Samuel Cottereau Du Clos
The three times very great Hermes, describing the origin and properties of primitive salt, teaches that the igneous spirit of the active, moving and heating Sun, which holds the top towards us, and the elementary and passive body of water, designated by the Moon, located under the Sun, quite close to the earth, contribute to the production of this admirable subject, that the wind, which is reduced water in vapour, carries with it among the air, and which the earth receives into its bosom, and nourishes for the perfection of all natural mixtures. But the foundation of this physical doctrine of the great Hermes was discovered to us by another great king, great prophet and great philosopher, saying that the Most High pitched tents in the Sun to camp in the middle of the universe.
He who dwelt in inaccessible light before the creation of things, manifests himself to us in visible light, in which he has placed created nature, which is a ray of his glory. Hermes recognized the Sun as the father of salt, which is the subject of the natural perfection of mixtures, and David elevates our minds to recognize in this Sun the power and wisdom of a primary and supreme water. These remarkable attributes of the highest sound, one in the powerful activity of the solar light, the other in the wise conduct of nature, insinuates in this light, and diffuses with it in all the universe.
The motive power of the Sun is moderated and regulated in the mixtures by the wisdom of specifying nature. And these attributes participating one in the other of these created principles, are emanations of the goodness of the most high, very powerful and very wise Creator, who must be the first subject of our physical considerations, to descend by gradation from the most high to low, in order to know better what is between one and the other.
After the first and supreme cause which holds the highest, nature, created as a second and subordinate cause, occupies the higher rank of what is with below. The igneous spirit of the Sun serves as its vehicle and organ. It is through this solar spirit that the vivifying and specifying nature insinuates itself into the elementary bodies of the terrestrial globe, and of all the specified mixtures which are in it. The Sun acts here below by light, its movement and its heat. The light during the day rejoices the animals, enlivens the plants, and awakens nature slumbering in the darkness of the preceding night.
Its heat restores the vigor of vivified mixtures, and its movement preserves their life. This celestial fire communicates it to all that is on earth, in water, and in the air. It is found in all natural mixes. Without him everything would be without movement, without vigor and without action.
It is in salt that the igneous spirit is incorporated and concentrated, and this salt, the first production of the Sun in the earth, through the mediation of water, having in itself the virtues of causes, both inferior and material , that formal and superior is the origin of the perfection of the specified mixtures, and makes the foundation of the glory, which this earthly world receives, from the communication of heaven.
It is of this salt that I will declare things which are not vulgar. The Hermetics, informed of the excellence of this noble subject, have occupied themselves carefully in researching it, and in that of the means of reducing it in universal medicine. But they made secret the progress of their work, regulated by the doctrine of their master, who contented himself with teaching summarily.
That there is in this world an admirable thing, which makes its perfection, for the production of which, there is a concurrence of causes, the superior views, and the others inferior. That the humid water designated by the name of the Moon, receives the rays of the Sun, which are the celestial and primitive fire. That of this fire received in the water is made a vapor, which rises and mixes in the air, which by the contrast of the coldness exciting the igneous spirit of this aqueous vapor, the humidity of this agitated vapour, fortified by the cold of the air against the rarefying action of this fire, makes it regain its liquid density and fall as rain.
That this igneous water, insinuating itself into the earth, carries there the solar fire with which it is impregnated; The earth retains it and foments it, and it is in it that this aqueous fire takes the form of salt, and this primitive salt is the subject of the perfection of the world, that is to say of all the natural mixtures of three supreme genres.
After this succinct theory, this great master passing to the summary declaration of the practice of the exaltation of this primitive salt in magisterium, to serve as universal medicine, he ordered to draw fire out of the earth, to separate gently and with great industry, the subtle from the thick; to circulate the spirit over the body, to bring them together pure and clean of all defilement, and then reduce this regenerated spiritual body to a state of permanent glory, to work admirable things on animals, on plants and on minerals by exalting and perfecting their specified salts, which are all derived from this primitive and general salt.
The volatility of this salt has given it the name of ammonia, in relation to that which is extracted from urine and soot, and which is so named because it is substituted for that which was formerly under the sands of Libya, and which was formed from the urine of camels. This primitive salt is found in water, both rarefied in vapor and diffused by the air, and condensed in rain, snow and dew. It is also found in soils which are not impregnated with any mineral seeds. The difference of the waters and the lands which contain this salt, obliges to some diversity of work to extract it and to reduce it in universal medicine. I am going to describe some processes which are known to me, beginning with that of water, to speak then of the primitive salt which is found concentrated in certain grounds, which are not impregnated with any particular seed.
Water being that of the elements which receives without particular mediation the igneous spirit of the Sun (is as I said) the first impregnated with this celestial fire, and it is through it that the earth participates in the primitive salt which s 'y forms, and which the water retains in part, to make circulate with it the more subtle and more volatile portion of this salt, which is not yet specified nor altered by any mineral impression. This moist element, destined to temper the other two and make them suitable for the purposes of nature, for the production of minerals, the vegetation of plants, and the preservation of animal life, rises from the earth into the air, mixed, which are both of these elementary regions.
The rarefied water is reduced to vapour, rising from the earth, and mixing with the air, resumes its first liquid consistency by the coldness of the air, if it is much elevated, or by that of the earth itself. if it is close. The vapors of water which are condensed by the cold air, melt rain, hail and snow , and those which are condensed by the coolness of the earth make the dews of the morning, which terminate a serene night.
When the air begins to warm up, towards the end of spring, the coolness which remains in the earth prevents the aqueous vapors which issue from it, from rising very high in the air, increased during the night reduces these vapors to dews, in the months of May and June, in this climate. And because the water is then filled with the igneous spirit of the Sun, the dews which are made of it , abound in primitive salt, but the aqueous vapors which serve them as matter, having risen a little, remain impregnated with some sulphurity. terrestrial, which make the salt of the dews less pure.
The vaporous humidity which condenses in the air to make the rains, having risen higher by a greater rarefaction, has carried with them only the most subtle and purest portion of the primitive salt of the earth. , which they retain being condensed.
The water which rises from the earth in imperceptible vapors in the seasons of spring and autumn, by the movement which general nature excites in the igneous spirit, concentrated in the moist earth, in order to return the sap to the plants. which they need to regrow and vegetate again, and in order to restore the air in a condition to take back from the animals which breathe it in this most temperate weather, the vigor required for the propagation of their species. This water, I say, is then more impregnated with this primitive salt than that of the vapors which rise at the other seasons of the year. In winter, few come out of the ground, and those that provide material for the rains, which are then more frequent, hold less of this first salt. In summer they are too mixed with sulphurous exhalations, which infect them. The water of the equinoctial rains is therefore preferable to that of the other rains and even of the dews.
Some curious people have invented various means of condensing the subtle vapors of water, raised and diffused in the air, trying with industry and difficulty to force nature to give them little of what it distributes of itself easily and in abundance. Some use the cold of ice, snow mixed with salt, or some other cold matter enclosed in a glass vessel, suspended in the heated air of the Sun, to make condense the aqueous vapors, which touch this vessel. Others expose certain sulphurous salts to the moist air, such as that of calcined tartar, saltpetre fixed by coal, or calcined black pebbles, which attract and retain aqueous vapours , which condense there and resolve them, and can be removed by distillation, in the form of tasteless water impregnated with this primitive salt.
It is probable that this salt carried in the most subtle and purest vapors of water, is also very subtle and very pure, and that the most curious of the hermetics were right to seek the one which is diffused in a warm serene air. by the rays of Sun, in the season of summer, because then the aqueous vapors are more igneous, and their salt has more sulphurity, by the predominance of solar fire; but this sulphurity produced in a pure and serene air, does not alter this primitive salt, as can those which are made in the earth, which is rarely exempt from mineral infections.
Those who worked on the dew, and communicated to me the order and success of their work, went in the months of May and June in serene weather, after midnight, in the countryside far from rivers, ponds, and villages, from which impure vapors could arise, and put earthenware dishes on the ground ; then in the morning they observed where these dishes were wet. If it was from below, they judged that the humidity came from the earth, and was not suitable enough for their purpose. But when these dishes were found dry below, and wet only above, and when tilting them the drops of water did not fall easily, they took this water for the true and good dew, of which they made provision, the collecting on the wheat, before sunrise , or immediately afterwards, with fine sponges, or with clean cloths, or even by passing large sheets of fine linen over the tip of the wheat, which they then expressed to have the quantity they wanted.
Having thus collected the dew towards the end of the spring, they kept it until the beginning of the autumn, and then they put sixty pounds of it in a cauldron, on the coal fire, only to make this water simmer. , in order to skim it, and having removed the scum, and allowed it to cool, they then ran it through a cloth, then they put this dew in four large glass retorts, and distilled it in the heat of the sand , in containers with three mouths, one to receive the neck of the retort, the other opposite to apply a second container, in which was collected the most spirituous portion of the dew, and the third in the lower part of the belly of the first container, to let fall, in a third container, the most phlegmatic part of this water.
They repeated twelve times, in the same way, the distillation of this dew, always separating, and preserving what had passed into the posterior container, and putting back into the retort all that had fallen into the one below, to redistill it. From each pound of dew there was an ounce of spirit, which was that subtle portion, passed to the receptacle farthest from the retort. In these distillations, repeated so many times, a few earthy starches were formed in the retorts , first white, then later greenish, which increased little by little and began to dandruff.
In order not to leave these lands impure, they took it into their heads to purify them in this way. They took the spirit of dew, and poured it into those retorts, by which they had caused it to be distilled, and in which those dross having remained, shaking them to loosen them, and having thus withdrawn them with that spirit. , and held it in digestion, in the belly of the horse for forty days; then filtered through gray paper the liquor, which had taken on the color of hyacinth, they removed the spirit, by distillation in a bain-marie, at very gentle heat, and it remained in the cucurbit a salt of pleasant sucrine taste, which they kept to use it in this state, according to the occurrences, judging that it must be a good medicine against malignant fevers .
And yet, to continue the principal work, having prepared a sufficient quantity of dew, they put it into glass matrass, capable of holding each three pounds of water, filling only a third, with a pound of this spirit, and leaving two-thirds empty; then having hermetically sealed these vessels, which were four in number, they held them in the belly of the horse, for forty days, in damp heat and gentle. After that they put them in dry and moderate heat, on small wooden tripods, lined with white iron at the ends of their supports, and carried their tripods on the iron plate, which made the floor of their square furnace, on which before they had put sand, and posed their retorts to make the distillations of their dew, in order to have the spirit of it.
Having properly arranged and secured these matras on their tripods, and closed the registers of this furnace, which was covered with an earthen vault, they made a small fire there, which they continued, taking care that the air of outside does not come in to cool the ships, or that the excessive heat of the fire does not cause them to burst. The one who was in charge of the work, said that in a month he was to make a violent effort to the vessels, and that he would make another at the end of four months, and a third two more months later, and that then he would there would be nothing more to fear than too much fire, the excess of which he always had to guard against, as a perilous thing, and the cold did no other harm than to delay the work and in fact a month after the vessels were put in the furnace, they burst like grenades, and threw out the yoke of the furnace, and all was lost, except the courage and the resolution to begin again.
What they did, considering that this spirit igneous, contained in this spirituous water, which from time to time makes this great effort, before being retained by the concretion of the salt, and which however the heat of the external fire, must be well moderated. Having therefore put new spirit of dew in new vessels, and well regulated the heat. These vessels are preserved whole and without bad accident, at the end of two months there is made in the liquor a saline concretion in small crystals, which is found increased two months later, and even more at the end of six months, but there was no more concern afterwards, although the heat had been continued, always equal until the end of the eighth month.
This concrete salt, separated from the remaining liquor, was subtle in the fire like wax, and dissolved in the moist air, a dragee of this salt thrown on an ounce of molten gold reduced this gold into salt, and dissolved Gold being thrown on new molten gold reduced it still further to salt, and this gold salt could no longer be put back into a metallic body. This gold salt being circulated with the spirit of phlegm of wine, was reduced to red gum, like blood, and it was then an excellent drinkable gold for health.
A similar reduction of gold into salt, by the salt of the dew, had been carried out at the home of a famous chemist in Paris, to whom a foreigner, visiting his laboratory one day, and seeing that his the great furnace was constantly heating day and night, he asked the aforesaid chemist to use a corner of this furnace to put something in digestion, leaving it there while he made a journey of four or five months. This being granted to him, he took a large glass balloon, in which he put dew which he had prepared, leaving two-thirds of the vessel empty, which he put on the ashes of the stove after sealing it hermetically .
This man having returned after four months, and visiting his ship, he observed that some concretions of salt had been made in the dew, but less than he had hoped for because the heat of the furnace had been too weak. And not being able to wait until he made more, by a longer digestion, he opened his vessel, withdrew this salt, and having asked the master of the laboratory if he wanted to see something very curious, he put a little of this salt in a small German crucible, where this salt quickly melted, then he told this chemist that if he wanted to put gold in it, it would soon be resolved.
Which obliged the curious chemist to draw two gold crowns from his pocket, and to throw them into this crucible, where they were immediately dissolved and reduced to salt without changing the color of the salt of the dew, and the whole dissolved. in common water,
Some others proceed somewhat differently in this work on the dew, and push it further. They first put the spring dew to be distilled, by the still, in a vaporous bath, without any preparation, their intentions being to separate the less volatile earthiness from this water, with what they have of concrete salt, and to put them apart, to remove this portion of salt. And to cause the spirituous and volatile salt dissolved in this distilled water to solidify, they follow the usual method, which is to keep it in several tightly closed vessels, at a slow heat, continued for a long time, and until it simmers. it forms variously colored flakes which fall to the bottom of the vessels, this concretion increasing little by little, and finally ceasing, which is done even in the water of the equinoctial rains. When nothing more condenses, they remove the water by distillation in the still, at very gentle heat, and collect the concrete salt, which remains at the bottom in these flakes.
And because these saline flakes have some mixture of subtle earthiness, they mix this salt of the water with that of the earth, which was separated in the first distillation, to purify them together. And to make the mixture of these two salts well, they grind them together, and dilute them with their water distilled, and having filtered what is resolved to separate the earths, which remain in the filter, they evaporate the water to have the concrete double salt, to which they then add what can be drawn from the earths calcined in the streetlight fire and washed in their water.
All the salt of the dew being extracted in these ways, they proceed to the coction which is threefold. The first is simply fixative, the second is multiplier, and the third is fermentative. These coctions are made in a strong glass egg, hermetically sealed, enclosed in an oak box, and kept in a lamp oven until perfect fixation, This fixation in the first coction lasts six months, at the end of which the fixed salt remains white. For the multiplicative coction, some expose this salt to the air at a suitable time, whence by its magnetic virtue it attracts the primitive salt which is homogeneous with it, and by which it multiplies in the fixing coction, but others add to this fixed salt a quarter of its weight of new salt extracted from new distilled and digested dew, and keep the vessel in the lamp oven only two months;
Because when the time of fixation is shorter, because the salt which is already fixed facilitates the fixation of that which is added to it in less quantity. This multiplication can be repeated as many times as one wants, but one must observe in the last, the successive colors which appear in matter, which first becomes black, then white, then yellow, and finally red, to stop at perfect whiteness , or pass to deep redness, according to the plan one takes to employ this material in metallurgy for the work in white or red. These philosophers, to proceed with the fermentation, propose to have again distilled and digested dew-salt, to melt it on the fire in a crucible, and to mix in it pure, well-refined gold, which is due to it.
resolve and become salt, in the philosophical egg, in the lamp oven, observing the colors to stop at white, or go to red. This fermentative coction pushed until the redness must be longer, and pushed until the end of the tenth month; Because the perfectly red and constant color is only seen in this time. Although this material thus fermented has acquired the metallic specification, it cannot have intruded into the imperfect metal if it is not further metallized. This metallization can be made by laminating the white material with sheets of fine silver, and the red with sheets of gold, and cementing according to the art, by three days.
But I leave to these curious about metallic transmutations, this end of the work and stick to what can be used for health. The reduction of gold into a medicinal liquor by dew is not a new invention since a Greek philosopher, who lived more than fifteen centuries ago, described it in his book True and Perfect Love. . This description of Athenagoras is enigmatically represented by a theatrical action, or tragicomic representation of Apollo attacked by two demons, rescued by Vulcan and cured of his wounds by Aesculapius by making him take a remedy, which he had received from the son of the air of the moon. This enigma deserves to be explained.
having been calcined by mercury and sulphur, then sublimated with sal ammoniac and dulcified by the spirit of wine, be dissolved in the spirit of the dew Apollo in this state communicating itself to the sick and the decrepit put them in a better disposition than they were. I could another time declare the whole process of this potable gold, because I intend to write a dissertation on this matter, to contribute to the restoration of the honor of medicine.
That is enough of the salt of the dew, I must speak of that of the equinoctial rain, which, not having so many terrestrial sulphurities as the dew, does not need to be purified by so many of distillations. It suffices to put it in digestion in matras , or glass balloons, hermetically sealed, and to keep it in a moderately warm place, for a long space of time; for there will be formed small saline crystals, which will fall to the bottom of the vessels. When it no longer forms, it will be removed and water will be separated to fix it.
The fixing of this precious salt, as well as that of the dew, must be done in the philosopher's egg, which is only filled to a quarter of the capacity, and which is hermetically sealed, giving the first degree of heat, such as it would take to hatch a hen's egg, and continuing it through forty days, in which time the matter turns black. When we see that the blackness remains in the same state, we increase the heat, giving that of the second degree, and in a few days we see that the matter takes on a dark blue color, then clear, intermingled with various colors. And in twenty or thirty days the matter is reduced to grayish powder.
When these colors cease, we pass to the third degree of heat, and the powder takes on some orange color, which changes into whiteness, which begins to appear at the ends like a little white belt, and little by little this whiteness extends to all the powder, which happens in three or four weeks. If this whiteness does not change, by continuing longer this third degree of heat, it is necessary to pass to the fourth degree which changes this whiteness, and finally gives red color to all the powder which is then fixed and perfect. This same order is observed in the fixation of all the volatile salts, in imitation of that of the metallic elixir.
The universality of the salt extracted from the water of the equinoctial rains makes it suitable for everything and it can be usefully employed to perfect metals, to make plants vegetate abundantly, and to prolong the life of animals. Old Becker, doctor to the Elector of Bavaria, in his subterranean physics, makes some mention of this salt, which he calls celestial, and which he says has drawn from the air, from the rain, from the dew, from the snow, &c. Whose digested spirit was reduced to a balsamic salt, which deserves, he says, endless praise, as a very excellent medicine, suitable for correcting the imperfections, which the corrupt air introduces into us, and which it heals plague, malignant fevers , &c. and gives some examples.
He does not say that this salt is the fixed; but that through the fault of a valet, he lost half a pound of this salt, which he had taken two years to prepare, the vial having broken from having made too much fire. Fioravanti famous Italian empirical, the excellence of the primitive salt of water, on which he did not explain himself otherwise than by saying, that common water can be reduced by fire to such great perfection, that it heals all kinds illnesses, although great and lamented, which he has experienced several times, and it is by this means that he has had so many wonderful cures. He says that some, having noticed this, worked on the water to put it in this state, but that they could not succeed like him, who knew the whole process, that he did not didn't want to say yet.
He had said before that the distilled water of the sea is thus made without manifest salinity, great virtue, that it would restore life to dying people, and preserve it for a long time to living people. What he does not explain further, not knowing yet if he should reveal such great secrets.
Drugs of this importance would well deserve the restraint of this empirical, who claimed to take pride in these mysteries. This reserve would still be excusable now, if the honor of medicine were to be prostituted to an ignorant multitude of empirics, very different from those who formerly deserved the esteem of Galen, who gloried in having had it for his masters. . If the spell of medicine bears, let it complete and ends the course of its revolution, by a return to its origin becoming again empirical, after having been successively methodical, dogmatic, and rational, those who have zeal for the preservation of dignity in this state, must contribute to supporting it by the great effects of hermetic pharmacy , so that what the masters of the art have tried to establish by their doctrine, may be advanced by happier practices .
The profanation of the divulged mysteries is not to be feared. It requires industry, time, and patience to succeed well in the preparations of these great remedies, but their uses are easy, the uses agreeable and sure, and the effects healthy and prompt.
Those curious about metallic transmutations will be able to make other uses of this fixed salt, after having fermented it with the perfect metal, of which I say nothing, especially since the moderation of the mind of a philosopher , the return of this passion, which gives too much anxiety, one must be content with its medicinal virtues, for the preservation of life and health , for which this means seems to me the most suitable, having in itself benefits that cannot be found elsewhere.
This salt is the first of the mixtures, and the igneous spirit is in it less weakened by the embarrassment of corporeal matter; and being the purest, he is most subtle and penetrating, and the general nature residing therein in the plenitude of its power, and without specific limitation, it enables it to act more effectively on all the mixed ones specified, and to fortify in them the participated nature, with which the universal and generic nature of this primitive salt, has more agreement and not difference, than the specific nature of the other salts. For the difference that is found between the generic or universal, and the specific or particular, is only on one side, knowledge is in the specific to which it is added to make it such.
And if it separates the specific from the generic from which it emanated, so that because of this difference the specific is no longer in the absolute simplicity of the generic, it does not prevent because the generic is not yet found in the specified. Thus the generic which has only by the difference on its side no longer symbolizes with the specified, which is only the generic conditioned by this difference that one specified does not symbolize with another specified, whose differences are held on both sides. and on the other, and further distance them even to the point of opposing them and making them contrary; thus the universal nature insinuated into the igneous spirit of the primitive salt, unites more perfectly with our particular nature, and strengthens it better, than nature can do.
particular nature of the other specified subjects, which does not act on another different particular nature, without some reciprocal alteration, caused by the specific differences of the one and the other.
It is therefore in the universality of primitive salt that one can find a universal and absolutely such medicine. I say absolutely, because the universality of medicines can be considered either as absolute or as respective. The absolute universal medicine is that which can be usefully employed on all natural compounds, to fortify and preserve, or to re-establish or perfect their being in its specific state. The respective universal concerns only some species of mixtures, to which it is applied, to act generally on all the individuals of this species, and on all the parts of each individual, by fortifying the principle of their specificity and by rectifying their corporeal matter.
Salt being the material, first and principal subject of the constitution of the natural mixtures, because it contains the igneous spirit, which is the immediate vehicle and the organ of the specific nature, it is on it that medicine, either absolutely general, or special and respective, does its action both to rectify its matter, and to fortify the igneous spirit which is in it, and this pefective action is indeed done by another salt, and better by a general, which is always more effective, than by a variously specified particular. Only the organic dispositions of the animated body, and the affections of the soul, are not always subject to the action of these medicines.
I could here declare a great secret of the marvelous effects of the universal medicine, drawn from the primitive salt of the air, of the water, of the earth, and even of the rays of the Sun. But you would not believe me, if I said, that by the use of this holy medicine, one can achieve wisdom, and I do not know if the Kabbalists published these mysteries, if I took it from them the knowledge.
none of these sages, and what I am about to say comes from me.
To explain to myself what I think of the means of becoming wise, and of finding in wisdom the supreme good of man, I must begin to say that I consider man constituted in the midst of other creatures, between the bodily and intellectual, as participating equally in the condition of each other, and as the horizon of the animate world separating the upper hemisphere from the lower, and holding of both, man for this purpose has the power to rise towards one, or to lower oneself into the other, being therefore of two principal faculties, which are the intellectual and the sensual.
can rise and take place in the superior order of the angels, and by sensuality he descends and lowers himself to the lower rank of the beasts. By the operation of the understanding conjoined with the sense, the man standing between the top and the bottom, acquires only knowledge mixed with true and false, good and bad, like those which gave the fruit of the forbidden tree. This knowledge, being only sensible and singular things, has no certainty which can establish science, and thus man remains in his horizontal state. But by the operation of the understanding only on itself, he acquires in the light of the superior understanding of the general nature, sapience, in which consists the supreme good of his being, which is to know God and to draw near to him.
It is by the ideas of things alone that the understanding of man can be moved. He receives these ideas either from without through the senses, or from within through the internal light of nature. Those formed in the imagination are often confused or false, and those of the higher nature are always definite and true. The external senses being dormant and unexercised in sleep, and the understanding receiving only the ideas of general nature , there are dreams which are true, by which one is informed of certain knowledge which the senses do not give point. But if the understanding then only receives ideas from the imagination, dreams may be vain. Those who have treated of the manner of resting in order to learn by dreams what one desires to know, say that in order to have true dreams , the understanding must be elevated, and abstracted from the internal and external senses, so that 'he is enlightened only by the understanding only with the light of the superior understanding of the general nature.
This is what Pelagius particularly recommended in his book of Anacrise, and this suspension of human understanding is what Paracelsus calls Gabalia;
I will soon say where this word is taken from.
only that the Gabalistic doctrine is founded on the ideas of the human understanding to receive from the general understanding, when it has got rid of the senses, and collected in itself. It is in the light of this superior and general understanding that man can acquire sapience, by the perception of the ideas of all things past, present and future, and even see in them some idea of the Divinity. It is also in this superior light that man knows himself, which the senses do not teach him.
To designate the elevation of the intellectual part of the soul, and the mortification of the sensual part, the sages used the word Gabalie, taken from the ancient Latin word Gabalum, meant a cross or a gibbet, and took the cross as their symbol. For to become wise humanity must be crucified, so that the flesh, which is the sensual part, dies, and the spirit, which is the intellectual part, remains elevated above earthly and deciduous things. By this elevation of understanding the wise man can enter into conversation with the angels, and thus approaching God, enjoying the sovereign good, is the end of wisdom.
The dispositions required by the Gabalists to become wise are of several kinds, such as the melancholic temperament , which makes the understanding more arrested, firmer and less vague; the favorable state of the sky at the point of birth, which is very advantageous; the purity of manners, which makes the soul tranquil, and facilitates the recollection of the spirit in itself; and Gabalistic medicine, which increases the vigor of the understanding.
This secret and very holy medicine is drawn from the igneous and luminous spirit of the Sun, which is the tabernacle of God, where the treasures of life are locked up. And this celestial spirit, vehicle and organ of vivifying nature, is embodied in the primitive salts, which are composed of this igneous spirit and of the purer and more subtle portion of the elementary body. These primitive salts are the Sylphs, Undines, Gnomes and Salamanders of the Comte de Gabalis. These invisible corporeal spirits, which inhabit air, water, earth and fire, are subtle, pure and powerful, but incomplete, not yet partakers of the gifts of the specified nature. And it is with them that the wise must have a special trade, to make by their means productions which also eternalize them.
These primitive and inconcrete volatile salts take concretion, and make themselves treatable by the manners which I have deduced in this dissertation. These salts prepared and reduced in medicine, being conjoined with the body of the sage, by an internal use, preserves in him an attractive virtue of their fellows diffused through the air. Which fortifies him, so that he might pass several days without taking any food, and the spirit which vivifies him, exalted by the celestial igneous spirit of this very pure, elementary medicine, increases the vigor of his understanding, to rise and receive more freely the pure lights of general nature.
If the author of the book of interviews with the Comte de Gabalis knew the secret sciences, had understood the meaning of the allegorical speeches of this sage, he would not have turned them into ridicule as he did. Contemplative devotees recognizing that God is the spirit, spirit, have exercised themselves in the elevations of the spirit, by the mortification of the flesh; for for the spiritual life the flesh profits little, it is the spirit which vivifies, but we know that in this state of life the spirit is not separated from the flesh. It subsists in it although it no longer operates through it. The soul ordinarily follows the dispositions of the body. If the degradation of health depresses the spirit, its restoration lifts it up and strengthens it, and this restoration can be done very advantageously by the medicine of the wise, which is very pure and very active, being composed, as I have said, of the igneous spirit of the Sun, and the most subtle portion of the elemental body.
This universal spirit being the mediator between the vivifying nature and the vivified body, the continuation of its mediation is necessary to preserve our life, and even to make it more vigorous and healthier. This celestial spirit is communicated to us by the air we breathe, and by the food we take; but in the air it is weak, and in the food it is impure. To participate abundant and pure, it is necessary to seek it in the primitive salt of the elements to extract it, to purify it, to fix it, and to use it interiorly every day in very small quantity, during a few months, so that our blood becomes impregnated with this salt, which by its magnetic virtue attracts strongly resemble the air that surrounds us, and that this attracted spirit strengthens in us the one who is already the mediator of our life.
This marvelous effect of the medicine of the sages may well be attributed to some kind of magic, but this completely natural and solar magic is neither black nor forbidden. The spirits that she invokes and that she uses have no malice, they do not divert men from their duties towards God, nor from the offices that they are charitably obliged to render to their neighbor, for the maintenance of the civil society. This magic well deserves not to be profaned, and to hold the mystery better covered, the sages took it into their heads to speak of it only by allegories remote from the probable, and which even gave some horror, not to be examined with too much application.
The most inquisitive of philosophers have sought the knowledge and commerce of these spirits, and because they have supposed that there are two kinds of them, one endowed with intelligence, one without intelligence, and corporeal, they have made two kinds of Kabbalah to preserve its doctrine. They gave the nickname of magic to that which treats intelligent spirits, and called chemical that which by object only corporeal spirits. A of these Kabbalah is all metaphysics and the other is part of natural science. The man constituted between these two kinds of spirits, can have communication with one and the other, and profit from the commerce of the inferior and corporeal for the good of his body, and that of the non-tenebrous intellectual superiors, for the advantage of his understanding clearer. The Count de Gabalis, wanting to give some Kabbalistic instruction touching on corporeal spirits and the ways of treating them chemically, has used some terms of the magic Kabbalah, to hide the mystery from the profane, who understand this Kabbalah less than physics. But he does enough to understand to those who are initiated into these mysteries, that the elementary spirits of which he speaks are not endowed with any intelligence, that they are purely corporeal, and that they are products of the igneous solar spirit insinuated into the elements. , from the particular quality proper to each of which these spirits receive their generic differences.
The Salamanders are more fire, the others are more elementary, those of the air are called Sylphs, those of the water are called Undins, and the Gnomes are terrestrial and clothed in bodily starches, than the deprivation of the spirit igneous solar, has had the earth named damned, and where the Kabbalists put the habitation of the devils.
Man naturally has within him these same elementary spirits, but less pure, although they are there in a nobler way, by the union of the rational soul with the human body which it vivifies. These spirits of the vivified human body can therefore be strengthened by means of their fellows drawn from the elementary regions, and these elementary spirits are immortalized in man by the life they receive there.
The manner of evoking these spirits and making them visible, makes their conditions sufficiently known. This igneous powder, which is formed in a glass vessel by the concentration of the Sun's rays, using a concave or lenticular mirror, is not a demon, any more than this primitive salt, which is drawn from the air, from the water or from the earth, these subtle and spirituous matters have no intelligence, and are only used by the wise to compose this excellent medicine, which strengthens in them the spirit of life, and makes their understanding higher.
After having revealed the mysteries of the primitive salt which is drawn from the vapors of water diffused among the air, and from those which are condensed into dew and rain. I am willing to discover that of the primitive salt of water, which having condensed into dew and rain, is already mixed with a certain quantity of pure earth, which does not participate in any mineral specification. THE Hermetic philosophers have given this salt the name of ammonia, especially since it usually partakes of some mixture of acid, contracted in the earth, such as does nitrous salt , which is found among the sands of Libya.
There is little moist earth in which there is salt . It is in the earth that the igneous spirit of the Sun takes the form of salt with the water, and it is from the earth as well as from the waters which cover it in several places of its surface, that rises that , which the aqueous vapors carry into the air, whence they fall back condensed, either by the cold of the air in rains, or by the coolness of the earth, in dew, to return this salt to that which the conceived, which must nourish and preserve it for the common utility of the natural mixtures. But because it receives the alterations, in the lands impregnated with various mineral ferments, it is important to know well the particular qualities of the lands, not only to discern those which abound in pure and sincere primitive salt, and to seek there this Divine medicine , which the most high created in the earth, and which the wise man must not despise, to see it trampled under foot and soiled by animals, but also to use it for the uses of life, by cultivation , or otherwise, and to judge of the impressions which the waters and the airs receive from it, in the places we live.
The air we breathe being mixed with the vapors of water, can be infected by impure volatile salts, which the water has impregnated with the earth, and which have risen with it into the air, which being of itself pure has no malignity prejudicial to the health and life of animals, although by its simplicity it is not very fit to preserve the life of those who breathe, not only because it is of itself too subtle, not being mixed with aqueous vapors, which temper it, and which are necessary to maintain the humidity of living bodies, but also because it is not impregnated with this salt primitive, which contains the igneous spirit, by which the vital heat is fomented.
It is true that foods serve both of these ends, but their digestions not being so soon completed, to be able to repair fairly quickly what is dissipated from the vital, moist spirit. and hot, by continual perspiration, the vaporous humidity of water accompanied by primitive salt (which is a volatile nitre, similar to that of blood) and carried by the air, which insinuates them into our bodies by respiration, maintain the vital spirit, while the food is digested and prepared, to repair more strongly the dissipations and the losses.
Breathing takes place in us, not only to facilitate the passage of blood, through the vessels of the lungs, from the right ventricle of the heart, to the left ventricle, but also to receive the communication of the air, both in the chest and in the belly, so that the primitive salt carried by the air, in the vapors of rarefied water, insinuates itself into our bodies, through the channel of the lungs, and that of the stomach, whose orifices are very close to the from each other, and which very wise nature would have separated more, to avoid the disorder, which can arrive in the tracheal artery, by the fall of some portion of the food, which must enter the esophagus, without another need more important, which is that of the reception of the air in our bodies by one and by the other together.
The air attracted by the expansion of the chest enters not only the trachea, but also the esophagus, where it passes into the stomach, and the intestines, which are always filled with air. And it is probably the necessity of bringing in the air through the esophagus into the stomach and the belly, as well as that of passing the blood from one side of the heart to the other through the vessels. of the lungs, which is the cause of the expansion of the chest, to draw air through the mouth, or through the nostrils, attracted, and would not easily enter the stomach, where it enters through the esophagus, when breathing, as well as into the lungs through their own channel.
The passage of blood from the right ventricle out of the heart from the left ventricle, was done in us through the malar hole, while we were in the wombs of our mothers, without breathing, participating in the air they breathed, and which remained partly insinuated in the blood and in the lymph, which we received from them through the umbilical vessels. This same passage of the blood in the malar hole, could be continued after the birth, if not having any more the communication of the air by the intermediary of our mothers, we were attracting it ourselves. What we could do without the dilation of the chest, by which inhaling the air and exhaling it , like a bellows, that one agitates the movement of the lungs, dilated and compressed, draws the blood from the right ventricle of the heart, and pushes it to the left through the vessels of these parts.
The passage of the blood being thus diverted from the first way by another occasion, continued, and to this use was added that of bringing in also the air into our stomachs and into our intestines, not only to keep them open and tense , but mainly to communicate to us the igneous spirit, incorporated in the primitive salt, which the air receives from the vapors of the water, which raise it from the earth, and carry it away, by which our life is preserved, better than by the foods which we take, in which this salt is less pure, and of which we do without longer , than that which we receive from the air, by respiration, which cannot cease very little without making us cease to live.
This primitive salt raised from the earth, being pure and the aqueous vapors which contain it being not infected with any sulphurous, mineral exhalations, contrary to life, the air which receives them is always salubrious, but when it is mixed malignant exhalations and vapours, according to our particular dispositions it disturbs our health, and causes popular diseases; for in expiring and rejecting the air, which in breathing we have attracted, we retain some portion of the salts and sulfurs with which it is infected, by the vapors and exhalations which are mixed with it. The asthmas of the workers who work in the metal mines, the paralysis of the plumbers and brass founders, and the colic of the painters, are very manifest proofs of this, as are also the languor of the convalescent patients, who always remain in the same room. , where the air is corrupted, by the infected vapors of their bodies. Even those who are well and who live in good air, finally feel some diminution of vigor if they remain shut up for a long time, in the same place without changing the air, because breathing only the same air, that they had expired, and this air being deprived of part of the primitive salt which it had, which remained in the body, and receiving the vapors which the body exhales, this air is no longer so fit for the preservation of life.
Each climate has its properties, and the air of each province in the same kingdom, besides hot and cold, dry and humid , has notable differences which cannot be justly attributed to exhalations and vapours, which rise from the earth, where the salts and their sulfurs are produced, which qualify them, and make them salubrious, or pernicious.
The waters which we drink and which we employ in preparing food and remedies are often mixed with saline and sulphurous juices, which render them less suitable for our health. There are good ones and bad ones, according to their mixtures which meet there , and which are made in the earth, receiving from the air only what they have carried there, being rarefied, and that the earth had previously communicated to them .
It is in the soil that we must seek the cause of these ordinary infections of the air and alterations of the water. But it is not pure and simple earth, considered as that of the elementary bodies, whose density makes the solidity of the mixtures, which is in itself the cause of these malignancies.
It is not on its own qualities that they depend, and it would not be easy to disentangle it from the other elements, in order to examine it. Water and air can only be altered by it to a certain degree of consistency, which cannot do much harm. It is only the impure salts, which the soils impregnated with various mineral and sulphurous ferments communicate to the water and the air, which infect them.
The earth being the matrix, in which the primitive salt is conceived, by the incorporation of the celestial igneous spirit, it is also in her that we must seek this pure and sincere salt, while it is in the chaste womb of the mother, and before this child of the earth pure takes foreign foods, which change the goodness of his temperament. I have shown in our academic assemblies, various species of earth, which were differently impregnated with this primitive salt. Those I then examined were common lands, loams, kiln lands, marls, clays, bowls, ochres, chalks , and sands, and ways of treating them to recognize quality. of their salts, were of two kinds: one to push them into the fire, without mixing, in retorts, in the manner of strong waters, to release into receptacles what they had of humidity laden with volatile salt; the other to mix with it some fixed salt to open up these earths and release their salts, less volatile, or more involved, which could not be separated from them either by fire or by water without this disposition.
The common lands which are cultivated for the vegetation of plants, which serve for the maintenance and convenience of life, such as corn, vegetables, vines, fruit trees, vegetable herbs &c, have salts more or less proper to one of these things than to the others, lands. Some of those which have been pushed into the fire without addition have been found to be nitrous, that is to say, impregnated with a resolute volatile salt, which forms a contrast with the acid liquors. This kind of salt makes the land fertile, as does that of the urine and manure of animals. It was abundant in that land of Verderome, which is called white silt, and which is said to be very fertile, and a certain land of Seaun, which is fertile and apt to bear good wheat. In some other lands, the volatile nitre was mixed with bitumen, which on distillation yielded oil, with the nitrous salt, which was partly concrete. These bituminous lands have a darkness that increases in the fire, when they are distilled there. Such is the land near Chartres, where are the springs of mineral water, which is beginning to have some reputation for curing many sick people. Such are the muds of the baths of Bourbonne in champagne. And there are similar ones in many places.
Of the free lands which are mixed with silt and subtle sand, some have returned to the fire, by distilling them without mixture, first of the acid, then of the volatile nitre, which that of the plain of Parnassus of the schoolchildren, behind the enclosure of the Carthusian monks of Paris. The others were only nitrous, having less sand, like those of the reservoir of Glatis and that of Bailly, near Versailles.
Kiln earths usually have few salts. The sandiest give off acid, and finally nitre, like those found at Passy and Auteuil on the low path towards the river. But those which are more silty, have nothing acetous. Such is that of the ditch at the Porte Saint Honoré in Paris, which yielded very little nitre. No fixed salt was found either in one or the other, any more than in their free lands.
The marls are usually nitrous and without acid, which we observed in those of Roissy, Ecouant, Chicotet, Gillesmoustier, Les Brosses, and Mouron near Colomiers en Brie. That of Dampierre towards Chevreuse found itself participating in some bitumen.
Clays are more different from each other than other soil species. We have recognized that that of Auteuil is reborn from vitriol, that that of Issy took part in mineral sulphur, that that of Arceuil was nitrous and bituminous, that that of Bailly near Versailles was nitrous with some participation of acid, that that of of Fasvry was more acetous than nitrous, that that of Ecouan was only nitrous, that that of Charonne which is used to make earthenware, was more nitrous than acetous, and that that of Savigny, from which Beauvais sandstone is made, had likewise more nitrous salt than acid.
Bowls, the common one called Armenian bowl, turned out to be vitriolic and ferruginous. The bowl of Issoudun was more nitrous, and that of Normandy was even more so.
The diversity of colors of these bowls, mark some diverse sulphurity. That of the bowl of Armenia could be attributed to a ferruginous sulphur, but we were not able to judge the sulfur content of the bowl of Issoudun so well by its vermilion color, nor that of the bowl of Normandy, whose color was reddish brown. . Between the ochres, Berry yellow, is slightly nitrous and has very little acid. Red ocher is even less nitrous, but without acid. Street ocher is very nitrous, with some participation of bitumen. And the umber , which can be put in the rank of ochres, has given, by distillation, a spirit similar to that of common salt.
We have noticed much greater differences between the salts of various species of chalk. Common white chalk was found to be nitrous. The reddish tripoli, slightly nitrous, but participating in the mineral sulphur. Briançon chalk consisted only of common salt, and very little. The black stone has been recognized as vitriolic and ferruginous, rt the green stone seemed to us very nitrous with the participation of common salt. Little salt was found in common blood, and less acid than nitrous.
The various fine sands which we examined held very little volatile nitre, and all yielded acid. They had been taken near Versailles. One was red, mixed with white and yellow, taken on the path which descends from the mountain to Bailly; the other only pale red, taken on the same path. Another was red, drawn from the retainer of Glatigny; a yellow found at the foot of the Montbonron hill near Clagny; and an Argentinian white, encountered near the lodgings of the Fatory millers.
All these earths were quite superficial, not having been taken from very deep places, where probably the salts may have received greater alterations in the mineral matrices. Those on the surface of the earth must be less changed, being less distant from their origin. Almost in all the lands, taken at a few feet, or at a few fathoms of depth, we found volatile nitre, which is the first and principal of the salts, and this nitrous salt had no urinary and disagreeable odor, of those derived from plants and animals. It seems to us that this primitive salt of the earth being less specified, purer and more active. To better know its activity on metals, I put calcined taetre salt in whiteness, in the waters drawn by distillation from the nitrous earths, and impregnated with their volatile nitre, so that this salt of tartar resolving in these waters , retained all the phlegm, and remained in the consistency of strong lye, with which the spirit of phlegm of wine could not mingle; Having then put a good spirit of wine on this solution of the salt of tartar, and agitated the whole thing together, the spirit of wine took and retained the volatile nitre of these waters, which having no concretion, was easily mixed with him.
This spirit of wine supernatant in the lye rested from the tartar, having been separated by the glass funnel, and distilled in a Bain-Marie, remained impregnated with the primitive salt, and caused the sublimated mercury dissolved in common water to precipitate, like the volatile nitrates. animals and plants. This spirit of wine was then put on gold well attenuated, but without calcination, and in a short time, when cold, it was charged with a high red dye, by the dissolution of a portion of this gold, on which the spirit of wine alone did not act.
When this inconcrete primitive salt is preserved in the lands where the running waters of springs pass, these waters become beneficial and suitable for the preservation and restoration of the health of those who drink it. And these waters, very different from those which are called mineral, can be called waters of salvation, which most minerals do not do, because there are hardly any that are not infected with a few pernicious sulphurites, of which one recognizes malignity by their bad effects which they produce in those who use them. To discern these saline sulphurities in the earths, where they are not always manifest, neither by the lotions, nor by the distillations, I judged that it was necessary to mix some other salt, which helped to open and resolve these earths, by pushing them into the fire, to release what they have of salt and sulfur intimately united.
And that's the other way I had proposed to examine the land. The salt I chose to mix only an eighth part with the earth, on which I wanted to work, was the one that separates and condenses into small grains of cubic shape when the saltpetre crystallizes on the surface of the cooled lye. . This salt, still containing saltpeter, is very dissolvable, and better suited to act on the land, and facilitate the disengagement of their sulphurities, than the common salt of the sea, and than that of saline wells. The knowledge I have of his goodness for the very use of the kitchen, and of the table, obliges me to say here on occasion, that it is much preferable to ordinary common salt, for the seasoning of meats, and for the health of those who use it. use, because it partakes of that excellent sulphur, which is found in saltpetre, and which manifests itself by that high redness of the vapor, when it is distilled.
This sulfur has of itself great medicinal virtues of which I will speak another time. I add here that we lose much in the deprivation of this saltpetre salt, which one makes throw away and lose, to deprive us of the use of it.
which he takes with him while distilling, part of which remains dissolved with the spirit of this salt and colors it, and the other sublimates into flowers resolvable in the humid air. What is resolved in the spirit of this salt can be separated, by means of common mercury, with which it mixes in its solution with this mercury, from which the mercury separates by sublimating it.
It is particularly in clays that these sulphurous materials are found, which are usually mixed with a notable quantity of vitriolic salt, the spirit of which, rising in distillation with that of the added salt, is greatly increased without being weakened, these lands having been well parched before distillation. By means of this fixed salt, separated from the saltpeter, I recognized that the clay of Auteuil held common sulfur and vitriol. That that of Issy had less common sulphur , and was without manifest participation of vitriol. And that of Savigny took from both.
All the clays are hardly suitable for being mixed with their salts which one wants to distil, to have the spirits, because even they retain little of the salts, which one mixes there, the spirits of these salts are less sincere, and participate in the vitriolic and sulphurous qualities of these clays, except that of Moure en Brie, rt some others similar which have only salt common, which cannot alter the spirit of such salt. The bowls of Normandy and Issoudun as well as the ocher of Berry, seemed to me the best, to prevent the fusion of common salt and saltpetre, when it is necessary to draw the spirit by distillation , as much as they do not alter these spirits and that they do not retain most of these salts, with which one mixes these kinds of earths, to prevent their fusion, by pushing them to a high fire, to make them distil.
The lands which retain many of the salts which are mixed therein to facilitate the distillation of their spirits, are the marls, the silty lands with furnace, and the other nitrous earths, such as green earth, rue ochre, and sanguine. The green earth is the most nitrous of all, and the spirit which is extracted from it, by distilling it, after having mixed one-eighth of the fixed salt of saltpeter, is completely nitrous and similar to that which is obtained from sal ammoniac. factitious mixed with calcined tartar salt, but care must be taken that it is fossil and natural green earth. Because there is some artificial, which is white chalk that is soaked in the strong second water of the refiners, heated in the fire to attract all the copper, which is dissolved there, and which gives it the color green . This chalk being well washed and dried resembles the fossil green earth, but when distilled with one-eighth of the fixed salt of saltpeter, it gives only an acid spirit. The umber pushed to the fire by the retort with the addition of fixed salt of saltpetre like the others, was found to be very saline, and the Tripoli very sulphurous.
The clay of Auteuil, which is between Auteuil and Passy, having been recognized as the most vitriolic of the other clays, which are around Paris, I had the curiosity to observe the marcasites, which meet there in notable quantity. These marcasites are mostly long, blackish, and ferruginous, compact, hard, and tasteless. But having been washed, wiped, Coarsely crushed, and exposed to the humid air, they finish reducing themselves to powder, and are covered with white flowers, of a sweetish and styptic flavor, by the attraction of the saline humidity of the air.
The common water poured on these powdery and flowery marcasites, dissolves the salt which happens to be of two kinds, by the evaporation of a part of this filtered detergent, in the cold it forms green crystals, totally vitriolic. , which being separated and the lye put back on the fire, to still evaporate a part of the water, in the rest exposed to a cold place, some new crystals are made , but whitish, of a consistency more compact, and less transparent, of a less styptic and more acrid flavor , which makes them judge less vitriolic, the water which remains after this second concretion is brown red, of a very acrid flavor, with some relation to that of artificial sal ammoniac .
There is no more concretion in the cold, and the salt it contains only condenses by total evaporation of the water. This latter salt is nitrous, and readily soluble in the humidity of the air. This salt is not emetic, as is that of vitriol, but releases the belly and provokes urine. If, however, it is kept for a long time, it takes on a certain vitriolic stypticity. I recognized that this recent salt, to make artificial mineral waters of very great virtues against several diseases, like the water of Sainte Reine. What comes from the primitive salt, which these marcasites have attracted from the humidity of the air, with which it had mixed, rising from the earth, and circulating with the vapors of water, in a continual movement until until he is attracted by some terrestrial sulphur, which arrests and fixes this inconstant and fickle Mercury.
The vitriolic sulphurs, being the first produced in the earth, to be the subjects of metallic specifications, which are the noblest of the mineral kind, have the greatest disposition to receive and retain this primitive salt, but it deteriorates there very soon. He condenses better in marls, because they are purer , and the primitive nitrous quality is not altered there by any bad sulphur. It is of the primitive salt of this kind of land that I am also going to speak, having hitherto only said the ways of examining these lands to discern the qualities of their salts.
I said that there was volatile nitrous in most lands , and I showed it in our academy; but there are usually very few, and because often it is very subtle and without concretion, and it is not easy to treat.
The marls are the purest of the lands, they are nitrous, and usually without admixture of mineral sulphides. They are found beneath the common ground, and to uncover and fire them, holes are made in the form of wells, or square pits.
They are sometimes met with fairly close to the surface, and often it is necessary to excavate to the depth of four or six fathoms before they are discovered. There are various colors, white, gray, yellow, green, reddish . The white ones seem to be the purest, since the colored ones are not without the participation of bituminous sulphur.
The reds, however, can be very good. They are also of different consistency, some are soft and very moist, the others compact and pasty, and the others stony and hard.
They all have the property of attracting the primitive salt diffused in the air, with the aqueous vapors, and of retaining it to communicate it to the lean and arid lands, among which they are mixed, instead of manure to amend them and make them fertile.
The best are recognized by the greater and more lasting fertility they give to the fields where they are spread.
Those which are more compact and stony do not soil the soil in the first year, because the frosts have to dissolve these marly stones, and then the rains thin them out, not only to release the nitre which they contain, but also to make them capable of attracting, receiving, and retaining that of the air that the aqueous vapors carry there continuously, and communicate it to the ground of the field, which one wants to make fertile by this means. The nitrous salt of the marls is not so abundant that it can maintain a long fertility, but it gives to the ground of the fields whose marls are spread and mixed, a more or less strong attractive power of the primitive salt diffused by the air, which being received and retained in this earth, makes it fit to make vegetate what is sown there. A similar power of attraction is observed in the saltpetre soils, from which the saltpetre has been separated, and in the dead heads left over from the distillation of strong waters, which being exposed to the air, again become impregnated with the primitive salt, which the ferments of these materials specify, just like the other salt, which had been extracted from them. I observed that marl also had the property of retaining humidity for a long time; for having put common water on the marl of Dampierre to see if I could extract salt from it, then spread this marl on a horsehair sieve , after having filtered the water through the gray paper, it remained more a month like an open room, always soft and very humid. What makes me judge that this property of retaining the humidity of the water for so long, still contributed to the fertility of the marly lands, by keeping them moist, and more fit to receive the primitive salt of the air, which the dry lands do not easily retain, letting it be carried away by the winds, which penetrate these lands.
To recognize in marl this attractive power of primitive salt, I took some white marl from Croissy, which had remained in the air for some time, and having distilled it through the retort, it first gave off salt. phlegmatic water, then smoke came out of it, which condensed into yellow water, impregnated with volatile nitrous salt, which caused the sublimed mercury dissolved in common water. And in the dead head there was found fixed nitre, which also causes the sublimate to precipitate, but without causing it to take on a yellow or red color, as do the alkalis, or fixed nitres of plants. In the rectification of the distilled water of this stale marl, some salt remained at the bottom of the curcurbite, which, being put back into its water, gave it a red-brown dye.
To better judge the effects of the impression of the air on this marl, I took some recent, freshly drawn from the same place and having put it to distil in the same way, the spirits which came out of it after the phlegm, had no yellow color.
They were a little cloudy and whitish, and held less volatile nitre. They partook of some mixture of acid, which had manifested itself in the rectification, and in the dead head there was found no fixed nitre, but very little common salt.
By these observations, I recognized that the salt of this stale marl had increased in the air, and that it had acquired some greater perfection. The marls of this province of Isle de France and those of Brie have little of this primitive salt as soon as they are drawn from their pits. But if they are exposed to the air, where they are long beaten by the Sun, the wind, and the rains, mainly during the months of March, April and May, we can find more salt and better. The marls, which have thus been in the air for a long time, become powdery, light, and of a sweetish taste, mingled with some subtle and not very perceptible acidity. The stagnant air in the damp caverns where marly stones are found sometimes renders these stones so abundantly impregnated with primitive nitre that one sees flowering on their surface in a woolly form.
It is observed that ewes and pigeons seek this stony nitre, which increases their fertility. The particular life of animals is maintained by an internal fire, which can be fortified by a similar fire, such as is found in the salt of food, in that of the aqueous vapor which we breathe with the air, and even in that primitive nitrous salt of the pure land, where this fire is finds more effective, if it has no mineral specification.
I learned from a Saxon gentleman that in Germany, in the marquisate of upper Lusatia, in the seigniory of Mesrau, which belongs to the baron of Calemberg, there is a large hill, at the foot of which people once made saltpetre, and that the Sun, at the height of summer, caused the earth to split and open up there, there is in these crevices white powder conglobate, which rolls down in small balls, which the poor peasants go to collect in the evening, to mix with flour and increase the bread, to feed themselves when wheat is dear. This they practiced in the wars of Germany, when the Swedish troops had ruined the countryside, most of the land having remained deserted and uncultivated. This earth, of which I was shown a little, resembled white marl, being kneaded alone, it does not ferment, as it does mixed with flour . And the bread of this flour, increased by the mixture of this earth, is good to eat, and nourishes almost as much as that of pure flour. This bread does not mold like bread common, being kept for a long time, and even a few months.
It is therefore principally in the marls that this primitive terrestrial nitre must be sought , in order to reduce it to a medicine capable of preserving life. This chaste and pure land, having received from the sky, through water, the first being of salt, and having nourished the son of the Sun in its bosom, until putting him in a condition to appear, with enough strength, to support itself, it presents this dear infant to the hermetic sages, to raise it to a perfection, which will make it merit the esteem of the Philosophers, and the admiration of all men.
Here is on the extraction, depuration and fixation of this nitre primitive of the marly lands, the process of a friend who showed me some of his work. Having found in Normandy a certain earth, greyish, light, powdery, which was stale marl, and for a long time exposed to the air, he put it to be distilled by the retort, giving a fire like strong waters, and continuing it. as long as he saw volatile salt pass into the container. Having then ceased the fire, the whole being cooled, he removed the container, and drew the liquor from it, after having dissolved the concrete volatile salt, attached to the upper part and to the sides of the container. We observed that this spirituous liquor was almost tasteless, with a weakly urinating, yellowish in color and slightly cloudy in consistency.
To rectify this liquor, it was put in a glass still , in a bain-marie, to be distilled gently and only half was removed .
What passed into the receptacle was impregnated with volatile nitre, then having changed receptacle, to continue the distillation, what came next was only phlegm, and at the bottom of the cucurbite it rejected a red salt, which had some bitterness. , and which seemed to me to be the less volatile portion of the nitrous salt, mixed with some sulphurous acidity.
The first liquor of rectification being put on this salt red to dissolve it, became very red, and this was kept until we had a greater quantity of these two salts.
The artist having as much as he desired of this spirituous water impregnated with volatile nitre, and this red salt, he rectified the water seven times, distilling it through the still in a bain-marie, and separating the pure phlegm who came out last; then he put this spirituous water on the red salt, which made it take on a lot of redness, and then he had it distilled in the still at the low heat of the bain-marie. What came first contained the volatile nitre, and the pure phlegm came last. The red salt by its acidity retained a portion of volatile nitrous salt, separately received the phlegm, he cohobait on the red salt the liquor impregnated with the volatile nitre, and reiterated the distillation in the same manner.
Continuing thus to cohober and dephlegm, the volatile salt took ever more concretion, and having scarcely any phlegm left, it rendered milky and very acrid the portion of the liquor which it distilled first. This spirit having all come out, what remained of phlegm came next, and when there was little of it, it made a film on the red salt, which prevented evaporation, which obliged the artist to remove the l screed. still, to break this film with a small stick, and let the phlegmatic humidity evaporate more freely, making this evaporation even easier at the end, by shaking with the small stick to dry this salt well.
Thus the dephlegmating volatile nitre attached itself to the red salt, and finally everything remained there. As a result of these cohobations, the salt which remained at the bottom of the curcurbite condensed into grains like common salt; then by the mixture of the volatile nitre, it remained black and viscous, and rendered the separation of the phlegm more difficult , and finally having retained a great deal of volatile nitre, it crystallized into long fibers like saltpeter does , and this concretion was even made in the heat of distillation in what remained of phlegmatic water, and these crystals had a very great acrimony. He also parted with some black starches. The two salts being thus conjoined, and having finally given the suitable fire to sublimate this double salt, it rose very white, leaving at the bottom of the sublimatory vessel a very black earth like soot. The sublimated matter was found to be light as snowflakes, the flavor was moderately acrid and without corrosion. We took some of it in a scale of glass, on a window at night, to see if it would resolve in the damp air; but it was exhaled, and in the morning we found nothing more in the shell.
I was planning to dissolve this salt in four times as much of his well-rectified spirit, to cook it and fix it in the athanor.
But this friend, being requested by another to go to Holland for some particular business, stopped there, and only showed me that this salt, in this state, could do on gold. And for that purpose put some in a small glass matrass, with gold leaf, and having hermetically sealed the neck of the matrass very close to his globe, he put this vessel in a small furnace with a lamp, where the heat gave more on the vessel, by reverberation from the vault, than from below so that the salt could melt, without rising by the heat, although very moderate. This salt melted easily, and absorbed the gold leaves, which were as quickly dissolved as ice in hot water, and the whole remained clear, even without heat after the vessel had been drawn from the furnace, and was completely chilled. The matrass having then been opened, this liquor was put in a still of glass to be distilled in a vaporous bath, and the whole passed into the receptacle in green liquor, with nothing remaining of the gold at the bottom of the cucurbite.
These processes of extraction and purification of the primitive nitre of the earth, seemed to me quite in conformity with the doctrine of the great Hermes who orders to separate the fire from the earth, the subtle of the gross, gently and with great industry, raising this watery fire from earth to heaven, and descending again to earth, to receive the virtues of higher and lower causes, and acquire a glorious being. But because to return the whole force, it must be converted into earth, it was necessary to complete this work, to proceed to the fixing of this salt, immediately after having sublimated it. And then he would have been more capable of conquering all subtle things, and of penetrating all solid things, and marvelous adaptations could have been made by his means.
The manner of fixing this primitive salt of the marly lands after having extracted and purified it, was communicated to me by another learned man and great chemist who had worked with good success on the same subject, but a little differently. Take, he said, an ounce of this most pure salt, pour into it three ounces of his well-rectified spirit. The salt will immediately dissolve in this spirit, and if there is then a greasy film on the surface, remove it, for it would prevent the coagulation of the spirit. Put this dissolved salt, in a glass egg, of such capacity that three quarters of it remain empty, hermetically seal the vessel, and place it in the secret furnace, light the fire of the Sages there, giving for the first degree a warmth so gentle, you could hatch an egg from hen, which would have been put in the oak box, where the vessel is. Continue this degree of heat for forty days, and in that term your matter will turn black, which is the sign of the requisite putrefaction. And when you see that your matter no longer changes and remains always in darkness, increase the heat to the second degree, and in a few days you will see many colors, like dark blue, then light blue, then various mixed colors.
By this degree of heat the superfluous humidity is consumed and the matter dries up, and in three or four weeks it is reduced to a greyish powder. When giving the third degree of heat, the material having taken on an orange color, will gradually become white, and in this crystalline whiteness, a beautiful leafy salt will be made .
When we see that the matter is very white, we can leave it at that, if we only intend to use this universal medicine for health. But wanting to go beyond this , one must continue the fire without intermission, increasing it by one degree, and this resplendent crystalline whiteness will change. A thousand flashes will appear in this vessel, with small veins of circulating humor. When it no longer appears, this humor will dry up, and the matter will remain in red powder, heavy and fixed.
The continuation of the process of my Philosopher is the multiplication of this fixed salt. He ordered to do it like this: on an ounce of this red powder put in a new philosophical egg, you must pour three ounces of spirit similar to the first and well rectified, seal the vessel, and cook according to the art in the same furnace. secret, observing the rules of heat. And the same color changes will appear; but in less time, and the whole will be completed rather by half, because if at the first firing it was necessary to employ nine or ten months, in this second it will only take four or five. And as many times as we reiterate the cooking with the addition of new spirit, for continue the multiplication, always keeping the same order, the time is shortened by half, and the powder increases in weight and virtue.
This salt thus prepared and perfected is a universal medicine, like that of the primitive nitre of water, and it can be employed to exalt and perfect the specific essencified salts of all the natural mixtures. I leave to talk about its uses in metallurgy, according to the instructions of my author to say only its starches in the medicine of men, which is my profession. This Philosopher had warned that for this use, it was enough that the fixing was made in whiteness. But having been pushed to the color red, this great igneity had to be moderated by dissolving a little of this red powder in water, and soaking barley in it , to make some fowl eat it, which 'one must kill it four hours later, then boil it and cook it in the ordinary way, to take the broth from it, and even eat the flesh.
To employ this general or universal salt, to the perfective exaltation of the specified salt of the metals, and principally on those who are at the last degree of the perfection which is natural to them, or who have the disposition to attain it, by the operation of the nature, which art can greatly help, it should be fixed with the metal itself, by a similar method.
Potable gold is praised, for a greater mystery of medicine, Arnaud de Villeneuve, the most renowned doctor of his century, speaking of the means of maintaining one's youthful vigor, and of delaying the caducity which accompanies the declining age, says that gold reduced to drinkable liquor, and taken internally, renews the skin and cleanses it of all leprous impurities, corrects the bad habit of the body, restores equality of temperament, strengthens the viscera, rectifies the humours, clarifies the blood, brightens the complexion, brightens the spirit, and preserves the graces of youth.
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“from these bodies there is extracted an exceedingly white and red sulphur; for in these there is a most pure substance of sulphur, cleansed to the highest degree by Nature's own artifice.”
Arnold de Villa Nova
The Golden Tract Concerning The Stone of the Philosophers
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