The preparation of Salts is essential in the Art of the Ancients. Know that there are various Salts that we must prepare and combine together. As far as I am concerned, I always prepare the Salts by the Dew. I consider this as the sea of my Salts, in the sense that it ennobles them and brings them qualities that without it they could never have. Dew is in fact a true celestial fire and it is closely linked to the radiance of the stars...
Know that the rays of the Moon give it qualities that the rays of the Sun quickly take away. Also it has been demonstrated that polarized rays and Ultraviolets act on Dew by generating in it a kind of oxygenated water (H2O2).
The rays of light thus act on the composition and structure of the water itself. Remember that the seasons in which we harvest the Dew are also important in the results we want to expect. Generally Philosophers speak of working during the months of April, May and June and it is true that it is during this period that the best Dew for Salts is harvested .
The following experiment clearly shows that the Sun burns the Dew and deprives it of certain qualities: If we mix clinker and Antimony Sulphide together and add to this mixture dew which has not been exposed to the rays of the Sun, we will observe that this mixture reduces to powder. On the other hand, if the Dew has been “burned” by the Sun, this mixture will not be reduced to powder. Moreover, pure Rosée tends to burn the hands, triggering a weak oxidation reaction in the tissues. It should be noted that we can also obtain from Dew a sort of Nitre Salt, very beautiful, very white and very subtle.
However, I prefer to purify and unite my Salts inside because they then acquire a quality as if they were drawing from the Dew all the secrets being infused there. 2 2 By Dew we can unite various Salts such as Tartar, Nitre, Salt Ammonia, Lime, Carbonate of Potash... or make various combinations that we can use for Art. We actually have to mix the Salts into the Dew, filter them and put them to crystallize and then we can get wonderful things. Through purifications and reiterations successive stages of the process we can obtain essential elements for our Art...
The fact that Dew putrefies well when it has not been exposed to the rays of the Sun (just as the Urine) suggests that the Sun destroys micro-elements generating this putrefaction, or that it blocks or prevents the transformations that can take place in the Dew.
We know that certain types of radiation are bactericidal, while others induce proliferation.
In addition, certain bacteria (aerobic or anaerobic) carry out extensive transformation work, even biological transmutation.
On the other hand, certain radiations are catalytic while others are acatalytic for a given reaction, that is to say they accelerate and enable a reaction or can block it.
To return to the phenomena of putrefaction, we can affirm that the conditions favorable to its development are darkness as well as gentle warmth. Putrefaction is generally indicated by a blackening of the materials, by the descent into the liquids of a dark gray or black dust, and most often by a characteristic odor.
The expression to cut off the Raven's Head (from the Beautiful Body) indicates the separation of the Dragon into two parts. That is to say that the dark, putrefied matter is separated in two. The Ancients could also speak of the Head and the Tail of distillation because, once the head has completely vanished, all that remains is a very beautiful white material...
The Ancients called Mercury the various waters which soften metals and make them liquid. These waters are in the form of Acids, Alkaest, or various prepared substances which dissolve (or rather liquefy) the elements subjected to them. This name of Mercury is associated with the metal of the same name because, associated with other metals, it resolves them with it into a liquid structure.
The Ancients also called them Menstrua in connection with the red liquid obtained emanating from the dissolution of the metal, or basic mineral. This color thus recalls Menstrual Blood or even the Blood of innocent metals that our Menstruation slaughters.
Generally, Mercury is understood as the dissolving agent which extracts from the body, with which we work, the elements Sulfur and Mercury. In other words, from a simple basis we obtain three key elements for Alchemical work.
Thus in the Body are the Soul and the Spirit remaining invisible, and the whole Art consists of knowing how to extract these three separate ones from one and then from three to unite them into one and the same glorious body.
The choice of raw material depends in particular on this, that is to say that there is a sufficient quantity of Body, Soul and Spirit. In certain Particular processes, one can take the Body of one element, the Soul of another and the Spirit of a third (or a combination of two).
However, the result will not be the same as if we start from a single material. This is why your choice must be directed towards the quantities of Salt, Sulfur and Mercury contained in your raw material. Several materials can be suitable for this and lead to the creation of the Work...
By Mercury we also mean a kind of heavy water that is extracted from metals. Thus Mercury, the agent of dissolution, makes it possible to obtain this heavy water or vital principle of the metal. For this, various means may be suitable for acquiring this water from the metal but, in fact, few allow both Mercury and Sulfur to be obtained in a single operation...
Natural transmutations do not require not necessarily considerable energy. They only require the simultaneous presence of various elements, in good conditions, as well as a low energy in the form of heat, light, electro-telluric currents or others...
However, sometimes, Nature shows us vivid transmutations under the effect of the forces of its elements.
This is how, by lightning, Carbon is transmuted into Nitrogen. Thus, after lightning strikes, the land is abundant in Nitre, thereby generating an area of strong plant growth. However, Nature offers gentler paths to the formation of Nitre. This is how the Lime found in the walls slowly changes into Niter under the effect of electro-osmotic currents. We can say that Niter is a Key Salt in the culmination of our Alchemical evolution.
Another Key Salt is Tartar which is deposited in wine barrels. This salt is both mineral and vegetable.
Indeed, as a stony concretion, it comes from fermenting grape juice (that is to say it comes from the plant kingdom).
The Ancients always paid particular attention to Tartar, in particular Van Helmont who said that if you did not know how to prepare Alkaest, you had to know how to volatilize Tartar.
Basile Valentin affirms, for his part, that there is another Salt of Tartar than that of the barrels. It is a salt which comes from vine branches (or other plants), which are burned to extract the ashes. These salts resulting from leaching and crystallization are essential for opening metals.
Tartar is the Salt of Tartaric Acid. It comes from the walls of wine barrels and naturally contains Calcium and Potassium Salts .
Tartaric Acid has two
Asymmetric Carbon atoms and it can be found in
four forms:
- Dextrorotatory Tartaric Acid
- Levorotatory Tartaric Acid
- Racemic Acid (which is an equimolecular mixture
of the two previous ones)
- and Mesotartaric Acid (optically inactive).
Although the Ancients did not know these various forms of Tartaric Acid like we do, they knew how to transform Tartar into Potassium Bitartrate which they called Cream of Tartar. The transformation of “raw tartar” into cream of tartar, or “ purified tartar”, is done by heat and the addition of charcoal, clay or tile powder. We then obtain an almost pure Potassium Tartrate, no longer containing Calcium Tartrate .
Subsequently, the Ancients calcined this Tartar until they obtained a sort of black mass which they called "purified and calcined Tartar". Then this Tartar was dissolved in water, filtered and recrystallized many times until a white salt was found.
Finally, this Salt is Volatilized by various methods including, for example, the addition of Ammonia Salt, volatile essential oils , or even rectified wine vinegar which, through several cohobations, give our Tartar wings (this is i.e. makes it totally volatile). Thus, our flying Dragon biting its tail means that after several reiterations of our sublimations, the head (of distillation) takes the tail with it.
When the head and tail are as volatile as each other, we are in the presence of our Volatile Salt.
Although it seems impossible to our contemporary scientists, the mineral has its own life at the bottom of its metalliferous deposit. Indeed, within Mother Earth, it evolves, it grows and transforms little by little, according to its mineral progression. But what is the source of its life, what fundamentally differentiates it from a dead metal or mineral?
In Nature, we observe that all life is linked to electromagnetic forces. If, for example, we take an Egg and put it in contact with the positive and negative terminals of a battery, along its longitudinal axis, we will observe around the Egg the distribution of a very tenuous electromagnetic field. On the other hand, if we cook the Egg, our hard-boiled Egg will not produce an electromagnetic field. In fact, for the mineral, it's the same thing.
The natural mineral is piezoelectric and, through it, an electric microcurrent circulates and, around it, an electromagnetic field results. In fact, one could almost say that this electromagnetism and piezoelectricity determine the vital quality of the mineral itself. This life is related to the crystallization of the mineral.
When we find ourselves faced with a dead mineral, we must know how to give it a particular crystallization (in the mass), as well as various intrinsic qualities (electromagnetism for example) to bring it back to life.
Certainly, the secret fire helps a lot in these applications, and slow crystallization, or in a particular state of supercooling, brings results which should not be neglected; but it is also necessary to take into consideration, to a certain extent, the magnetic fields of the Earth and the Universe in order to obtain, in certain cases, an exceptional state of crystallization.
To this we must note that in the month of May the magnetic field of the Earth is superimposed on the magnetic field of our solar system, and this conjunction produces a quite astonishing effect on the degrees of crystallization that we can obtain. ..
Like other minerals, Sulfur is alive.
Also the electrotelluric currents of the Earth act on Sulfur and induce the formation of its particular isotopic state. Likewise, by various modes of ionization of the Sulfur element, we can speed up the process of obtaining our sulfur.
Sulfur is the food of metals and minerals.
It is he who allows the evolution of metallic bodies in order to bring them to an ever greater degree of perfection. The Ancients give us the following order of progression: Saturn - Jupiter - Mars - Sun - Venus - Mercury - Moon In reality we see, in metal deposits, that elements like Lead, Tin and Iron (Saturn, Jupiter and Mars) are found very rarely in Nature in their native state (except in special cases: for example for iron in “star stones” (meteorites)). It is only from Mercury that we begin to find this element in the native state, but it is still in the intermediate state because we can see that it is still an unripe metal since we find it linked to Cinnabar (its natural Sulphide). Then comes native Copper, native Silver and native Gold. We can therefore see in this progression that Sulfur nourishes simple bodies and transmutes them little by little to perfect them according to Nature.
When we talk about Sulfur, it is not Sulfur that we know but a sort of isotope of it which is created within Sulphide over time. It is not a Yellow Sulfur as one can generally find in Nature, but a Violet colored Sulfur which is a little more resistant to fire than the natural one.
Ordinarily, this Sulfur is so diluted in the mass that it seems almost impossible to obtain even a gram of it; but with Art and patience, and by knowing how to gradually increase the internal and secret fire of our Sulfide, we can obtain a little.
Keep this little King in our Chemical Art carefully because he will be of great use to you. Moreover, the simple demonstration of his strength is seen by the transmutations that he is capable of producing. Through these transmutations, he shows the path of mineral progression and therefore the reality of our Art.
Our Art is in fact only knowing how to assist Nature, and to lead the mineral progression to a state which is beyond that of Gold. As if, somewhere, we had reached a state where this Sulfur was concentrated and pushed to a degree purer and deeper than Gold...
To reach this state, it is enough to see a mineral in the course of its evolution and push it beyond. Also it is not necessarily necessary to draw our Violet out of the body that we are working, because all operations can be internally...
Observe, for example, metallic Sulfides like Galena (Lead Sulfide), Martial or Venusian Vitriols or both ( Sulphate of Iron and Copper) and Cinnabar (Sulphide of Mercury), and note at what stage of mineral evolution they are. The difficulty is then to raise them to the Imperial Rank, which is a higher rank than the Royal Rank, the King of the mineral world being the Sun, that is to say Gold...
The Salamander is nourished by fire. In reality, there are several basic types of fires. There is the fire which burns, like that of the chimney, and whose heat induces various chemical reactions. There are solid or dry fires, which are used in dry processes in the form of fluxes, salts and sulfur. There are liquid or humid fires, which are used in humid environments in the form of Mercury. There are also fires of an electromagnetic nature (which are fires not of either of the other two natures).
An element which is said to be open is made sensitive to this third type of fire. So, for example, the best known of the open salts is Silver Nitrate, whose sensitivity to light shows its sensitivity to electromagnetic fires. Among the influence of these electromagnetic lights, we take into account the Stellar, Lunar, Solar and Terrestrial lights (that is to say the electromagnetic radiation of the Earth), which vary throughout the year.
This particular Type of Fire thus acts on mineral evolution by working on the secret fire infused in matter.
This Secret Fire is in fact a kind of natural Radioactivity being contained in a living mineral. The Salts are generally carriers of this Secret Fire and thus enrich, by transposition, the Secret Fire included in the mineral.
Thus an element made open is an element which, through the intermediary of the Secret Fire, participates in its evolution through the radiations of the Universe. We generally observe a kind of natural and complementary polarity through Lunar or Solar radiation, which goes in one direction or the other of natural mineral evolution.
Metal reincrustation is a method that sometimes seems essential to bring metal back to life. Indeed, isolated from its ore, the metal has lost its electromagnetic property as well as its natural radioactivity, and this is due to too much heat which has assailed it and therefore subsequently deprives it of its mineral evolution. Bringing the metal back to the state of mineral allows it to help it find an evolutionary structure.
Through the Secret Fire and crystallization, the metal is then given back its life potential, via the newly acquired mineral structure. In fact, the mineral base then transfers part of its life potential to the metal. So, instead of extirpating the Salamander, we seek to reintroduce it ( reincrude it) into the metal so that it resumes the course of its natural evolution.
Conversely, to extirpate the Salamander, we observe that the fusion of the ore releases an element whose melting point is slightly higher than our basic ore and, if we are unfortunate enough to go beyond this degree of fire, all our work then disappears. The Art then is to know how to extract our remore from our ore and catch it in our nets.
All of these various paths could be suitable to help us capture the much desired Secret. We find, here again, the aspect of the dry or wet method where the first, by fluxes, allows us to lower the melting point and the second, by solvents, reduces the compound to a liquid and leaves our Salamander solid. ...
The various paths are rather related to the different starting materials that we use, which gradually go back up the metal lineage and arrive at the same goal.
To this, the Ancients would tell us that several different materials are suitable for the Work, and it seems obvious that, depending on the countries and traditions, the starting material was certainly not the same.
Nevertheless, the Ancients, understanding and following the ways of Nature, managed to obtain masterful Elixirs for the secrets of the three kingdoms. What we then commonly call Wet Way or Dry Way are then only means to achieve the expected result.
The Wet Way simply uses liquids called Mercurys or solvents, and generally uses a relatively low temperature. The Dry Way, for its part, passes through higher temperatures associated with fluxes, salts and our Particular Sulfur. The two Paths can be combined according to the various results that we want to obtain, but also according to the understanding that we have of the Work.
Indeed, one can take various paths using the two Paths which, ultimately, lead to the same result (or almost). Also, the Dry/Wet Way differentiation can be made during the preparation of our Secret Fires. Thus, at a moment, two elements become only one. The flying Dragon has become the bird that seeks to take away its companion.
We see there two elements which purify each other in a magnificent combat. It is necessary, through a cohobation of these two materials, to purify them in order either to obtain a Spirit which dissolves all matter (an Alkaest), or a snow-white body which is a melt containing a powerful Secret Fire. If we obtain a Spirit, we will tend towards the wet path, if we obtain a snow-white body we will tend towards the dry path.
In this Circulated, the proportion of materials determines the result...
End
Quote of the Day
“the truth of the Theory ought to be confirmed by Practical experience.”
Bernard Trevisan
The Answer of Bernardus Trevisanus, to the Epistle of Thomas of Bononia
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