fixed after that makes itself master of the volatile, and imprisons it, or fixes it in its turn, it is a deplorable thing to see Charlatans who improperly take quicksilver; which they call spirit, and gold, which they call body: They imagine that they can ferment together, while there occurs no action or reaction on either side; and when they have volatilized the said gold, by means of this quicksilver, they fix it again, and thus the said quicksilver is converted into gold, on their account, or silver, depending on the metallic material which they have mixed with him. It is an imposture worthy of torture.
Our acid spirit still has the virtue of penetrating stones, and freeing them from their compactions, provided that they have previously been opened by calcination. It also has the strength to sublimate them into a dry consistency, or to elevate them into vapors. It also has the power to sublimate metals; that if one objects that it is the volatile salts which elevate the metals, I reply that these salts are composed of acidic spirit and fixed salt, and that the volatilization of metals proceeds from the spirit, since the principle salts of the said metals are fixed in their nature, and only become volatile through the conjunction of the spirit, which causes the volatilization of both salts and metals, proceeds from him.
However, I admit that it does not dissolve the raw and viscous sulfurs of metals, if by due fermentation they are not purified or attenuated by legitimate calcination, in which consists one of the greatest secrets of metallics. It is true that he loves all mercurial bodies, both raw and cooked, pure or impure, and dissolves the pure with their sulfur, or rather with their fixed salt, the impure with their sharp sulfur; & wanting to dissolve mercury coagulated by the viscous sulfur of unripe metals, he cannot do it properly, if they are not calcined by art beforehand: otherwise the quantity of their raw sulfur prevents the dissolution of their mercury, can dissolve them like the others, but calcify them quickly.
I go beyond, and say more, that the spirit is a medium between oil and salt, like a link, to chain them both, and join them almost inseparably; because it elevates the salt, which before sublimation cannot join with the elemental oil; but after the spirit has raised the body, which is the salt, it easily takes up its soul, which is the oil, and by this means a fixed, quasi-homogeneous body is made and inseparable from these three, which could not be unite inseparably before the sublimation of the body, because of the earth, second principle of corruption, which was mixed with it, & which prevented the indissoluble union of the soul and the body, which is provided by the intervention of this spirit, which promptly mixes with all the principles.
And because this spirit is very heavy, we must know that the heaviest and most compact bodies have more spirit and salt. If it is objected why Saturn is heavier than the Moon, I answer that the mercury of Saturn, although it is more aqueous than that of the Moon, nevertheless its greater gravity comes from its strong mixture with its viscous sulfur, abundant in salt & spirit; whereas that of the Moon is not so well united, because in addition to its white salt & fixed internally, it has a quantity of external sulfur, more terrestrial than that of Saturn, although more abundant, and consequently which has less united and mixed its mercurial parts.
Observations on Oils.
The coarse & fetid oil of which we have spoken so much requires that we change the vessels every time we rectify it, because these vessels retain an impression of bad odor; & after having calcined the remaining mass to whiteness, we make a wash with heated phlegm, stirring everything with a stick, until the water appears salty to the taste, which usually happens in five or six hours . Flammable mixed oil differs from the oils, by default, in that the former is truly inflammable, and the latter is nothing but a salt which resolves in the damp: for, Salia dissoluuntur aquis & humido. As for flammable oils, one asks why some float on water, others mingle & incorporate, down to the smallest atoms, with water? I will answer that oils & flammable things, float on water because of the heterogeneous parts which compose them, having a viscous substance, or soot, in them which supports them on water, prevents them from incorporating, & n has no resemblance to water, which would not be found if the juices from which these oils are obtained had been fermented.
THE oils which mix down to the smallest atoms with water are, for example, ethereal oils well rectified from their soot; those which float on water are the coarse oils, which are mixed with their soot and other etherogeneities, such as olive oil, rapeseed oil, resins, bitumens, and others by expression. , just as those which are extracted by strong distillations, by the retort of combustible things, which before their rectification float on the water. It must therefore be said that fermentation being an operation by which dirty and viscous things are made tenuous by the separation which takes place from this viscosity in digestion, it follows that the oils which derive from the above things, always float on water.
But it happens otherwise when the distillation is carried out only after the fermentation, that is to say, after the solution of these mixtures in their own menses: so that by digestion, this soot, or viscosity , separates into the flammable substance; after which being in its purity, it incorporates with the water, having no heterogeneity of substance.
For proof that the oils proceeding from expression or separation, without previous fermentation, are filled with this sooty soot, you have only to take these kinds of oils, and burn them under some hollow cover, which receives the smoke or vapor immediately coming out of the flame, and you will soon realize by the soot which will adhere to this cover, how much of this substance there is sooty in these kinds of oils, which ethereal oils do not do after fermentation . Moreover, this soot is clearly seen in the contemplation of the flame of a brand, a candle or a lamp, where we observe two things: namely, the burning flame is currently burning its inflammable subject and the matter which must receive a new flame.
Inflammable materials are usually coarse oils, pitch, tallow, etc. & the matter which receives the flame is no different. But one will ask the origin of this flame, I will answer that the flame where there is burning & shiny heat, is elementary, & takes its origin from an ethereal, shiny & vivifying flame. This ethereal flame takes its origin from the glowing supercelestial, since the celestial bodies are conglobated lights which do not need maintenance; but like permanent flames, spread their lights & influences in the same instant to the center of the universe, like a seminar & radiant virtue, to provide life & propagation to the species of plants, animals & minerals; also on the contrary, the elementary cannot subsist without new matter; & is still attached to this matter; namely, to the fat of animals, which have more than plants, and these more than minerals, and minerals or marcasites, have more than metals: I mean these flammable sulfurs.
Stones have their sulfurs completely fixed and celestial, like the diamond, the ruby, the sapphire, carbuncle, which glow perpetually, although we only notice it in the darkness. But without dwelling further on the origin of its nature, something must be said of the origin of its birth: in the first place, to accommodate mortals, for which he was seriously punished by the Gods: also it is true that the flame always tends upwards, aspiring to return to its origin.
It is certain that there is continuity of light between us and the ether, although its tenuity does not allow us to perceive it there. Homer, in the Hymn of Vulcan, says that he, being assisted by Minerva, taught men their artifices & beautiful works, inferring through Minerva, Goddess of Arts & Sciences, understanding & industry; & by Vulcan, the fire, who carries them out, who, according to Diodorus, was a man who having seen a burning tree struck by a thunderbolt, its convenience & use.
Coming back to the contemplation of the flame of a lighted candle, we will distinguish three kinds of colors, or different lights; one which stops at the bottom of this flame closer to the wick, and is bluish, like common ignited sulfur, like also any other sulfur from minerals or marcasites & metals. The reason for this blue color is because the fire which is enveloped in the sulfur or fat, dissolving the mixed, the most fixed spirits of it, rise with the sulfur or fat, and change its color, making it participate in the color of these spirits, which ordinarily are vitriolic, whatever they are in wood, coal, fat, sulfur & bitumen. For it is certain that the spirits of animals are nourished by plants and therefore partake of them.
Vegetables likewise derive their nourishment from mineral spirits, but these spirits are very fixed in metals; less in plants, but very volatile in animals. Mineral spirits, when they are purified & sequestered from the other parts of their mixture, are called their vitriols, and this vitriol is nothing other than the juice of a purified metal. Also you see a blue flame appear, when those who handle the copper make it redden by the force of the bellows, and even what sublimates metallic spirits, adhering to the stove of these people, dyed them blue; & to demonstrate this, it is that this blue is the blue of verdet, which is the rust of copper: you will see the same around the flame, in which the vitriol is calcined, or the common salt: or, if you put the antimony in calcination in the dark, you will see this same blue flame appear very close to the matter, like a common sulfur, which is full of vitriol, witness this acidity which one draws from it similar to the the spirit of vitriol; for all vitriol has an inflammable sulfur in itself, & all sulfur has a lot of spirit of vitriol, also in itself.
The other color of the flame of the candle, a little higher, is white, because vitriolic spirits do not rise so high to dye its whiteness. The third is red at the top, because the blue and the white chase away the black soot which flows along the wick, which rises in a pyramid: so that in the wide expanse of this white flame, the black cannot sufficiently to dye this whiteness, the substance of which is more rarefied; but towards the tip, where the whiteness is compressed, the black dyes deeply from white to red; thus you see in the differences of the flame, the differences of combustible materials. But an even greater difficulty to explain in the resolution of the mixed, is to know whence comes such great activity of the flame; we answer, naturally, that it is a free & easy communication of a flame to another flammable material; but that a spark could ignite a whole world, if it were full of gunpowder , or other combustible matter, how can it do so?
It is further answered that the readiness to receive the flame depends not only on the dryness of the combustible material, but also on a quantity of nitrous spirit with which it is filled; & those minds having a proximate disposition to conceive in expansive motion at the slightest attachment of nitrous corpuscles, which are already inflamed, there necessarily follows the eruption of a flame, which has an extent proportioned to the quantity of the matter which produces it. It is therefore these spirits of niter who are the nearest envelopes of the soul of the world; and this soul being universal, performs its function at the same instant , as the sensitive soul does in its own body, up to the last extremity of its sphere: Rata proportione partium; the whole being in each part.
This is why the inexhaustible richness of this flame depends on this spirit, which fills all the spaces up to the center of the universe; & if our bodily sight could penetrate & distinguish the subtlety & tenuity of this universal spirit, certainly we would see as well by night as by day; because this spirit is only light & influence; but not having its appropriate envelopes to sufficiently foul and corporify its rays, it only shows itself to us through sensitive and sulphurous bodies; & thus makes us believe that there is nothing certain than what we see, when on the contrary there is nothing more certain than the uncertainty of knowledge, even of corporeal things, being examined by the reason.
The universal spirit is by its very subtle and invisible nature, and it can never appear to our eyes that it is not enveloped in some coarser visible matter; and this nearer matter , capable of serving as its shell, are the subtle, aqueous, saline, sulphurous bodies.
Concerning this universal spirit, I remember having undertaken a rare and singular operation, concerning the dew:
it was after having read a passage from Vanhelmont, which says: Arte dedici rorem saccharo esse divitem & multis morbis opitulantem. (By art I have learned that the dew is rich in sugar and in many diseases making a living)Having enough esteem for this Author, I put twenty or twenty-five pots of dew in putrefaction, for forty days, in the dunghill, after having filtered it. Then I distilled it in a non- boiling bain-marie; after the first distillation, I found a sediment at the bottom of the cucurbit, tasteless & silty, which I threw away, as useless, hoping that the salt would come later.
I therefore repeated the distillation eight or nine times: on the fourth or fifth, I found the capitals of my stills; because I had several all lined like cobwebs, which were nothing other than the volatile salt of the dew, which began to manifest itself under the appearance of this matter: I confused this with the liquor; & finally, during the last distillations, I found a salt at the bottom of the cucurbits, saline, filthy, which I filtered, having diluted it in part of the dew: then I put this salt back with the liquor, which took on a new salt and new dirt, and repeated this work until nothing more came.
So I removed from all this two ounces of very pure and beautiful crystalline salt, like the finest saltpeter, melting in the mouth, and fulminating in the same way on the burning coal; but the substance of this salt must be much more precious than that of saltpetre; for having put my two ounces in a small retort over a sand fire, with a receptacle, I saw a white smoke enter it, then red; but having pushed the fire a little too much, the retort burst , & I removed the salt about the quantity that I had in it. had put. Perhaps someone will tell me that in all this, there appears to be nothing that cannot be seen happening in the distillation of ordinary saltpeter. But common saltpeter gives you, through distillation , a corrosive & stinking water, & this dew salt gave me a liqueur, albeit in small quantity & with a very subtle, pleasant & saline taste, accompanied by a smell of vine flowers, the sweetest one can imagine.
It will be noted that I reduced and subtracted a third of the liquor from each distillation, to only work on the spirit. If Vanhelmont, who is content to tell the Public that he learned by art to extract a salt from dew, would have given manipulation, as I do, we would have more obligation to him. This remedy should be administered as a universal panacea, to aid respiration, by unblocking the ducts of the lungs, calming irritated spirits , refreshing the bulk of the blood: in a word, giving it a free circulation, which depends on a volatile and well exhaled saline spirit , like that of our dew; the dose is a scruple, or thereabouts; & although I only got two ounces out of it from twenty or twenty-five pots of dew, I do not doubt that another will get more, because I have had some vessels broken, which will have caused some decrease in this product; & Vanhelmont, remedy, says it is abundant in salt, saccharo divitem; this sugar must be taken & understood for salt.
After all, I don't know of any Author who has given an analysis as exact as the one above. Mr. Lemery pays no more attention to it than to rainwater, which he uses to make Mars saffron, and ignores all the preparations that can be made from it elsewhere. Now I report this experience to prove that this dew salt having taken body, was previously contained in its water, in an invisible form, and as a pure element, given that I distilled it several times, and that it passed end, without leaving any residence. From which I conclude that the universal spirit, or soul of the world , as one wishes to call it, is neither visible nor easy to catch, unless it is enveloped in some nearby matter, like us. we said, and it seems to me that the humidity of the air could serve as a receptacle for it, since this spirit resides in the air of a vague and indeterminate nature. And especially since this lower region that we call atmosphere is completely filled with the spirits in question, we cannot choose a cleaner time to fish for them than the month of May to June: it is then a continual eruption of spirits emerging from the earth, which rise in the air, and reciprocally every night there is a precipitation or cohobation of these same spirits which are confined in their small envelopes of water, and thus falling at night on the plants, provide them with fertility, also - although to minerals, to which they will give nourishment & growth, each in their own species.
The dew therefore contains a principle of fecundity, which consists of a volatile saline and sulfurous spirit, which we bring out of its prison, being only imprisoned, and we unite it, by art, in visible substance, such as we said. Because if we carefully consider the nature of things, everything what is corporeal & visible is not the true being, nor the essence of the thing, but it is the place, in quo, or the envelope of the active principles, whose force is all the more weakened, that it is composed & covered with corporeal envelopes , & is all the less: unum, bonum verum (which are the properties of being) that there is subtraction to be made of all that is useless & accidental to its primitive essence; for true beings must not be in any other subject than in themselves:
And since matter posterior to forms, and compound to accidents, is the cause that neither of them are true must we not also admit that where there is neither matter nor compound, there must be true beings?
For all forms need no matter other than themselves, having form as the idea only becomes matter: And if you ask where does this first being & essence come from?
It is, without doubt, of the first unity, which is its creator; And as the Apostle says, speaking of the Son of God: All things were made by him, & in him, & he is before all things: they are made in him, both visible and invisible, in Heaven & in Earth . I therefore say that this light shows itself only when its envelopes are appropriate to its purpose; because this spirit nitrous, through which the soul, or universal spirit, shows itself, performs actions on wet things, as well as on dry things, but variously; because in the humid, it is without flame, or light, but with heat, and this heat is in the salt; & on dry things, it is with flame, light & heat dependent on sulfur.
These doubts thus clarified, now explain the reasons for the colors which are found on the salt of tartar by the continuation of the fire. The green, which is seen first, is an advancement to the blue: everything depends on the metallic spirits contained in the tartar, of which that of Venus, or copper, predominates. But the red, which are seen in the volatiles, as in the fermented oil of wine, improperly called spirit of wine, were first in the fixed; namely, first with salt, then with sulfur; this is why sulfur is the closest material cause of colors: salt is nevertheless the cause, but the most remote.
As for the separation which is seen in the phlegm, it proceeds from the fermentation; because as the fermentation caused the soot (which separated and supported the sulfur or oil) to separate from the salt, also said fermentation not only removes a new viscosity from the interior of this salt, to join it to its purified sulfur; but also gives it a sulfur incomparably more spicy & excellent than it was before, in smell, color & properties, to make it an elixir or universal remedy; not only to restore the forces, but also to increase them & prolong the life considerably.
Modern Philosophy teaches us that colors depend on the different refractions that light makes on bodies, due to the different configuration of the parts which form their surfaces, on which the sun's rays fall. But it seems to me that if bodies did not contain luminous matter, with which its rays could communicate, it would be difficult to clearly explain the difference in colors, by the sole difference in refractions. For examining carefully our salt of tartar, which first appears white, then green, then blue, and finally red, if we do not admit luminous spirits pre-existing in matter, of which there is a development by the corpuscles of fire external, which extroverts them, I do not believe that the sole reason for the different refractions on the surface of bodies can be sufficient to give a fair notion of the way in which colors are made.
It is therefore true to say that the tartar appears green after the sulphurous spirits, which were previously enveloped of a white viscosity, were freed by melting of this viscosity; & that then these spirits having allied themselves with the light, made a green color appear to our eyes: as also by the continuation of the external fire, these same spirits having acquired some degree of coction & purity, by the separation of a new filth, manifested itself in blue color: finally, after having reached the highest degree of elementary purity, no longer having anything dark which envelops them, we notice the red color: which color is the term of the perfection of the salts, when by the philosophical path, they were led & reduced to this state.
I say when the matter has been treated philosophically; because if we put salt of tartar on the fire, without having previously been well prepared, if it is kept there and pushed to the degree which is required to make it redden, as happened to certain Chemists, they found by this means their material vitrified. We must therefore conclude from what is above, that not only the colors are essentially in all mixtures, but also the light; and that when neither one nor the other appears, it is because they are veiled and enveloped by the gross parts, or passive principles which surround them. all things, & does not accompany all things; because although the sun and the stars appear to be the only centers of light , we cannot therefore believe that all the other beings, right down to the center of the earth, are not participants, light being a radical property of all beings.
To prove it, one only has to consider the sparkle of a diamond, the glow of a carbuncle, the bright and brilliant colors of bird plumages, fish scales, and the actual fire that comes out of the eyes of animals when they are angry : in a word, these thunderbolts and these lightning bolts, whose light dazzles the eyes, which are nevertheless the productions of a thick black cloud, which darkens the air before clearing it.
It is certain that all sublunary matters have an intrinsic fire and light, by which they live and maintain themselves in what constitutes their being, until a dissolution occurs, which gives rise to the dissipation of this internal & luminous fire. Before the disobedience of the first Man, one can reasonably conjecture that all shone beautifully in the earthly Paradise. No doubt the plants, minerals and animals were then in their natural perfection; I mean that each thing made burst this principle of light which it contained in itself.
Trees had their plain and polished barks, the very green leaves , and their fruits of a beautiful color and a good smell. The plants, in proportion, needed no cultivation to bear flowers & seeds. Minerals & metals were rust-free in the bowels of the earth. What God had created should not feel the approaches of death, which are filth, stench, & the deprivation of a certain luster, which accompanied all mixed, according to their genera & species. As for animals, there were no harmful ones : there were none poisonous; all beautiful & well made, were the ornament of nature.
This secret fire that God had insinuated to them, made them appear with brightness: And as it is said in Genesis: The Lord has found good everything that he has done. But since all these things had been created for the use of faithful Man in the earthly Paradise, as soon as he became prevaricant, they degenerated from their first state. What could we say about the course of the seasons?
I believe it would have been a perpetual spring, and the men would never have heard the thunders rumbling over their heads. To authorize this opinion, we can presume that God, angry with men, refused to the elements the continuation of these pleasant influences which he had first communicated to them; and having, so to speak, abandoned them, their fierce and impetuous spirits, collided with such violence that they made the earth tremble, and the air resound with their threatening noises; buildings, ruins; & men, of death. In the midst of all this, it is very obvious that we always notice, and in all things, a secret fire and an invisible light: in which consists the hidden virtue of all beings.
After having sufficiently made it known that all mixed substances contain a luminous spirit, we must teach how to extract it to bring it to light, and use it advantageously for the use of Medicine, digestions, as Vanhelmont says: Per modum irradiationis (By the way of irradiation).
For it is characteristic of spirituous and volatile medicines to act like light; this is why the elementary principles of the mixtures are called by the Philosophers, fire or light; unlike common, coarse and starchy remedies, which cause nausea, weigh on the stomach, irritate the parts through which they pass, and very often hasten this happy day so awaited by hungry heirs, as Despreaux says. But it will perhaps be objected that the most subtle remedies cannot act by irradiation in the human body, owing to the quantity of gross humours, the obliquity of the conduits; & that to act as a light whose movement is momentary, the body would have to be diaphanous like the air, which is suddenly illuminated by the sun, whose rays in an instant reach from the horizon to us, without obstacle when it is serene. It is easy to respond to this objection, following Hypocrates: Totum corpus est conspirabile & perspirabile (The whole body is compressible and breathable).
It is true that the human body receives impressions through circulation ; but the animal spirits, which are the directors of the most sublime functions, have such a sudden correspondence throughout that it must be admitted that their movement takes place by radiation.
napelle, which is a poison, only tasted with the tip of the tongue, carries its malign virtue in a very short time to the brain; just as infected air suffocates in an instant: Why would we not also want there to be medicines which act by irradiation, and communicate their virtues in an instant to animal spirits, with which they make a sudden connection, to to increase its strength & virtue, until being able in a very short time to renew the whole mass of blood & humours . The prodigious effect of Buthler's stone, of which Helmont speaks, returns here very appropriately. Buthler only touched the tip of his tongue with his insipid stone, and he cured considerable illnesses.
Particular work or branch of our arcana, which is the Little Circulated of Paracelsus.
Take three pounds of tartar calcined to whiteness in a streetlight , dissolve it in the spirit of wine, by putrefaction for seven days: then put this solution in a retort of Beauvais earth & fit a large glass container into it, & proceed to distillation in the ordinary manner of distillations of strong water, beginning first at a low heat, then gradually increasing to a very violent fire.
First, will distil the spirit of wine, then will come a black oily liquor, and a dead head of tartar will remain.
You will separate the container from the retort; then putting the liquor in a glass still, you will separate by distillation, the spirit from the black oil by the bain-marie: said oil will remain at the bottom, which we do not need in this arcane. Returning to the dead head, you put it in a crucible over a streetlight for twenty-four continuous hours; after which, dilute the said feces with an equal quantity of fiery wine; & having put them in a retort of glass or earth, you will distill, as before, all the spirit that can rise through all the degrees of fire, like etching. You then calcine the remaining faeces for twenty-four hours over the street lamp fire: you will soak this lime with an equal weight, or quantity of spirit of wine, you will distill, as before, all the spirits, & repeat this process as long as there remains at the bottom no salt of tartar, which by this means will be entirely volatilized, & joined with its spirit of wine.
You put together all the spirits of wine impregnated with volatilized tartar; & after having perfectly rectified it from all impurities, both phlegmatic and sooty, you will put them in a hermetically sealed glass bottle , this liquor, by the degrees of heat, according to the art, to the athanor, as long as it is converted into dryness. After that, you will put this powder in a glass retort, & extract from it by distillation, the spirit in the same way as you previously made calcined tartar.
The weight of a grain of barley of this spirit, mixed with half a gram of mithridat, in half an ounce of water of chicory, or plantin, & administered, according to the disposition of the persons, by a few different times, will remove all the roots of ulcers. Many could here by these few words, be instructed, & reach the deepest foundation of Surgery, & true transmutation Vulcanic, as well as knowledge of solar dye, precious stones, & others. But, cries Paracelsus, it is a great pity that avarice and laziness are the cause that we do not want to work on the entire perfection of this arcana, by the secret of fire or philosophical water.
Paracelsus discovers here his great secret of the sulfurous circulation, and of its igneous water, which he calls philosophical hidden fire, of which he does not mention here, both to cure ulcers radically, and for metal and precious stones; & here is the beginning of the alkaest, which he hides in so many places with great skill, which is here discovered in a few words. It will be noted, however, that we must be careful not to use all the last circulated and digested salt, and not to convert it totally into spirit; but part of it must be digested to a fixed redness, and then it will be resolved by putrefaction, in the new spirit of well-delegated wine; & after having iteratively separated the phlegm, you will digest the rest in the philosophical egg, as long as you have still reached white dryness, from which the spirit can still be extracted by strong distillation; it is this spirit that he calls circulatum minus. But having left it to digest until a fixed redness, to then it is a real philosophical sulfur; it is the perpetual lamp of the Philosophers, and the mine of their fire, which multiplies, as you see, by new solution, in first matter.
That if after having dissolved a quantity of this red sulfur in the spirit or quintessence of wine, you then distill this spirit, as long as all the sulfur is united with the spirit of wine, & passed through the mouth of the retort; & then dissolving again in it new red sulfur , you redistill & calcine the whole, & start the process again as long as the spirit of wine thus impregnated, no longer wants to receive any sulfur: then you will have an oil entirely satisfied & made complete, which is truly called alkaest incorruptible & immutable, with which Paracelsus & Vanhelmont carried out surprising operations.
Another particular process of Salt of tartar.
Take the salt of tartar, dissolve in the phlegm of the wine, filter & repeat this three times, or as long as nothing is left on the filter, then calcine until perfect whiteness: take of this salt calcined to whiteness a pound & put in a bain-marie with four pounds of rectified spirit, mix & distil two parts, which will be tasteless, repeat this process with philosophical spirit, until you remove it as you put it on: then dry your salt perfectly, re-soak it with new spirit; it will still retain a little: then put this salt in the glass sublimator, it will sublimate a white matter like camphor : keep this sublimated preciously; for this salt being mixed with the ethereal spirit, philosophically prepared, and with it volatilized, it dissolves the calcined sun; then being put into putrefaction with it, it draws the tincture from it, which tincture finally dissolves & resolves into viscous water: which being dried up, mixes with the sublimated & very well purified mercury.
To make Precious Stones from their fragments.
Libavius says that one must take fragments of precious stones, dissolve them in radical vinegar, in which his own salt is dissolved; both purify well; put the solution in molds, of any shape you want, and these stones thus molded, are placed suspended on the vapor of the water of egg white, where they are fixed. If you want to make them more colorful, you can instill in them a few drops of the solution of some metallic lime.
Dissertation on Sepulchral Lamps.
The manner of extracting a matter, or incombustible & perpetual luminous oil, similar to that which is said to have been discovered in several ancient tombs, and notably in that of Tullia, daughter of Cicero, after fifteen hundred years, seems very close to the process that we have in our Vegetable Work described above. And although I have no doubt that this oil cannot be obtained from all sublunary substances, I nevertheless believe that those which are contained in minerals, or metals, have more disposition for this effect, because of the activity , rigidity & smallness of the parts which compose them, such as those which produce lightning, which accompany the thunders, the matter of which cannot be anything other than very subtle mineral sulphurous particles, reflected in the center of a cloud, through which there is a sudden eruption, with brilliance, by the elastic force of the igneous parts reduced to the elementary state, which produce a most dazzling light there is in nature after that of the sun.
Here is a completely luminous principle, contained in mineral matters, and most evident.
This assumed, I begin to establish what I put forward on the existence of phosphors, or natural luminous bodies, which are found in quantity in the three kingdoms; namely, between minerals, diamonds, stone of Bologna, &c. Between plants, several shiny woods, & which make fire, &c. And among animals, the eyes of irritated cats, glowworms , many scales of fish, &c. Mr. Ozenam, who claimed to refute the possibility of sepulchral lamps, said that all these lamps were discovered at random, by gullible workers, who were convinced that they were lit lamps, instead of that they could not being that lights produced by fatty and oily exhalations , which erupted from the catacombs of the tombs, where they had been confined for a long time, did not fail to ignite upon entering with a new air, in the manner of wisps of fire, & died out in a short time.
Nevertheless, as the Workers saw that they had broken a lamp which produced light, they persisted in saying that they had seen a lamp which gave light. But none of that can erase the reality of perpetual lamps, especially since he himself admits hypothetically that if he could do it, it would be with a phosphorus: of which I do not disagree . I even add that if we would never have discovered perpetual sepulchral lamps, that would not exclude the possibility of making them, as we see every day materials perfected by the Arts, in the hands of Artists,
It is the ordinary style of Scientists to doubt everything, like that of the ignorant to be too credulous; but to judge healthily we must suspend our feelings on what we do not know perfectly. The difficulties that arise from not believing in something do not always merit calling it into doubt. It is enough to say that as we know that on many occasions art perfects nature, it seems to me that in these we can very well succeed. For this subject it is necessary to agree that the luminous parts which emanate from the phosphors are the most subtle and the most digested of the matter, which come out of the substance of these mixtures, like the spirits which come out of the eyes of furious cats, of glow worms, etc. & we will place these spirits among the most active principles of the subjects who produce them: & consequently, I believe I am right to attribute a luminous character to the three active principles, which are the spirit, the salt & the oil, when they are separated from the passive principles, which are earth and water: these principles of light, and these principles of darkness, which prevent all the mixtures from being luminous.
To bring this light even more into evidence, let us consider what a flame is. Modern Philosophers agree that it is a mass of igneous corpuscles, separated from combustible matter, adhering to each other, which have three qualities; the first, to be very round; the second, very small; the third, with a very rapid movement. As for the configuration, I don't know of anyone who has seen it, to be able to decide on the roundness; because an atom cannot be visible alone: the principles of all mixed things must be manifested by molecules. Moreover, the more or less glowing flame is accompanied more or less by terrestrial or aqueous parts; that if we consider it at the exit of the matter which produces it, everyone sees clearly that it seeks to dissipate in proportion as it moves away from it.
But if we can find a way to bring together and concentrate all these luminous molecules, and fix them, there will undoubtedly be a much more brilliant light resulting, which, being fixed, will not be able to dissipate; therefore will be perpetual.
Because, as I reported in the Observations that I gave to the Public, concerning sepulchral lamps, in the Journal de Verdun of May 1717. page 319. after having explained the different kinds of fires & flames, I I established as the principle of light, very active spirits, very purified & freed from earth & water. Now, next this idea, I judge that the perpetual existence of light in the sepulchral lamp is very possible, and that it depends on the purification of matter, which serves as the basis for this work. In which the Hermetic Philosophers claim to have succeeded, like Penot, according to Faber's report, in his Palladium Spargiricum. This Author admits for this several elaborations, by which one manages to extract a matter which consists of luminous molecules reduced to the elementary state, approaching the nature of the rays of the sun, which, starting from the focus of these lamps, manifest themselves at the through the crystal that contains them.
That if we come to object, that as soon as these lamps are open they go out, which I find hard to believe; but supposing that this happened by opening or breaking a lamp, we can attribute it to a precipitation of the coarse parts, of an unctuous & thick air, of an underground which makes it lose its lucidity, almost like a mirror , which, at the approach of a vaporous breath, becomes obscured, and sometimes hides itself forever, and the thinner the ice, the more it receives the impression of a thick vapor. Add that all elaborate materials, masterfully reduced to elementary quintessence, are always eager to come together at a few gross bodies which they encounter, to take the place of the passive principles which they have lost.
Example: If we throw into the air a spoonful of wine spirit reduced to quintessence, it will not fall to the ground; because being hungry for phlegm, of which it has been stripped by art, finding it in the air, it attaches to it, and mixes with its substance. And although the luminous material of the lamp appears extinguished in the supposed case, I nevertheless consider that it is only veiled, and that if we put it in the hands of a good Artist, he would have no difficulty to restore it to its former glory; because everything which, essentially & radically, contains fire, can easily manifest its light, like a flint , like a black and dark smoke, which suddenly produces a flame; which made some Philosophers say: Flamma est sumus accensus (It is a flame we are kindled).
This is what I put forward to prove the possibility of the existence of a light which is diffused in all beings: it is only a question of fixing it; & consequently, it will always shine, since its parts, joined together by not being able to separate, will also not be able to dissipate. Let us see how we can arrive at the fixation of the luminous principles in question. I have just quoted Faber, Doctor from Montpellier, who teaches how to separate the active principles from its matter, from with the liabilities, then to purify them; & after having made them volatile, to fix them, then to volatilize them once more , & finally to fix them, which is the term of the last perfection: so that all these volatile principles, if they have not been previously well purified & made luminous, having no terrestrial or aquatic part in their mixture, they will not be able to join to fix it.
But let us suppose that having proceeded well, one will have succeeded in making the perpetual luminous matter, it will be necessary to enclose it in a globe of glass, or crystal, hermetically sealed; because these kinds of sepulchral lamps do not need a vent nor opening; unlike other lights, which cannot exist without air. The reason for this difference is also in that the oil or the material of perpetual lamps being fixed, it is consequently very pure, and exempt from this volatile and coarse effumation, which is a gas which accompanies common oils, and which bursts the vessels which contain them; this is also the reason why ordinary fires & flames go out being deprived of air, which air serves to ventilate & remove their coarse sulfurs, in the center of which the igneous particles are hidden.
Indeed, to design a light which perpetuates itself, it is repugnant to reason and experience that it could be a vaporous matter which produces it; for the luminous matter will be contained either in a well-closed vessel, or it will be in open air, as in a vault; that if in a closed vessel, how can we imagine that a fire or a flame contained in a vessel, could have lasted a single moment without being suffocated by its own vapor; if in a vault, where the air is free, the flame, by continually exhaling, will fill it with its effumations; & given that it is a closed place & surrounded by earth, or walls, for lack of a vent, the return of the exhalation, while circulating, with more thickness on its hearth: how will it also be possible for this movement to last a long time, without the hearth suffocating, or drying out;
And as Licetus says: Quomodo lucerna vulgaris, sine spiraculo, non extincta brevi foret, vel a sumo suo ante supulchri apertionem suffocata (How can a common lamp, without a vent, not it would soon be extinguished, or by its suitor before beauty stifled the opening).
Here, in my opinion, are invincible obstacles to the flame or to the permanent light, in the supposition of a vaporous matter. We must therefore conclude, as I have proved above, that the luminous matter of which we hear speak must be of an entirely different nature; that it subsists by itself, being fixed, very pure & dazzling. So, as we cannot deny that a fine diamond does not allow its fire and its light to perpetually be seen through a vessel of glass which will contain it, without any other elaboration than being polished, it cannot be disputed either that this diamond, or any other approaching material, is duly prepared, one cannot draw from it a fixed matter, and similarly luminous, much more dazzling, since its tenebrous principles will have been separated from it.
Among all the mixtures, as we have said, the phosphors, or shiny matters, seem to be destined from nature, in preference to other substances, to serve as the subject of a perpetual light, inasmuch as they bear its signature. To enter this detail, let us examine how nature acts in the bowels of the earth, to produce precious stones, which are brilliant. Philosophers agree that the material principle of precious stones is water accompanied more or less by earth, to which is added a salt which has the virtue of coagulating this water into stone, which is best manifested in rock crystal, which naturally resembles to ice water; that if a spirit, or metallic dye , also occurs to it, it communicates to it its fire, its color and its light: so that the Artist wanting to imitate nature, he will only have to strip a precious stone of its earth & of its coarse sulfur, it will form an inextinguishable light.
Chemistry teaches this perfectly through its calcinations, digestions, distillations, sublimations & circulations. And although I look at precious stones as the next material to be able to be elaborated, to extract from them a perpetual luminous substance; given nevertheless that they borrow their fire and their brilliance from the tinting of metals, I have no doubt that from these same metals, one cannot also extract luminous spirits, mainly from those which we call perfect, such as gold. & money, as we will see below. Licetus, who treated, Ex professo de reconditis antiquorum lucernis, mentions several sepulchral lamps, which the ancient Romans and Egyptians ordered, after their deaths, to be placed in their tombs, to be kept burning there by means of common oils, which the we took care to provide these lamps, as long as their faculties allowed them to be able to operate there, and these kinds of lamps ended and ceased to shine, some earlier, others later; so that in the second generation, it was usually neglected to carry out the wishes of the deceased on this article.
But with regard to those in question, who have lasted a thousand years, and more, without anyone having put their hands on it, and without anyone realizing that there was any reservoir of common oil, to produce them for such a long time, we ask the reason why these could they have persisted in this way, and of what materials could they have been composed? This same Author, who endeavors to describe those of Tulla, daughter of Cicero, of Olibrius, of Pallas, & others, who continued to illuminate the space of fifteen hundred years; in the explanation he makes of it, he always makes it known that what maintained the light of these lamps were materials masterfully elaborated, giving them the name of magisterium,
As for the lamp of Olibrius, which lasted fifteen hundred years, and which was still full at the time it was discovered in Pavia, we read this Inscription on a golden bottle:
PLUTONI SACRUM . MUNUS. NE ATTINGITE FURES. IGNOTUM IS VOBIS. HOC QUOD IN ORBE LATET NAMQUI ELEMENTA. CLIMB. CLAUSIT DIGESTA LABORE VASI SUB HOC. MODICO MAXIMUS OLIBRIUS ADSIT. IQ CUNDO CUSTOS SIBI COPIA CORNU, NE TANTI PRETIUM DEPEREAT LATICIS. Sacred to Pluto. FUNCTION DO NOT TOUCH THIEVES. He is unknown to you. THIS IS WHAT IS HIDDEN IN THE WORLD ELEMENTS. CLIMB CLOSED THE DIGESTED LABOR UNDER THE VESSEL THIS. THE BIGGEST OLIVER IS HERE. IQ CUNDO THEY BUY FOR HIMSELF A QUANTITY OF THE HORN, SO THAT IT WOULD NOT LOSE OF SO MUCH PRICE LATCHES
These Verses mean: Let those who come to remove what is contained in this vessel, be careful not to touch it, being a sacred thing which is made an offering to Pluto, which moreover is a gift. It cost a lot of sorrows to the great Olibrius, who reduced the material of his work to an elementary state, after having digested it well before enclosing it in this globe. He ends by imploring the help of someone who would be willing to become the guardian of this precious liquor. We also see from this Inscription that the matter of which Olibrius speaks was not common, and he says what is necessary, in his Verses, to convince of the existence of the perpetual lamp, joined to what we found her ardent after fifteen hundred years; but he does not say enough to teach composition.
This should not be surprising; because we have always noticed that Hermetic philosophers, to give proofs of their capacity, have said & done surprising operations but jealous of their knowledge, have never wanted to give to know that under enigmas, or hieroglyphic figures, the means which they used for the execute; all to be admired, and so that no one could imitate them.
Moreover, Adolphus Balduinus, one of the scholars & curious of our days, who made flowers vegetate in the middle of winter, in his study, also teaches how to make a luminous phosphorus , in his Book of Auro aurae, with nitre, & tells which he read in Fridericus Gallus, which the latter saw in the hands of a Hermit, who was of illustrious birth, a garnet-colored tincture, glistening like a lighted lamp; whereupon he urged the College of Learners, of which he was a member, to investigate the cause of this effect. There is no doubt that the material of the burning lamp which was found in the tomb of Queen Serviramis, would not have been the water of life of Nuisement, the sanguis Alberti known to the Adepts, etc.
A certain Franciscus Cetesius, in relation to Licetus, said that the matter in question was an oil extracted from metals; & Volfangus Lazius, a learned man, considered it to be a golden oil.
Indeed, to authorize the feeling of the latter, that we see minerals and metals consume in fire, and that gold alone resists, without losing any of its substance: why then in imitation of nature, which made gold inconsumable, and yet susceptible of ignition, could the Artist not draw from it a liquor which would not be consumed, and would become the subject of a perpetual light? like Isaac, a Dutchman, who is considered one of the Adepts, teaches in his Mineral Works to make red water, which gives light by night and day; And ends by saying: Habes aquam rubram diù noctuque lucentem.
END.
Quote of the Day
“Gold is dissolved that he may be reduced unto his first matter, that is that it may be made truly sulphur and Argent vive. For then we may make most best silver and Gold when it is converted into the matter of them. Therefore it must be so well washed until it be true Sulphur, and Argent Vive, for according to the Philosopher they be the very true matters of metals. Therefore he that can wed a wife, and get her with child and mortify and quicken again the kinds of generations, and can cleanse and bring in light, and to separate the shine thereof from blackness and darkness, shall be of most great dignity.”
Georgius Aurach de Argentina
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