Transcription of the manuscript from the Manly Palmer Hall collection BOX 10:
“Alchemy Operation”
Operation on Zinc according to the intention of Respour and Delocques, To extract the mineral spirit from it and make it the subject of the Great Work, combined and commented by M… Anonymous.
Zinc is a Saturnian antimonial mineral.
There are three kinds: mineral and two artificial. All three can also serve in our magisterium.
Make the Zinc flowers according to art. The ordinary and most common way is this:
Melt Zinc in a large flat crucible. Being nicely molten and red, rub the edges of the crucible with a small iron spoon with a long tail made for this purpose. Friction will immediately cause our Zinc to ignite as if it were nitre and shine like the Sun.
Being in this state, very cottony white flowers arise and a kind of crust is formed which is lifted slightly with the spoon after having left it to cook in a corner of the crucible so that it reduces to lime. of Zinc. Having left it like this for a miserere, remove it from the melted matter, as if foaming it, and put it in an earthenware vessel next to you; continue to do this as long as there is molten and ignited material , making a reasonable fire, and taking care to remove the raw material mixed with the flowers. The fire must not be stronger than to keep cast iron tin always red; we can hardly make more than a pound of these flowers in a day.
The second way of making flowers is using aludel in the form of sublimation.
The third is done by the tubulated retort. The latter two are preferable to the first, because the mercurial volatile spirits are retained and not lost.
Zinc destroyed by the tubulated retort or by the aludel It is necessary that the tubulated retort or the bottom of the aludel be very red, and project the Zinc in shot or in thin plates and put it in different times and little by little. The container must be very large and exactly fitted; this mercurial spirit passes into white vapors like that of vitriol and is reduced to a diaphanous liquor like the spirit of wine; it is clear as water although it is also very penetrating; it is this mercurial spirit which is the humid radical of the mixed; if we want to have a quantity of it, we must use mineral Zinc which has never been melted, because that in this state he has not lost any of his spirit by the fire of fusion.
Reduction of Zinc into Shot
It must be melted in a flat crucible (it must be observed that in fusions of Zinc the crucible is reddened in the fire before putting the Zinc in it) As soon as it is melted you remove it from the fire and you let it cool to the point that when you dip a straw in it it won't light up. In this state we pour it from a great height onto the clean floor, a drop here and a drop there, or to do it better we always pour it from quite a height onto an inverted marble mortar so that it spreads better; or we pour it into a tub or a terrine filled with lukewarm water, taking care to put a new and non-flammable broom, that is to say green, which is not wet and which does not touch the water from the tub, across the said tub, always observing to pour it little by little and at the same degree of heat as above. All these precautions are necessary.
Reduction of Zinc flowers into universal salt.
Take your very white Zinc flowers, grind them well in a glass mortar, pass them through a silk sieve. Put them in a glass with the dew of March, from the first quarter of the moon to the beginning of the last, or during all the equinoxes. Your glass must be tilted and there must be a container underneath to receive the liquor which will fall through deliquescence. Place your material sheltered from rain and sun; collect exactly the water that will be in the container, and the residue of the flowers that are on the glass. Put everything in a glass retort and distil in a graduated lamp until no more liquor comes out (having previously lubricated the joints well) Separate the water which will have passed into the container and keep it in a tightly corked bottle. Expose the dead head to the air again as you did before to make it fall further into decay; then take again the liquor and what remains on the glass of the dead head, put everything in a retort and distill as above; repeat this work until all your flowers are almost all reduced to liquor.
Take all these liqueurs, filter them, and purify them in the vaporous bath as long as they leave no sediment (see how to clarify the dissolutions in Delocques) Purify them in a gentle water bath in well-closed matras for 40 days, then filter them and separate them from the sediment they might have made; then distill them in a boiling water bath in tall cucurbits until a film, then crystallize according to the art as one does with vitriol while keeping the same precautions; then all your liquors being reduced to film and crystallized, they are the true salt of Zinc which is the greatest precipitant there is in nature.
This salt is sweet like Saturn sugar, it must never be revived in the body, it is purified like all fixed salts by means of the phlegm which has passed through the distillation, and in the absence of the said phlegm we use the distilled rainwater, (rainwater from the equinoxes or May dew is preferable to any other) Everything must be done accurately and cleanly. This salt, being thus purified and talcose, is light, and has the shine of the finest oriental pearls.
All metallic limes can be salified by this method provided that they have been well destroyed by fire; Zinc is used in preference to any other mineral because it is totally destroyed and cannot be reduced to a body by any art.
It should be noted that by distilling the previously purified liquor which is zinc lime dissolved in air, an ardent spirit as subtle as the spirit of wine passes through a boiling water bath, which must be kept carefully because it has very great virtues. It is properly a universal spirit determined by the metallic nature.
Good method to attract a lot of this universal spirit and at the same time to purify this alkali and central salt of Zinc.
Take the rainwater of the equinoxes or the dew of May and distill it in this way: Put for example 100 pints in a still, distill half of it; take this half distilled and redistill it a second time, but only distill half, that is, 25 pints. Distill these 25 pints again and remove only 12 pints. Then put your Zinc salt after the simple and first crystallization which is not yet purified, in four or five pints of this water. Digest it in a bain-marie in a meeting vessel, as long as no more sediment is deposited; then filter and distill in a water bath. First a very subtle mind will pass, then a phlegm. Distill until film, and crystallize. Keep wits and phlegm apart.
Take the crystals, put them in a glass cucurbit and melt them over a low, graduated heat with sand, gradually increasing the heat until the salt is liquid. Being in this state, continue the same degree of fire for 24 hours or until the crystals are dried up of themselves, then remove the cucurbit from the fire, and, being still very hot, pour over your salt which is in the cucurbite about ten pints of the water prepared above (the water must be boiling) All your salt being dissolved, digest it in a bain-marie in meeting vessels until it no longer precipitates from sediment; then filter and distill, and do as you did in the first operation. Repeat this work 4 or 5 times, or as long as the salt being dissolved in a small quantity of the said water, it radiates and represents different colors, and as it flutters in the liquor several needles and flakes of gold color, which it melts at the slightest heat, light, talcose, white as snow, and very soft. Then your salt is pure, and separate. It is called by Ripley, “Leafy Land or Virgin Land of the Philosophers.” » As for the subtle and spiritual liquor, it must be well corked and preserved for the following use.
Way to deflegm this subtle Spirit
Take Zinc lime prepared as above, one pound, and four pounds of the subtle spirit reserved above; the lime must be very dry and not have become airborne, because as long as it contains phlegm the operation would not be successful; put everything in a long- necked matrass, carefully place a suitable capital in it, leave everything without fire for an hour, stirring it from time to time, then place your matrass in a very gentle, but nevertheless capable, bain-marie. to show the spirit devoid of its phlegm, which will attach itself to the said flowers. Distill to this degree as long as you see that there is spirit; it is better that some spirit remains with the phlegm than if it passes through mixed with the spirit. If the first operation is not enough to deflegm it well, you can repeat it up to three times on new, well-prepared and very dry zinc lime, like the one above; then you will have a very subtle, penetrating and well-deflegged mind.
To better carry out this operation we use Zinc salt, because all the alkaline salts of each body concentrate the spirits better and separate the phlegm more easily than a foreign alkali. However, Zinc lime has the virtue of concentrating and deflegming all spirits, both alkalis and acids, as we will be able to see below. This way of deflegming minds with their own alkalis must serve as an example for all others of this nature.
Now take the salt which as a mark of perfection must reflect all kinds of colors in the sun; it must be very clear, tending towards greenish, very heavy; this spirit is mercurial, mineral and metallic. Soak the salt with the above-mentioned spirit thus prepared by one or the other of the two ways, dry it over a gentle fire of sand in a well-closed vessel, re-soak it again with the same spirit and dry it out. Repeat this work 7 or 8 times or more, that is to say until the salt which is truly virgin earth no longer wants to drink it.
This is how the washing, imbibition and nutrition of the leafy earth of the Sages are done; this earth being thus satisfied, dry it over a low heat, then sublimate it with a graduated fire according to art.
If everything sublimates and nothing remains at the bottom of your vessel except a very light grayish ash, the imbibition has been well done; If a fairly heavy mass remains at the bottom of your vessel, you must start the imbibition again. This sublimation sometimes rises into flowers and other times into crystals, but both of these two sublimations are white as snow and very heavy. This precious sublimated material contains beneath its whiteness a blood-red sulfur which is the live and unripe gold which the Philosophers use to animate their vulgar gold.
Way of making this red sulfur appear and extracting it.
Take the sublimed or white flowers which are very volatile and set or freeze them over a gently regulated fire, until the matter no longer sublimes and it is a beautiful crimson red, what the Philosophers call the occult manifested. To do this fixing or freezing, we use a very round mattress, we put in this sublimate or white flowers, or this volatile which we want to fix and redden. We only occupy the sixth part of the matra, we seal it hermetically and we put it on the side in the sand, over low heat , and when it is mounted or sublimated we turn the matra upside down , and we reject this as long as it no longer sublimates matter and it has become fixed, fuse, and a bright red; then he is prepared; or we take two low cucurbits which do the same function as the matras by rotating each time the salt rises, until it remains in the state we have just described.
This operation serves as an example for fixing and redefying all the volatile salts which are the last envelope of the seminal spirit of the mixture from which they are taken and which under their whiteness contain the bright red and prolific sulfur.
To then extract this live sulfur and have it pure, it is necessary to pour on it a good quantity of the subtle and well-delegated spirit and prepared as we said above, then digest it over a low heat, decant and add more.
new, digest and decant, and this as long as this spirit no longer takes on color.
Then we collect all the extractions and decantations, and we remove all the spirit in a bain-marie until all that remains at the bottom of the retort is an oily , fatty and creamy substance which is a fixed and the proximate matter of metals and minerals; in a word it is their prolific seed.
But if we do not want to do this extraction, we must then gradually feed this rubified salt with our own well-delegated spirit until it has drunk at least ten times its weight, or until it is well satisfied, then everything remains cold and hot in a fixed oil consistency similar to that above.
To perfect one or the other of these oils, they are poured into a three-quarters empty pot, then kept for eight days in moderate sand; then ten more days in the bain-marie, and we continue like this alternately for three months, so much more, so much the better; then we distill everything with a retort and we separate it exactly from its feces, if any has precipitated; this then forms a permanent liquor that Philosophers call Salamander, an incombustible, inextinguishable oil, which has virtues that surpass imagination.
Way to have quickly and in abundance of this Salamander for the medicine of the human body.
Take from this Salamander and put it in a matra to circulate with the spirit of tartarized wine, or even better, concentrated on the lime of Zinc, as we taught that one should do with one's own spirit.
It takes 4 ounces of this wine spirit to an ounce of Salamander; everything being circulated and united, we have a perfect essence of Zinc which is its true Narcotic sulfur, which is the sedative of all the strongest pains. The dose is from one to three drops in a suitable vehicle.
On this model, we can extract from all metals, minerals and salts, narcotic sulfur, whose virtues are so prodigious, but we must first reduce these bodies into real salt, volatilize it and then treat it as we said above. -in front.
Here is how to use this Salamander for metalwork.
We take ten parts of this Salamander, and one part of very pure mineral gold, and failing that we use gold prepared by antimony or other philosophical way, but the gold must be attenuated and opened; we sigilize everything in a matra to cook it over a lamp fire, until everything is reduced to red powder which we ferment and multiply with the above-mentioned Salamander as often as we judge appropriate. This powder is projective and cures metals of their leprosy. As for the salts drawn from metallic and mineral bodies , it is easy to volatilize them using common mercury as an agent which only draws from them their average substance which is the volatile part and consequently the seminal.
End of the present operation on Zinc and continuation of other great arcana on the same matter by the different and more abbreviated route Way of attracting a lot of spirit determined to the mineral kingdom
Take the lime or dead head from which you have drawn one or the other Salamander, or better yet, the faeces which precipitated while purifying the said Salamanders or red liquor. Expose them to the air and dissolve them by deliquescence, purify what comes out of them through the bain-marie and through the filter, then distill through the retort as we said, and put what will distill separately in a well-stoppered flask, and expose the dead head again for as long as you see fit. As for the waters which came from the distillations of the said deliquiums, it is necessary to putrefy them, then separate the spirit according to art, which will be a mercurial spirit, subtle, determined to the metallic type and which has great penetration.
Very short way to destroy the lime from Zinc, to carry out the above-mentioned operation, which proves that once we have reached an arcana, we easily find abbreviations.
Take this mercurial spirit determined to the metal pulled by one way or the other, gradually soak it in Zinc lime made as above and this until it no longer wants to drink it, then expose it to the air and it will decay as easily as salt of tartar. All the insipid and mercurial spirits drawn from saltpeter, salt, vitriol and sulfur, have the same effect. From this liquor by deliquescence we soak other lime with Zinc and by this way we make it fall to infinity; and from this deliquium treated as we have said, there is obtained a spirit and a salt in abundance which achieves the same goal as that of above, if it is treated in the same way.
Second reduction of Zinc lime into real metallic salt for physical operation.
Take 5 pounds of zinc lime, put it in a very large glass jar and pour three fingers of mountain vinegar over it ; vinegar is the acidic spirit of vitriol or ferramie or pyrites which is the marcasite of vitriol. We can use vinegar or acidic spirits separated by zinc lime as will be said below; failing this, we can use vinegar or acid spirit drawn from nitre salt drawn by zinc lime, or some other very strong master vinegar, made from wine, honey, or other of this nature , taking care to season the said vinegars with a little spirit of salt or vitriol. Digest your material over low heat, stirring the vessel from time to time because a crust accumulates at the bottom which becomes very hard and through which menstruation can no longer act or penetrate. Your vinegars having become very soft and well laden with a dark dye, decant the said vinegar, and add more, and repeat until no more dye comes out, and the vinegar no longer becomes softer. So take all your vinegar that you have decanted, filter it and purify it in the water bath, as long as it no longer leaves any sediment.
Afterwards, put it in cucurbits and distill in soft sand until the consistency of a very thick gum, then remove the cucurbits from the heat and assemble all the gums in a single vessel while they are still hot, because as they cool they harden; reserve them for the following use; however put them on the furnace of very soft sand with their meeting vessel; all well read. Take the liquor which came out by distilling your impregnations to make the gums above, and animate them with some acidic saline spirits as was said and done first to make it used for a new extraction. Take the dead heads which have given the gentle impregnation and dry them well by distilling them over high heat, in order to remove the little menstruation which may have attached to them; after reverberating them over an open fire under a muffle, stirring them from time to time as if you wanted to calcine the antimony, and this for as long as possible. By putting a little of this lime on the tongue you feel a little salty taste, so do the extraction as said above; repeat this work as long as this lime can give some sweetish saline impregnation, reduce everything to gum as was said above, everything well purified.
Take this gum thus prepared and dissolve it in phlegm of vitriol which contains a little spirit; purify this solution by the bain-marie and by the filter, repeat this so many times, always dissolving it in new phlegm, purifying it until this gum is extremely diaphanous.
Then have the sulphurous spirit of very pure vitriol, totally separated from its acidic oil and as much as possible from its phlegm; pour two fingers over this gummy substance meltable like wax, digest for a few days in the meeting vessel, then remove the phlegm with a moderate sand fire, put back after another spirit and this by as many reiterations that the spirit comes out as strong as when united; then digest this material for 40 days in a water bath or steam bath, then put this hot and liquid gum in a large retort that you have heated . The furnace being also hot, promptly adapt a very large container luteed with precision, and distill over a very moderate graduated fire according to art. At the slightest heat, there will first pass a very subtle fiery spirit similar to the spirit of wine, but insipid, then white smoke which will be reduced to oil or a fatty liquor, yellow like hyacinth and with an odor of sulfur ( rather the smell of camphor, the word sulfur having undoubtedly been misplaced by the copyist) Continue the fire until nothing more passes through .
So everything being cold, leave the retort and you will find snow-white sublimated flowers attached to the neck of the retort; sometimes we do not find any of these flowers, especially when the nutrition of the sulphurous spirit of vitriol has been piously done according to the rules of the art; as for the bottom of the retort, there will remain a dead head which is a good phosphorus that is flammable in the slightest air; otherwise it must be calcined in a short neck matra as long as it no longer smokes, then it is ready. To store it , keep it in a tightly corked glass bottle.
It should be noted that all metals actually destroyed, i.e. which have lost their hard and compact form to take on the saline and soluble, give a skull (caput mortum) from which we make a phosphorus, otherwise they would not have been destroyed nor reduced to true salt which can never be reduced in a body similar to that from which they came. All trivial and vulgar sophistic salts are nothing other than acids frozen and corporified with the alkaline lime of metals; However, as lime concentrates the spirits which act on them and deflegates them, they make them much more powerful, and make them solvents above the common ones, if the studious artist knows how to take advantage of them.
Take the white flowers if there are any, and which smell of Camphor - they are only the most fixed part of the oily liquor - Mix them with the two different liquors which are in the container, put and mix everything in a meeting vessel, and digest everything in a vaporous bath for 10 days, then distill in a gentle water bath: the ardent spirit will pass first into tortuous veinlets like the spirit of wine, which you pour back entirely apart.
The precious wine spirit of Raymond Lulle has infinite virtues.
He is a metallic mercurial spirit who is one of the greatest agents there is in the world. It is a universal solvent, and especially of mother-of-pearl , porcelain, Venetian salt, and the Moon which it dissolves and reduces to very volatile soluble salt, which salt by a distillation similar to that of the aforementioned gum gives an essence or liqueur which is the true talcum oil of the ancients. As for the yellow oil, it dissolves the moon into lime, bismuth or tin into ice, and the fine Jupiter, reduces them into salt, which, purified and treated as has been said, gives by distillation an essence which does not yield in no way compared to that which is made by spirits. The oil and the spirit put and circulated together reduce the feather alum into salt. They form with it a salt which, through distillation, gives a fixative essence whose effects are surprising, both for men and for metals.
Zinc is the eldest son of Saturn.
Moreover, with all the ardent spirits drawn by whatever means from the Saturnian family, we open and prepare all the metals both for metals and for health, and we make with them the most beautiful fasts in the world.
ENDThe Philosophers' Rose or The Great Work on Zinc
Take lime or Zinc flowers. Pass through a silk sieve the quantity of one pound, fine saltpeter well separated from its common salt and its two pounds. Grind everything exactly, then put it in a flat crucible with its lid, set a very gentle graduated fire for 12 hours, stirring the material from time to time without letting it melt, all as if one were calcining antimony for reduce to glass. The twelve hours having passed, and the fire having continued to increase, remove the material and pound it into impalpable powder, then project it into a good flat vitrified crucible which is very red and well ignited, all to fulminate the material.
Give it a very good fire to melt it, stir it from time to time with an iron spoon which you will remove quickly to prevent it from melting; if it happens that your material does not fulminate, throw crushed charcoal on it from time to time, (willow charcoal is the best) Having thrown away all your material and having fulminated well, having been stirred, hold it in cast iron until a Rose with its leaves appears on the surface of your crucible; as soon as this sign appears to you, remove the crucible from the fire, and throw the material into a clean and hot basin on a well polished and hot metal plate as if making antimony glass .
Pound your hot material into powder, and put it in a glass to cool in the cellar. Hold it like this until it is almost completely reduced to red gum which contains the aurific sulfur of Zinc; put it in a glass cucurbit with its meeting vessel with the dead head which gave the gum, digest everything in a water bath for ten days.
Afterwards, distill in the said bain-marie all the liquor that can pass through.
Return the dead head to the cellar to be resolved as above, then digest in the same way; repeat this so many times until putting this deliquium in a retort it turns red. Carefully collect all the water that you have removed from the liqueurs, to obtain from it a good mercurial spirit as was said in the previous procedure.
Your gum being in the above-mentioned state, distill through the retort everything that turns red; recobobate this red liquor two or three times on a tenth of its weight of the dead head from which it came, or for the best, take the alkali salt from it and recobobate the said liquor on it, Reserve separately the said red liquor which you must have well dephlegmated at each cohobation for the use below.
Then draw all the salt from all the dead heads and purify them according to the art, then put it in a mattress and feed it little by little with the red liquor previously reserved, and this as long as it is meltable. like wax , then reduce it to a liquor in a bain-marie, with sand. Distill it until it is in perfect purity, and you will then have a solvent that has no equal.
Take the above material on the surface of which a kind of rose appeared , very hot before it was reduced to red gum, put it in a mattress, and pour over a pound of spirit of saltpeter, or vitriol, or other of this nature provided that it is very pure and well rectified. If these spirits or these liqueurs are concentrated on Zinc, the operation will be better and shorter. Antimony butter, oil of salt, or sulfur are also good.
So take one or other of these liqueurs that you want to sweeten and prepare as we said above. Take one pound and four ounces of the so-called Rose. Digest everything in moderate sand for ten days, then digest in the manner of concentration, then distill over an open fire by gradation according to the art, and your liquor will come out in vapor; it will pass ¾ of the phlegm and only a fourth of the liquor which is a true oil or essence. Apply it a second or third time on the dead head and it will come out without any corrosion, but soft although very active and penetrating; all corrosives dulcified by this means are reduced to a fixed liquor which is the only agent which can radically resolve both metallic and mineral sulfurs and reduce them into an essence of great virtue both for health and for metals.
Reduction of these oily and sulfurous liquors into perfect essence.
Take the alkali salt drawn in the same manner which furnished the oily liquor that it be well purified according to art. Put it in a mattress and soak it little by little with the said oily liquor, drying exactly with each feeding; repeat this work as long as it is melting and completely satisfied, then reduce it in a water bath and sand into a liqueur which you will purify by repeated distillations, separating it exactly from its phlegm each time; because it should be noted as a general rule that as long as there is phlegm, we can never reduce salts or saline liquors into perfect essence, that is to say penetrating and dissolving. These fixed species have infinite virtues on metallic matter.
Way to quickly make a Triangular Enixe salt so praised by Deloques and Glauber
Take one or the other of the alkaline salts of Zinc, it does not matter how it is made, it is enough that it is very pure. Take 4 ounces and one ounce of sulfur oil or vitriol concentrated on Zinc. Put everything in a mattress covered with its meeting. In the absence of one or the other of these oils you will successfully use one or the other of these oily and sulfurous liquors from the previous article; cook everything over a moderate sand fire until no more liquor appears; then put back about half an ounce of what you used on the mass, and cook as above until firm; then put a large amount of this liquor on the mass until it has become very fusible: you will have a real triangular salt for the destruction and precipitation of metals and for separating and metallizing the pure from mines or other metal embarrassments.
For medicine we dissolve it three or four times in good brandy, we purify it by the water bath and by the filter and we crystallize it each time, then it is ready. This salt is reduced to an essential liquor and fixed like all other salts of this material by the water bath and by sand.
Virtues of this Enixe salt for the precipitation of metals and minerals.
Melt or, at best, make the gold red with perfect ignition in a crucible where you will have previously made Mars and Venus red; after the gold, add silver and when everything is well ignited and reduced to paste, throw in Jupiter and Saturn, which will then cause the fusion; your mixture being made, and everything well melted, project on each pound of material two ounces of the aforementioned Enixe salt and hold it in cast iron for two hours, then let your crucible rest. When cold , break it and you will find your metals separated from each other and arranged according to their category; to separate them you just have to file them.
This operation, as useless as it is curious, serves to extract from all imperfect metals the gold and silver that they can contain, so that with the famous precipitant, we profitably extract what is pure from the imperfect.
It should be noted that all the central salts drawn from the Saturn family and nourished by some oily liquor made by Zinc lime have the same virtues.
Virtues of this precious salt to make metals change shape, reducing them into metallic salt in no way altered in its seed.
Take two ounces of Enixe salt which is well meltable and one ounce of well-opened lime gold, or failing this salt, take the same weight of the gum described above, positively in the time it is prepared for draw the red liquor through the Cornue; grind everything together well in a glass crucible, let it melt for two hours, during which time throw in a large amount of the salt you used until you have added an ounce; stir the molten material from time to time with a wooden stick that you do not let burn in it and take care that no coal falls into the crucible; the fire should not be stronger than to hold the molten material. When the two hours have passed and the gold seems well penetrated, pour everything into a clean hot mortar , ground into a fine powder. Have a good vitrified crucible, and melt in it as much of the salt which you are used for the first time, as your mass of salt and gold weighs; then your salt being in fine cast iron, gradually project your mixture of salt and gold, hold everything in cast iron for two hours, then pour everything into the basin or well polished plate, pulverize everything exactly, let it fall into deliquesce in the cellar, and purify it in the water bath and filter it. Carefully keep the filter from all the deliquiums below, and also the dead head which will remain on the glass.
Take these deliquiums, purify them and put them in a retort; distill over a graduated heat everything that can pass through, set aside the distilled liquor for the use below; remove the dead head from the retort, and dissolve it in the cellar so often that it no longer liquefies in the air; purify this deliquium each time, and distill it as we have said.
Everything being thus prepared, put all the liqueurs which have arrived from these resolutions in cucurbits, place everything in a bain-marie set for 40 days. During this time take the dead heads, and all the sediments from the filters that you had separately by reverberating them under the muffle as we do for antimony for its reduction into glass; and when this material has acquired a little saline ponticity, put it in a matras with three fingers of Mountain vinegar above, taken from saltpetre, vitriol, or salt by Zinc; draw out all the tincture and sweetness according to the art, purify this extraction and reduce it to very pure salt for the use below.
This alkali salt of Zinc impregnated with gold is the best of all to compose the Enixe salt, either with the oil of sulfur, of vitriol, or the Antimony Butter made and prepared as above said.
Your alkali salt thus prepared, take the liquor which is in the bain-marie and distill it in the same fire as long as it can distil; At the bottom you will have a red liquor which you will hold for six days in a bain-marie.
Meanwhile, deflegmize the liquor which has passed by concentrating it on our fixed salt, doing the same operation to deflegmize it as we have already taught.
Your liquor being delegmated, take the red one, which remained in the Cucurbite in the water bath, put it in a retort, pour in the delegmated spirit, digest for three days, then distill by gradation everything which will pass clear and limpid ; but as soon as a red liquor passes through, change the container and increase the heat, gradually increasing it until the retort is red; when nothing more passes through, rehob what has passed white on the dead head of the retort, digest as before, then distill and repeat this so often that no more red liquor leaves; then assemble all your red liquors and digest them for ten days in a bain-marie, then remove from said bain-marie all the clear and undyed liquor which will come out, and at the bottom you will be left with a real animated gold oil.
Take this oil and gradually feed the alkali salt previously reserved, and this until it is meltable like wax, then reduce it with sand and in a bain-marie into a fixed liquor, and you will have double mercury. of the Philosophers who lack nothing except to be cooked and reduced to projection powder.
As for the white liquor which emerges from above the golden oil, it is an animated mercurial spirit which has the aurific principle. It is used to multiply and ferment the double mercury of the above when it is reduced to powder.
Proceed as follows: Take an ounce of double mercury reduced to powder, put it in an egg with half an ounce of the white liquor, sigil and cook over a regulated fire until reduced to powder; take this powder and mix it with half its weight of the white liquor, cook as before, and repeat this work as long as you see fit; This is called incineration, it multiplies the powder in quantity and quantity and it can be pushed almost infinitely.
It should be noted that with this white liquor we can carry out very lucrative mining activities with gold and mercury, and this quickly. It can be made with the aforementioned powder and it is good to observe in passing that it is from this single trunk and this Root that all the particulars and all the transmutative branches start. Take the projective powder from above and mix it with ten times its weight of common mercury. Cook everything together in a matras 40 days, then put ten times of this common mercury and cook everything as before. Take the cooked mass and divide it in two; melt it in one part, and you will find good, foolproof gold.
With the other part add its common weight of mercury and cook for 40 days, and so every 40 days you can take one half to melt, the other put Mercury in it. The same thing is done with the mind when we have melted enough gold or silver in it and reduced it all to powder.
All the sulfurs taken from minerals, marcasites, hematites, dilated and animated by this white mercurial spirit have the same effect, and the sulfurs thus prepared are called “live gold”; we work them like this: Take a mercurial liquor from whatever liquor it is drawn from, provided that we have followed our precepts, fuse with this liquor the alkali salt drawn from the same material, this will form a homogeneous liquor which we called mercury double. We take this mercury and little by little we imbibe sulfur taken from the same material, and this until it is reduced into a homogeneous liquor, then this liquor is called live sulfur, where animated, or live sun because it is the pure part of the mixture from which it is taken.
This live sulfur, through repeated cooking, becomes by itself without addition projective powder, and this is what we call work of the poor; but to shorten the time we deduce gold with the mercurial liquor, we extract its sulfur and its salt, and we expand both, then we reduce them into a homogeneous liquor, to make a regenerated gold, we take a part of this regressed gold and as much live sulfur from above, put everything in a hermetically liquefied matras, cook over a regulated lamp fire until everything is reduced to powder, expand this powder or with the sulfur or by the regenerated sun, the former increases it in weight and very little in quantity, and the latter increases it in weight and quality.
This first cooking lasts nine months, and during this time every schemes pass, and are seen in three main colors which are black, white and bright red. As for distillation, incineration, or multiplication, we can put one weight out of ten, that is to say one ounce of live sulfur or regenerated gold out of ten of a mixture of live sulfur and regenerated gold reduced to powder. At this first incineration all the colors pass in five months; to the second in a month; the third, in eight days; to the fourth in an hour; to the fifth in a moment; it is very difficult to go to the seventh lack of vessels which can contain this mixture.
Another very quick way to destroy metals with Enixe salt, to reduce them to alkali salt, mercurial liquor, live sulfur, or homogeneous liquor.
The way of composing the Philosophers' Saturn or their Saturnian antimony.
For the Saturn of the Philosophers, take ordinary lead, and project Enixe salt on it, doing as you did above then, or failing Enixe salt, take material from the Rose of the Philosophers, that is - say the actual material which we spoke about in the same article, which must be put on a glass in the cellar to reduce to red gum. Do the same operation with the Enixe Salt on the Saturn, or with the same material of the Rose, and you will attract the same principles but much more easily, and by this means you will compose the Saturn of the Philosophers which you will reduce into salt, this salt in mercurial and sulphurous liquor, which joined together form an immortal liquor or philosophical mercury which joins it intimately to gold.
The same operation is done with the antimony regula made without adding charcoal, or better with mineral antimony salt. We can also use the Saturn mine; all mining, metals, and minerals, marcasites can be treated in the same way and especially the mines of metals which are easier to work than metals: this antimony thus worked is called philosophical Saturnian antimony.
Virtues of Zinc lime.
To make mountain vinegar for all philosophical dissolutions and extractions, it is necessary to have this lime, it has the virtue not only of deflegminating, crystallizing, destroying, and softening all liquors, and making them irreducible to the first Being from which they came, but it also has the virtue of purifying them, of removing their determination, of clarifying them, of fixing them and of making them suitable for all the operations of chemistry, and to really make them philosophical solvents which are neither trivial nor vulgar.
Mountain vinegars are made in two ways: either with spirits or with oils. We call spirits the first sulfurous liquor which comes out through distillation immediately after the phlegm. This spirit comes out in fairly subtle vapors from the three mineral salts, which are Saltpetre , Common salt and vitriol. Sulfur and all the marcasites which give by distillation a sulphurous spirit can be included in this number, so they are a real solvent of the mineral and metallic Kingdom.
The spirit of Tartar and the universal spirit and all the other acidic spirits which come from the family of plants are also of this number, and are the true solvent and extractor of the vegetable dyes which they make fixed.
The acidic spirit drawn from the blood of the microcosm, urine, brane, and others are also of this number, and are the true materials of this Kingdom, if we except tartar, urine, and the mar which have power over the three kingdoms, and with which one can easily compose the fire of hell.
As for oils we mean the most acidic and most fixed liquors of the three kingdoms which are oily and colored; they come last by distillation, so they are the most caustic. They pass in clouds, or flakes, and only come out when the fire is violent. These clouds or flakes are of different colors depending on where they come from. Finally, what we call oil is the liquor remaining at the bottom of the cucurbit when the sulfurous spirit was drawn out through the sand. In the mineral, that of saltpeter is yellowish, and does not fail to retain a lot of the smell?? The sulfurous spirit distills into red vapors; that of common salt is amber-yellow, the color of straw, has little odor, and is very pungent; that of sulfur vitriol and all other semi-minerals is very red, it passes into white smoke or flakes similar to small balls making several lines, it is acidic.
The oil of the Vegetable Kingdom is that of Tartar, it is a golden yellow and very fetid. All those of the plants are of the same color, and smell a lot of empyreum; they pass into whitish smoke, cause a sore and a loud detonation.
Those of animals are a beautiful dark golden yellow, but very bland like that of urine and mar. It is from this that we get phosphorus.
All oils or acidic liquors must not be muddy, thick and vile, but they must be purified according to art, that is to say recohobed two or three times on an eighth of their weight with their dead head or salt fixed, or we take glass of antimony or saturn without addition, one or the other in impalpable powder one pound, and two pounds of the oil of saltpeter, salt, vitriol, sulfur or other minerals, we distill over a streetlight, and at the first distillation, we have a beautiful pure oil, clear, simple, and red if it is vitriol, sulfur, or other minerals.
Besides these simple oils or acidic liqueurs, there are also compound ones, such as antimony butter of various preparations, and others of various natures found in various receptacles, all of which can be used to make mountain vinegar.
This is how we make mountain vinegar With the spirit specified above.
Take 4 ounces of Zinc lime prepared by one of the three manipulations which we spoke of at the beginning of this treatise, and put it in a concentration vessel; if the cucurbit is of one piece with the long-tailed funnel, it will be all the better. Pour little by little a pound of spirit on each ounce of Zinc lime, and act according to the rules of the art; all the boiling having passed, supposing that there was any, put all the liquor in a Retort, and remove the third or fourth part of the acidic liquor similar to wine vinegar. Reserve this liqueur separately: it is our mountain vinegar for the extraction of all metals and minerals without any other preparation.
The second way of making mountain vinegar using oils is as follows: we take one or other of the oils specified above, very pure, and we concentrate it little by little on the Zinc lime because of the 'horrible effervescence and we observe the same circumstances described in article 1° of the 2nd chapter (I believe that this article and this chapter are not from this notebook) and we remove oils by force of fire from inside this lime. The liqueurs being distilled only once, we weaken them with their own phlegm which is very pure so long as the taste perfectly resembles wine vinegar , and we use it as the first.
The mountain vinegar thus prepared placed on the lime of the metals gives with them a gum, which, when dried, becomes a soft salt like Saturn reduced to salt. And that of all metals and minerals. All the metallic salts prepared by mountain vinegar can no longer be reduced to bodies. But by distilling it they give a non-flammable spirit which passes into veins like the spirit of wine, and into a beautiful sulfurous liquor.
This Zinc lime not only has the virtue of purifying, concentrating , and reducing all the most corrosive acidic liquors into vinegars, but it dulcifies them perfectly by rectifying them two or three times on the so-called Zinc lime, always deflegminating exactly every time. All metallic antimony butters made with the so-called Zinc lime soften it perfectly by this method.
The oils of plants and animals, the most foul, are completely purified by this lime. It should be noted that to carry out these concentrations, we use a three-pronged balloon; by this means we dephlegmate much more easily, and the operation is much shorter. We find the oils in the small Container, and the spirit in the last balloon which is very subtle. We only get four ounces of delegmated liquor from each pound we use.
All kinds of alkaline or acidic liquors concentrated on zinc lime two or three times and exactly delegmated, which are then distilled with the large long-necked matras, as stated in article 1 of the 2nd chapter. In two liqueurs, the first of which has passed into veinlets like the spirit of wine and the second into globules like Common mercury, it is also a mercury, but a Philosophical mercury, or rather the vivific seed of the mixture from which it came; it is this seed or mercurial liquor which is the simple mercury of the Sages, it is not found made on earth, since it costs so much time and trouble to make; it is this liquor which is the root of metals, and which consequently is their true solvent.
Way of operating with this liquor which falls into globules of mercury
Take a mineral or metallic alkali salt made according to art and which can no longer take shape; one or other of the Enixes salts described above can be used; and even better this fixed alkali salt taken from the same hearth from which the above-mentioned liquor is drawn, for example if it is on the vitriol that we have worked, and that the oil is made which has been concentrated three times, and the venous spirit and the globular mercurial liquor have been drawn out, we will take the fixed salt drawn from the colcotar, we will purify it with precision, as long as it is not not at all earthy; then we put this very pure alkali salt in a matras, and we soak it shortly after with the globular liquor, and we dry it, and this by so many reiterations that the alkali salt becomes meltable like wax; then we add veinous spirit to this mixture little by little, but so much and so often that it is satisfied. Then we reduce everything in a water bath and sand, distilling two or three times, or until there is no more sediment at the bottom, and your liqueur will be prepared.
This liquor is the double mercury of the Philosophers, their hermaphrodite which in the moment dissolves the metals and the quintessences (where, to put it better, attaches itself to the sulfur of each body and then being are similar and of the same nature one and the other others come to life; it is at this marriage if gold is used, that the triple mercury of the wise begins, which being cooked and having passed through the regimes becomes projective and transmutative powder . 20 Way of operating with the veinous spirit of the Mixtes and especially of the three salts of nature which are Saltpeter, common salt and vitriol. Take the spirit which has passed into common veinlets the spirit of wine but which is not inflammable; volatilize the salt alkali from the subject from which the said spirit is drawn, by the repeated affusion of this spirit being volatile, govern it by a lamp fire or regulated sand, then draw the tincture from it by the aforesaid spirit; this sulfur or tincture being joined together with the spirit of never separates again, it rises through distillation with it; this is what the Philosophers called quick gold, or the Balsamic or narcotic sulfur of the wise; if we ferment this live gold with common gold, it passes through all the colors, and the whole becomes projective powder, if having reduced to powder the junction of this live sulfur with gold, or the junction of gold with the double mercury of the above which we called triple mercury, if, I say, we impregnate the above-mentioned powder little by little with the mineral or metallic sulfur, we will increase in weight and virtue the above-mentioned powder. This is what Philosophers call feeding their child with virginal milk, or with one's own blood. This live sulfur joins without difficulty to one or the other of these two powders, because it is of their nature, and because it started from the same principle; this live sulfur is the first ferment, but when it is joined to gold it is the second ferment and the one which of itself by simple cooking becomes tinting powder; it is with this second ferment that we carry out the multiplication, the imbibitions and the fermentations, always cooking over an equal and continuous lamp fire, and this by so many reiterations, that what is done in nine months, is done in an hour, that is to say that the regimes and colors pass in a moment.
The true way to make a Magnetine material to quickly have a simple Mercurial spirit for metallic regeneration.
Take Zinc lime made by aludel, or by the tubular retort and not otherwise; put it in a matra, pour over the yellow spirit which floats with two fingers, (this yellow spirit is the one which passed into the container), digest for a few days, then distill and rectify 3 times, deflegminating exactly to every time ; reserve this first liqueur in a well-stoppered bottle: it is a simple mercury.
Take the Dead Head on which you have rectified this liquor, and put it to deliquescence in the cellar, treat this deliquium as it was taught in the first article by reducing the Zinc lime to salt, and by distillation you will withdraw a subtle liquor similar to the first, that is to say a simple mercurial spirit, which rectified on Zinc lime makes it like the above-mentioned yellow liquor - a magnetine mass which attracts the spirit of determined air and specified to the metallic, and this to infinity, because it is only a question of having a little of this precious liquor and a lot of Zinc lime made by one or the other of the three ways of the first article ; either way of making a magnetine mass gives in the work an alkali salt of the same property and virtue as that of the above. The alkali salt being purified and nourished by the spiritual liquor which we have called simple mercury, as long as this salt is meltable like wax, which being after reduced into liquor becomes double mercury, or if, instead of reducing it in liquor we make it sublimate, we will have the white philosophical armoniac which, being cooked, becomes red, and this redness being extracted by the simple mercury from above, joins with it intimately, and of the two only forms 'a homogeneous oily and sulphurous liquor which is the living philosophical sulfur without which the work cannot be done. By these tricks it is easy to see that we go to purity and perfection by several paths, either by separating the principles which fall under our senses to purify them separately, in order to join them and make a spiritual body, or by doing nothing other than separating the pure from the impure to corporify a spirit to the supreme degree of exaltation .
Virtue of this alkaline salt of Zinc made by one or the other of these magnetine masses made fusible by the repeated affusion of simple mercury.
It softens, like the others of the past, the greatest corrosives, and this in the moment. It precipitates the heart of all minerals, metals and stones.
It precipitates gold and silver which is found in all imperfect metals . It precipitates in simple melting all the metals according to their categories, however melted and mixed they may have been together, without diminishing the quantity of one or the other. It precipitates bed by bed the different metals found in the same mine, metallizes them and gives them their phlogiston principle. It revives all metallic limes, however worked and broken they may have been. It separates and makes the dry departure of the gold with the silver, precipitating the first at the bottom, provided that we have crucibles made in cones, then to make the total separation, it is only a matter of to dip the ingot on the side in strong water and cut it with the file, and by this way we will make the quick and easy separation of these two metals.
Way of separating liquors mixed with each other by means of salt or lime from Zinc of the first article
Make a mixture of all the acids, such as the spirit of saltpeter, common salt, sulfur, vitriol, alum, and others of this nature; concentrate them on the so-called lime or zinc salt, as we taught above; it will first pass through all the phlegm of all the liquors, then the spirits one after the other, which we will know by their different colors, vapors and smoke, changing containers with each change of vapors; we remove pure and unmixed each spirit in particular well deflegged and with an increase in their virtues, which we will know through experience which will satisfy the curious naturalist.
Way of extracting narcotic sulfur or sweet Vitriol from metals and minerals, in order to extract from them this green and ethereal spirit called by Philosophers Medicine or Universal Solvent
Take Zinc in granules or in small plates made as was said in the first article of this manuscript, or Zinc lime; failing that lime Zinc, we can use hematite which is a stone.
Take from one or the other, one pound, of concentrated spirit of salt of all as it is taught, four pounds; separate the phlegm exactly, and reserve the dry spirit separately which is a pinkish yellow color; Reserve this spirit separately in a glass bottle double stoppered with gardener's wax . Take the dead head, put it in a mattress, pour over it three fingers of tartarized wine spirit animated by some volatile salt like that of urine, or at least that of armoniac, digest in the meeting vessel, decant and put back others, and this by so many repetitions that your spirit of wine no longer draws tincture. Take after all the dyed spirits and purify them through the water bath and the filter until nothing more rushes out.
Then put the dyed spirits in a glass cucurbit and distill them in a very gentle water bath until dry. Take what remains at the bottom of the cucurbit and cook it in a matra until it is dry: then you will have a soluble saline tincture which is a balsamic vitriol with a pleasant smell. It has a thousand properties for medicine and metals.
Way of rendering this precious salt into essence and distilling it Take the saline tinctures from above and put them in a well-lit retort and distill them over low graduated heat until no more steam passes , then increase the heat until the retort turns red, and keep it in this state, always increasing the fire as long as you can and until you see that nothing is passing through. At the end of this operation, a lot of volatile salt of different colors will pass through; Above all, we must avoid haste and large, unscaled fires, because they require a lot of precision.
Quickly collect everything that has distilled, flowers, cottons, liqueurs, either in the retort or in the container, and put everything in a lute matras of meeting and hold it on the moderate sand for the following. Take the dead head which remained in the retort, and dissolve it in new spirit of very dry wine, and do as was first said; repeat this so many times that the dead head becomes spongy and very light. To finish this operation more quickly, it is only a matter of imbibing, nourishing and satiating this first tincture which has drunk ten times its weight of the said spirit of well- delegated wine, then distilling it either by the ordinary retort or other, and he will pass a purer and more perfect spirit than by the other way, and this without the need to start the work again, because in the first operation the dead head remains light, ignites in the air and remains a phosphorus as all other metallics and minerals are wont to do when they are totally destroyed and reduced to true metallic and mineral salt which alone can give this ethereal spirit. These flowers are the real armoniac and have the smell of saffron.
Preparation of the ethereal spirit and its flowers or armoniac which has an odor of camphor or saffron.
Take all the liquors which have come out of the mineral and metallic salt; put them all in a cucurbit, and distill in a bain-marie all the spirit which will pass into veinlets. Take the phlegm apart and distil until something begins to rise; then cease the fire, rehob the spirit on the volatile salt, then distill, leaving a third of the liquor; repeat this two or three times, and by this means you will make this spirit as subtle and as ethereal as you wish.
As for the volatile salt of Camphor odor salt, sublimate it, then being very pure, fix it by the round globe on the soft sand fire, and cook it until it is the color of Cinnabar; then we lift the tincture of said salt by the repeated affusion of your spirit, and what distills color will be your essence or rather perfect quintessence and prodigious virtue for health . As for what remains of this frozen volatile salt, fixed and frozen, it is a kind of grayish ash which easily gives flowing mercury, provided that all the dye has been removed by the ethereal spirit of above.
To reduce the grayish ash to mercury Take two parts of volatile urine salt, one part of armoniac salt, and one part of the said ashes. We sublimate everything three times, removing the sublimated with the dead head, on the third we revivify it by distillation with mars, precipitated lime and tartar calcined to blackness, and we do this as wanting to revivify the cinnabar.
But if we do not care about having mercury flowing from the metal, we expose this dead head to the cellar and it falls into deliquescence, we purify this deliquium according to the art, and we extract from it a metallic salt and a mercurial spirit metallic mineral property and virtue of the others above. In this way we can reduce all metals, minerals and marcasites in salt. Note that all ethereal Spirits, that is to say, the spirit which passes into veinlets like the spirit of wine, and which are drawn from metals and minerals and marcasites, reduced into true metallic salt according to our precepts, then regenerated, are called by the Philosophers, “Spirit of double wine satisfied on their own corrosive”.
Then they form a volatile saline body which they named Sel Armoniac Philosophique, which being reduced to liquor was called volatile ethereal spirit, resolved salt, alkaest, hell fire, circulated, solvent and universal medicine, spirit or double mercury which reduces all metals and minerals into green Vitriol, or Philosophical Salt, which Salt of Vitriol being nourished and satiated by its own spirit, that is to say by this double liquor which formed it, becomes melting and melting like wax. Which vitriol to the saline body being in this state gives by light distillation an ethereal spirit as subtle as smoke, and an oil or balsamic sulfurous liquor which the Philosophers have called narcotic sulfur of metals, that is to say of Venus if we used solar Venus if we used gold, as well as other metals, minerals, and marcasites as will be said elsewhere.
Beautiful and particular operation on Zinc to quickly make a projection powder
Take a good quantity of the Philosophers' Rose made with Zinc and purified nitre; instead of extracting it by the spirit of wine which extracts a red tincture which after 15 days coagulates it as if it were meat juice or redcurrant jelly, in which is contained a large secret, as we will say below, both to serve as Alga or philosophical liquor which nourishes all the juices of the most poisonous plants and makes perfect oils or essences which have nothing above them for medicine than real Drinking Gold. So take a lot of the Philosophers' Rose as was said above, and dissolve it in very clear Rose of Vitriol, or failing that in some distilled water; filter and then evaporate in an iron pot and you will have a sulfurous salt that has hardly its equal.
Take this sulfurous alkali salt and grind it with twice its weight of fine saltpeter, then melt everything in a glazed crucible, only give enough fire to keep this material in fusion for three or four hours, then dissolve, filter, evaporate as before, repeat this work three times, always adding new fine saltpeter to what remains, and by this means you will so exalt your aurific sulfur from the Zinc which is in your salt that it is an incredible thing. Then reverberate this salt under the muffle, without it melting, and as long as it was yellow, it becomes red almost as if it were colcotar; being in this state, put it in a retort without it taking in the air, then put on top three times its weight of oil of vitriol of Venus which has been rectified two or three times by Zinc, or otherwise , so that it is completely delegmated and of infinite purity. Then distil over an open but well-regulated heat all your oil without taking sight of your vessel, the neck of which must be very wide, and the container very large, even with two joints if you want to avoid breaking everything .
Everything being distilled, re-oil your oil onto the salt and do as above in order to fix your salt and make it melt as much as possible; then it is prepared and it is called true Enixe Zinc salt, the use of which we will give below: Take an ounce of rubified gold, that is to say exuberated and very pure, dissolve it in water treat made from equal parts of spirit of saltpeter and spirit of salt; both concentrate your dissolved gold. Digest it for a few days in this menstruum then put it in a retort and distill over a graduated heat: your menstruum will take away part of your gold in the consistency of oil; add more solvent to what remains in the retort, digest and do as above, and this so many times that only gray gold earth remains at the bottom of the retort; then distill in a bain-marie your menstruum which has removed the gold until it no longer distils anything; this distillation is a bit boring because it lasts four or five days. At the bottom there will remain a very fatty and very meltable material which you will dry as much as possible in the said bain-marie, then with soft sand to have it as firm as butter, and as easy to handle.
This mass is very corrosive, but it softens perfectly by the following operation: Take a part of this corrosive gold in the consistency of butter, put in a glass mortar and make a paste which must not be left in air because it liquefies easily. Then take ten parts of the above described and melt it slowly in a good vitrified crucible; the whole being liquid, gradually throw in the paste or mixture of above (the author probably means the corrosive gold in butter) covering the crucible each time so that no coal falls into it. Everything being projected, keep it in fusion without pressing the fire for 3 or 4 hours, then throw everything into the hot mortar, then dissolve it in a stoneware terrine with clear water, filter and coagulate, and you will find a admirable philosophical salt. There will remain a salt on the filter, and at the bottom of the terrine a lime which, being brought back into body by the fluxes, will form a white gold.
Take the salt and pour it back under the muffle without melting, then put it in a crucible, cover it with another crucible and lukewarm, then keep everything over a very gentle Roue fire for 60 hours, increasing the heat little by little. Finally, as long as at the end the crucible turns a little red, hold it for 24 hours without forcing the fire, then open your crucible and you will find a mass separated from the feces which will be very yellow and heavy, one grain of which transmutes an ounce of Saturn and of Jupiter in late Gold. This grain must be wrapped in wax.
We usually find six large ones of very fine gold which, being mixed with two large ones from the Moon, also transmute it into foolproof gold.
The same operation is done on antimony from which we can make an enixe salt.
End of this treatise on Zinc
Laus Deo
The Heaven of the Philosophers and their various menstruës.
The Adepts called their sky a certain essence, or very pure oily matter. Many believed that this essence was made with the ordinary wine spirit, but after much work, they recognized that it was not on an ordinary wine spirit, but on the physical, that is to say on the fiery mineral or metallic spirit.
In the mineral, all the salts or saline materials, all the sulfurs or sulfurous materials, like Jupiter of ice called bismuth, Zinc, antimony, and in the metals with Saturn and Jupiter, we make fiery or fermented spirits which we call Philosophical Wine Spirit.
Ardent or fermented spirits rectify themselves three times on metallic matter, and draw themselves from the mineral family by various manipulations that can be seen in the operation of the children of Saturn.
Metallic wine spirits are rectified three or four times in order to separate them as exactly as possible from their phlegm; For this we use akalis salts, then we take well-deflegged ardent spirit, we the sigilla in a matras after having rectified this ardent spirit three times, then we put in the sand fire regulated until it is separated from a very pure oily liquor with the sweetest odor in the world; this comes from metallic and mineral sulfurs, which, matured, exalted and fixed, give charming odors. It is this oily liquor that the Sages call their Heaven, or their Mercury which dissolves all bodies; it attaches itself to their pure parts to form with them only a perfect quintessence which cooks in the lamp fire until it is fixed and reduced to melting red powder, cooks and ripens in the moment the imperfect metals on which it is projected.
This solar liquor, if it was made with the Sun, is only a concentration or reduction of a large quantity of metallic spirit in a small volume, and which having united their forces, are more able to act on metals, to separate the pure parts from the impure ones, to join the dry saline salts with the fatty sulphurous parts, and to make the dissimilar parts homogeneous through their smoothness; joining the dry with the wet, and forming only one uniform material; this is what the difference between the Mercury of the Philosophers, which we call Heaven, consists of with the vulgar menses, these sulphurous and oily liqueurs which we call essences or concentrated metallic spirits, attaching themselves to what they have dissolved, increasing the parts which are subjected to the action of fire, and which can by this means be brought to the degree of perfection that the artist desires.
Instead of ordinary solvents separating themselves from what they have dissolved, the Heaven of the Philosophers makes homogeneous the parts which could not touch it, and the parts of the dissolved being joined to the solvent form a third body which contains what the artists are looking for.
Raymond Lulle, Ripley, Zachaire, Basil Valentin, Paracelsus, and a few others learn to make the spirit of philosophical wine through several manipulations. They want us to use different metallic limes and especially Saturn. The most open of these limes and the one that is most difficult to reduce. Others want us to use metallic or mineral limes reduced to glass, and to make an extract of all the Saturnian limes with some very volatile acids; some used simple or compound wine vinegar, and others of different mixed acids; these extracts are sweet and more or less yellow in color depending on the various preparations. Those that are the softest and most colorful are the best; they purified these extractions by the water bath and by the filter then they evaporated to the consistency of honey, and they called this gum material, “Adrop”.
Others have crystallized and dissolved this gum several times and reduced it in the form of a white, light, shiny, talcose and sweetish salt: this salt or this gum is nothing other than the most sulfurous part of the metallic lime. joined to the acidic salt of the menstruë which was used like, for example, vinegar; we should not be surprised if this Saturnian salt melted with the alkalis becomes Saturn again as it was before, and that being distilled by the retort it gives an inflammable spirit, since it is none other than the spirit of wine which is was concentrated in vinegar and which develops by means of metallic lime; this is what made me believe that to remove all suspicion of this operation on the non-flammable spirit that we call physical, it would be appropriate to use for menstruation a sulfurous saline spirit drawn from saltpeter, salt and vitriol which I have recognized through several experiences to be as subtle as the spirit of ordinary wine, since like it they pass before phlegm and in veinlets; It is true that these spirits have a sulphurous odor which is not pleasant, but as a reward they are very subtle and have a great effect on metallic lime although they are as insipid as water, having only their odor and their ease of rising which distinguishes them from phlegm.
The saline menstrua being placed on the metallic and mineral limes will dissolve them, will corporify with them, and will form a gum or a salt at will of the artist which distilled will give an inflammable spirit which one cannot suspect to be that of the wine , but which will be truly mineral or metallic depending on the lime used.
I noticed through several experiments that it was only salts which penetrated metals, which is why spirits, although insipid, must penetrate lime metals more than wine vinegar, however subtle it may be. either, apart from the fact that salt spirits being insipid, we have no corrosive to fear; consequently these menses are to be preferred to others which have acids, of which several authors have given the description.
But as in this operation the artist's intention is to extract the spirits from the metallic limes, joined to the spirit of the menstruum which is used , and for this purpose they recommend using well-opened metallic limes, and so destroyed that they cannot return to the body, and this so that the metallic spirits attach easily to the spirit of menstruation, I would be of the opinion that lime or Zinc cotton was used, that we otherwise called Zinc flowers, which although white being reverberated become greenish or the color of dead leaves, and can never vitrify alone or combined with salt, and even less return to the body, which shows that they are totally open and clean to let go of their metallic spirit. With the spirit of menstruation, they form with vinegar a white Saturnian salt, sweet, or a gum in all similar properties to ordinary Saturnian salt, with this difference that this salt melted with tartar does not revive in Saturn nor in Zinc, which proves that it is better than all the lime or preparations of Saturn or the Jupiter of which several others have spoken.
Thus the secret of the Heaven of the Philosophers or the Mercury of the Sages lies only in the secret of extracting metallic or mineral lime, the spirit which they contain. They are in truth in very small quantities. However , it is with them alone that we make the essences or oily liquors that we call Heaven or Philosophical Mercury which dissolves gold and the open Moon, and forms with them a triune matter which is subject to the action of fire and which goes where the artist wants to take it. This Saturnian gum or salt of whatever metallic or mineral lime it is made, and whatever acidic menstruum that has been used, whether of wine or of salts, gives by distillation a veinous inflammable spirit almost similar to the spirit of ordinary wine, and a very heavy yellow oil which is acidic; this yellow oil serves as a menstruum to extract new gum or new Saturnian salt by putting it on new, well-opened metallic or mineral lime and doing with it as was done with acid, saline, or other menstruum. By this means we still have a gum or a salt which upon distillation gives an inflammable spirit and a yellow oil.
The more we repeat this work, the more easily it is done, and the less we suspect that the little menstruation or money we used at the beginning gives and communicates his virtues; so that by repeating this work, we are sure that the inflammable spirit we have is positively the metallic spirit; then following this principle, it matters little which acid or menstruum we use as an agent the first time, since it communicates so little virtue; I believe, however, that we must prefer the one we have more easily, to all the others.
To rectify this metallic inflammable spirit more easily, you must put all the yellow oils and the fiery spirits in a one-piece cucurbit and distill in a water bath everything that will pass into veinlets, and stop as soon as these sinuous veins do not pass the fire more.
Then we must distill with sand everything that is tasteless, which is phlegm, ceasing the distillation, or changing the container as soon as the oil rises. It is even better to leave the oil at the bottom without distilling it, and to recoob the inflammable spirit to redistill it, in the same order that we have just spoken about; we repeat this work until the inflammable spirit no longer releases phlegm, then this spirit of Philosophical wine is rectified; this operation is called alcoholizing; we sigil in a three-quarters empty matra, we hold it over a regulated and continuous fire of sand until the whole has separated into two parts, one of which is totally phlegmatic, and the other in the form of an oily essence, heavy, and with a very sweet odor which is what we call Heaven or Philosophical Mercury.
As for the acidic, fragrant yellow oil, it is the menstruum suitable for extracting metallic limes, the inflammable spirit to make Heaven or the Mercury of the Sages, which joins with opened gold and cooked in a lamp fire regulated, reduces and forms a red, fixed, melting powder which projects onto the imperfect. Note that the spirit of metallic wine is not powerful enough for the dissolution of gold, or of the moon, which is why we are obliged to circulate it in order to freeze and contain in a small volume all the metallic spirits which are scattered in the phlegm which is only separated by this circulation; then this essence or physical sky is able to dissolve the open gold, and to form with it the triune matter of which we spoke above.
Note also that all fiery metallic spirits are reduced by circulation into well-luted matras in an essence which swims on the phlegm, which being separated by the funnel from the phlegm and being put back on an even heat in a well-stoppered vase, it is reduced to white salt which can sublimate in the heat of the sand like armoniac. Furthermore, note that the fiery metallic spirit after having exactly been dephlegmated three times with its oil, then put back with the said oil, all circulated in a water bath for six weeks, the essence of the Philosophical wine will float, and will be very green, which, separated from other liqueurs, then put back into the fire in a signed vessel, is reduced in three weeks to a salt which can be sublimated.
This green essence which is a particular physical sky dissolves the open gold and forms with it a projection powder like the other.
These two operations are by Isaac Hollandais. Note that this fiery metallic spirit can be reduced by several operations into oil or essence which we call Philosophical Mercury; This is why we must not stop at the smell or the color, but only at what it operates on open gold and silver. The ordinary color is sapphire, or celestial, sometimes green, but its smell is always very sweet; it is the celestial color which makes it called Heaven; it changes its odor when it has dissolved the gold and silver, because then at the slightest fire it ferments, and is corrupted with the gold or silver; in a word, we can do with this essence everything that the Philosophers say about their Mercury.
The moderns have found a very short way to reduce the spirit of Philosophical wine into oil or essence which we will talk about below which is not so boring as that of the ancients whose manipulation we have just taught.
Way to prepare veinous acid spirit for Adrop gum extraction.
Take Apium Sylvestre which is Marsh Ache, or wild celery, black pepper, euphorbia, shop solanum, roots of pyrethrum, lacewort , a handful of each; pound it all together and put it in a cucurbit with four pints of good ordinary vinegar; let everything digest cold for a month, then distill according to the art to have the most acidic liquor; filter it two or three times with the covered funnel, and you will have a very strong acid vinegar which dissolves the metallic limes well and reduces them well to a gum to easily extract the metallic spirit.
To properly rectify the metallic spirit made by the above acid, take the veinous and flammable spirit which came out of the distillation of Adrop, or azotic gum, or saturnian salt and oil, or rather all the acidic liquor which is oily and yellow; put this liquor back into a glass retort, distill gently until an acid liquor comes out which is oily and yellow; put this liquor back into a retort with the third or flammable liquor that you drew first ; distill the fourth part of all this liquor in a bain-marie, then distill off anything tasteless. Then distill your oil or acidic liquor for the second time with sand, then put everything in a one-piece cucurbit or long-necked matras, that is to say your oil and your inflammable spirit, and distill in soft water. water bath everything that will pass from veinous which will be about a fifth of the whole liquor, and your inflammable spirit will be rectified. You can repeat this last operation two or three times, taking care to remove the phlegm that remains with the oil through the retort and sand.
Ripley's Way of Making Brandy
Take the fiery metallic spirit drawn by distillation from azotic gum or saturnian salt, take four pounds of it and put it in a matra with black pepper, euphorbia, and pyrethrum ana 4 ounces, all crushed, sigillate and circulate it for 3 months at a regulated sand fire, then distill everything gently in a water bath with the long- necked matras, taking only half of the liquor, i.e. say two pounds, rectify these two pounds, you will only be left with one pound which is Ripley's brandy , which is sigilized in a matras and circulated in the sand, (the matras according to what the process says must being of copper (I think there is an allegory there), regulated until the liquor has separated into two, into oily liquor and phlegm.
This operation is different from the vinegar described above in that in the vinegar the author's intention is to sharpen the said vinegar and make it more biting so that it acts more easily on the lime of the metal. But in this operation of Ripley the same plants which are joined to the ardent spirit are there only to increase the oily part so that it has less difficulty in freezing it and reducing it into the essence which we call Heaven, but not to sharpen this spirit, which being sulfurous attracts the sulfur of the hot drugs with which it is associated.
Esprit de vin Physique du Petit Parisien
Take the fiery metallic spirit taken from adrop gum by distillation nine pounds, put it at the bottom of a large matra in which you will have put three pounds of good new honey dephlegmed in a bain-marie as much as possible, sigillate and circulate in a bain-marie for 40 days, remove after said bath four pounds of your inflammable spirit which will be well prepared and which will have removed with it the most sulfurous part of the said honey.
Then take this spirit, but note beforehand that you prove to remove all the spirit which can pass veinous and ferment it with new delegated honey in order to change it all the more unctuous and sulphurous parts of the said honey; then take this fiery metallic spirit, sigilate it in a matra to freeze it in the regulated fire, to reduce it into Physical heaven.
Note. Sugar and manna can also be used in this operation, instead of honey.
Philosophical wine spirit of Paracelsus
Take very white and dry cream of tart in very fine powder, one pound, which you will put in a matra with three pounds of fiery metallic spirit , digest for ten days, then gently distill in a bain-marie the half of the liquor that you will put on new cream of tartar as before, that is to say three parts of spirit against one of tartar, always removing only half of the spirituous liquor; do this three times, and at the end you will have a Physique wine spirit.
Take this fiery metallic spirit that some authors have called water of life, fiery celestial spirit, and other spirits or alkaest of life; soak the little volatile urine salt, macmac, or even common armoniac provided that it has been sublimated three times with melted common salt, changing salt each time, and that the said armoniac salt is in small, very white and light flowers; So feed these volatile salts little by little with the fiery metallic spirit, hold the vase well lubricated in a bain-marie, and when you see that your spirit will be very red, and that the salt will be completely dissolved, distill through the retort and re-ohobulate. two or three times, or as long as this liquor leaves no more feces, having delegmated it well each time, then your physical wine spirit will be prepared to be frozen and reduced to heaven or essence.
Note that if these salts are dissolved and coagulated several times with the phlegm of the fiery metallic spirit, they will be easier to be penetrated by the said physical spirit, and the operation will be shorter; this coagulation must be done in a water bath and at the bottom of the vase there remains a very white prepared salt; then this salt holds the ardent spirit to itself and releases the phlegm, and this as long as the two become one, then the salt rises with the spirit through distillation and forms a physical spirit very easy to be frozen and reduced to heaven. Note that this metallic fiery spirit joined to the volatile salt being well deflegged, one part against two of ordinary metallic fiery spirit well deflegged on its oil as we have taught, the whole put together in a matra and well stirred coagulates into salt which is just like the dry sky, and that in a moment.
This is called coagulated physical sulfur. This salt is as good and even better than the physical sky, being put in a matra two or three parts against one of gold or moon (here there is in the process: by distillation) which coagulated in the fire of a lamp is a projective powder. 34 THE VEGETABLE SKY OF RAYMOND LULLE Take equal parts of cream of tartar and fine saltpeter, fulminate them together and form a very white mass which is an alkali salt in very fine powder. While still very hot, pour spirit of turpentine over it, stir it with a pipe tail from time to time, and continue adding new spirit until the said salt has drunk three times its weight, which is done cold after six months. Then properly decant the turpentine oil which will float the salt of tartar, then put it in a matra with ordinary wine spirit and extract all the redness which is a beautiful and excellent tincture. You will have left at the bottom of the vase a clean volatile salt of tartar for the following operation: Take the said volatile salt of tartar, one pound, put it in a retort with four pounds of metallic fiery spirit, digest for ten days in a bain-marie, then distill in soft sand with a very large container, and all your salt of tartar will pass into spirit with the spirit of physical wine. If everything does not pass, we must recohobe the liquor, and circulate as before; distill. Then put what has been distilled on a pound of new salt of metallic tartar, and operate as before. Do this until the liquor contains three pounds of volatile salt dissolved in spirit to 4 pounds of metallic spirit; then your physical wine spirit will be ready to be frozen as we said above to reduce it to heaven or oily liquor which is separated very precisely from its phlegm and its swimming hypostasis above like that of urine; then we can use this sky with gold or the open moon for the wet way, or dry it into salt for the dissolution of gold or silver, by the dry way as we have said.
PHYSICAL WINE SPIRIT OF BASILE VALENTIN
Put quicklime made with black marble (the brightest and the best burned is the best), reduce it to a fine powder, put it in a large cucurbit, three quarters of which are empty, put above the spirit of ordinary tartarized wine (even better the physical one) Put it on top only to moisten the quicklime, and reduce it to a very thick slurry, this is done through a pierced funnel as if it were for concentration ; then distill everything in a bain-marie until a very subtle veiny spirit emerges; re-coat it on the lime with new spirit 7 or 8 times; at the last distillation, dry this lime exactly in a water bath, then pass it by putting in it the tenth of its weight of tartar, and as much as the whole weighs, of these starchy earths which separate and are deposited when we purify and crystallizes the tartar, exactly dried and well mixed; distill it in a retort like oil of vitriol with a very large container very well lute; This operation is easily done with the two- or three-pointed balloon. In the last flask it is necessary to put the subtle spirit that we extracted during the first distillation to attract the white fumes which we are going to talk about. Distill very gently over a med fire as long as drops come out which are only phlegm, which having passed, increase the heat as long as white fumes pass like those of vitriol, which neither fall nor attach to this phlegm, but which will join with the inflammable spirit which is in the last balloon. Note that this is done all the more easily as the cohobations have often been reiterated at the beginning.
Take this spirituous liquor which will be in the last flask, mix with the spirit of wine, put everything in an earthenware bowl, then set it on fire; the spirit of wine will burn, and the spirit of lime at the bottom in the form of an oily liquor which can only be separated from the spirit of wine by this means, because it rises with it by distillation . This igneous spirit of lime is the physical spirit of Basil Valentin which, coagulated like the others above, makes a sky for the dissolution of the two luminaries.
Note that this spirit is sometimes found yellow being joined to the spirit of wine, and that in this it must be rectified two or three times, then it becomes clear and limpid after having deposited the little feces which gave it the color .
PHILOSOPHICAL WINE SPIRIT OF RUPESCISSA
Take salt of tartar made by detonation with cream of tartar and fine saltpeter, put it all in a cucurbit, then water it and feed it little by little with the fiery metallic spirit, delegmating with each times, may your spirit come out as strong as we put it in. Then take our tartar thus nourished to the cellar, to fall into disrepair; purify this deliquium using a water bath and filter it; distill until the consistency of honey, or until a veiny spirit begins to come out. Continue the distillation over a sand fire, having previously changed the container, as long as nothing veiny passes through, and you will have a fiery metallic spirit which you will rectify two or three times to completely deprive it of its phlegm; then freeze in the regulated fire, and make it into a physical sky.
Note that honey, soot, dregs of urine, blood, and macmac, and all other materials distilled with suppressive fire give a lot of phlegm and an acidic spirit but the fetid oil of this volatile salt is concentrated in the dead head, from which being drawn by leaching, by the phlegm which came out, and purified with their acidic spirits give very penetrating white alkaline salts which, treated like the aforementioned tartar by the spirit of wine in Bainmarie, are join very easily with him and quickly form the Heaven of the Philosophers for the dissolution of the two luminaries.
RIPLEY'S OPERATION
Take an ounce of revivified ordinary mercury, some antimony butter, and three ounces of physical wine reduced to salt, or better still physical heaven reduced to salt as we have said; It does not matter whether it is one or the other of the operations described above as long as it is with one or the other of these salts which we call philosophical armoniac.
Grind everything together in a glass mortar until the mercury no longer appears, sigillate it in a matra, place it in a bain-marie until everything is reduced to a white liquor like milk; put this liquor in a matras with a pound of very pure common mercury, then having sigillated put it in a water bath for 40 days, then distill over a gentle sand fire until it passes an insipid liquor which is rejected, then increase the heat and a very yellow oily liquor will come out, suitable for fermentation .
Then take dyed gold dyed with a color exuberated by venus and antimony, and reduced to red powder according to the art, one ounce, and ten ounces of the first mercurial liquor. Sigillate in a matra and hold over a lamp fire until the putrefaction is completely done, then put everything in a retort, and distill over a sand fire: a very red oily liquor will come out which is real drinkable gold. Cook this oil over a lamp fire until it is dried out and reduced to a red powder, of which you will project one weight in eight of gold into cast iron, and everything will be reduced to powder which you will feed little by little with the yellow oil of this - in front as long as it is fixed and fuseable and you will have a powder which projects on all metals and especially on mercury which it reduces to pure gold.
This same operation can be done with the Heaven of the Philosophers and Mercury, but it takes longer; it can also be done with the spirit of philosophical wine provided that it is well dephlegmated. Here is how it is practiced:
Take a pound of very pure mercury and put it in a matra with three fingers above the sky of the Philosophers. Sigillez. Keep it in a bain-marie set until everything is reduced to liquor, then distill through the sand retort to work with it and the gold as was said above to make a drinkable gold and a projective powder.
To have very pure mercury it must be sublimated with common salt and vitriol after having dissolved it in the spirit of niter so many times that it no longer blackens the salts with which it is sublimated; then we take a pound of this sublimate which we put into powder, we soak it with oil of tartar by deliquescence until it is in a slurry which we mix with three parts of live sulfur in powder; we put everything in a retort, we distill having adapted a container half full of water and we have magnificent and clean mercury for the above-mentioned operations.
RAYMOND LULLE'S OPERATION
Take ten pounds of ordinary corrosive precipitated mercury, sublime with salts until it no longer gives blackness, triturate the very fine with ten ounces of calcined Jupiter, spread the whole on an iron plate and do it fall into deliquescence in the cellar, purify this deliquium through the water bath and the filter, you will be left with a very fatty green liquor which you will distill through the retort over a sand fire. Repeat the distillation until there is no there remains no earthly things; then distill this liquor in a bain-marie about the tenth part which is an insipid phlegm, then take what will remain at the bottom of the vase and on each four ounces that you have of heavy matter, put there an ounce of salt of volatilized tartar of described above . Put everything in retorts, distilled over a graduated sand fire with very large flasks, everything that can pass through; then take the liquor and put in the same salt the same weight as the first time, doing the same operation, which you will repeat four times with new salt, and you will have excellent mercurial water well prepared. Take an ounce of very pure common mercury and four ounces of the above-mentioned liquor, put everything in a matras sigillé in a boiling water bath, and everything will dissolve, distill the solution in order to make it pure, and by this means you will dissolve so much whatever mercury you like and reduce it to water.
Take this mercury water, purify it in a water bath for 40 days, then put this material in a retort and distill in the said water bath as long as it can pass, and at the bottom you will be left with your snow-white mercury. Pour four fingers of your first liquor which dissolves the mercury onto the mercury, then put everything in a bain-marie for 4 or 6 days, tightly corked; then distill with sand at a graduated fire, and your mercury will pass with your spirit and with your menstruation. If there is anything left at the bottom of the retort, put new menstruation there and do as before to join everything together, and at the bottom of the retort there will remain a black dead head, which no longer smokes on the lamina must be reverberated in a closed vessel for 24 hours.
Feed this earth little by little with the mercury liquor that you have drawn, removing with each imbibition in a gentle bain-marie a certain tasteless phlegm; repeat this work so many times that this black matter becomes white as snow; then put this well-dried material in a bain-marie in a cucurbit to sublimate it according to art over a very gentle sand fire, which will be done in three days.
This sublimation is talcose and is called magnesia, physical armonia.
Put this precious sublimation in a signed matras, and hold it over a regulated lamp light until it is fixed and no longer sublimes and you will have a real physical sky reduced to salt for the resolution of metals by the dry method. Note that instead of volatile tartar salt, or other volatile salt, you serve physical armoniac salt made with the fiery metallic spirit which is the sky frozen into salt, your operation will be much better and will be much better penetrating.
End of this work
Laus Deo
OPERATION OF MR. A.
You must take as much corrosive sublimate as you want, which has been made with salt, vitriol and saltpeter; these three agents open the mercury well and introduce into it a sulphurous fire which only increases this internal fire which it already contains in its bowels; this mercury must have been sublimated at least three times with new salt vitriol which was made of cast iron so that it better retains the terrestrial properties of the mercury; it is good to observe to always take half of the dead head which remains after each sublimation, and half of new matter.
Instead of sublimating the mercury, we can dissolve it in equal parts of strong water of nitre and alum, we remove by distillation two thirds of the solvent, and we crystallize in the cellar. By this means we have a mercurial vitriol which is as good as the sublimated one above.
We must put this sublimate or these well-dried crystals into a subtle powder, and pour over very good distilled vinegar to the height of three fingers, digest them together and dissolve, separate what will be dissolved, add new vinegar, and continue in this way until all the sublimated or mercurial vitriol is dissolved. There will remain some earthly things at the bottom of the vase as happened to me and which must be rejected. It is necessary to put all these said solutions in a cucurbit and remove the menstruum with sand over a well-graduated heat until dry, or even better until the consistency of honey; then this material when cooling will form a gum which to all appearances is Ripley's Adrop.
We must take this material, put it in a meeting vessel, and pour over it the spirit of well-alcoholic wine on the salt of tartar, close the meeting and lute it very precisely, digest it in a vaporous bath . for a month, or until the matter opens and becomes blackish and viscous; (it becomes so rather and it would fall better into putrefaction if we joined the animal acid to the vegetable acid; and the animal volatile spirit to the vegetable volatile spirit because the quantity of salts or volatile spirits of the animal joined to the vegetable causes the putrefaction of minerals and metals much earlier ; the solution and putrefaction would be even more rapid if we added the vegetal sky of R. Lulle, or the leafy earth of the sages which is nothing other than the magisterium of tartar on which I work)
The matter being in this state, we must remove the spirit of wine to a heat proportionate to nature, that is to say in a gentle bain-marie, then place the vessel in the sand, and distill to the highest degree of fire that can be given: there will come out a liquor which will be white as milk (the same happened to me) on half an ounce of material which I had wasted that day, but I did not have enough to pursue my ideas in such a way that I had to start the operation again on a large scale; I was curious to put a small pinch of silver in lime on the little liquor that I had removed, and on the spot when cold, I had a royal blue color that was the most superb that one could achieve. see, which made me presume that it attacked the center of the money; all the more so if I had enough material to continue and doing on them the operations that I describe in this process and that I will continue.
Recobob this white matter like milk on the material which has remained at the bottom, and on that which can be sublimated, and repeat the distillation, and recobobing and distilling until almost all your material has passed into oil which must be sweet according to the feeling of all the authors and which must have a good smell. It will at the same time be deprived of any corrosive action, and made homogeneous to the animal; and in this state it must heal all internal ulcers, drive out all the impurities which cause illness , and perfectly purify the blood. Then we have fulfilled the precept of some Philosophers who say that their matter is a deadly venom, but which through preparations becomes an excellent medicine. The dose should not pass from one drop to two in a vehicle appropriate to the disease.
Having obtained this first oil, take the caput mortum which will have remained in the retort, reverberate it for 12 or 24 hours under the muffle, or in a crucible and your dead head will have become white. Extract the fixed salt by means of the phlegm which must have been preserved, join this salt to your oil, circulate them together for 15 days, after which distill over a fire strong enough for your salt to pass through in addition largely with its oil which will by this means be sharpened by its own fixed salt. So you have to have a beautiful exuberant golden lime to dye the way that I know how to prepare, and pour over about five parts of your oil; others put ten against a part of the said golden lime; sigilate everything and place your matras in the lamp fire for six weeks.
If a little leafy earth was added to this mixture it would accelerate the putrefaction.
At the end of these six weeks, let it cool and put the material in a retort, and distill over a graduated sand fire: you will have a real drinkable gold or a very red oil whose dose should not exceed half a drop to a drop. . You can cook this red oil over a lamp fire until it is completely dry and reduced to a red powder which must be melted by soaking it in the said oil which has been reserved.
End of this process
Laus Deo
Quote of the Day
“Gold is by Art dissolved with Mercury, that the unripe may be holpen by the ripe, and so Art decocting, and Nature perfecting, the Composition is ripened by the favor of Christ.”
Bernard Trevisan
The Answer of Bernardus Trevisanus, to the Epistle of Thomas of Bononia
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