To the Poor Evangelizing Men



FIFTY WONDERFUL SECRETS OF ALCHEMY.

WITH A STUDY-PREFACE BY PAPUS.


BY


G. PHANEG


PROFESSOR AT THE HERMETICAL SCHOOL OF PARIS

PARIS

GENERAL OCCULT SCIENCES LIBRARY CHACORNAC LIBRARY


11, Quai. Saint-Michel

1912

Transcription PSP
LETTER PREFACE



MY DEAR FRIEND,

You have just composed a work on practical Alchemy, or better on the primary elements of alchemical research and you ask me to present it to our usual readers.

Alchemy is a high philosophy which is easily freed from laboratory experiments.

Experience for the alchemist is only the presentation on the material plane of an astral theory or a calling of spiritual forces.

Palingenesis, radium lamps, astral resurrections are the real practical works of alchemists assisted by spiritual guides.

But these practical works of high spirituality cannot be accomplished without material training, which differ from the current work of our most eminent chemists. These are the works that you put within the reach of studious readers with your usual talent.

It must be emphasized that true hermetic work must be accomplished on three levels at the same time and that it is thus differentiated from simple chemical work.

Labora, Ora et Inventes, says Khunrath. Oratory and the exercise of material or moral charity, music and its action on the astrals, are as necessary to the alchemist as the laboratory. Your work comes on time. It will bring forward the time when the chemist and the alchemist will finally understand each other and where the Science which is One will be reconstituted intact by the union of its two poles which are now separated.

Your book will make you think and work a lot. It is therefore worthy both of its author and of the unknown master who inspired you.

With all my congratulations, believe me always, My Dear Phaneg, your devoted good.

PAPUS.

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PREFACE

ALCHEMY.

The current opinion on Alchemy is that it is a lying art tending to artificially make gold and which ruined a lot of naive people in the Middle Ages.

The first question that arises before us is therefore how we should consider this Alchemy from the point of view of occult science.

For this we will leave there, if you wish, the commentaries and dissertations written on alchemy in contemporary Encyclopedias, and we will address ourselves directly to those whom alchemists consider to be the masters of their sciences.

Take the work of Raymond Lulle, for example. What do we find there?

Anything other than the rules of this special art considered the sole concern of alchemists.

In any serious work relating to Hermetic philosophy we will indeed find:

1° A profound philosophy serving as a basis for a natural synthesis, having as its starting point the theory of evolution extended to the maximum and that of unity of the substance and unity of the plan.

From there, the alchemical axiom: . Everything is in everything.
2° A judicious application of the principles of Hebrew Kabbalah combined with Egyptian and Gnostic tradition.

3° Numerous practices in physics, chemistry or biology supporting these theories.
To therefore want to see in alchemy only chemical practices is to mutilate in the most odious way a complete teaching in which the practice only came as; justification of scientific theory.

A true alchemist was therefore at the same time a doctor, an astronomer and an astrologer, a philosopher, a Kabbalist and a chemist. Also the studies were very serious and strong, long, transmitted by initiation by the master to one or two favorite disciples and carefully hidden from the profane.

Alongside these scholars, true hermetic philosophers appear ignorant charlatans whose sole goal is the acquisition of material wealth. These have always only discredited alchemy. The several thousand volumes written in French which are found in our libraries under the heading of Hermetic philosophy therefore include:

1° Treatises on natural history.
2° Treatises on ordinary physics and chemistry.
3° Treatises on alchemy proper or preparation of the philosopher's stone.
4° Treatises on philosophy and kabbalah or astrology.
5° Kinds of encyclopedias where all these genres are brought together.

This overview allows us to see that the esoteric tradition in all its branches is represented by Hermetic philosophy.

How did this tradition pass from Egypt to the West?

This is what we are going to see.

The study of the depositaries of esotericism has enabled us to ascertain that the Essenes, on the one hand, the Gnostics, on the other, had alone kept the keys of occult science.

The Essenes, keeping themselves outside of all political life, remained in Palestine and had established several secret societies.

The Gnostics had sought everywhere to spread their teachings. After the freedom left to the regional Faculties to divulge the esoteric teachings, several treatises concerning the practices of occult science had been written according to the traditions of the Egyptian University itself.

These treatises, the writing of which dates back, in fact, to approximately the second century of our era, were intended only to ease the memory a little and to aid oral transmission. They were divided into two large classes. :

1° Those who dealt with the invisible world, the soul and its powers; of psychurgy.

2° Those which dealt with the application of the powers of the soul to nature; hence theurgy and alchemy.

Of the first, especially philosophical, we have some fragments entirely translated by M-Louis Ménard (Louis Ménard, Hermès Trismegistus, 1 vol. in-§°, crowned by the Academy.).

Of the latter, we possess a host of treatises constituting the works of alchemy proper.

It is generally agreed that the whole practical part of occultism came to Europe through the Arabs.

The Arabs did not bring to us the sciences which they had received from the Gnostics who had remained in Egypt, until long after the preaching. of Gnosis in Europe.

Now Gnosis included a magical part. Remember the miracles of Apollonius of Tyana, Simon the Magician, and other famous Gnostics, and you will discover the true origin of this hermetic philosophy, an origin which seems so obscure at first glance.

Alchemy therefore represents the way of transmission of occult science through the West, that is why we will now deal with the work and the theories of those who called themselves the sons of Hermes. We shall therefore have successively:

1° The exoteric goal of the alchemists, — the philosopher's stone, — its reality and what can be said of its preparation.

2. The texts on which the alchemists base their philosophical opinions, — the Emerald tablet and its explanations.

3° The explanation of the symbolic stories found in alchemy treatises.

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THE PHILOSOPHAL STONE.

Definitions.— Theory of its preparation. — Explanation of the Hermetic texts. — Irrefutable proof of its existence.

II.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY PHILOSOPHAL STONE?

This question, so simple at first glance, is however quite difficult to resolve. Let us open the serious dictionaries, let us browse the serious compilations of the rare scholars who have deigned to treat this subject. The conclusion is quite easy to pose: “Philosopher's stone transmutation, of metals, equals: ignorance, deception, madness. »

If, however, we reflect that, in short, to talk about sheets, it is better to go to the draper than to the doctor of letters, the idea will perhaps come to us to see what the alchemists think of the question.

Now, in the midst of the desired obscurities, and the numerous symbols which fill their treatises, there is one point on which they all agree, and that is the definition and qualities of the philosopher's stone.

The perfect philosopher's stone is a red powder which has the property of transforming all the impurities of nature.

It is generally believed that she cannot. used, according to alchemists, to change lead or mercury into gold. It is a mistake. Alchemical theory derives from sources far too speculative to locate its effects in this way. Evolution being one of the great laws of nature, as hermeticism taught several centuries ago, the philosopher's stone rapidly evolves what natural forms take many years to produce; this is why it acts, say the adepts, on the vegetable and animal kingdoms, as well as on the mineral kingdom and can be called medicine of the three kingdoms.

The philosopher's stone is a powder which can affect several different colors according to its degree of perfection, but which, practically, has only two, white or red.

The true philosopher's stone is red. This red powder has three virtues:

1° It transforms mercury or molten lead into gold on which a pinch is placed; I say in gold, and not in a metal which comes more or less close to it, as a contemporary scholar believed (1).

2° It constitutes an energetic depurative for the blood and heals quickly, taken internally, whatever illness it may be.

3° It acts in the same way on plants by making them grow, ripen and bear fruit in a few hours.

These are three points that will seem fabulous to many people, but alchemists all agree on this subject.

It is enough, moreover, to reflect, to see that these three properties constitute only one:

Strengthening vital activity.

The philosopher's stone is therefore quite simply an energetic condensation of Life in a small quantity of matter, and it acts like a leaven on the bodies in whose presence it is placed. It only takes a little ferment to leaven a large mass of bread; likewise, it only takes a little philosopher's stone to develop the life contained in any matter, mineral, vegetable or animal. This is why the alchemists call their stone: "Medicine of the three kingdoms." »

We now know what this philosopher's stone is, enough to recognize its description in a symbolic story, and there must limit our ambitions.

MANUFACTURING THE PHILOSOPHAL STONE.

Now let's see how it is made.

Here are the essential operations:

Extract from common mercury a special ferment called by alchemists philosophers' mercury.

Make this ferment act on the silver to also draw a ferment from it.

Make the mercury ferment act on the gold to also draw ferment from it.

Combine the ferment made from gold with the ferment made from silver and the mercurial ferment in a very solid egg-shaped glass matra, seal this matra and put it to cook in a special furnace called by the athanor alchemists.

The athanor only differs from other stoves by a combination which allows the aforementioned egg to be heated for a very long time and in a special way.

COLORS.

It is then (during this cooking), and only then, that certain colors are produced on which all alchemical stories are based. The matter contained in the egg first becomes black, everything seems putrefied; this state is designated by the name, raven's head. Suddenly, this black color is replaced by dazzling whiteness. This transition from black to white, from darkness to light, is an excellent touchstone for recognizing a symbolic story that deals with alchemy. The material thus fixed in white is used to transmute impure metals (lead, mercury) into silver.

If we continue the fire, we see this white color disappear little by little, the material takes on various hues, from the lower colors of the spectrum (blue, green) to the higher colors (orange-yellow), and finally arrives at red. ruby. The Philosopher's Stone is then almost finished.

I say almost finished, because in this state 10 grams of philosopher's stone does not transmute more than 20 grams of metal. To perfect the stone, you must put it back in an egg with a little philosophers' mercury and start heating again. The operation, which had taken a year, now only takes three months, and the colors reappear in the same order as the first time.

In this state the stone transmutes into gold ten times its weight.

We start the operation again. It only lasts a month, the stone transmutes a thousand times its weight in metal.

Finally we do it one last time, and we obtain the true perfect philosopher's stone, which transmutes ten thousand times its weight of metal into pure gold.
These operations are referred to as stone multiplication.

EXPLANATION OF ALCHEMICAL TEXTS.

When we read an alchemist, we must therefore see what operation he is talking about:

1° If he speaks of the manufacture of the philosophers' mercury, in which case it will surely be unintelligible to the layman.

2° If he speaks of the manufacture of the stone itself, in which case he will speak clearly.

3° If he speaks of multiplication, then he will be quite clear.

Equipped with this data, the reader can open Mr. Figuier's book and, if he is not an enemy of gentle cheerfulness, read from page 8 to page 52. He will easily decipher the meaning of the symbolic stories which are so obscure to Mr. Figuier and make him hazard such joyous explanations. Witness the following story which he treats as a grimoire (p. 41):

When considering a symbolic story, one must always look for the hermetic meaning which was most hidden and which is almost surely found there. As nature is identical everywhere, the same story which expresses the mysteries of the great work could also mean the course of the sun (solar myths) or the life of a fabulous hero. The initiate alone will therefore be able to grasp the third (hermetic) meaning of the ancient myths (2), while the scholar will only see the first and second meanings (physical and natural, course of the Sun, Zodiac, etc. ), and the peasant will only understand the first meaning (story of the hero).

The adventures of Venus, Vulcan and Mars are famous from this point of view among alchemists (3).

From all this, we see that, to make the philosopher's stone, you need time and patience. He who has not killed within himself the desire for gold will never be rich, alchemically speaking. To be convinced of this, you only need to read the biographies of two 19th century alchemists, Cyliani (4) and Cambriel (5).

Physically, the philosopher's stone would therefore be a red powder quite similar in consistency to gold chloride and the smell of calcined sea salt.

Chemically, it is a simple increase in density, if we admit the unity of matter, an idea highly honored among contemporary chemical philosophers. Indeed, the problem to be solved consists in transforming a body of the density of 13.6 like mercury, into a body of the density of 19.5 like gold. Is this transmutation hypothesis in disagreement with the most recent chemical data? This is what we are going to see.

III.

DOES CURRENT CHEMISTRY ALLOW YOU TO DENY THE EXISTENCE OF THE PHILOSOPHAL STONE?

Two contemporary chemists have pushed their investigations into the obscure domain of alchemy; they are MM. Figuier, around 1853, who published Alchimie et les Alchimistes, a book of which we will have occasion to speak presently, and Professor M. Berthelot, member of the Institute, who published, in 1885 , the Origins of Alchemy.

These two official scholars, especially the latter, are authorities on the subject, and their opinion deserves to be listened to by all serious people.

Both regard alchemy and its purpose as sweet dreams worthy of times gone by; both formally deny the existence of the philosopher's stone, although Figuier unknowingly proves its existence). And yet they declare that, scientifically, the thing cannot be denied a priori. Thus Figuier says:

"In the present state of our knowledge, we cannot prove, in an absolutely rigorous way, that the transmutation of metals is impossible, some circumstances prevent the alchemical opinion from being rejected as an absurdity. in contradiction with the facts (6).

Mr. Berthelot, in several passages of his book, shows that, far from being opposed to contemporary chemistry, alchemical theory tends, on the contrary, to replace today the primitive data of chemical philosophy. Here are some supporting extracts.

Through the mystical explanations and the symbols with which the alchemists wrap themselves, we can glimpse the essential theories of their philosophy: which are reduced, in short, to a small number of clear, plausible ideas, and some of which offer a strange analogy. with the conceptions of our time (7). »

“Why couldn't we form sulfur with oxygen, form selenium and tellurium with sulfur, by suitable condensation processes? Why couldn't tellurium and selenium be changed inversely into sulfur, and this, in turn, metamorphosed into oxygen?

“Nothing in fact opposes it a priori. (8). “Certainly, I repeat, no one can affirm that the manufacture of bodies deemed simple is impossible a priori (9). »
All this clearly shows that the philosopher's stone was not fatally impossible, even in the opinion of contemporary scientists. It is now that we must see if we have positive proof of its existence.

IV.

PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE PHILOSOPHAL STONE. — DISCUSSION OF THEIR VALIDITY.

We affirm that the philosopher's stone has given irrefutable proof of its existence and we will present the facts on which our convictions are based.

We have stated the facts, because we cannot consider as absolutely serious the demonstrations drawn from more or less solid reasoning. It is in the domain of history that assertions are always easy to verify in any era, and therefore truly irrefutable.

We will therefore present the arguments invoked by the adversaries of alchemy against transmutation, and these are facts which alone will be able to victoriously refute each of these objections.

It was Geoffroy the elder who took charge, in 1722, of putting the alchemists on trial before the Academy. If his memoir is to be believed, the many stories of transmutation on which followers base their faith are easily explained by deception. Uncontested philosophers, such as Paracelsus or Raymond Lull, left abstract speculations there for a moment to perform a few deft tricks of sleight of hand in front of astounded naive people. However, let us analyze the means of deceiving at their disposal, and seek to determine experimental conditions, putting to naught their arguments.

Alchemists use to deceive the assistants:

1° Crucibles with double bottoms.
2° Charcoals or hollow rods filled with gold powder.
3° Chemical reactions unknown then and perfectly known today.

For one of these conditions to be fulfilled, the alchemist must necessarily be present at the operation or have previously touched the instruments used.

Therefore, in the experimental determination of a transmutation, the absence of the alchemist will be the first and most essential condition.

Furthermore, he must not have had in his hand any of the objects which will be used for this transmutation.

Finally, to respond to the last arguments, it is essential that the data of contemporary chemistry are powerless to normally explain the result obtained.

For our work to find even more solid evidence, the reader must be able to easily verify all our assertions; this is why we will draw our arguments from a single, easy-to-find work: Alchemy and the Alchimists, by Louis Figuier.

Let us recall, before moving on, the most essential conditions:
1° Absence of the alchemist.
2° That he has not touched anything that is useful to the operator.
3° That the fact is inexplicable by contemporary chemistry.
And we can also add:
4° That the operator cannot be suspected of complicity.



Let us open the book of M. Figuier, edition of 1854, chapter III, page 206. There, we find, not one, but three facts answering all our conditions and which we are going to discuss one by one.

Not only is the operator not an alchemist but he is a considered scholar, a declared enemy of alchemy, which responds even more forcefully to our fourth condition. Let us speak first, Helvetius and his transmutation; we quote Figuier verbatim:

“Jean-Frédéric-Schweitzer, known by the Latin name Helvetius, was one of the most determined opponents of alchemy; he had even made himself famous by writing against the sympathetic powder of Chevalier Digby. On December 27, 1666, he received a visit in The Hague from a foreigner dressed, he said, like a bourgeois from the North of Holland and who stubbornly refused to make his name known. This stranger announced to Helvetius that, upon hearing of his argument with the knight Digby, he had rushed to bring him material proof of the existence of the philosopher's stone. In a long conversation, the adept defended the Hermetic principles, and, to remove his adversary's doubts, he showed him the philosopher's stone in a small ivory box. It was a sulfur-colored metallic powder. In vain Helvetius conjured the stranger to demonstrate to him by fire the virtues of his powder, the alchemist resisted all entreaties and withdrew, promising to return in three weeks.

While chatting with this man and examining the philosopher's stone, Helvetius had had the skill to detach a few bits of it and keep them hidden under his fingernail. No sooner was he alone than he hastened to try its virtues. He put molten lead in a crucible and made the projection. But everything vanished into smoke. Only a little lead and vitrified earth remained in the crucible.

“Considering this man as an impostor from then on, Helvetius had almost forgotten the adventure when, three weeks later and on the appointed day, the stranger reappeared. He again refused to perform the operation himself; but, yielding to the doctor's entreaties, he presented him with a little of his stone, about the size of a grain of millet. And, as Helvetius expressed the fear that such a small quantity of substance could not have the slightest property, the alchemist, still finding the gift too magnificent, removed half of it, saying that the rest was sufficient to transmute an ounce and half lead. At the same time, he took care to make known in detail the precautions necessary for the success of the work and recommended above all, at the time of the projection, to wrap the philosopher's stone in a little wax, in order to protect it from lead fumes. Helvetius understood at this moment why the transmutation he had attempted had failed in his hands; he had not wrapped the stone in wax, and therefore neglected an indispensable precaution.

“The stranger also promised to come back the next day to witness the experiment.

“The next day Helvetius waited in vain; the whole day passed without anyone being seen. When evening came, the doctor's wife, unable to contain her impatience any longer, decided her husband to attempt the operation alone. The test was carried out by Helvetius in the presence of his wife and son."

"He melted an ounce and a half of lead, threw the stone wrapped in wax onto the molten metal, covered the crucible with its lid and left it exposed a quarter of an hour by the action of the fire: At the end of this time the metal had acquired the beautiful green color of molten gold; cast and cooled, it became a magnificent yellow.

“All the goldsmiths of The Hague estimated the grade of this gold very highly. Povelius, general assayer of the coins of Holland, treated it seven times with antimony without it decreasing in weight. »

Such is the narration that Helvetius himself gives of this adventure. The terms and minute details of his story exclude, on his part, any suspicion of imposture. He was so amazed by this success that it was on this occasion that he wrote his Vitulus aureus, in which he recounts this fact and defends alchemy.



This fact meets all the required conditions. However, Mr. Figuier, feeling how difficult it was to explain, added some explanations in a later edition (1860).
Wanting to find everywhere a priori fraud, here is his main argument: .

The alchemist bribed an accomplice who came to place in one of Helvetius' crucibles a gold compound that was easily decomposed by heat. Is it necessary to show the naivety of this objection?

1° How to choose just the crucible that Helvetius will take?
2° How can we believe that he is so stupid as not to recognize an empty crucible from a full one or an alloy from a metal?
3° Why not take the trouble to reread the account of the facts; Mr. Figuier would have seen two important points:

First the following sentence: “He took an ounce and a half of lead. » Which indicates that he weighed it, that he handled it, which would have put him in a position to easily check if it was really lead.

4° Then this little detail: “He covered the crucible with his lid”, which prevents any further evaporation.
5° Even supposing that Helvetius really was deceived; that he, an experienced scientist, took gold for lead, the proof of the transmutation is no less obvious, because the critics always forget the following fact: If there exists an
alloy hiding gold in it , the ingot, after evaporation or oxidation of the impure metal, will weigh much less than the metal initially used.

If, on the contrary, gold is added by any process, the ingot will weigh much more than the metal initially used.

Now the transmutation of Bérigard of Pisa, which we will find below, irrefutably proves the inanity of these arguments.

Finally, to destroy Mr. Figuier's assertions forever, it is enough to note that the goldsmiths of The Hague, as well as the tester of the coins of Holland, noted the absolute purity of the gold, which would be impossible if there had been some sort of alloy. Thus falls by itself the explanation that the critic gives of this fact: .

“Today we can hardly explain these facts except by admitting that the mercury that was used or the crucible that was used contained a certain quantity of gold hidden with marvelous skill (10). »

We said that a single well-proven fact was enough to demonstrate the existence of the philosopher's stone; and yet there are three; under the same conditions.

Let's look at the other two:

Here is the story of Bérigard de Pisa, similarly cited by Figuier (p. 214):
“I will report,” Bérigard of Pisa told us, “what happened to me in the past when I strongly doubted whether it was possible to convert mercury into gold. A clever man, wishing to remove my doubt in this regard, gave me a bulk of a powder whose color was quite similar to that of wild poppy, and whose odor was reminiscent of calcined sea salt. To destroy any suspicion of fraud. I myself bought the crucible, the coal and the mercury from various merchants, so as not to have to fear that there was no gold in any of these materials, which is what alchemical charlatans often do. . To 10 gros of mercury, I added a little powder, I exposed everything to a fairly strong fire, and, in a short time, the mass was all converted into nearly 10 gros of gold, which was recognized as very pure, by the tests of various goldsmiths. If this fact had not happened to me without witnesses, without the presence of foreign arbitrators, I might have suspected some fraud; but I can assure you with confidence that the thing happened as I relate it. »

Here, it is still a scientist who operates; but he knows the tricks of charlatans and employs all imaginable precautions to avoid them.

Finally, let us again quote the transmutation of Van Helmont, in order to edify the impartial reader in all respects:

In 1618; in his laboratory in Vilvoorde, near Brussels, Van Helmont received a quarter of a grain from an unknown hand. It came from a follower, who, having arrived at the discovery of the secret, wanted to convince of its reality the illustrious scholar whose work honored his era.

Van Helmont himself carried out the experiment alone in his laboratory with the quarter of a grain of powder which he had received from the unknown; he transformed eight ounces of mercury into gold. It must be agreed that such a fact was an almost unanswerable argument to be made in favor of the existence of the philosopher's stone, Van Helmont, the most skilful chemist of his time, was difficult to deceive; he himself was incapable of imposture, and he had no interest in lying, since he never took the slightest advantage from this observation.

Finally, the experiment having taken place without the presence of the alchemist, it is difficult to understand how the fraud could have slipped in. Van Helmont was so well informed on this subject that he became an avowed supporter of alchemy. In honor of this adventure, he gave the name Mercurius to his newborn son. This Mercurius Van Helmont did not deny his alchemical baptism. He converted Leibniz to this opinion; throughout his life he searched for the philosopher's stone and died without having found it, it is true, but as a fervent apostle.
Let us now take up these three stories, and we will see that they meet the scientific conditions laid down. Indeed:

Did mercury or lead contain gold? I don't think so, expected: .
1° That Helvetius, who did not believe in alchemy, nor Van Helmont and Bérigard de Pisa who were in the same situation, were not going to have fun using it.
2° That in no case had the alchemist touched the objects used.
3° Finally that in the transmutation of Bérigard de Pisa, if the mercury had contained gold and the latter had remained alone after the volatilization of the first, the ingot obtained would have weighed much less than the mercury used, which does not 'is not.

After these arguments, one might think that the list is closed; not in the least, there is still one left, not very honest, it is true, but all the more dangerous:

“All these stories, taken from printed books, are not the work of the signing authors, but of skillful imposter alchemists. » This is certainly a terrible objection which seems to destroy all our work; but the truth can still emerge victoriously.

Indeed, there is a letter from a third person as eminent as the others, the philosopher Spinosa, addressed to Jarrig Jellis. This letter irrefutably proves the reality of Helvetius' experiment. Here is the important passage:

“Having spoken to Voss about the Helvetius affair, he laughed at me, wondering at my being occupied with such trifles. To find out for sure, I went to the mint Brechtel, who had tried gold. This one assured me that, during its fusion, the gold had still increased in weight when silver had been thrown into it. It was therefore necessary that this gold, which changed silver into new gold, was of a very particular nature. Not only Brechtel, but also other people who had been present at the trial assured me that it had happened that way. I then went to Helvetius himself, who showed me the gold and the crucible still containing a little gold attached to its walls. It is unheard of that he had barely thrown on the molten lead a quarter of a wheat grain of philosopher's stone. He added that he would make this story known to everyone. It seems that this follower had already had the same experience in Amsterdam, where he could still be found. This is all the information I was able to gather on this subject (11).

“Boobourg, March 27, 1667.

“SPINOSA. These
are the facts that have led us to this conviction:
The philosopher's stone has given irrefutable proof of its existence, unless we deny forever the testimony of texts, history and men.

PAPUS.
1. Mr. Berthelot.
2. V. Ragon, Initiatory Fastes. (Occult Masonry).
3. See the admirable treatise entitled Lumière suc le chemin (by Carré).
4. Hermes revealed (See the end of this study). :
5. Alchemy course in nineteen lessons.
6. Alchemy and the Alchemists, p. 353.
7. Berthelot, The Origins of Alchemy p. 280.
8. Ibid., p. 297.
9. Ibid., p. 321.
10.Louis Figuier, ibid., p. 210.
11. Posthumous Opera, p. 553.

FIFTY WONDERFUL SECRETS OF ALCHEMY.

FOREWORD.

As we have just seen in the fine study above, alchemy is one of the most important among the occult sciences.

It does not constitute, as is still too often said in our time, the beginnings of modern chemistry; it represents, on the contrary, a complete philosophy of which chemical practices are only the justification. The alchemist, alone worthy of the name, was a philosopher in the deepest sense of the word: he did not seek gold for gold's sake; his most important goal was to find a universal cure for diseases.

The greatest difficulties have always surrounded the study of this science, and this is by design, because, according to the admission of the most eminent hermeticists, the work is relatively simple, and it is precisely for this reason that 'they hid it so carefully. There is not a word in their books that is not diverted from its true meaning, and all means have been used to conceal the truth from the profane. “Their works,” says Pernéty, “are only a web of enigmas, metaphors, allegories; they keep everything a secret and seem to have written only so as not to be heard. — They used symbolic figures for which no certain rules can be given, because “each philosopher has imagined them according to his fancy. »

This is not, however, the greatest obstacle. I believe that we can manage to translate symbols, to decipher hieroglyphics, to know the true meaning of words; the difficult thing is to understand the deep philosophy of the initiated Hermeticists, to put oneself into their mentality, to penetrate into their soul, to know, like them, that everything depends on the Invisible. In a word, to be worthy of success, one must have found the spiritual philosopher's stone, have become a real man again, a regenerate person.

It is therefore impossible to hide, if once we have understood the principles on which alchemy is based, the enormous difficulties that we encounter in its practice. It takes a combination of conditions that are very rare to find, especially in our time:

Lots of time and money, extensive knowledge of chemistry, superhuman patience, absolute contempt for gold; a very great science of the occult and hermetic tradition, a complete notion of one's own weakness, a great power of prayer and of trust in the Invisible.

These are the main qualities without which one cannot hope to succeed.

You must therefore feel truly called to this special work to begin it, because it is an extremely hard and painful path. To understand it, we only have to imagine the difficulties of encountering in a single being the synthetic science of antiquity and modern analytical science, the faith of a child, and the brain of a genius. I therefore do not encourage anyone to seek the philosopher's stone; but, alongside real alchemical practice, there are some rudimentary preparations that are still difficult, and yet affordable, although relating to the same principles.

I found, during research in libraries, a relatively clear manuscript, due to an alchemist: Jean de Roquetaillade, known as “Rupe Scissa”. The author takes care to explain to poor evangelizing men the philosophical expressions he uses. All the experiments mentioned are quite easy to try, although it is also necessary to be very patient and you should not hope to succeed the first time. I thought I would make a pleasant and useful work by presenting to the public some of our author's less difficult recipes.

I have simplified as much as possible, and translated the old language of the master into clear language.

Some of the elixirs, the recipe for which will be found below, have been tried in our day with full success. I am convinced that we will thus have a series of powerfully energized medications, with the help of which the evangelizing disciple will be able to do a lot of good (after medical advice, of course).

Sédir, in a pamphlet on occult medicine, says: “that in his opinion, the most learned of men, the most energetic, can do nothing without the help of God and does nothing without his permission, and that more than any science, more than any secret, the humble and sincere recourse to supreme virtue, to infinite charity, is the miraculous elixir”.

Allow me, on the first page of this work, to appeal to the same principles; to declare that man cannot do anything alone, not even attempt an elementary alchemy experiment. It is not he who acts, but the guides who are behind him, in his shadow.

May the disciple of “Rupe Scissa” therefore never forget the call to the Invisible; the sincere request for outside help, before lighting his stove. He must always remember that he is not alone; that eyes are fixed on him and see his intentions. Under these conditions, his heart will be illuminated, and this light will radiate around him.

The alcohol he will hold in his hands, the plants he will grind in his mortar, the fire itself, all these beings will be imbued with a force, a dynamism that they would not have if, rejecting every idea of ​​humility and prayer, he worked full of confidence in himself alone and in his own strength.

Everything is here ; this is the key to the truly miraculous action of certain products, such as the elixir of antimony for example, or drinking gold, the manufacture of which we will see later.

This is the spirit in which I present this work; may it allow some student, sincere and of good will, to do as the ancient Roses  Crosses did, to find, if not a universal medicine, at least a powerful restorative which, with the help of Heaven, will bring back life and happiness in many homes.

As we can see, my work has an almost exclusively practical aim. I wanted to enable those who felt enough patience and good will to try some modest achievements, referring for theory to the alchemists, to Papus, Poisson, Haatan, J. Castelot; nevertheless, I do not believe it is useless, if only to guide the readers' thoughts. towards the same current of ideas, to devote a few pages to the philosophical principles of the ancient hermeticists, to their general ideas on nature and matter to which our modern chemistry returns more and more every day. I will support these theories with two or three experiences full of lessons.



CHAPTER I.

For the Hermetic philosophers, Nature was the mass of all beings that make up the visible world; the principle, emanating from God but distinguished from him, which revives.

God brought nature out of nothingness; the world was formed from a vapor which condensed into chaotic water, containing within itself an invisible Spirit (the uncreated Fire), which, by its action on it, formed the whole Universe.

Everything is in everything; this spirit is distributed in all the bodies of nature which draw existence from it and also return to it after their dissolution.

In principle, this universal chaotic water was crystalline, clear, transparent, without particular smell or taste and without movement; all the elements were mixed up. Soon, by the action of the invisible Spirit contained therein, it fermented, became confused, gave birth to an earth of its own accord and putrefied.

The subtle parts were then separated from the gross, by degrees. The most subtle formed the sky or the fire; then, going down, air, water, earth. But these four elements differ only in their degree of subtlety or fixity; it is always the same, raw material, which has, so to speak, been classified under the action of the generative fire. Each of these forms of raw matter, or elements, produced its like, continually exteriorized a semential force, and from these united forces was born a water of the same nature as chaotic water, from which all physical things will take birth. This is the creation of the second world or astral plane.

The emanations of the sky, of the air, of the water, of the earth engender, we say, by their union a universal seed.

The sky acts first on the air; water, on earth; then from their union the second chaotic water (astral plane) is finally born, from which all physical things will emerge, be preserved, destroyed and regenerated. The sky and the air are therefore the active part; water and earth, the passive part of this primordial matter.

The action of the motor spirit in the elements is not the same for everyone. The more subtle the matter on which he will have to act, the more quickly it will receive its impulse.

"Fire" being the highest and most mobile part will therefore be the first to be set in motion; he will then act on the “air” himself; this one, on "water", and step by step on the coarsest part: "earth".

Here is how this action occurred for the fire:
After the separation or universal chaos (the hustle and bustle of Genesis), the ether, the fire, became the most subtle, the most incomprehensible and the highest being. He is the first agent, the father of all things, the male seed.
“Being the most mobile of the elements, it heats up by its perpetual movement, lights up, exhales in an invisible manner everything that it does not need for its consistency.

These emanations descend into the nearest sphere: the air (principle of gases), and, as they encounter a medium which is neither too thick nor too subtle, they allow themselves to be caught, mix with it. , coagulate with the most rarefied parts, circulating from side to side, until completely united they can approach the lower emanations (water and earth). »

By these continual emanations, the ether loses none of its forces, because it replaces them by parts which are similar to it; it receives vapors extracted from the air; he takes as many as he needs, absorbs them, thus changes them into his nature and expels the superfluous.

The immediately less subtle matter, where the air takes hold of it, thickens, resolves what is useless to it into rain and dew, and pushes them towards the more inferior matter: water.

This, in turn, discharges the thick superfluities towards the earth which is satisfied with them, expels the parts which it has not absorbed, resolves them again into vapors which rise towards the air, and so on. following.

It is by observing these things that we will know the superior and the inferior of Hermes, the golden chain of Homer, the ring of Plato, and that we will be convinced that a thing is transmuted in the other and becomes similar to itself again.

The same reasoning is applicable to air, water and earth.

We must only understand that the further down we go, the closer we come to the physical plane.

Therefore, matter is one in its principle and will be one in its manifestations on earth.

Everything has its origin there and returns there.

All beings on earth will have a soul that comes from chaos, an astral body that comes from regenerated chaos or second world and a physical body that comes from earth.

The preceding theories apply to the first two worlds: the divine plane and the astral plane. Here now, according to Agrippa (1), the character of the elements or states of matter on the physical plane (third world):

“All bodies are composed of them, not by assembly, but by union, that is- that is to say that the different states are not superimposed in a body, but that they interpenetrate.

“All states of matter can transmute into each other.

“Solid matter can become liquid by dissolution or boiling; matter in the
liquid state can pass through heat to the gaseous state.

“This superheated gaseous state passes into the radiant or etheric state; but, this radiant matter being extinguished (that is to say having undergone a molecular change) returns to the gaseous state, then liquid, then solid.

“Each state of matter has two specific qualities, the first of which is specific to it, and the other serves as its link with the following state.

“Radiant matter is hot and dry; it participates in the quality of fire (luminosity).

“Solid matter is dry and cold; it has the qualities of the earth: solidity, hardness.

“Matter in the liquid state is cold and humid and shares the qualities of water: mobility; finally, matter in the gaseous state is humid and hot and participates in the qualities of the air: diaphaneity. »

It is through these different qualities that each state of matter is opposed to the other; Plato (2) gave the radiant state three qualities: clarity, rarefaction, maximum vibratory movement; in the solid state, darkness, thickness, minimum vibratory movement; — in the gaseous state, two qualities borrowed from the radiant state; rarefaction and very rapid vibratory movement; — in the liquid state, two qualities borrowed from the solid state: darkness and thickness, and one from the radiant state: movement, very rapid vibration.

In the etheric state, matter is twice as rarefied as in the gaseous state, three times more mobile and four times more active.

In the gaseous state, matter is twice as activated as in the liquid state, three times more rarefied, four times more mobile.

The liquid state has twice as much activity as the solid state, three times more rarefaction, four times more mobility.

We understand that this knowledge of the different states of matter and their relationships with each other plays a large part in the marvelous results of alchemy.

The Ancients, for so long considered as little children in all things, after the reaction of the 16th century, had, on the contrary, an in-depth knowledge of certain aspects of matter that are still little studied today.

Read, for example, this description of the properties of the ether, and we will be astonished: it is due to Dyonisius, quoted by Agrippa (3):

“The ether appears clearly, in all things, and moves away from them. He gives light to everything; it is hidden and unknown, when it exists by itself; it is luminous and invisible, disposed of itself to its own action. Excessively mobile, it communicates to everything that approaches it; it renews the forces, preserves nature. It includes all other states of matter and penetrates them all without needing any of them to exist. He is active, powerful, invisibly present in all things. He sometimes suddenly reduces matter inferior to him. It is impalpable; without diminution, since it communicates liberally to everything. It is in all beings: in stone, since a sudden blow “brings it out in the form of fire; in the earth, which smokes while digging it; in water, who sometimes gets heated in the fountains; in the air, which we often see heating up, etc., etc. »

These were the teachings of ancient philosophers about the formation of our world and the origin of matter. We will easily recognize the occult doctrine of the three worlds: divine, astral, physical or plane of principles, laws and facts.

To complete these elementary notions, it me. It remains to talk about putrefaction, which is closely linked to the ideas of the Hermetists, since our author's entire book is based on the way in which nature destroys bodies through putrefaction and then reconstitutes them. This is an extremely important point to which I would like to draw the reader's attention.

Why, in fact, did Rupe Scissa, whose secrets we are going to try, always recommend starting by rotting the bodies that we will have to take care of?

In this he obeyed the Self then in force. Today, if a pharmacist took care to cause the plants he prepares to rot, he would not be able to do so, as he lacked time; also, its products are extremely far from achieving the dynamism and radioactivity of alchemically prepared elixirs.

Below we will find a summary of putrefaction which philosophers did not hesitate to call the key to nature.

When ether is alone, it is incorruptible; but, as soon as it mixes with the elements, it also rots with them so as to create its like in the lower elements (that is to say in; mineral, vegetable, animal matter), such as it appears in our eyes. Material bodies cannot be produced and destroyed without putrefaction.

Their faculty of putrefaction varies greatly; it is very great in animals, less in vegetables, barely perceptible in minerals (except for iron).

By putrefaction, the minerals become vegetable; plants, animals. It is the marvelous blacksmith, who makes a solid a liquid, a liquid a gas, a gas an ether, and vice versa. There is in all putrefaction a Spirit which one could call the force of dissociation: it separates the pure from the impure; it conjoins and coagulates the molecules forming a being and that, until the term of this being; then, it putrefies it again, it resolves it, separates it; this spirit is therefore the generator, the preserver, the destroyer and the regenerator of all things.

In its principle, it is entirely invisible and intangible; but when it descends into a body, it is materialized in part; it then becomes visible and palpable; it appears to our eyes in a very white, crystalline, transparent form; it is cold as ice, and yet, if it were collected in large quantities, it would blow everything up.

“It is he who causes earthquakes; it is widespread in all creatures and gives them life. It is the principle of birth, destruction, regeneration. He is never at rest.

“Riplée defines putrefaction, the death of bodies and the division of the materials of our compound, which leads them to corruption and disposes them to generation. Putrefaction is the effect of body heat, maintained continuously, and not of heat applied manually. We must therefore be careful not to push the exciting and external heat beyond a moderate degree; the matter would be reduced to dry, red ashes, instead of black, and everything would perish.

“Putrefaction usually follows solution, and it is often confused with digestion and circulation. We regard putrefaction as the fourth degree of chemical operations: it is THE MAIN and should be regarded as the first; but order and mystery demand that we give him this place, says Paracelsus; she is known to very few people; and these degrees, he adds (book VII of The Nature of Things), must succeed one another like the rings of a chain, or the rungs of a ladder; of which, if we remove one, there would be an interruption, the prisoner would escape, we would not be able to achieve the goal we propose and the whole work would perish.

“Putrefaction is so effective that it destroys the ancient nature and form of the putrefied body; she transmutes it into a new way of being to make it produce a completely new fruit. Everything that has life dies there; everything that is dead petrifies there and finds new life there. Putrefaction removes all acridity from the corrosive spirits of salt and makes them sweet; it charges the colors, it raises the pure above and precipitates the impure by separating them one from the other.

“When physicists say that no generation takes place without putrefaction having preceded it, we should not understand it as an intimate corruption or putrefaction of the principles of the mixture and of the proper substance of the compound, but of that yes simply produces the solution of external sperm (4) and which frees the principles from the links which embarrassed them and prevented them from acting. When putrefaction passes this degree, the various species of mixed species (5) do not generate their fellows, and degenerate into other mixed species, as wheat degenerates into tares. Thus entire or substantial putrefaction extinguishes the form of the mixture.

“The physical putrefaction of a body is the “purgation of the radical humid (astral body)” by the natural and spontaneous fermentation of “pure and homogeneous principles with the impure” and the heterogeneous” (Pernety).

We therefore understand that we must begin by rotting a body on which we want to act, because in this way we open it, we dispose it to a change, to an evolution, since this is the path followed by nature itself.

As we can see, these notions on putrefaction complete this overview of the ideas of the ancient Hermetists on nature.

I will now keep the promise I made to quote verbatim two or three alchemical experiences.

The first is intended to provide proof that nature never mixes the various bodies without conforming to their degree of subtlety.

The second, the most important, to show that rainwater and dew contain the four elements (the three kingdoms of nature).

The third, finally, makes it possible to make visible the form that the spirit takes on the physical level: universal.

FIRST EXPERIENCE.

Take any land from the fields or meadows; pour water into it and grind well; let it rest together; the largest parts of the earth will precipitate, and the water will take care of the most subtle part which constitutes the “salt” (or between the spirit and the body of this earth) (astral body).

When the coarser part, or earth, is removed, water can no longer act on the remaining earth, being too weak for that.

“It is therefore first necessary to reduce the weaker earth that it still contains to water, and this is achieved by distillation; it will then again acquire the strength to separate in the remaining earth the finer parts from the coarser ones, to reduce them also, into water which acts again on the earth, and so on. »

SECOND EXPERIENCE

“Take and collect dew or rain, or snow, frost or frost, whichever you please (the process will be shorter and better if you take rainwater, especially when it thunders) ; put it in a clean barrel, filter it, so that it does not retain dirt from roofs or thunder.

You will have crystalline, clear and transparent water, which has no particular taste and which resembles fountain water. In short, very clear water, very pure and very good to drink. Put this water in a warm place under a roof, where the sun, the moon, the wind or the rain cannot give; cover it with a cloth or the bottom of a barrel so that no impurity can fall into it; leave it in this state for a month without moving it; during this time you will see a great alteration in his nature; it will soon begin to be set in motion by the spirit that is implanted there; it will warm and heat up imperceptibly, putrefy, become stinking and cloudy.

“There we will see the spirit or the archaeum carrying out a separation of the subtle from the gross, of the clear from the thick, because there will arise there an earth which will increase more and more, become heavy and will fall basically. This earth, which the archaea separates, is brown in color, spongy, as gifted to the tact as fine wool, sticky, viscous and oleaginous. This is the true universal Guhr.

“The curious will noticeably see two things, namely: water and earth in which the sky and the air are hidden; for we cannot see the sky, because of the weakness of our eyesight; we see the air well, when it flies in its sphere in the form of vapor, smoke, or fog, but here the air is reduced to water and contained in the water, just like the sky. The amateur will therefore find two visible elements, water and earth (6). Previously, there was only volatile water; now, the earth has become visible, through the benignity of putrefaction or lukewarm digestion; as for the sky and the air (7), we must seek them by another way.

“After the rainwater has been thus disturbed, stir everything well together, pour it into a copper pot which you will place on a stove, make a fire underneath, so that the water starts to evaporate, and you will see coming out of the matrass a vapour, an exhalation, smoke or mist; here is the air (8) which contains the sky within itself.

“If you want to take the air and reduce it to water, together with the sky, you only have to adapt to the matras a spouted capital with its meeting vase, as brandy distillers do ; this vapor will condense in the capital and rise in the form of clear, crystalline water in the container; distill the fourth part of the water that you put in the matra, you will have the sky and the air joined together, and separated from the water and the earth in the form of beautiful water.

You will distinguish the sky by its luminous radiance, because this water, especially if it has been rectified, will be much more brilliant than it was before, or than fountain water, however limpid it may be; which clearly demonstrates that it contains a superior virtue or that it contains within itself a celestial quality. After you have the air and the sky, you will put them apart, and continue to distil until it is thick like melted honey, but not; until dry; because you would burn the virgin earth which is still tender, and which has not acquired supreme fixity; you will set aside this second distilled water which is the third element.

“For what remains in the matras, that is to say the earth which is still very damp, you will remove it cleanly and put it in a glass dish which you will expose to the sun to dry it completely, until until you can reduce it to powder with your fingers; thus you will have the four elements before your eyes: solid, liquid, gaseous, ethereal, liquefied matter, mixed with water.

“Let us now be sure that these are the four elements, because without this, what we have said about them would be false: knowing that it is from them that all sublunary things take birth. No one should imagine that they can produce, with this water, stars, meteors, because this water is itself a meteoric production; so, I will not talk about it, we will only examine whether this quadruple water can procreate what is necessary for us, namely: animals, plants and minerals, which serve our purposes and from which we draw our sustenance.

“So take some of this earth, and, if you want to make minerals from it, moisten it a little with its water in a mattress and expose it to the heat of the sun in a place where its rays cannot dart. When it is dry, moisten it again with its water, but not with the sky and the air (or with that which contains the sky and the air); repeat these humidifications and dryings several times, and, if you wish, you will thereby reduce all the earth to mineral earth. You will find that, through humidification and drying, the earth will have become heavy and sandy; note that it will be enough for the mat to always be blocked with a cloth of paper only, and not even too tight, so that the air can enter it. penetrate better.

“When you see that the earth will be reduced to sand, you will no longer doubt that there is sand; a mineral, because, surely, it is neither in the class of plants nor in that of animals; therefore he could not; be only a mineral. When you have a quantity of this sand, take a little, test it, as one does with mineral earth, and you will see a vestige of gold and silver.

“If you want to produce a plant from the above-mentioned earth, take from this earth dried up and pulverized by the heat of the sun 2 parts of its water and 1 part of sky and air; mix these waters together and moisten the earth as gardeners do, so that it is neither too dry nor too humid, expose it to the air, not to the sun, and you will see all kinds of small plants grow there. herbs. If you put the seed of a plant there, the fruit of this seed will not fail to grow there; through this you will have vegetable procreation.

“If you want to get it from the animal, you will take the above-mentioned earth dried in the sun and pulverized, and you will soak it with 1 part of water and 2 or 3 parts of sky and air mixed together, adding to it this mixture, until the earth has the consistency of melted clear honey; put it in a warm place, away from direct sunlight. so that it does not dart its rays too much; In a few days you will see a stirring and swarming of all kinds of small animals of different species. If the water and humidity drops too much, you will moisten it again with the same water mixture, so that everything remains in the same honeyed consistency. You will see that the first animals will partly disappear; that others will be born,

“I would gladly teach here a manipulation, by which we could produce all kinds of animals of the species we wanted; but although I am not accused of interfering in the functions of the Creator, I prefer to remain silent about it. We should, however, reason with more solidity and think that God created everything from nothing and without matter, whereas we, by wanting to weakly imitate him, are unable to move on from created matter. God has not forbidden us to recreate ourselves in his works and his creatures, but rather he commands it to his elect, and has revealed it to them in secret as a cabalistic science by which they can arrive more and more at the knowledge of God . »

We see through this beautiful experience that rainwater and the earth it contains can reproduce the three kingdoms. We can therefore be certain that it is the universal seed from which all things can be procreated once they have been formed in principle in the original chaos.

Few people know the cause of the fertility that rainwater gives. Certainly, it is the spirit that it contains which acts, but it is too volatile for it to be able to do so without taking on a palpable and visible body. Many often touch the body without suspecting it, and it can be collected in quantity. Very few people know the origin of this concentrated, condensed seed, which is truly the “spirit of the world” in a diaphanous, crystalline body. It is a dry water that does not wet the hands, an aqueous and igneous earth; a coagulated fire; a thing, in a word, more precious than all treasures.

Here is how we can make it perceptible to our senses:

THIRD EXPERIENCE.

“Take putrefied water from the barrel above, full of a glass vase or a cauldron, evaporate it over the fire up to a third, let it cool until slightly lukewarm. Filter it well from all the faeces into a vase or dish of pewter, glass, or wood; immerse this vase in cool water.

“You will see in one night this spirit of the world showing itself in two different forms, or taking on two different bodies, one crystalline, diamond-like and transparent, which will attach itself to the sides and edges of the vase; and if we put small pieces of wood in the vase, it will also stick to it and the other will remain at the bottom in a shape slightly brownish.

“Take separately the one that is attached to the sides and edges of the vase; keep it neatly; also remove the one at the bottom, pouring the water out by inclination; dry it well in the sun or gently on a lukewarm stove; keep it also separately address with these two to the lame Vulcan (to the fire); he will tell you who they are and what their names are.

“Throw the first one that sticks to the sides of the vase onto the hot coals; its sudden inflammation will tell you that it is nitre. Also throw the second on the same coals; by the noise it makes, you will recognize the salt: an ordinary, alkaline and decrepitating salt. »

I hope that these three achievements, although difficult to reproduce, will make the author's thoughts clearly understood.

I could have continued these interesting quotes which reveal to us the soul of philosophers.

I must limit myself; and these few notes will, I hope, be sufficient for the purpose I have in mind.

So let us move on to the study of the complicated laboratory of the alchemists and its modern adaptation.



1. Occult Philosophy.
2. Quoted by Agrippa, The Occult Philosophy.
3. Occult Philosophy (French translation).
4. The force which holds the molecules of a body together in an external form.
5. A mixed is what we call a compound body.
6. Liquid and solid materials.
7. Clearest parts of the water.
8. The most volatile parts of water.



CHAPTER II.

THE ANCIENT DEVICES OF THE HERMETISTS.

I have previously summarized, by way of documentation, some of the principal theories of the alchemists on nature, and I have cited a certain number of typical experiments in spagyric art, not for the sake of reproduction, which is what I believe it is extremely difficult, but to show what the Hermetic initiates could obtain outside of the stone, and to make it understood that the experiences, the facts really came in second line, the principles and laws being judged by them very differently. important.

With the same aim, before giving some practical advice and describing the very simple modern laboratory, I would like to devote a few pages as a curiosity and also for teaching, to the summary reproduction of the main instruments and apparatus of the old laboratory.

We will see that this study will not be useless; moreover, the attached plates are not very easy to find outside libraries. The numbers placed under each figure will allow you to refer to the device described.

Here, first, some details about the stoves (1):
“Alchemical philosophers also have their furnace, which they keep a great secret.

D'Espagnet, who is believed to be true among them, describes it thus: Those who are experienced in the operations of the magisterium have called the third vessel which contains the others and preserves all the work a furnace or oven, and they have affected to hide it closely. secretly; they named him Athanor because he maintains an immortal and inextinguishable fire; because it administers a continuous fire in operations, although sometimes unequal depending on the quality of the material and the size of the furnace.

“It must be made from baked bricks or clay or well-ground and sifted clay, mixed with horse manure and hair, so that the force of the heat does not cause it to crack; the walls will be three or four fingers thick, to be able to better retain the heat and resist its violence.

“Its shape will be round, its interior height two feet or about; we will adapt in the middle an iron or copper plate, pierced with a number of holes supported by four or five iron pins, embedded in the walls of the furnace. The diameter of this plate will be almost an inch less than the interior diameter of the stove, so that the heat can communicate more easily, both through the holes and through the space which remains empty between the plate and the walls. Below the plate will be made a small door to administer the fire, and above it, another to examine the degrees of the fire with the hand. Opposite the latter, we will make a window closed with glass, in order to be able to see the colors which appear in the material during the operations. The top of the furnace must be made in a dome, and the cap must be removable to be able to place the vases containing the material on the arcane tripod which will be placed in the middle of the plate. When we have placed the vases in this way, we place the cap on the stove, and we read the joints, so that everything becomes one body. You must also take care to close the small windows properly to prevent heat from escaping. »

Philalethes gives a roughly similar description.
“Although chemical philosophers have not commonly divulged the construction of the furnace we have just discussed, it is nevertheless not the one they call their secret furnace”; By this they often mean the fire of nature, which acts in mines for the composition of metals, and, more often, their celestial water or their mercury; this is why Philaletus (fons chimicae philosophicae) says. So we only have one a. vase, a furnace, a fire, and all this is only one thing, namely: our water.

“If Hermetic Chemistry is true, those who seek the philosopher's stone through the vases of vulgar chemistry are therefore very wrong to have so many different furnaces built, according to the different operations they want to carry out: one for sublimations, a another for the calcinations, a third for the fusion, a fourth for the lamp-post, another for the digestions, several finally for the various distillations. All the chemical philosophers all agree in saying that only one is needed which is used for all these different operations which are all done in the same vase without changing its place. Which made the cosmopolitan known as Sendivogius say: If Hermes, the father of philosophers, were resurrected today with the subtle Geber, the profound Raymond Lulle, they would not be regarded as philosophers by our vulgar chemists, who would hardly deign to put them among the number of their disciples, because they would not know how to go about proceeding with all these distillations, these circulations, these calcinations and all those innumerable operations which our vulgar chemists have invented for having misunderstood the allegorical writings of these philosophers. »

The furnace, says the alchemist Rhenanus (1613), is the apparatus in which the fire is governed properly and with skill, in order to subject the matter to a certain chemical work. It may or may not be open. Open stoves are those whose upper part is open; they are divided into test furnaces and air furnaces. The testing or docimastic furnace is an open furnace, in which the most perfect metals are purified and tested. This stove, most often made of earth or iron, thin and rarely made of bricks, is built in the following way (fig. 1). We take a plate of iron or refractory earth; it is arranged in a frame, so that the width of a foot divided into twelve parts constitutes the extent of the base and six times its length; but, when in length the measurement has been taken eight times, the furnace must be curved, giving it a slight inclination so that it becomes narrower by four measures and the opening retains only the value of seven measures. It is then appropriate that the thickness of the plate be one and a half measures, but, on the other hand, that the bottom and the earthen base marked by the letter A should only be three quarters of a measure. This done, it is necessary to take again three measurements from the base and four in width which will constitute the opening at the bottom indicated by the letter B. From the top of this opening, the wall must be continued by two measurements which fill the space between this same opening and the one which immediately follows it; this interval is marked by the letter C. From there, there are still three and a half measures and four in width. Which will provide the location and dimensions of this second opening which will be made in D.


FIG. 1
We will carry the length of a measure above it and we will drill a small hole in the middle, barely the size of a little finger, which will allow the coal to be stirred with an iron rod. Furthermore, three-quarters of a measurement away from this opening on the left and right, we will make two other holes marked FF, admitting about a finger; in these holes to which two other holes in the opposite wall must correspond, iron rods must be placed, which protrude four fingers from the interior wall; then at each opening, to moderate the fire, we will make a door with a handle intended to grasp it. The upper door will have an oblong hole so that once closed, nothing is inaccessible to view; the lower one will have a round one and larger for the draw. On the iron rod is placed a plate of earth dug on three sides, so that the ashes can pass through, the fourth side intact, and firmly applied to the front wall. On top is placed the floor of the oven and the muffle which must be to the sides and back by two and a half measures; in addition, a round hole is dug near the upper opening to spare the air: it is indicated by G, a letter which is also found on the window of the lower door. All this arranged in this way, we print in the still soft earth ditches or furrows intended to receive iron plates which reinforce the furnace; this is finally left to dry in the sun and taken to the potter who will carefully fire it. On top is placed the floor of the oven and the muffle which must be to the sides and back by two and a half measures; in addition, a round hole is dug near the upper opening to allow air: it is indicated by G, a letter which is also found on the window of the lower door. All this arranged in this way, we print in the still soft earth ditches or furrows intended to receive iron plates which reinforce the furnace; this is finally left to dry in the sun and taken to the potter who will carefully fire it. On top is placed the floor of the oven and the muffle which must be to the sides and back by two and a half measures; in addition, a round hole is dug near the upper opening to allow air: it is indicated by G, a letter which is also found on the window of the lower door. All this arranged in this way, we print in the still soft earth ditches or furrows intended to receive iron plates which reinforce the furnace; this is finally left to dry in the sun and taken to the potter who will carefully fire it. ditches or furrows are imprinted in the still soft earth to receive iron plates which reinforce the furnace; it is finally left to dry in the sun and taken to the potter who will bake it carefully. we print in the still soft earth ditches or furrows intended to receive iron plates which reinforce the furnace; this is finally left to dry in the sun and taken to the potter who will carefully fire it.

This is the best way to build a docimastic furnace, both because it is not easily clogged with ashes and is also suitable for any docimastic operation, as well as because it protrudes much all the others by his happy disposition to direct the fire.

After talking about simple furnaces, we are brought to compound or complex furnaces, that is to say those where a single fire maintains several furnaces, this is the athanor.

The athanor, also called the philosophical or secret furnace, is specially constructed to provide suitable heat, the fire not reaching the vase for the elaboration of the secret stone of the philosophers. Many people have imagined many models of this same stove; However, there is one of our invention which seems to us to fulfill the desired purpose and which surpasses all the others, not only by the fact of the contiguity of the fire, but also by its easy moderation. We make (fig. 2) a round wall, one foot high with a space left free on one side for the opening used to extract the ashes; an iron gate is established above it, and on this gate a wall is raised high like a small tower, wider at the bottom than at the top, which we indicate by the letter D; above the grid,



FIG. 2
It is this tower that we fill with coal to the top and which we then close with a lid of earth E; from behind, near the grid, we leave a hole F open, so that the heat penetrates into the athanor, and, this hole, we close it with a plate or door G which some call "register", and which can be raised or lowered as desired. To this tower thus constructed, we annex a lateral furnace, or athanor proper; we make a round wall, a foot and a half high applied exactly to the rear wall of the keep marked I; on this wall we erect a curved oven K, leaving at the top of the vault a hole L like an imperial thaler through which the heat, which has in some way reverberated in this place thanks to the vault, can rise into the next oven ; of this same vault, we raise another wall by a foot and a half, and we close it with the N vault, at the top of which we make an orifice O, as in the lower one.

It is necessary on one side of the middle part to leave a free place through which we can enter and remove the material, because it is this middle part which is the seat of the work that the material will undergo in its vase placed on a tripod.

At this opening you need a door that is well applied and that closes perfectly, for fear that a little air can enter by this way; four fingers above this second vault starting from its base, we set up four ventilators with their obturators PP serving to increase or decrease the heat, and we close the furnace with the third vault Q. Let us now pass to the other instruments . One will notice their form voluntarily in relation either with the man, or with the animals. These drawings have retained their primitive naivete. They correspond to the various degrees of fire.

The vial (phiala) is an earthen vessel with a spherical belly, a long, slender neck; it is frequently used in solutions and coagulations (fig.3).

The circulatorium is a glass vase in which the liquor contained therein, rising and falling, is carried away in a rotary movement as in a circus; it is used in sublimations and circulations. Different people have imagined several kinds; I will only cite two very esteemed and widely used ones which we like more, namely: the pelican and the Dyota.



FIG. 3



FIG. 4
The pelican (fig.4) is a circulatory vase in the shape of a bird and represented at the moment when it pierces its chest with its beak to feed its young; it has a large belly continuing with a narrow neck, which, curved, opens into the belly itself. At the bottom of this vase is a channel, through which the liquor is poured and which is, at the time of heating, sealed with the seal of Hermes.

The Dyota (fig. 5) is a circulatory vessel with two handles, like a man who has his two arms touching his sides; the lower part is in the shape of a retort at the top of which is a still having a channel intended to pour the liquor into it.

At this location, there are the two curved arms bringing the condensed liquid into the retort in the capital.

There is also another species of circulatory vase, which Raymond Lulle made frequent use of and which it is interesting to reproduce here: the cucurbit is a vase with a belly usually swollen in the shape of a squash (cucurbita) or pear; there are cucurbits with flat bottoms, others with round bottoms. Finally, we will find in Figures 6 and 6 bis two other curious examples of vases reminiscent of the human form and the shape of a bird (2).



FIG. 5



FIG. 6



FIG. 6 bis
The devices described above are taken from alchemical works; here are now some curious plates borrowed from the famous chemistry of Lemery (1701). They are likely to interest the reader and give him a complete idea of ​​the old laboratories.

1. Don Pernety.
2. Rhenanaus.



FIRST BOARD.

Fixed streetlight furnace with a single retort.

To the ashtray. — B, the hearth. — C, the retort supported by two iron bars. — D, the dome. — E, small chimney. — F, balloon or container. — G, dome separated from the furnace. — Hl, fixed lamppost furnace, with two retorts without container. — KL, the Cols des Cornues. — M, dome with its cap. — K, separate dome without cap. — O, retort or retort. — P, small separate chimney. — Q, portable melting furnace with its holes or registers. — B, tripod to support it. — S, dome separating into two pieces. — T, Small chimney. — U, earthenware pot pierced in the middle of its height. — X, its cap at the bottom. — Y, three earth aludels. — Z, Glass capital. —



PLATE 2.

AB, large fixed lamp furnace with six retorts. — C, hearth door. — DE, the six retorts supported by three iron bars. — FG, the six containers adapted to retorts. — H, separate retorts. — I, separate stoneware container. — K, fixed furnace for placing a large copper cucurbit. — L, copper cucurbite tinned on the inside. — M, Moorish head. — N, tinned copper pipe passing through a barrel filled with water. — O, glass container. — P, tap to let the water out of the barrel as it gets hot. — Q, matras. — RS, matras with its adapted capital. —



PLATE 3.

A, fixed furnace for placing a large copper cucurbit. — B, large copper cucurbit tinned inside. — C, small copper pipe with its cap. — D, tin coil. —E, Moor's head. — F, G, two iron bars attached to the wall which support the refrigerant. — H, container. — 1, fixed stove for placing a steam bath. — K, large copper basin which enters the furnace to contain the water. — L, window. — M, cove of the basin. — N, large cucurbit of tinned copper on the inside, the bottom of which fits into the top of the basin. — O, capital and refrigerant. — P, tap to let the water out as it gets hot. — Q, container. — R, siphon. — S, small stove and a capsule with sand and a terrine filled with liquor in the middle to evaporate. — T, small stove. — V, the iron pot. —X, its lid.—



PLATE 4.

A, copper bain-marie for distilling with four stills. — B, pipe to bring hot water into the basin as it is used up. — C, iron stove on which the bain-marie is placed. — D, bain-marie for distilling with a single still. — E, portable furnace for distilling over a sand fire. — F, the ashtray and its door. — G, the hearth and its door. — H, the curcurbite surrounded by sand. — I, the marquee. — K, the container. — L, detached cucurbit — — M, detached chapter u. — N, common iron furnace. — O, mold for making packets of antimony regula. “P, Q, meeting ship. — RS, pot with a paper cone for extracting benzoin flowers. — T, glass for making clove oil. — V. cloth tied around the glass containing the powdered cloves. — X, earthen bowl which contains hot ashes.

CHAPTER III.

THE MODERN ADAPTATION LABORATORY.

I think I have clearly indicated my aim: It is therefore useless to repeat it here; However, I still want to affirm that I did not have the thought of directing anyone towards the search for the philosopher's stone or the elixir (universal medicine. This would, in my opinion, take a serious responsibility. I wanted to , first, to bring my modest contribution to the work of popularizing ancient science to which so many masters have devoted their lives, then to put a few sincere students in a position to reproduce ancient and precious formulas, too forgotten.

The preparation of these quintessences is very closely linked to alchemy, although one should naturally hope to find neither the stone nor the mercury of the wise; it is linked to it by the philosophical principles which are the same, and by the processes which differ greatly from ordinary chemical manipulations and are close to those of the Hermetists. As I am writing for beginners, being a beginner myself, I will give details that may seem naive. I apologize to the scholars who read me, but we must think of those who do not know.

The lab will be very simple; a large white wooden table for the gas stove, a board to place the retorts, tubes, vases, mineral, plant or animal products used; a small lockable cabinet to hold full jars and vases; easy water intake, a bunsen burner, and that's about it. Do not be afraid to keep it simple, the more poverty there is in the installation, the more the invisible will help us; let us never forget that we can do nothing alone, and that it is to the little ones, not to the proud, that the deepest secrets of nature are given, the Gospel says it in full.

“Rupe Scissa” is very much in favor of this way of seeing. I noticed that, when he gives several ways of operating, it is generally the cheapest which is the best; we will notice this, for example, for wine: he first recommended using very good wine, then ended up saying that one could take rotten wine. Now, if we remember the passage on putrefaction, we see that this is indeed the best process.

Our little laboratory will therefore be installed according to these ideas. That said, we will successively give details on heating, the different degrees of fire, the lutes or closing of the retorts, the small number of instruments necessary; we will end with some advice regarding handling.

Heating. — In general, one can replace, especially for elementary preparations, all; the stoves described above speak of a simple gas stove.

Gas allows you to start at a low level and gradually build up to very high heat. It does, however, have a serious inconvenience: when it comes to work requiring very gentle heat, of uninterrupted duration, for example ten or fifteen days and even more, it cannot be left to itself without supervision or without special gas holders: the slightest draft could extinguish it and cause serious accidents, not to mention lost work. Although the word oil lamp, often used by alchemists, contains a secret meaning, one can however use the apparatus (fig. 7), operating on oil, which can be safely left to itself, overnight ; we will only have to change the pilot lights every morning, add oil when necessary, so that the level always remains approximately the same. Of course, you will have to change the pilot lights, one by one, so that the heat is not reduced.



FIG. 7
We can also start by putting on six pilot lights, then seven the next day, and increase in this way to about ten.

By using this device and the long-necked flask, we can obtain very interesting results by digesting either alcohol or water coming from the putrefaction of plants, minerals or animals.

Note, however, that whenever it is possible to work during the day and for operations lasting only a few hours, gas will be infinitely preferable. Since we are talking about fire, let us recall them: different processes intended to obtain varying degrees of heat: the sand bath, filings (iron or copper), ashes, the lamp fire, the bain-marie, and finally the fire directly placed under the crucible or retort. For baths a simple ordinary iron dish filled with sand, filings or ashes will suffice. There is no need to describe the bain-marie that everyone is sufficiently familiar with. The ancients also used gentle heat due to the putrefaction of manure, grape marc, quicklime, etc., but, except in the countryside, this amounts to more or less heating (1).

The fire of filings gives the strongest heat; that of ashes, the least. In many cases we need concentrated gentle heat; to obtain it, the student could not have a complicated athanor built. I recommend the following very simple and inexpensive process which I owe to an alchemist. On the gas or oil stove, we first place a fairly large iron dish containing the sand bath, then a long-necked flask. Around the ball, a metal lampshade frame which will rest on the edges of the dish.

We will cover the lampshade with a large terry towel, and that's it; the liquid contained in the balloon will thus be subjected to very concentrated heat for the entire desired time.

Now let's talk about luts; they are intended to close the necks of the balloons or retorts as tightly as possible. We sell retorts which are joined by emery closures, but this is not enough, we still have to add a lut. The luts are therefore tenacious and ductile coatings which become solid when drying; here are the main ones; but the best method for circulation is surely the soluble or fusible glass stopper found commercially.

“Take sand, clinker, loam or powdered clay, each 5 pounds; horse droppings or finely chopped mud, a pound of crushed glass and sea salt; of each four ounces, (135 grams); mix everything, and make a paste with a sufficient quantity of water of which paste or lut we will surround the retort up to half of the neck; then we will put it and dry in the shade... This same bed can be used to block the joints of the neck of the retort with the container; but, as it dries, it hardens and becomes difficult to remove, it is necessary to moisten it with wet cloths when you want to separate the container. from the retort.

“The lut which I usually use on this occasion is only composed of 2 parts of sand and 1 part of loam kneaded together with water.

“If we need a lut, which separates very easily when the operation is done, we must soak sifted ashes in water and make a paste; but this flow is much more porous than the previous ones; you can re-moisten it when you have removed it and use it as many times as you want. For the joints of the stills, we use common glue with paper; but, when we distill some very spirituous liquor, such as the spirit of wine, we must use the wet bladder which carries with it a glue that is very easy to attach to. That if this bladder is eaten away by spirits, we will resort to the following glue which we call: lut de sapience.

“Take flour and slaked lime, each one ounce (33 grams), bowl (2) powdered half ounce (15 grams); mix everything and form a liquid paste with a sufficient quantity of egg whites that you will have previously beaten well with a little water.

“Hermetically seal and close the mouth or neck of a glass vessel with red-hot tweezers. To do this, one heats the neck with hot coals which one approaches little by little, one increases, and one continues the fire until the Earth is ready to put in fusion; we use this means of blocking the vessels when we have put in them some matter which is easy to be exalted and which we want to make circulate. »

It is also made with pulverized almonds incorporated with starch glue, with dried and pulverized clay and linseed oil cooked with a third of its weight.

Whitewash is prepared by putting an egg white in a mortar with a little water; lime is added; strips of canvas have been prepared and used immediately.

Here is now a list of the main instruments used; they are not all essential, and some may still be rejected in order to simplify and reduce expenses. I owe this list to an alchemist who prefers to remain unknown. I send him all my thanks here.

Glass stills (3) emery-stoppered 250 to 1 litre.

— — — — — — — — — — 3 liters for distilled water.
Straight and curved extensions for — —
Rodriguet devices for cold dyeing.
Round and flat base balloons with matching volume.

— — — — — — — — long collars.
Glass barrels of distilled water.
Crystallizers of various sizes.
Photo cuvettes 9 x 12, 13 x 18 glass.
Glass funnels.
Gas cylinders; foot specimens.
Attack vials of various sizes (reagent bottles).
Assorted bottles with straight and wide necks.

— — — assorted clogged, emery.
Jars.
Tester's mattresses, Wurtz mattresses.

— — — glass and porcelain.
- - - iron.

Precipitation and saturation glasses.
to experiences.
of watch.
Bohemian glass capsules.
Assorted Erlenmeyer flasks.
Glass stirrers.
Fractional distillation flasks.
Porcelain capsules.
Biscuit retorts.
Porcelain crucibles.
Gray terrine.
Earth crucibles.
Crucible furnace.

— — with muffle.
Schlœsing displacement device.
Refrigerant.
Test tubes and support.
Burette.
Thermo 10 X 100 laboratory.
Cast iron or copper sand bath.
Cork and rubber stoppers.
Analysis torch.
Mineralogist's hammer.
Paper to filter.
Bunsen batteries and accessories (useless for our tests).
Test tube clamp.
Iron crucible tongs.
Ring holders.
Alcohol or gas lamp.
Bunsen burner with support.

Practice, creating successive needs, dictates better than any other method the devices necessary for the studies undertaken; those that follow are a little personal to us, we only give them for information, not as models.

LEACHING AND DIGESTION DEVICES (4).

Fig. 8. — Cold digester and leaching device. — Same principle, but the material occupies the cooling tube A B. The evaporated liquid condenses on this material until it occupies level CD, where it siphons into the flask.



Fig. 9. — Hot digester apparatus. — The material located in balloon A is subjected to the sand bath; on the balloon is attached a curved tube opening into an extension where the gases and vapors cool. When the liquid condensed in the curve in BC reaches the top of this curve D, it automatically siphons and falls into the flask to be evaporated again.



Fig. 10.— Simplified digester.— A balloon, a lute tube ending in a small glass stopper simply placed. The liquid evaporates in the cold parts of the tube and falls; a cap rosette on the edge of the tube ensures sufficient and safe closure.



Fig. 11. — Fractional distillation flasks. — Used to collect vapors condensing at different temperatures. The figure shows how it works better than any explanation.



Fig. 12. — Balloons for the work. — Blow two welded balloons as shown in the figure: fill with the material of the work and stretch the neck of the upper balloon: it will be good to create a partial vacuum in the balloons before to close them.



Fig. 13. — Athanor I. — Made of refractory earth in three parts, A, B, C. The first A serves as a dome and has a hemispherical reflector concentrating the heat on the egg; the second B contains the sand bath and the egg; the third C is used to enclose the heating system; in D, E, there is a metal vault equalizing the heat in B; at F piercing the vault, a thermometer plunges into the sand bath of the egg; finally, we can place a tile fitted with a red glass allowing us to monitor the transformations of the material. It goes without saying that this tile can be removed at will when you want to judge the color.

I can especially recommend the digestion flask and the arrangement of luteated retorts for slow distillation.

The above information is very basic, although sufficient; it is especially by working that one will learn the various manipulations mentioned; there are no hazardous materials to handle, except perhaps mercury. I must suppose that all students know the danger of breathing its vapors, but by heating it in a closed retort and at very low heat there is nothing to fear. Just in the event that we are tempted to go further, we would need to have a fairly complete knowledge of the bodies whose combination could form an explosive, but this is obvious and I do not need to insist. I repeat, for experiences with alcohol and mineral, vegetable or animal quintessences, only patience and care are required. The most difficult thing is to follow the spiritual path of true philosophers who have been initiates. I can affirm, this is the only way, and simple research based on these principles can give better results than long years of purely material work.

What else can I add? The experiments that I indicate below are certainly elementary, but one should not hope for that to succeed them the first time. A broken retort, the fire extinguished, a clumsy movement or even an invisible cause can compromise everything at the moment of success; the slightest discouragement, the slightest impatience are to be avoided; you only succeed when you are able to stay calm and start over with a smile. and simple research based on these principles can yield better results than long years of purely material work. What else can I add? The experiments that I indicate below are certainly elementary, but we should not therefore hope to succeed them the first time. A broken retort, an extinguished fire, a clumsy movement or even an invisible cause can compromise everything when it comes to success; the slightest discouragement, the slightest impatience should be avoided; You only succeed when you are able to stay calm and start again with a smile. and a simple search based on these principles can give better results than long years of purely material work. What else can I add? The experiments that I indicate below are certainly elementary, but we should not therefore hope to succeed them the first time. A broken retort, an extinguished fire, a clumsy movement or even an invisible cause can compromise everything when it comes to success; the slightest discouragement, the slightest impatience should be avoided; You only succeed when you are able to stay calm and start again with a smile. A broken retort, an extinguished fire, a clumsy movement or even an invisible cause can compromise everything when it comes to success; the slightest discouragement, the slightest impatience should be avoided; You only succeed when you are able to stay calm and start again with a smile. A broken retort, an extinguished fire, a clumsy movement or even an invisible cause can compromise everything when it comes to success; the slightest discouragement, the slightest impatience should be avoided; you only succeed when you are able to stay calm and start over with a smile.

For common chemistry, the bodies handled are inert, rapid processes are used much more than slow ones, distillations than circulations. On the contrary, the student must know that everything is alive, and not fear repeating a distillation 10 times; that for hermeticists, the true meaning of distillation is circulation, work of the body on itself with the help of the natural fire contained therein. We therefore rather use the long-necked balloon than the two retorts which can however be useful in certain cases (even essential).

“The volatile,” says Pernety, “carries and makes the fixed rise with it; the latter in turn brings down the volatile and this circulation takes place in a hermetically sealed vessel. This is done in the same vessel without artificial fire, without any stirring. »

I particularly draw attention to this quote, it is very important. One of its practical consequences is that exposure to the sun in flask No. VIII of alcohol already distilled several times or water distilled from plants, minerals or animals previously putrefied, would give very good results .

Abandoning the bodies to their own devices, letting them digest and work, thanks to their natural fire alone, will also be another key to success.

You have to be wary of acetates, although there is no real danger, but there are often quite strong releases of acetate and acetic acid if you heat without precautions.

Let us also remember that the balloons must have a very long neck, as in figure 3 or figure 10.

We will finish these few recommendations by reproducing an extra simple distillation process without apparatus that we can try with fruit.

All you have to do is cut a piece of clean white sheet into a triangle. We dip the base in a covered bowl, with a glass plate and containing alcohol; we drop the tip into another bowl placed a little lower and that's it: the distillation is done by capillarity. Let's now tackle the preparation of the alcohol.

1. In modern chemistry, we sometimes use the effervescence caused by sulfuric acid placed in the presence of water.
2. Clayey soil.
3. Devices whose names are printed in italics are the most useful.
4. Leaching is an operation by means of which alkaline salts which ashes may contain are washed away.



CHAPTER IV.

PREPARATION OF ALCOHOL.

The book by Jean de Roquetaillade (known as Rupe Scissa) is based on the same principles as those indicated by me at the beginning of this work; he is deeply Christ-like, that’s what attracted me to him. He dedicates his work to poor evangelizing men, that is to say to all those who, having felt the call of Christ in the depths of their being, gave themselves to the one who chose them, and have no other goal here below is to try to do the will of their master in all things and, supported by the gospel, to carry out his teachings as much as possible. Rarely rich in material goods, but possessing a more precious treasure: peace of heart, poor evangelizing men go through life trying to do good, and it is to them that Rupe Scissa addresses himself.

With the modest ordinary gas apparatus, with a few retorts, a few glass tubes, working, feeling their guide near them, their thoughts fixed on suffering beings, they will be able to obtain elixirs, waters which will work miracles.

Although he said a lot, although he spoke very clearly for an adept, Rupe Scissa did not entirely renounce the language of the Hermeticists; It is certain that we cannot hope to find in his book the means of obtaining the real quintessence which is none other than the mercury of the Philosophers, the stone in the form of elixir. I know very well that the wine he is talking about is not ordinary wine, but philosophical wine, that is to say the universal solvent of the wise.

This spirit of the wine is therefore absolutely mineral, not vegetal.

Rupe Scissa writes: "Please don't think that I told you a lie, because I named the quintessence: fiery water, and said that the doctors failed to its knowledge, though easy to find, for the quintessential magister is hidden, and only a very renowned theologian ever heard of it, and, if, I affirm for the truth that the quintessence is fiery water and is not fiery water. Now, the God of heaven wishes to put caution in the hearts of the evangelizing men for whom I am writing this book, so that they do not show reprobate men the secret of the most great God.

Now I have declared the Truth to you. »

“This amounts to saying: I am not lying when I tell you that the quintessence is fiery water, but listen to me carefully. I also warn you that it is not: fiery water is in fact the known expression - for mercury of the wise - philosopher's stone; — but, if it is certain that by operating on alcohol we will not extract the true quintessence. Many alchemists agree that the quintessence of carefully prepared ordinary wine spirit is a wonderful elixir. The Spirit of well-rectified wine is of such a light nature, writes Rulland (Hermetic Pernety Dictionary) and so easy to sublimate that it seems to participate in the nature of mercury itself. One can extract, says another, a very good quintessence from the spirit of vulgar wine, especially if it comes from past, spoiled wine. With a mixture of good fermented wine (Pernety) and verjuice, we make a vinegar, dissolving many bodies, etc. »

We can therefore follow Rupe Scissa's information while knowing how to limit our ambition. Our author begins his book thus (I quote his words because they show the spirit in which it was written and in which spirit I also try to make it known):

"I thought," he said, "to point out the uses which I have seen in philosophy, which have been shown to me by the spirit of God, at which time, however bad I was." God came to me with pity, so that I would reveal to evangelizing men the means that those who despised the riches for love of the gospel could, without the teaching of man and without great expense, heal bodily diseases. And I pray to God that he allows it to the good, to the perfect evangelizing workers who would like to use it. As much as possible, therefore, I make this book only for the benefit of the good, and place it in the custody and protection of Jesus Christ.

I allow myself to express also this hope that nothing bad can come out of my work, because I know the responsibility of those who write.

That said, and again recalling the reservations made at the beginning of this chapter, let us see the preparations that we must make when alcohol is subjected to extract not the quintessence itself which is nothing other than the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, but at least the quintessence of the spirit of ordinary wine. Let us say again, according to Rupe Scissa, that ordinary wine alcohol responds well to the qualities required of a quintessence, that is to say, to be incorruptible, to be neither hot nor dry with fire; neither wet nor cold with water; neither hot nor humid with the air; neither cold nor dry with the earth. Indeed, the rectified spirit of ordinary wine can burn, so it is neither damp nor cold, because elemental water does not burn. It is neither hot nor humid like the air, for the air becomes corrupted sooner than anything; and he remains incorruptible for a long time; it is neither dry nor cold like the earth (solid matter), because it is as active as possible; and it is neither hot nor dry like fire (ether), because it cools hot diseases (alcohol is, as we know, wonderful for inflammations, phlegmons, etc.).

Finally, quintessence confers incorruptibility, and rectified alcohol enjoys this property to a great degree.

After many periphrases, our master Rupe Scissa reveals to the poor evangelizing men that the basis of all preparation is alcohol. It is strengthened by adding to it, in the manner that I describe below, the virtue of gold and other principal metals. This is of course wine alcohol, the purest that can be found; It is preferable to distill rotten wine and verjuice yourself several times very slowly on a sand bath.

We could certainly go faster by making the lime absorb the water still contained in the 90° alcohol; but it must be remembered that although elementary, it is still alchemy that we are trying to achieve, and we must never lose sight of the fact that our motto is patience and length of time”.

I therefore believe it is preferable to distill the alcohol yourself several times; we thus have a much more dynamic, much more lively product, a “Heaven”, said the old masters.

The following process will then be employed: Place the very pure alcohol obtained by successive distillation in a long-necked flask (see fig. 8) and expose it to the sun for a month; the bottle must be closed with a fuse glass stopper.

When uncorking it, an extremely sweet and penetrating odor should be released.

Yet another sign of perfection is a bluish cloud which floats above the liquid.

If you live in the countryside, you have to make a small pit and line the walls with a paste of wet ashes. This small pit thus prepared is filled with well-pounded horse manure; we place in the middle (without it touching the manure) the bottle of which only the neck must protrude; we understand that it cools in the air and that the most subtle emanation of the alcohol condenses, falls, and condenses again. Manure can be replaced by bunches of grapes coming out of the press, putrefaction generates sufficient heat (in town you can use the oil stove which burns continuously for a month or more). Still with the manure, You can place a vial lubricated with wax only, neck down for several days. It is then removed upside down; with a very fine punch, we pierce a hole in the cork, then we let the less clear part of the liquid flow out; or will thus have a quintessence.

Finally, here is a more detailed procedure which I borrow from Hyperchemistry (October 1899).

Red or white wine is distilled in the ordinary way. The spirit thus obtained still contains water, and a cloth moistened with this liquid burns on contact with the flame, but is not consumed. By successive rectifications, it becomes so strong that the linen moistened with the liquid obtained lastly burns completely after being ignited.

The spirit then transforms into veins and when these disappear, the container is changed, the phlegm is distilled, which, in the first distillation, still contains a little spirit and which is preserved for later use.

The spirit is digested in the heat of the manure (36°) until an oil with an exquisite perfume is deposited on the surface. This oil is quintessential. Lulle got it sky blue, others got it yellow.

After the transformation of the spirit and phlegm by distillation, there remains a residue similar to a black mass of melted pitch. This residue is decolorized using the phlegm of the first distillation, until it completely loses its color.

The colored parts are combined and distilled to produce an oil residue. This residue thus obtained is calcined; which can be done in different ways. In one formula, Llull claims that calcination cannot take place with strong heat, but that it is produced simply by the Spiritus ardens. He says, on the contrary, in another place, that it takes place in the street lamp.

According to certain formulas, the residue becomes white by calcination with the phlegm; but sometimes by a similar process, it is still in the state of black powder and even, after having treated it with Spiritus ardens, it is still black.

The residue thus prepared is digested and distilled several times with Spiritus ardens under different conditions, until it is saturated and turns white and the spirit disappears.

The characteristic of this result is that, if placed a little on a hot plate, no smoke is produced. It is then distilled again with Spiritus ardens until it becomes so volatile that on contact with a reddened plate it evaporates entirely or. very largely.

When it is prepared in this way, we sublimate it. The result of sublimation is clear and shiny like a diamond. It is used to acidulate the Spiritus Vini philosophici, and for this it is distilled several times with the Spiritus ardens, and the volatile salt it contains evaporates. The product of the distillation is digested for 60 days; it then transforms to give the fragrant quintessence, which is so clear and brilliant that it can barely be distinguished. As a characteristic, a deposit forms at the bottom similar to the urine of a healthy young man (1).

But we must now, as Rupe Scissa says, "adorn our sky", that is to say that we add still more strength to it, and it is to gold that we will turn for that. If gold ore can be procured, it will be all the better; if not, we will take a small strip or, quite simply, a piece of gold, and here is how we must proceed; this lamella or this piece will be brought to the red on an iron palette, and it will be projected, to extinguish it, into a vessel of glazed earth which will contain good ordinary alcohol. This operation must be done fifty times and more. If we notice that the alcohol is decreasing, we will put it aside, and we will continue, in another vase with other alcohol. The contents of the two vessels are then mixed. “Know, my friend,” said “Rupe Scissa, that God has created so much virtue in the fiery water, that it can draw to itself all the virtues of gold, heat, equality, incorruptibility, duration, solidity. One should not extinguish the golden lamellae in the very quintessence, for one would lose it; it is necessary to mix the alcohol thus “gilded” with half of quintessence and to put it aside to use it. All our provision must be thus prepared.

The virtues of gold are not the only ones that we can communicate to the quintessence; it is easy for us to repeat the same operation for the other main metals, limiting ourselves to those which the Ancients made correspond with the main astral forces, known under the name of planets: the Sun, the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus.

Gold is the solar and synthetic metal which gives to our quintessence the powers of a general restorative of the human body, of a sort of cures everything. Each of the other metals is also extinguished in alcohol which is then mixed with the quintessence and imparts its particular virtue to it.

Lead, the metal of Saturn, will be good for curing any disease of the bones, stomach, nerves, bladder, eyes, ears. Tin, the metal of Jupiter, which dominates the lungs, the liver, the arteries, will provide a good remedy for diseases of these parts of the body (pleurisy, jaundice, gout).

The same goes for iron, the metal of Mars, corresponding to the kidneys, to gall, to blood (to the arms).

For copper, the metal of Venus, which influences the intestines, genitals, nostrils.

Finally, silver, the metal of the Moon, influences sputum, sweat, the stomach and the brain. — It is understood that I am only indicating here experiments to be tried, but that one should never do this without the advice of an experienced doctor.

Such are the different manipulations to be subjected to alcohol; we are now going to choose from the work of our master the most powerful preparations and the least difficult to try in a laboratory as restricted as ours. For clarity, we will divide them into three parts: animal, vegetable and mineral quintessences. We will end with some curious and rare remedies and a list of plants, by complexion (hot, cold, dry, wet).

1. This very difficult recipe is given as documentation only.

CHAPTER V.

ANIMAL QUINTESSENCES.

We have seen that putrefaction is indispensable to extract from an animal, as from the rest of the vegetable kingdom, anything other than weak water.
Through putrefaction all forces develop, and one can draw from them the spirit or quintessence. These animal quintessences offer a certain current interest, because nowadays we are returning to opotherapy, and many ultramodern drugs, such as adrenaline, nephrine, thyroidin, etc., are nothing other than quintessences.

taken from the animal kingdom, but obtained by less perfect processes than those of animals.

Nephrine is prepared nowadays as follows: The cortical substance of a beef kidney which has just been sacrificed is triturated in a mortar with 300 grams of neutral glycerine and 200 grams of sterilized salt water, macerate for five hours in a vase surrounded by ice. The entire mass is then filtered through a Chardin paper filter; the liquid thus obtained is again filtered through a Chamberland candle (Dieulafoy). Thyroidin, adrenaline are processed in much the same way extra fast (1).

We are going to see, on the other hand, the processes of the Ancients—to analyze all or part of an animal, for example the blood, the urine, the bones, the skin, the horns.

We will begin with the liquids and end with the solids... "There are," says the author of Nature Unveiled, "certain disadvantages in working on fresh blood, because it happened to me that by wanting to distill the most more fixed, the monstrous figure of the animal on which I was working appeared to me. As for the human blood, it produced a noise as if there were a ghost, which was very frightening. »

Our author here alludes to the mysteries of Palingenesia. Let us just note, in passing, this recommendation.

The best animal parts from which we can draw quintessence are urine, horns, nails, bones, hair, scales.

The liver, the kidneys, the heart can also give very good products on condition of avoiding by certain processes being inconvenienced by the smell of putrefaction. We will successively examine these two quintessences:

QUINTESSENCE OF BLOOD AND LIQUID PARTS.

1° Let the blood and animal juices rot at 36°C in a tightly closed still for fifteen days.
2° Distil in a bain-marie and keep the result.
3° Return what has been collected to the retort, to container, distill very slowly in a sand bath.
4° Stop the distillation when an oily substance is about to pass.
5° There will be in the retort an oil and a carbonaceous substance; they must be removed and ground together well.
6° Put in a long-necked flask, pour the product of the first distillation over it and let it digest in a bain-marie for two whole days.
7° Put back in a container retort and distil slowly. Some of a volatile liquid will pass through. Let's then change the bath; put on ash bath; soak with the distilled part of the volatile, further digest in a bain-marie, distill, desiccate with ashes; we will have the quintessence in the form of powder.

Let us now operate on the flesh, the bones, the horns, the hairs, the nails, the solid parts of the animal, for example the kidney or the liver.

Let's reduce it into pieces as small as possible, put them in a still, pour in blood or rotten juice from the same animal or even human urine mixed with rainwater.

With hair, bones, or horns, putrefaction is more difficult to obtain, but here is a way: grate, file bones, horns, or nails; cook rotten rainwater or salt water with the animal's urine until they are reduced to jelly, which is done in two or three days. Add to this jelly a sufficient quantity of rotten rainwater. When the putrefaction is complete, we will operate as before. It should be noted that nature does not completely destroy an animal or vegetable body, it is enough to reduce you to a sort of mucilaginous juice; in the same way, the alchemist does not destroy the bodies on which he operates, but only opens them through putrefaction, he examines closely the processes that nature uses to destroy a body and use it to restore life .

This is what the alchemist does by reducing certain parts of animals to an essential substance, a jelly, and then distilling them with the volatile spirit of the same animal; this volatile could moreover be replaced by rainwater or dew. This is made clear by the following process:

Take any part of the body of an animal, grind it to jelly while doing so, cook with putrefied rain water, let the whole ferment, pour out what is clear, filter it and distill it in a bain-marie, stopping when the oil is about to pass; put this aside, place in the cellar what remains in the retort to make it crystallize or thicken into jelly, it is the essential salt of the animal.

Put these crystals on an ash fire, dry without burning, pour the volatile that you have set aside on the residue; digest in a water bath, distill everything that passes, replace the water bath with a water bath of ashes and distill until completely dry, reduce everything to powder; on this powder pour more volatile, repeat this operation two or three times, you will then have a Quintessence.

We see that nature allows itself to be united or separated, provided that we follow the order established by it. Between the volatile and the alkali, between the mind and the body, it itself places a vinegar, which participates in both and can unite them, because it is neither fixed nor volatile: it is the theory of the body astral of occult science.

If readers find these processes too difficult, here's a less complicated way to do it; it is based on the ternary: putrefaction — circulation — distillation.
Suppose we want to extract from the kidney of an animal a quintessential liquid instead of a powder, as above. — We will take this kidney; we will cut it into small pieces which we will cover with already putrefied salty rainwater (very little water, so as to moisten only); we will place it in the cellar and let it rot for a fortnight. We will filter and we will fill, with the liquid obtained, a large flask with a long neck, lute with fusible glass. This balloon will be placed on the oil stove, in a sand bath, for twenty days. One will then distill in a retort in the receptacle four or five times, each time putting the contents of the receptacle back into the retort. We will thus obtain a very clear liquid, with a good smell, which we mix with alcohol half by half. We can operate in this way for all the animal quintessences.

Now let's move on to plants.

1. See also the note on page 185.

CHAPTER VI.

PLANT QUINTESSENCES.

We place the essay on plant quintessences after that on animal quintessences, to follow the order of the Ancients, a perfectly logical order, since the plant touches the animal kingdom from above, and the mineral kingdom from below.

As in animals, we will be able to obtain a quintessence: 1° from the soft parts of plants; leaves, stems, fruits, juices, gums or resins, seeds, etc., etc. ; 2° harder parts, such as stems, roots, wood, etc.

The process will be the same for all plants, paying attention, however, to the proportions, because, in certain plants, there will be a lot of volatility, that is to say liquids that evaporate easily and even gases; in others, on the contrary, many acids, etc.

So let's take from any plant what is tender and ripe (fruits, stems) with the juices.

Pestles in mortar; let's crush carefully and pour in putrefied and salty rainwater, so that everything is reduced to the consistency of a clear broth.

Let's put it in a wooden container, in a warm place; let it macerate for about three weeks until a sour and rotten smell comes out of the mixture; let's place in a still; then, as with minerals, we distill over very low heat over a sand bath, allowing only the most volatile parts to pass through. Let's remove the residues, place them in a glass retort heated to another distillation; we will first have fairly cloudy water, then an acidic substance, then a fairly thick oil, and finally at the bottom a charred burnt mass. Once we have separated, we must operate as for the animal kingdom,

As regards the manipulations to be subjected to the hardest parts, for example to obtain a quintessence with the roots, they are crushed and crushed at best in a mortar; pour in rotten rainwater, wine or salt water, macerate or cook until everything becomes soft; then putrefy, and operate as before.

Any quintessence should be clear and sweet smelling. Distill, until this result is obtained.

We know that the alchemists knew four states of matter, which they named after the four elements: water, earth, air, fire. By different operations they could extract from any quintessence the parts: fire, air, water, earth (1).

Each of these forms of the same matter being more or less related to the parts of the human body corresponding to fire, air, water and earth (the liquid, solid, gaseous or etheric parts of our organism ).

Here is this complicated manipulation. I cite it rather as documentation; in any case, you should only try it when you have had long experience in the alchemical laboratory. I summarize it in nine steps:

1° We take any animal, vegetable or mineral quintessence, for example that of blood, we put it in a retort with a container in a water bath. A clear water comes out which is kept in a well-stoppered glass vial: it is the water of quintessence.

2° There remain, at the bottom of the retort, three elements: air, fire, earth, the water originally obtained is returned there.

3° We place everything in a long-necked flask (fig. 8 and 10), and we circulate it for seven days.

4° We then put it back in a retort container, but this time over an ash fire; the water will rise very clear, in the form of a golden yellow oil containing in itself the air of the quitessence.

5° Separate the water from the oil (which is air) by distillation in a water bath, the water will rise; the air will remain at the bottom in the form of a golden oil, so we will have two elements: air and water.

6° Fire and earth remain; we take the water already obtained; it is poured over the fire and the earth in the proportion of 4 to 1, in a long-necked flask; we circulate it for seven days in a bain-marie.

7° Everything is put back into a retort container over a very high heat (increase the heat gradually and slowly). A red water will rise which will be put aside. There will therefore remain the land that we will also keep.

8° We take the red water aside, and put it to distill in a water bath; clear water rises; a red oil remains at the bottom; it is the fire of quintessence.

9° We calcine the earth a little every day for seven days. We will therefore have:
Fire in the form of red oil.
Air in the form of golden oil.
Water in the form of crystal clear water.
Earth in the form of a blackish substance.

This preparation is, as we see, very beautiful, but very complicated; it is not essential to obtain good, quintessence; simple, not broken down into two elements, by ordinary processes, the mineral, vegetable or animal quintessences are already very strong and especially if you have the patience to circulate for a long time and to distill several times.

We therefore have the means to extract the quintessence of plants, to increase and vary the qualities of our alcohol as we wish.

The quintessence of alcohol prepared alchemically and further fortified with gold, as we saw at the beginning is only an energetic restorative. It will be a remedy against constipation, if we add, for example, the quintessence of laxative plants or against the weakening of blood pressure, if we add an appropriate quintessence. And these remedies will have a marvelous, miraculous action sometimes because they will benefit from a dynamism, a radioactivity much greater than that of the remedies of the modern pharmacopoeia.

Here is a succession of vegetable quintessences which seemed to me the most useful; the preparation will always be the same.

Once obtained, the quintessence will be mixed with alcohol in the proportion of two-thirds to one-third: this will constitute an elixir that must be given by drops (always after medical advice of course).

Here, first, is another way of removing the quintessence from the blood; Rupe Scissa gives it with vegetable preparations; it must act like a modern serum, or in an analogous way. We must obtain a liqueur, water as clear as crystal and with a sweet odor. A certain quantity of fresh blood is taken from the animal; we let it sit and evaporate; it is dried and reduced to a very fine powder which is mixed with a tenth part of its weight of purified common salt. Pile carefully and place in a glass vial corked with emery and lubricated for greater precaution with egg white and flour or better with a meltable glass stopper. Place in a bain-marie over a very low heat (blue gas or oil lamp). The contents of the bottle should liquefy within a few hours; we then distill in a sand bath in the glass retort; then we put the product of its distillation back into the retort and we distill again as often as is necessary so that the product has the clarity and odor that I have mentioned.

WONDERFUL RESTORATIVE.

Oyster shells previously put in the oven are reduced to a very fine powder; rosemary, lily root. We put this powder in quintessence of alcohol (20 grams for 1 liter to be taken in drops of 10 to 15 per morning).

ATTRACTIVE QUINTESSENCE TO ATTRACT FOREIGN BODIES OUT OF A WOUND.

Let's reduce to a very fine powder a little natural magnet stone, assa-fœtida, marjoram, sulfur, petroleum, cyclamen. Let us remove the quintessence; mix with our alcohol, we will have an elixir which will act marvelously and will bring out the foreign bodies contained there from the wounds, by suppuration.

To attract or dissolve humors: bilious temperaments: rhubarb, violet, lettuce seeds, tamarind.

Lymphatic temperaments: saffron, colocynth, staphisaria, pyrethrum, euphorbia, rock salt.

Nervous temperaments: senna, mirobolants, nutmeg, flaxseed.

Blood temperaments: mallow, violet, mercurial juice.

All these plants are able to expel harmful moods from our body. We will therefore have to extract the quintessence and mix it with our alcohol.

To stop the blood, remove the quintessence of the following plants: myrtle, acacia, plantin, gum, cinquefoil in equal quantities, add a little coral and amber powder, gum arabic, alum.

The vegetable quintessence to "restrict the belly", says our author, is prepared in the following way, it must constitute a good remedy against diarrhea: draw the ordinary quintessence of the plants below, quince, pomegranate, almond, poppy seed black, mint, rose leaves, ash, plantin, gum arabic; then mix with the quintessence of alcohol.

To ripen an abscess quickly, to purify, cleanse, we will use the quintessence of the following plants all together: peony, hyssop, laurel seed, musk, wild mint, clover, fennel, chickweed, parsley, nettle seeds, etc.

The healing of a wound will be greatly activated by taking the following quintessence: frankincense, aristolochia, gladiolus, tamarind seed, honey, aloe.

You can prepare water to cleanse the skin with onion, chamomile, wild cucumber roots, marshmallow, rosemary, taken inside, by drops; outside, mixed with a third of boiled water.

Here is a very good eye drop: draw the quintessence of fennel, ache, sage, thistle; add two spoonfuls of honey and very little crushed pepper; put the quintessence in the sun for nine days before using it: two drops in the diseased eye, one in the morning, the other in the evening, following medical advice.

Against a very unpleasant disease, ozene or stench of the nose, ulcer of the pituitary membrane our author gives a very strong remedy: draw the quintessence of pink aloe wood, cloves, aspic, myrrh; wash the inside of the nose with good aromatic red wine; cauterize ulcerations with this quintessence, either pure or in water.

I will end here these few plant quintessences which we can, moreover, increase at will, since the process always remains the same. Instead of using plants in simple decodions or infusions, we will obtain a much greater quantity of curative principles from them by preparing them, as indicated by Rupe Scissa (2).

1. That is to say the very subtle parts, first, then less and less volatile, up to the solid residues (earth) that were found at the bottom of the retort.

2. We will find in the Remedies chapter, other plant quintessences which could have found a place here; I preferred to follow the order adopted by Rupe Scissa.

CHAPTER VII.

MINERAL QUINTESSENCES.

We saw it; The first operation that we must subject to matter, if we want to extract its quintessence, is not to destroy it, but to open it through putrefaction and dissolving substances. Also the Ancients, especially those who studied nature deeply, first established the laws that it follows for the transformation of animal, vegetable and mineral matter.

Nature, says our author, has in her hands to destroy minerals a fire which she draws from the sun; this fire heats your rocks, the stones; then the cold, the water, arrive and, little by little, moisten and expand the heated stones, they burst. The repeated attacks thus reduce the stone into small pieces which break more and more and end up being reduced to fine dust, which begins to rot, advances towards its destruction, becomes saline, is already of another nature which brings it closer of the plant and ends up merging with it.

Art can move faster than nature; if we heat a stone red hot and quench it in salt water, it will break into pieces; by repeating the operation as often as necessary, we reduce this stone into impalpable powder and water which can pass into the state of vapor, and again into water by distillation. This is how nature brings minerals back to their first nature more or less quickly depending on their species. It is also the first key operation to obtain quintessence. Here are some preparations which lead to a very good quintessence of minerals, although it is not the complete quintessence. This can only be obtained by first subjecting the metal to the universal solvent: the mysterious alkaest,
Generally speaking, mineral quintessences consist of removing metals and especially gold, silver and antimony, a universal medicine, as the alchemists say. We would say, for us, an energetic restorative, capable of raising blood pressure, capable, we would add for advanced occultists, of spreading in all the kingdoms of our being a light, a life which would increase a hundredfold the powers that all our cells to defend themselves; to seek from the immense and inexhaustible reservoirs of nature the forces necessary to reconquer the state of balance that we call health.

Here, to begin with, is the manufacturing of one of the best mineral quintessences, drinkable gold. Note here, even more than for plants, the absolute necessity; when our little alchemical pharmacy is full, to give nothing to a patient without the advice of a doctor, and an initiated doctor if possible.

“There are, indeed, certain organisms which cannot tolerate drugs based on metals.

QUINTESSENCE OF DRINKING GOLD.

Gold leaves, such as those used by gilders, are placed in a closed retort with mercury. The fire should be gentle enough (sand bath, blue gas or heat from an oil lamp) so that you can hold the retort in your hand and stir it often. As soon as the amalgam is made, put in a retort lute to a container, push the fire with caution to evaporate all the mercury; At the bottom of the retort we will find calcined and dirty-looking gold; we will remove it and put it in a wide-mouthed jar with four fingers of distilled vinegar. Then cap and place in the sun if possible. An oily substance will float which must be collected in a vessel half full of ordinary water. When no more oil is removed, evaporate the water over low heat. At the bottom of the container, will remain the quintessence of gold that will be mixed with the quintessence of alcohol. This drinking gold is a wonderful restorative, it soothes inflammation and quickly heals wounds, ulcers. We can also put a few very fine gold leaves with linseed oil in a glass vase; leave to digest for a month, remove the oil; At the bottom you will find a powder that can be mixed with honey.

The quintessence of silver can be made like that of gold, but here is a process which varies a little: Put in a flask half of good distilled vinegar, a small quantity of good calcined tartar and ammonia salt, add the lime silver prepared as above, stopper tightly with a fuse glass stopper, then put on a very low heat on the oil stove in the flask (fig. 8 to 10), for eight or ten days; the fire must not go out; after which distill as usual in a sand bath. We will first see the vinegar rise, then the quintessence of silver. Use this remedy in illnesses. lunar: diarrhoea, emphysema, gastralgia, eye pain (1).

To attract the quintessence of iron and obtain a good remedy for Martian illnesses (kidneys, liver, blood diseases), we mix iron filings and common salt in good distilled vinegar. We expose to the sun in a closed matrass, or on the oil stove for several days; there rises on the surface of the liquid a substance which is collected, and which is the quintessence sought. We then mix with the alcohol.

For copper (venereal diseases, intestines), same process, replacing iron filings with copper filings.

But of all the metallic quintessences after potable gold, the most useful will certainly be the following; it was very frequently used and; to our knowledge has really worked real miracles in long illnesses, in convalescence, anemia, rickets; it acts powerfully on the digestive tract, reviving the appetite, purifying the blood and giving strength very quickly. When taken in good health, it allows you to do long runs and difficult muscular work without fatigue; finally, it even acts on morale in neurasthenia. I have often heard from very sad people, very overwhelmed by serious grief, who have all observed very clear results on this subject. Here is how to make this elixir:

Take powdered metallic antimony and work it, pulverize it so as to obtain an extra-fine powder that is barely felt in the fingers. Put this powder in very good distilled vinegar; When the vinegar is colored red, pour it out and set it aside, add other vinegar to the antimony, and so on until it no longer turns red. When we add vinegar for the second time, we must heat gently, we then take all the colored vinegar, and we put it to distill on a sand bath: the vinegar will rise first; then, says Rupe Scissa:

"You will see descending drop by drop from the mouth of the still a mining avens, red as blood would be." You have here something to which all the treasures of the world could not be compared, it takes away the pain from every wound. »

No doubt, such as it is, this quintessence is marvellous; it can, however, be made even more marvelous by leaving it for forty days in horse manure in the sun (or on the oil stove in the balloon (fig. 8). I must say that one should not be discouraged,

if you don't get a red color the first time, and besides, the quintessence of a beautiful golden yellow is already very strong. again. It will be recognized that the decisive result has been obtained when the liquor has only a sweet odor with nothing reminiscent of vinegar. Note that it will be necessary to increase the heat as soon as the red drops of dye begin to pass.

OTHER RECIPE OF ANTIMONY.

Put in a long-necked flask (fig. 10) for 1 liter of distilled vinegar (crystallizable acid), 250 grams of potassium carbonate; add finely powdered antimony (2 handfuls); heat gently in a sand bath for four or five days without interruption, stir frequently, leave to cool and filter (you must be able to touch the balloon with your hands, otherwise the heat would be too strong).

Note that the metal will have lost its luster and will have become dark gray.

Here now, so that we can compare, are recipes due to Lémeri, chemist, who published his work around 1700. These recipes can also give interesting results. We will compare the brutality of the purely chemical process with the gentleness and slowness of alchemical operations.

TINCTURE OF ANTIMONY.

“This operation is a dissolution of the most rarefied parts of sulphur, of antimony made in the spirit of wine.

“Put over a high heat in a crucible “eight ounces (370 grams) of tartar salt. Throw into it at various times, by spoonfuls, six ounces 200 grammes of powdered antimony; it will melt and unite with the salt of tartar. Cover the crucible and leave the mixture in fusion for half an hour; pour it into a mortar so that it cools; reduce the mass to powder and put in a matra, pour in spirit of alcoholic wine to the height of four fingers, apply another matra inverted on this one to make a meeting vessel; Lut the Joints exactly and put your matter to digest in a slow heat for two or three days or until your spirit of wine has turned red. Then separate the matras, filter your tincture and keep it in a tightly corked bottle.

“Virtues. — It is sudorific and anti-nervous, it excites nausea or it purges a little through the stomach when given in large doses; it can be used to excite the months in women, to cure obstructions for hypochondriac melancholy, for gall, for smallpox, for malignant fevers, for scurvy.

“Dose. — The dose is from 4 drops. Up to 30, in some suitable liquor.

ANTIMONY GLASS

“This preparation is a regula of antimony vitrified by a long fusion.

“Calculate a pound of powdered antimony over a small fire in a terrine that has not varnished, stir the material constantly with an iron spatula until no more smoke comes out; but, if, however, the powder should lump together, as often happens, put it in a mortar and pulverize it; calcine it again as we said, and, when it no longer smokes and has taken on a gray color, put it in a good crucible which you will cover with a tile and place it in a wind furnace in which you will make a very ardent charcoal fire that surrounds the crucible so that the material merges; about an hour later, uncover the crucible and, having inserted the end of an iron rod into it, look when you have removed it, if the material attached to it is very transparent and, if it is, throw it on a well-heated marble; it will freeze, and you will have a beautiful glass of antimony which you will let cool, then you will keep it. It is a powerful emetic and one of the most violent of those produced by antimony. It is made emetic wine by soaking it in white wine.

It is also given in substance from two grains up to six (50 centigrams to 1 gram). »

Finally, here is another hermetic process that I borrow from the journal Hyperchimie.

ANTIMONY ACETON.

“We put finely powdered antimony in nitric acid. As soon as dissolution occurs, the residue is precipitated and washed. This is digested with distilled vinegar in a water bath for forty days; it then takes on a blood red color. We decant the clear part, and pour in more vinegar. We digest it for another forty days. This operation is repeated four times and the residue is discarded.

The solutions are mixed in a retort; we distill the vinegar which we then pour over the mixture; or, if the vinegar obtained is too weak, pure vinegar is poured in, and distilled again, after having obtained the solution. The residue is washed with fresh water until all acid is gone. The material, which is a very pronounced red, is dried in the sun or in the heat of a small fire.

“A well-rectified spiritus vini is poured onto this red powder, and left to sit in a water bath for four days, so that the dissolution takes place completely.

The solution is placed in a glass retort with a hat; we change the container and slowly distil the spiritus which we pour again; we distill again, and or repeat the operation until the spiritus rises in the capital taking on different colors.

It is then time to increase the heat; the spiritus then rises in the capital under the color red and falls in droplets into the container, similar to a blood-red oil.

“This is the most secret way of the wise to distill the famous oil of antimony, and we thus have a noble, powerful oil, with an exquisite perfume.

“The product of the distillation, the mixture of oil and wine spirit, is placed in a capital retort and freed of all spirit in a bain-marie, which can be recognized when a few drops of oil form.

“The spirit keeps well, because it still has great power coming from the oil it contains. In the retort is the red oil which lights up the night like red coal: it is used to improve metals for alchemy.

“The spirit of wine from tinctura d'antimonii is a very effective remedy. For gout, three drops taken in wine and on an empty stomach calm the pain. The following day, a heavy viscous sweat appears, particularly stinking on the joints, and, on the third day, even without the aid of medication, a useful evacuation occurs.

“It is also effective in other difficult diseases. »

QUINTESSENCE OF MERCURY.

Sublimate in a sand bath in a closed matrass, with a long neck, mercury, copper sulfate and common salt. The quintessence of mercury rises, carrying copper sulfate with it. This is philosophical brimstone.

Sublimated mercury still has some combustible parts; if we put them in corrosive water made of sulfuric acid and saltpeter, it will convert into amalgam and water. So let's put our sublimated mercury into this, mixture, and leave it until it's converted to pure water. Let us then still distil over low heat and in retort no. 9. The corrosive water will first come up, then the very white quintessence of mercury; at the bottom of the vessel, there will remain a burned and ugly body; let's repeat this operation until no residue remains (i.e. put the product of the instillation back onto the residue and redistill).

This quintessence is good for wounds, burns, pustules, etc.

In certain diseases, sulfur acts on condition that it is used in homeopathic doses. Here is the way to extract the quintessence of sulphur:

We take very fine flower of sulphur. In a closed balloon, we put two handfuls of this flower of sulfur, we pour over distilled vinegar. Gently heat in a sand bath until the vinegar is colored. Gently remove the vinegar, and replace it with another, when the sulfur no longer colors.

Then combine all the vinegars and evaporate over low heat: the quintessence of the sulfur will remain at the bottom of the vessel (take care to remove any impurities that come to the surface with a feather).

Let us take the retort which I have described; page 35, covered with its metal shade. Let's put our quintessence of mercury or any other in a glass vial with a fusible glass stopper; let's close by the spirit lamp; Suspend it so that it goes down inside the balloon, without touching the walls.

Heat in a sand bath to such a temperature that we can hold our hands on the ball.

Let it digest for eight days.

Let us break the vial and remove the residue that is there; let us reduce it to marble, into impalpable powder; put in a glass still and distill in a water bath, but so that the still does not touch the bath water. — The powder will convert back to water if it has been sufficiently calcined or pulverized. The result of the distillation will be a quintessence: real Virgin milk.

We also recommend that the closure of flasks and stills be absolutely airtight.
Let's continue with the manufacture of a very energetic solvent for many bodies.
Let us take 1 part of sublimated mercury, 1 part of common salt, 1 part of copper sulfate, 1 part of highly sublimated ammonia salt.

Grind carefully to make a fine powder, expose overnight in the air or in a cold cellar. This powder will convert into water, let's keep this water in a thick glass vessel.

We will end the presentation of its mineral quintessences with the following recipe that Rupe Scissa calls "the very strong virtuous water beyond measure":
Let's take good white tartar (2) well calcined; let's put it in a glass vessel with quintessence of alcohol. Let's distill; it will first pass the very weakened alcohol which will be removed, the tartar will have absorbed the quintessence and will be fortified.

We then calcine the tartar in a reverberation furnace (see p. 26); let's add alcohol, let's distill, let's calcine again: the tartar will be more fortified each time. We should expect the ships to break apart. So you need to have several on hand.

Let's take this fortified tartar, grind it with marble, put it in the cellar and it will convert into water. This water will be stored in a very thick glass vial.
This water very quickly heals wounds, eczemas, ringworms, etc... (I repeat: always consult a doctor before using these remedies.)

1. Correspondence from Oger Ferrier.
2. We recall that tartar, a deposit formed by wine on vats, contains tartrate of potash, lime, albumen: a little silica when it is limestone. It is a subcarbonate of potash mixed with lime and silica.

CHAPTER VIII.

SOME REMEDIES (1).

We've already talked about a wonderful restorative made from "gold and pearls," says Rupe Scissa.

Since we cannot use pearls, we use oyster shells which have been baked and reduced to powder. We add to this powder rosemary, lily root also powdered, and we mix everything with the aurified quintessence by the process described in chapter I.

Our old master says that if we take the plant called celandine (the flower), and after having extracted the quintessence from it, we again submit it to the operation described on page 50, and draw from it the fire, that is to say the most subtle part, we will only have to add this last liquor to the pearl elixir to obtain a beverage so powerful, that it can instantly resuscitate a dead person, c ie to put an end to a severe lethargy or a case of apparent death. Its power is even greater, but it is useless to insist: we will be understood half-heartedly. It is also a cure for leprosy.

STRAWBERRY WATER.

Against skin diseases, purging blood humors. —You have to take ripe strawberries, put them in a jar and leave to rot in the cellar for twenty-one days; then circulate the water obtained for ten to fifteen days; finally distill several times in a sand bath according to our ordinary process.

This water can be used for the eyes, and its strength can naturally be greatly increased if it is mixed with the quintessence.

To gain weight, combat anemia, growth fatigue for children, even strengthen a consumptive; it is necessary to draw from the quintessence of the celandine no longer the “fire”, as for the first remedy, but the air”.

Remedy for neurasthenia, mental imbalance, sadness without apparent cause, “saturnians”. — You must mix the quintessence of the plant called: fumitory, rosemary, borage flower.

Remedy for fear, lack of moral strength. — Take angelica root, saffron and, after extracting the quintessence, mix it with the quintessence of “gold and pearls”.
Preventive remedy against any poisoning. — Put in the quintessence: saffron, walnuts, garlic, rue, angelica, horseradish and take by drops.

The quintessence of blood, indicated above, is very good against fever, even without drinking it. All you have to do is rub the radial and temporal arteries for a long time.

By mixing half by half the quintessence of blood with our alcohol, we will have a very good medicine against continuous fever.

To combat acute and violent fever, mix with alcohol, rose water, violet and borage water.

Now here are some other very useful and highly boosted crafting; they are borrowed from Fioraventi, a famous Italian physician.

Manufacture of the philosopher's stone, very useful in many illnesses - It is necessary to take refined saltpeter (nitrogen of potash), rock alum, Roman vitriol (iron sulfate), a pound of each. The vitriol is then dried in an earthen pot; as soon as it is dry, it is crushed with the other substances and 125 grams of rock salt; then distilled over medium heat, taking care to cover the two retorts with a damp cloth. Leave to cool, keep the distillation water aside in a flask stoppered with emery. We then pound with a mortar:

Purified Mercury. . 1/4 liter.
Quicklime. . . . . .100 grams
Black soap. . . . . . 125 —
Ashes. . . . . . . 128. —

We distill it over a high heat; the mercury comes out of the container first; we take it out and keep it in a glass bottle.

The third operation consists in mixing the mercury and the first water obtained in a retort so that it is only one-third full. Add 50 grams of iron filings and 125 grams of leaf gold; cover promptly, distill until dry, keeping the water carefully. Break the retort, you will find the charred stone at the bottom. It will be necessary to powder it immediately and keep it in a silk bag which will be placed in a tightly corked bottle.

The elixir of life is also a very valuable liquor which increases the healing power of all medicines and is a good restorative, given alone. Here is the formula:

Cloves.
Frankincense.
Nutmeg.
Cinnamon.
Ginger.
Mugwort seed.
Galangua.
White pepper.
Black pepper.
Juniper seeds.
Of each 8 grams.
Lemon peel.
Orange peel.
Sage.
Rosemary.
Mint.
Marjoram.
White roses.
Aloe wood.
Cardamom.

Then 1/4 pound of figs; fat, dates, fresh almonds; add a pound of honey, 4 grams of musk, 4 pounds of sugar; put this together (taking care to crush, beforehand, the substances which can be crushed) in 5 liters of brandy or better of our quintessence. Leave to infuse for twenty days.

Then distil in a water bath until completely dry, put the water from the container to, distill in the sun on itself in device no. 8, for two months if possible (or in an oil furnace).

The dried plants, which remained at the bottom of the still, still contain one virtue: when bathed in ashes and over a high heat, they will give red water which will smell bad and be cloudy. It will also be necessary to pass it around in the sun or in horse manure.

The first distillation taken every three days prevents many illnesses and keeps the body in good condition; it heals wounds very quickly; it is also very good for many ocular inflammations in the sick eye morning and evening. It can be used in many other cases.

Blood red water taken by drops (4 or 5 in a glass of water) cures pain in the womb and bowels. It cures breath stench, dental pain, etc.
Here is another precious medicine: royal water; we take:

Yellow sulfur:. .
Rock alum. of each: 1 pound
Rock salt. . .
Borax (borate of soda). . 70 grams

Mix in a mortar, pound into a fine powder, distill in a sand bath first, then over high heat until dry. The water comes out white and cloudy; we filter it and put it in a well-stoppered flask; 20 centigrams of musk soaked in rose water are added; let it cool, and the liquid will become very clear and have a good smell. It can be used for wounds, mouth ulcers, three or four drops in broth, to combat fever.

Here is now how to make a liqueur called beaume. We know that the Ancients gave this name to all liquid resins. Today, we only call resinous substances that contain benzoic acid:

Fine turpentine.. . 1 pound.
Laurel oil......4 ounces (125 gr.)
Galangal.............. 3 ounces (90 gr.)
Gum arabic..... 4 ounces (120 gr.)
Frankincense.............. ..
Myrrh............ . 3oz (90 gr.)
Aloe wood,.........
Galarigue............
Clove.......
Cinnamon...... ....... 1 ounce (32 gr.)
nutmeg .......
Ginger...........
Fine musk...........
Amber. .............. 3 grams.

Pound it all together carefully. Pour 6 liters of quintessence over it (these quantities can naturally be reduced). Leave to sit for 9 days. Distill in an ash bath at very low heat. A white water will first come out, continuing the same heat until a blackish oil begins to come out; then change the container, increase the heat and continue it. You must then separate the oil from the black water, keeping each one separately. We do the same operation for the first water, and we keep it aside.

The first white water is good for the eyes and for the skin; it is diuretic, heals wounds and soothes coughs; black water cures ringworm, leprosy, all kinds of scabs and ulcers. Non-corrosive, used pure. Baulme oil heals head wounds and many other diseases.

Continuing to explore the too disdained treasure of the ancient pharmacopoeia today, we found the following recipe which seemed interesting to me:

LEONARD'S AROMATICUM.

Take 125 grams of fine powdered sugar, 1 gr. 30 of musk, saffron, oyster shell powder, aloe wood, fine cinnamon, 8 grams of the philosopher's stone, the manufacture of which we saw above.

Mix with rose water until solid (in tablets) and keep for use in a tightly closed wooden box. To make the tablets (pulverize everything, mix with a gum mucilage when the dough is well bound; cut into tablets; let them air dry on a sieve and dry in the oven) To use it, we cut 4 grams in broth, wine or water, it constitutes an emetic and a mild purgative.

THE ANGELIC ELECTUARY.

It is a good remedy for gout. We take it every three days. It is good for coughs, pain and inflammation, and is made as follows:

Saffron.............
Aloe wood........ 10 grams.
Fine cinnamon.........
Red coral.........
Black hellebore....... 60 grams.
Rose sugar.............. 125 —
Musk.............. 4 —
Philosopher's stone.. 100 —
Quintessence of alcohol 100 —

and cooked honey, this that it will be necessary to reduce everything to the consistency of a preserve.

Place in an earthenware pot over a low heat, stirring constantly; let cool, and put in a glass vase.

The dose is 4 grams on an empty stomach.



Esquinancy is an inflammatory condition of the back of the pharynx, larynx or trachea; there are naturally a very large number of forms; There is no need to recall them here: the Ancients had a curious remedy made with a wild boar's tooth reduced to powder. They mixed this powder with 100 grams of flaxseed oil, and the patient took 4 grams.

AGAINST URINE RETENTION.

Orange seeds
Small lemons... one pound
Melissa.........
Centipede.... 200 grams
Asparagus........
Watercress........
Hyssop... 200 grams.
Fennel root.
Parsley root.

Crush well in the mortar with the lemon juice, making a sort of liquid paste; put to distill in an alembic (earth retort), keep the water that comes out in a glass vase stoppered with emery.

When we want to treat a sick person, he will have to be purged and on a diet for a day. Take 150 grams of this water the next morning, hot, and also in the evening. Avoid meat during treatment.

The following recipe is a true alchemical preparation, it is a powerful restorative:

It is necessary to pound in a mortar white wine tartar, very clear turpentine, aloe leaves, of each one pound, until making a paste which is then put to distill by gradually heating until a fire strong enough so that the moisture is completely released. We then put the product of the distillation back into the retort, and we start again.

The heat must be increased at the end of the distillation, so that the feces are well burned and dry. We then remove them to pound them again with the distillation water, and we put everything back to distill in another retort. It is necessary to have a lot of patience, because you have to redo this operation Up to 15 and 20 times.

We then obtain feces absolutely white like salt; We put them on the marble in the cellar and they give very precious and clear water which we keep in a bottle stoppered with emery.

It is plant stone water of which 1 gram is enough to produce wonderful results.
This medication is taken on an empty stomach mixed with a simple julep (gum syrup), 60 grams, or sweetened wine.

It is an excellent remedy against worms: it modifies the liver, cures the spleen, coughs; in addition, it is very diuretic.



Mercuriale is a plant in the Euphorbiaceae family (we know that these are dangerous plants, due to the very caustic milky juice they contain). We must therefore handle it with caution. It must be picked in May. We take a fairly large quantity so as to have the juice, which we filter.

We mix, in a well-stoppered and luted glass vessel, half a pound of this clarified juice, 250 grams of gum syrup, 200 grams of our quintessence, 8 grams of sulfuric acid.

We expose ourselves to the sun or to the concentrated heat of our oil stove for forty days. If you put it in the sun, you have to bring it in at night.
Take 5 to 6 drops in broth, four hours before eating for two months.

ANOTHER DRINKING GOLD RECIPE AND WAY TO USE IT.

We take 100 grams of gold leaf, which we slip into four openings made in a still hot fat hen; the hen thus prepared is placed in a pot of thick earth, in a lukewarm place for thirty-six hours. The gold will be dissolved by this simple process. The honey water is then distilled three or four times, and the hen is carefully washed with it, thus removing all the gold. If, for example, one liter of golden water is obtained, one must add to it 1 liter of quintessence of alcohol and 4 grams of sal ammoniac. We then put it to circulate in a large long-necked flask with a double capacity, on the sand bath with blue gas, or on our oil stove, for three months. Every month it will be necessary to skim the surface of the liquid kept in a vial of glass stoppered with emery. At the end of three months, distill what will remain in the retort in a sand bath, after having poured half a liter of brandy into it. Heat it harder and whatever comes through, mix it in with what you've taken out, and set aside. Distil in a bain-marie, and put back in circulation for another twenty-five days. This preparation is long, but it is neither expensive nor very difficult.

4 grams of this elixir are administered in 30 grams of violet syrup, or any other syrup of your choice, also in tea, coffee or chocolate. It finds its use in syncope, difficult childbirth, apoplexy, after trauma, to combat convulsions in children, etc.

DISTILLED WATER OF HONEY.

We put in a retort fitted with its container and a capacity of 4 liters, a pound of the best possible honey. Cover with a wet cloth and heat moderately in a sand bath. It distills white vapors which convert into blood-red water, we put this water in a well-stoppered flask, and let it rest. It becomes clearer and takes on a ruby ​​color. It is then redistilled six or seven times, and it becomes golden in color. This quintessence has a very good smell and dissolves gold. If you give around twenty drops to a very weakened patient, he regains his strength very quickly. We also cure, with this water, wounds, ulcers, coughs, paralysis.

EXCELLENT OIL FOR HEALING HEAD WOUNDS, GROWING HAIR AND BEARD AND AGAINST URINE RETENTION.

Take:
Hard-boiled egg whites........ 400 gr.
Clear turpentine......450 gr.
Myrrh................... 100 gr.

Mix well, set to distill over a very low heat, and increase little by little, until everything that can pass through comes out. There will be an oily substance in the container, mixed with water. Separate the oil and store it in a glass jar.

WATER TO PRESERVE VISION AND CLEAN EYE SPOTS.

Take 6 liters of white wine, 2 pounds of well-risen breadcrumbs, 125 grams of celandine, fennel, pine kernels, 16 grams of cloves. Distill in a retort fitted with its container long enough to obtain at least 2 liters of water which must be stored carefully. If we want it to have more virtue, we will circulate it on itself for several days.

PHILOSOPHERS’ OIL (TEREBENTHINE AND WAX).

This oil is a balm of great virtue, because it is made of two almost incorruptible materials. It is necessary to distil, carefully mixing:

Clear turpentine...... . 500 gr.
Fragrant yellow wax...... 450 gr.
Ashes of vine branch............................... 150 gr.

You have to give enough fire for everything to come out; we will then see the coagulated wax on the neck of the retort. Then circulate and store in a tightly stoppered glass vessel. By rubbing it all over your body once a month, you remove all fatigue, and you retain the suppleness of youth for a long time. This water heals wounds quickly. The strongest urine retention subsides immediately by taking 8 grams, as well as stubborn coughs. You should always have some with you, it can be so useful.

THE GREAT LIQUEUR OF LEONARD.

To compose this precious remedy, it takes a lot of time and care.

Mix 10 liters of common oil and 1 liter of white wine. Then boil until the wine has evaporated. Put the oil thus prepared in an earthen pot. Bury the pot in the cellar or in the garden, if possible for six months, at a depth of 2 meters, after adding 3 pounds of rosemary flowers, 200 grams of aloe wood, 300 grams of gum arabic (Bdellium) . — If possible, bury it at the beginning of August to dig it up in February.

As soon as you get out of the ground, open the vase, add a handful of sage, rosemary, rue, yarrow, comfrey roots, 30 grams of galangal, cloves, nutmeg, saffron, 60 grams of mastic; dragon's blood, 250 grams of hepatic aloes and breadcrumbs, half a pound of yellow wax and Greek pitch, 4 grams of musk. Mix well and boil in a water bath until the plants are thoroughly dried out. Remove, add 10 grams of the balm described above, pass through a fine cloth, filter and store in a tightly stoppered flask. This liquor cures dropsy, hectic fever (fever which occurs in the last period of organic diseases): the dose is 10 grams in the morning on an empty stomach in a hot drink, for forty days. With this liquor, used hot, as a dressing, wounds, ringworm, head colds, catarrhs ​​are rapidly cured. It is diuretic, makes hair grow, etc.

MYRRH OIL (BEAUTY PRODUCT).

Take 180 grams of chosen myrrh and put them in 400 grams of our quintessence of alcohol, and circulate in the long-necked flask or apparatus (fig. 8). Then distill in a sand bath until all the water has passed. There will remain at the bottom of the retort an oil which will be filtered through a cloth. To use it, expose the face and hands to nettle water vapor and coat with myrrh oil. Earaches can also be cured with a little cotton soaked in this remedy.

ELECTUARY OF SULFUR.

Incorporate without heat: 1 pound of sulfur powder, 16 grams of cinnamon, 1 pound of saffron, 8 grams of ginger, 7 centigrams of musk that has been infused in rose water, as much good honey as necessary . Keep in a dry place.

We take 3 or 4 grams in the morning on an empty stomach. This remedy dries up pimples, is diuretic, dissolves stone, cures coughs and excites the appetite.

I will end these few curious and well-forgotten recipes today, with one or two preparations taken from Lémery, preparations so well known and so famous in the past, that my work would not be complete without them. I want to talk about the famous Water of the Queen of Hungary and the remedies made from deer horns, which certain reliable information allows me to affirm to be excellent.

WATER OF THE QUEEN OF HUNGARY.

To make this famous water, a large retort with a container is half filled with putrefied rosemary flowers; we pour our quintessence on the flowers so as to cover them; then, the retorts are gently digested in an oil furnace for three days without deluting; we pour what will have been able to pass, from the container into the retort, we increase the heat and we distill more vigorously until we have withdrawn about two thirds; we will then find an excellent liquor which we will keep in a tightly stoppered phial.

This remedy gives excellent results in palpitations, paralysis, apoplexy, syncope, nervous diseases, and externally for burns, bruises, etc.

DEER HORN PREPARATIONS.

These horns, grated, were used in powder form, in herbal teas, to cure diarrhea, worms and spitting blood. Jellies were also prepared by boiling them in water for a very long time.

Deer horn water is made like this: we choose tender horns that grow in the spring, we cut them into thin slices, we put them in a retort container, we carefully wash and distill everything that can pass from it. liquid. You must use a bain-marie or steam.

This water must be digested with a little cinnamon, orange peel and white wine. After digestion for two or three days, distill it all at low heat, which will be increased towards the end.

1. I follow Rupe Scissa's classification and make a special chapter of those remedies which could have been classified as quintessences.



CHAPTER IX.

LIST OF THE MAIN PLANTS CLASSIFIED BY COMPLEXION.

We know that from primordial chaos were born four elements or principles whose interaction produced on our earth the germs of all bodies. The Ancients admitted that four elements were united in man and formed the four temperaments or complexions: fire, air, water, earth - bilious, sanguine, lymphatic, nervous.

Each temperament being subject to particular diseases, the latter were classified according to the same principles. There were therefore diseases of fire, air, water and earth, participating in the four elementary qualities: hot, cold, humid, dry, each element having its own quality, more a quality borrowed from the neighboring element.

The fire diseases were therefore: hot-dry.
— air — warm-humid.
— water — cold-wet.
— earth — cold-dry.

According to O. Ferrier, here are the most frequent illnesses in each temperament:

Planets	Elements	Temperament	Diseases
Saturn	Earth and Water	Nervous lymphatic	Cold-dry or wet. Respiratory tract, leprosy, diarrhea, hernia, sciatica, neurasthenia, ophthalmia.
Jupiter	Air	Pure Blood	Hot-wet. Pleurisy, convulsion, apoplexy, phlegmons, blood and skin diseases, insomnia.
Mars and Sun	Fire	Pure Bilious	Warm-dry. Continuous fever, epidemic disease, migraines, pustules, boils, jaundice, dysentery, nephritis.
Venus	Air and Fire	Lymphatic blood	Wet-hot-cold Fistulas, weakness of stomach, kidneys, impotence, syphilis.
Mercury	Water and Earth	Nervous lymphatic	Cold-wet or dry Dizziness, paralysis of the tongue, phthisis, leg and foot ulcers, constipation.
Moon	Water	Pure Lymphatic	Dropsy, podagra, paralysis, catarrh, trembling of limbs, vomiting, poverty of blood, worms, fistulas

To treat illnesses, plants of opposite qualities were used: against hot illnesses, cold plants, against illnesses damp; plants, dry, etc. Here, according to Rupe Scissa, is a very complete list of plants classified according to their elementary qualities. It will be necessary to extract the quintessence and mix it with alcohol. We will fruitfully consult, to complete these notions, the beautiful work of Sédir on magical plants.

WARM PLANTS.

Borage, fumitory, marshmallow, sour monk, chamomile, coriander, dodder, basil.
Seeds: marshmallow seed, clover seed, rue seed.
Flowers: watercress, saffron, chamomile. Roots: gladiolus, aristolochia.
Fruits: blackberries (which are no longer green), gifted almonds, olives, figs, chestnuts, filberts, bark, lemons.
Leaves: bay leaf, cloves.
Seeds: wheat, white peas.
Gums: musk.
Herbs: wild rue, watercress.

COLD PLANTS.

Herbs: turnip, horseradish, mercuriale, sorrel, cabbage, mallow, endive, rhubarb, purslane.
Seeds: mallow, plantin, rosé, chicory, melon.
Flowers: roses, almonds, violets, lemon, willow.
Leaves: myrtle.
Fruits: acorns, lemon flesh, olives, green plums, quinces, pears, cherries, mandrakes.
Grains: barley, millet, myrtle.
Juices: cassia, vinegar, camphor, dragon's blood.

DRY PLANTS.

Herbs: Chamomile, Houseleek, Fennel, Cabbage, Quintefeuille, Wild Mint, Nightshade, Cardamine, Leek, Saffron, Carnations, Lavender.
Seeds: parsley, wild carrot, coriander, basil, endive, lemon, melon, cardamine, ache. Flowers: roses, garden saffron, cucumber, myrtle, pomegranate, asphodel.
Roots: ache, parsley, fennel, caper, pomegranate, river gladiolus, arum, aristolochia, basil, sage, plantin, peony, centaury.
Wood: rhubarb, aloe.
Leaves: willow, myrtle, serpentine, tamarind, laurel, olive, gourd, lemon, mint. .
Fruits: bitter almond, lemon, green blackberries, quinces, pears, chestnuts, pine cones.
Seeds: millet, barberry, myrtle.
Gums-sucs: frankincense, aloe, myrtle, honey, ammonia.

HUMID PLANTS.

Seeds: marshmallow, orache, mercuriale.
Flowers: beans, water lily.
Roots: rush.
Wood: licorice.
Fruits: blackberries (which are ripe), ripe grapes, plums, dates, cherries, nuts.
Seeds: green beans, pepper, white peas.
Gums: gum arabic.
Herbs: marshmallow, common lettuce, purslane.

CONCLUSION.

Here I have reached the end of my work. — Have I achieved the goal I had set for myself? It's up to the reader to say.

However, I dare to hope that, if he has fully understood the principles developed at length in the first chapters, if he knows how to be content with the little that I offer him, to be patient and calm, he will soon reap the reward for his pains and will succeed. to make very powerful elixirs that he would not find anywhere in our time.

When he will have overcome the first material difficulties, he will quickly feel the charms of laboratory work and will be passionate, I am sure, for his work.

With what pleasure will he not follow the transformations of the substances placed in his retorts? And when he sees a few drops of his quintessences restoring health, with marvelous speed, to poor sick people, he will quickly forget his first disappointments and will only think of trying new formulas to do even more good. in no way conceals the imperfections of these few notes, they have no pretensions, and their only merit is, I think, to be clear, simple and accessible to all. As they are, they will be able to facilitate the beginnings of students who would be attracted to the achievements of spagyric art: this is my only hope and my only goal.

Many friends and Masters have helped me with their kind advice during my work, I extend to them all my thanks here.

G. PHANEB.
July November 1911.

NOTE ON THE MODERN PREPARATION OF ANIMAL QUINTESSENCES.

Opotherapy uses, for the manufacture of nephritin, the kidneys of sheep or pigs; for thyroidin, the thyroid glands of sheep. For adrenaline, the sheep's adrenal glands. The glands are left to macerate in the absence of air in distilled water at 40°. After a few hours of digestion, the liquid is separated by expression, and concentrated to a syrupy consistency. It is taken up in alcohol at 95°, filtered and concentrated again to the desired consistency. For thyroidin, the fresh glands — raw or lightly grilled — are passed through ether to degrease them and bathed in 95° alcohol. The liquid is then dried, filtered, in vacuum at low temperature; Finally, the extract is reduced to powder which can be mixed with broth, milk or introduced into a pastille.

CONTENTS.

Study. — Preface on Alchemy. 1.
Foreword. 14.
Chapter I. — Theories of the Hermeticists on nature. 16.
Chapter II. — The Alchemical Laboratory. 24.
Chapter III. — The modern laboratory. Adaptation. 34.
Chapter IV. — Preparation of alcohol. 43.
Chapter V. — Animal quintessences. 47.
Chapter VI. — Vegetable quintessences. 50.
Chapter VII. — Mineral quintessences. 54.
Chapter VIII. — Curious recipes. 60.
Chapter IX. — List of plants by complexion. 68.
Conclusion. 71.
Note on modern animal quintessences. 72.V2.0 _