Posthumous Work Found After the Death of
Delocques, Spagyric Physician to the King,

or
Recapitulation of All the Operations He Carried Out During His Life,
a very curious work,
clearly explained, with the key to all the operations
contained in his Pyrotechnics on the Great Work

In Paris, in the 18th century.

The document describes the alchemical processes to produce zinc flowers and a zinc salt from mineral zinc. It explains the steps of producing zinc lime, reducing it into a universal salt, and purifying the subtle spirit produced.

First, the operations performed on Zinc, which is a mineral that contains great secrets (Paracelsus calls it Metallus primus et masculus, Flamel’s white Saturn, and Augurel’s amiable ??). It is so essential to know this compound that without it, nothing can be done in Chemistry.

Chapter 1
The Method of Making Flowers of Zinc

First, it must be noted that there are three types of Zinc. The first and best is the natural one, meaning the mineral that has never been smelted. The one that comes in small ingots and has the scent of violets is the finest. It is difficult to break.

Take one or the other of these three kinds of Zinc and melt it in a crucible. Once it is in a beautiful molten state and glowing red, rub the edges of the flat crucible with a long-handled iron spoon pierced with small holes made specifically for this purpose. The friction will cause the Zinc to ignite immediately, as if it were Saltpeter; this is why it is also called Saltpeter, Sun, and the Living Gold of the Philosophers.

Once ignited, white, highly cotton-like flowers rise from it, and a sort of crust forms, which should be gently lifted with the aforementioned spoon after letting it cook in the corner of the crucible so that it transforms into Zinc lime.

After leaving it like this for the duration of a Miserere (a short amount of time), carefully skim it off the surface of the material and place it in an earthenware dish beside you. Continue this process as long as there is molten and burning material, maintaining a steady fire and being careful not to remove any raw material along with the flowers. The fire should be no stronger than what is needed to keep Jupiter in a continuously red molten state.

No more than a pound of this lime or cotton can be made in a single day.

For this lime to be perfect, it must be extremely light, free from metal, and as white as snow. This operation is quite laborious and requires great attention. However, the artist who succeeds in it is well rewarded for their efforts, given its virtues and uses. This mineral lime is the very substance so often spoken of by the Philosophers and with which miracles can be performed.

Once your cotton is perfectly prepared as described, grind it in a marble or glass mortar, then pass it through a silk sieve and store it in a well-sealed glass bottle for the uses we will describe later.

There are two other, more philosophical methods to obtain these precious flowers. The first is by using an aludel, and the second through a tubulated retort. In either of these two methods, the volatile mercurial spirit is retained, which possesses remarkable virtues, as those who take the trouble to prepare it in this way will discover.

For this process, the tubulated retort or the base of the aludel must be intensely red-hot. Zinc, in granules, thin sheets, or small plates, should be introduced gradually, ensuring that the receiving vessel is very large and perfectly sealed. This mercurial spirit rises in white vapors, similar to those of vitriol, and then condenses into a transparent liquid, resembling spirit of wine, tasteless like water, yet extremely penetrating. This mercurial spirit is the radical moisture of mixed bodies.

If one wishes to obtain a large quantity of this spirit, it is necessary to use mineral Zinc that has never been smelted. Since Zinc is quite hard and sometimes difficult to break into pieces, it should be placed in a large, flat, red-hot crucible. In a short time, it melts. As soon as it is fully molten, it must be removed from the fire and allowed to cool—but not to solidify completely. The correct moment is reached when inserting a straw into it no longer causes it to ignite.

At this point, the molten Zinc should be poured gently from a great height onto a clean floor, dropping it one drop at a time in different spots. This method reduces it into very thin plates, suitable for various uses. Alternatively, it can be poured from a great height into a tub of warm water, where it will solidify into fine granules.

However, some precautions must be observed:

The Zinc must be poured from a sufficient height, little by little.

The broom used must be new, green, and completely dry.

It must not touch the water, or the granules will stick together, making it difficult to separate them without leaving bits of wood behind.

Reduction of Zinc Lime into Universal Salt

Take this lime, prepared as previously described, and place it in a glass vessel exposed to the May dew, from the first quarter of the moon until the beginning of the last, or during the two equinoxes. The glass must be inclined over a stoneware basin, as in a deliquescence process. Take care that no rain falls on the lime. Carefully collect the water that gathers in the basin, as well as the residue left on the glass.

Place everything together in a glass or stoneware retort and distill it in a closed reverberatory furnace, gradually increasing the heat until no more liquid emerges. Ensure that everything is properly sealed. Set aside the distilled water in tightly sealed bottles.

Take the dead head (Tête morte) from the retort and expose it once again to the air to dissolve by deliquescence, following the same process as before. Repeat this operation as many times as necessary until the Zinc lime is almost entirely dissolved into a liquid, much like calcined Tartar whitened by fire.

Take this liquid obtained from the Zinc lime and purify it using a bain-marie and filtration, until it no longer leaves any sediment. Once the liquid is in this state, putrefy it in a tightly sealed matras (a type of glass vessel) in a bain-marie for 40 days. Then filter it again, completely separating any sediment that may have formed.

Next, distill the liquid in a boiling bain-marie in a cucurbite until a thin film (pellicule) forms. Then, crystallize it like Vitriol, following the same precautions.

Once all your waters have been reduced to a thin film and fully crystallized, these crystals are the true Salt of Zinc, which is the greatest precipitant found in nature. This Salt is as mild as Saturn’s Salt, but it can never be revived into its original metal form.

This Salt is purified like all other fixed salts (see the purification process using the phlegms collected during distillation). If necessary, it can also be purified using dew water or distilled rainwater. The entire process must be carried out with precision and cleanliness. Once purified, this Salt is talc-like, light, and has the brilliance of the finest oriental pearls.

All metallic limes can be salified by this method, provided they have been properly broken down by fire. Zinc lime is preferred over all other minerals because it is completely destroyed and cannot be reduced back into metal by any known art.

It is important to note that during the distillation of the previously purified liquid (which is the Zinc lime dissolved in air), a highly volatile spirit passes over in the boiling bain-marie, as subtle as Spirit of Wine. This Spirit must be carefully preserved, as it possesses extraordinary virtues. It is, in fact, a true Universal Spirit, specifically aligned with metallic nature.

A Fine Method to Extract a Large Quantity of This Spirit and Simultaneously Purify the Alkaline and Central Salt of Zinc

Take rainwater from the equinoxes or May dew, and distill it as follows:

Pour 100 pints into a large alembic.
Distill it until half remains, leaving you with 50 pints.
Take these 50 pints and distill them again, but only collect 25 pints.
From these 25 pints, distill once more, and collect only 12 pints.
Now, take this specially prepared water and mix it with one ounce of unpurified Salt of Zinc (taken after its first crystallization only).

Digest this mixture in a bain-marie within a hermetically sealed vessel until no more sediment forms. Then, filter everything and distill it again in a bain-marie.

First, a highly subtle Spirit will pass over.
Then, a phlegm will follow.
Set both aside separately. Continue distilling the phlegm until a thin film (pellicule) forms, then proceed with crystallization.

Take the crystals and place them into a glass cucurbite. Melt them over sand, gradually increasing the heat until the Salt becomes liquid.

Once in this liquid state, maintain the same heat for 24 hours, or until the Salt dries on its own.

Remove the cucurbite from the fire, and while it is still hot, pour onto the Salt 10 pints of the specially prepared boiling water.

Once the Salt has fully dissolved, digest it again in a bain-marie in hermetically sealed vessels until no more sediment precipitates.

Then, filter it and repeat the entire process as before.

This must be repeated 4 or 5 times, until the Salt, when dissolved in a small amount of water:

Radiates and displays various shifting colors,
Forms thousands of tiny needles and glittering flakes, resembling small golden particles,
Becomes fusible in both cold and heat,
Is light, talc-like, and as white as snow,
Has an exquisitely mild taste.
At this stage, your Salt is fully purified and prepared.

As for the subtle, spiritual liquor, it must be carefully sealed to preserve it for later use.

This Salt, when prepared in this manner, is known by Ripley as "Terre Feuillée" (Leafy Earth) or the "Virgin Earth of the Philosophers."

The Method to Dephlegm this Subtle Spirit as Described Above

Take one pound of Zinc lime prepared as previously described (ensure that this lime is very dry and has not been exposed to air, as even a small amount of phlegm will cause the preparation to fail), and four pounds of the subtle Spirit prepared earlier.

Place everything into a long-necked matras, seal the top securely, and let it sit without heat for one hour, shaking it occasionally. Then, place the matras in a gentle vapour bath, ensuring it is warm enough to evaporate the Spirit without the phlegm.

Distill at this temperature until you observe that the Spirit has been separated, stopping approximately when half of the liquid has evaporated. The remaining substance is the phlegm that remains with the Zinc lime.

If the first operation is not sufficient, you may proceed to the second and even the third distillation. At the end, you will have a very subtle, penetrating Spirit, well-dephlegmed.

To perform this operation more effectively, Zinc Salt is used, as all alkaline salts of each substance concentrate the Spirit better and separate the phlegm more easily than a foreign alkali. However, Zinc lime has the virtue of concentrating and dephlegming all Spirits, both alkaline and acidic, as we will see later. This method of dephlegming the Spirits using their own alkaline salts should serve as a guide for all similar processes.

Take the Spirit which, as a sign of its perfection, should reflect all kinds of colors when exposed to the sun. It should be very clear, tending toward a greenish hue, and quite heavy. This Spirit is mercurial, mineral, and metallic in nature.

Imbibe the Salt with the prepared Spirit, using one of the two methods mentioned. Dry it gently over a sand bath in a sealed vessel, then reimbibe it with the same Spirit and dry again. Repeat this process 7 or 8 times, or more, until the Salt, which is truly a Virgin Earth, no longer absorbs the Spirit.

This process is the washing, imbibing, and nourishing of the Leafy Earth of the Sages. Once this Earth is fully saturated with its own blood (the Spirit), dry it gently, then sublime it using graduated heat according to the Art.

If everything sublimates and only a light grey earth remains at the bottom of the vessel, the imbibition has been well executed. If a heavy mass remains at the bottom of the vessel, you must repeat the imbibition.

This sublimation sometimes results in flowers, and other times in crystals, known as Sublimed Corrosive. Whether it forms flowers or crystals, both are white as snow and very heavy.

This precious Sublimed substance contains, beneath its whiteness, a red Sulfur, like blood, which is the raw, unripe Philosophers’ Gold that they use to animate base gold.

The Method to Make the Red Sulfur (or Quick Silver) Appear and Its Extraction

Take these white flowers or crystals which are very volatile and fix or freeze them with gentle, regulated heat. Repeat the cooking process until they no longer sublime and have turned into a beautiful crimson red color (this is what is called making the hidden manifest).

This process is part of the extraction of the red sulfur or Quick Silver, which is a vital part of the alchemical work.

Manifest to Complete This Operation Which Should Serve as a Model for Rubifying and Fixing All Volatile Salts, the Final Envelope of the Seminal Spirit of the Mixture from Which They Are Derived, and Which, Beneath Their Whiteness, Contain the Red, Lively, and Prolific Sulfur.

Take a large round matras and place inside the volatile salt that you wish to work on and rubify, but only fill it up to about one-sixth of its capacity. Seal the matras hermetically and place it on its side in a gentle sand bath. When it has heated up on one side, turn the matras upside down and repeat this process until the salt no longer sublimates and becomes fixed, fusible, and vivid red. At this point, it is prepared.

Alternatively, take two cucurbits that fit into each other. After placing the salt inside, lute the two cucurbits together with fusible glass, then place the vessel in the sand bath, turning it each time the salt rises. Repeat this process until the salt is fixed, as mentioned earlier.

To extract the vivid Sulfur and purify it, pour over it a large quantity of the spirit of the subtle and well-dephlegmed material, as described before. Then digest, decant, and add more of the same spirit, repeating this process until the spirit takes on color.

Now, gather all the extractions and remove all the spirits by bain-marie distillation. At the bottom of the cucurbite, there will remain a liquid in the form of a greasy, smooth oil, which is a fixed tincture and the next material for metals and minerals. In a word, this is their prolific seed.

But if you do not wish to make this extraction, you must gradually nourish the volatile salt that has been rubified with its own spirit, well-dephlegmed, until it has absorbed at least ten times its weight, or until it is fully saturated. Then, the mixture will remain solid, both cold and hot, with a consistency like that of the fixed oil mentioned earlier.

To perfect either of these oils, seal them in a matras that is three-quarters empty, then keep it in a moderate sand bath for eight days. After that, place it in a bain-marie for another ten days, and alternate between these two methods for three months—the longer, the better. After this, distill everything in a cornue and carefully separate it from any fèces (sediments) that may have precipitated. This will form a permanent liquid that the Philosophers call Salamander, Inextinguishable Oil, and a multitude of other names. Indeed, this oil possesses virtues that surpass the imagination.

Method to quickly and abundantly obtain this Salamander or another of this nature:

Take a drop or two of the aforementioned oily liquid, and place it in a glass or earthen bottle. Gradually heat it, and once it turns red, throw it into a large blazing fire. In a short time, it will fill itself because it attracts fire, which is the most pure element we have. This fire will bring forth a liquid similar to it, perfectly homogeneous in every way, and thus you will not be required to repeat such a difficult and lengthy process as the one we have taught.

The true way to use this Salamander for medicine:

Take a generous amount of this Salamander and place it in a matras to circulate with concentrated Spirit of Wine over the chaux de Zinc as we have previously instructed. You need 4 ounces of this Spirit. Once everything is united, you will obtain a perfect Essence of Zinc, which is its true narcotic Sulfur, a sedative for the most atrocious pains. The dosage ranges from 1 drop to 3 drops.

On this model, one can extract narcotic Sulfur from all metals, minerals, and salts, whose virtues are prodigious, but it is necessary first to reduce these bodies into true Salt, and then to volatilize this Salt in order to work with it as we have already explained. As for salts, it is easy to volatilize them by using common Mercury as the agent, which only extracts their medium substances, the volatile part, and consequently the semen-like essence.

How to use the Salamander for metallic matter:

Take 10 parts of this Salamander and 1 part of very pure mineral Gold, or if unavailable, prepared by Antimony or another Philosophical method. Place everything in a hermetically sealed matras and cook it over a lamp fire for as long as necessary until everything is reduced to a red powder, which you will ferment and multiply with the aforementioned Salamander, as long as you deem appropriate. This powder is projective and has the virtue of healing metals from their leprosy.

How to attract a prodigious amount of Universal Spirit determined to the metallic matter:

Take the dead head from which you have drawn one of the Salamanders, or better still, the feces that have precipitated while purifying the said Salamanders or red liquor. Expose them to the air and let them resolve by deliquescence. Purify what comes from this by bain-marie and filtration, then distill it by the retort as previously explained. Put aside the distillate and always expose the dead head to the air, repeating this process as many times as you see fit.

As for the waters from the deliquescences, they must be putrefied to separate the Spirit according to the Art, which is a mercurial Spirit, subtle and determined to the metallic genre, and which has great penetration.

Quick Method to Destroy Zinc Lime,
to Carry Out the Above Operation.

(Which proves that once one has reached an arcane, one can easily find shortcuts to avoid repeating a long and arduous process.)

Take this mercurial spirit, determined to the metallic matter, extracted by one means or another, and gradually imbibe it into the Zinc lime prepared as above. Continue this process until the lime no longer desires to absorb it. Then expose it to the air, and it will fall into deliquescence more easily than Tartar salt. All tasteless and mercurial spirits drawn from saltpeter, salt, vitriol, and sulfur have the same effect. From this deliquescent liquor, imbibe more Zinc lime, and by this means, it can be made to fall into deliquescence infinitely.

From this deliquescent matter treated as we have described, a spirit and a salt are extracted in abundance that reach the same result as the one described above if treated similarly.

There is another way to attract this mercurial spirit metallic in abundance, which is to place this Zinc lime (or better yet, the "Dead Head" as mentioned above) into an attracting vessel instead of Tartar. This attracting vessel, which we call the “Trine vessel,” will be described below. But it is important to note that the vessel must be placed to the south, with a window in the chamber opening to the north. The day should be long and clear, and the fire beneath should be light, not capable of driving away the spirits. In short, it should be a very gentle lamp fire, and through this way, you will attract an enormous amount of mercurial universal spirit from the air, almost entirely dephlegmated and determined to the metallic matter. This Zinc lime serves as an attractor and specifier for the spirit. This mercurial spirit acts perfectly for the modification and generation of metals.

Chapter 2

Second Philosophical Operation for the Reduction of Zinc Lime into True Metallic Salt

Take 5 pounds of zinc lime, place it in a glass matrass, and pour over it Mountain Vinegar, which should be three fingers deep. This is the acidic spirit of Vitriol and feragine (possibly referring to the marcassite of Vitriol), which is the acid spirit separated by the zinc lime as described below. If this specific vinegar is unavailable, you can use vinegar or the acid spirit extracted from salt or saltpeter by the zinc lime, or if none of these are available, any strong vinegar made from wine, honey, or another similar substance. These vinegars should be animated with a little spirit of salt, saltpeter, or sulfur oil, or any number of other menstrues, which will be detailed in this manuscript, and which are very suitable for this operation.

Digest your substance over a gentle heat, stirring the vessel occasionally, as a crust will form at the bottom, becoming very hard, through which the menstruum will no longer penetrate. When the vinegars have become quite mild and are well charged with a reddish or very dark yellow color, decant the vinegar and add more. Repeat this process until no more color or softness is extracted.

Then take all of your impregnations, filter them, and purify them by a bain-marie and by filtration, until no more sediment is released. Once they have reached this purity, place them in glass cucurbits and distill over a gentle sand heat, until only a very thick, dark gum remains. Remove from the heat and collect all the gums into a single vessel while they are still hot, as once they cool, they cannot be detached and will become extremely hard. Reserve these for future use. In the meantime, place them on the gentle sand with the receiving vessel, well sealed.

Take the liquid that came from the distillation of the impregnations used to make the gums above, and animate it with some acidic saline spirit, as was done earlier, to prepare it for a new extraction.

Take the dead heads that provided the mild impregnation, and dry them thoroughly by distilling them at a strong heat to remove any remaining menstruums. After that, reverberate them under an open fire, as if to calcine antimony, stirring them occasionally, until a small amount of this live lime, when placed on the tongue, gives a slight salty taste. Then proceed with the extraction as previously mentioned. Repeat this process as long as this lime can provide some mild impregnation through the technique described above, reducing everything into gum as previously stated, and purifying it thoroughly.

Take this purified and prepared gum and dissolve it in Vitriol phlegm (the one that contains the most spirit will be the best), purify this dissolution by a bain-marie and by filtration, repeating the process until the gum is perfectly transparent.

Take pure sulfurous spirit of Vitriol, completely separated from its acidic oil, and as much of its phlegm as possible; pour two fingers' worth onto this fusible gum-like substance. Digest with the receiving vessel for a few days, then remove the phlegm over a moderate sand heat. Afterward, add more spirit and repeat this process as many times as needed until the spirit exits as strongly as it was initially added. Then digest the substance in a bain-marie for 40 days.

Afterward, pour the liquid gum, while still hot, into a large retort, which should also be hot, and place the retort in a well-heated furnace. Seal a large receiving vessel tightly onto it, and then distill over a very moderate graduated heat, as per the art. At the slightest heat, a very subtle, fiery spirit, similar to the spirit of wine but tasteless, will pass over first. Afterward, white fumes will emerge, which will condense into yellow hyacinth-colored oil or fat-like liquid with a camphor scent. Continue the fire until no more distillate passes.

Once everything has cooled, break the retort and you will find sublimed flowers at the neck of the retort, as white as snow. Sometimes, no flowers will appear, especially if the nutrition of the sulfurous spirit of Vitriol was done thoroughly according to the rules of the art. At the bottom of the retort, you will find a dead head, which is a good sulfur that ignites with the slightest air. If not, it needs to be calcined in a short-necked retort until it no longer produces fumes, and then it is ready. To preserve it, keep it in a tightly sealed bottle.

It is important to note that all metals that have truly been destroyed, meaning they have lost their hard and compact form to take on a saline and soluble one, yield a dead head from which a Phosphorus is made. Otherwise, they would not have been destroyed or reduced to true salts. Anything that cannot be reduced by the resuscitative Vitriol salts in the body from which it was taken, all trivial and vulgar sophistic salts, are nothing but frozen acids that have been corporealized with the alkaline limes of the metals. However, since the limes concentrate the spirits that act on those they deflagrate, they make them much more powerful, and transform them into solvents far beyond the common ones, if the diligent artist knows how to take advantage of it.

Take the white flowers, if any appear, which also have a camphor scent because they are the most fixed part of the oily liquid. Mix them with the two different liquids in the receiving vessel, place everything together in the receiving vessel, and digest in the bain-marie, distilling in the same bain. The fiery spirit will pass first in twisting veins, similar to the spirit of wine, which you will reserve separately.

This precious Spirit of wine, as described by Raymond Lulle, possesses infinite virtues. It is a mercurial metallic spirit, one of the greatest agents in the world. It is a universal solvent, especially for pearls, mother-of-pearl, porcelain, talc, and the Moon, which it dissolves and reduces into a very volatile soluble salt. This salt, through a distillation process similar to that of the gum mentioned earlier, produces an Essence or liquid that is the true Oil of talc from the Ancients. As for the yellow oil, it dissolves the Moon into lime, Bismuth or tin of ice, and fine Jupiter, reducing them into salt. This purified salt, when treated as previously described, yields an Essence through distillation that rivals those made by Spirits.

The oil and the circulating Spirit, when combined, reduce the feather alum and form a salt that, through distillation, gives a fixing Essence by the Mercury in the Sun. If this Essence is mixed with the oil of Gold made from the oil or Spirit (or in the Moon, if the oil is made with Silver), this union of oil and Spirit—or even either one alone, without being mixed—reduces, through cohobations and circulations, camphor into a fixative oil whose effects are astonishing, both for humans and metals.

Furthermore, with all the fiery Spirits drawn by any method from the Saturnian family, one can open and prepare all metals for both their metallic use and for health, and make the finest cosmetics in the world with them.

3rd Rose of the Philosophers or The Great Work on Zinc

Chapter 3

Take the Zinc lime prepared by one of the three methods in Chapter 1, sift one pound, and use two pounds of well-prepared Saltpeter; grind them thoroughly together, then place them in a flat crucible with its cover. Apply a very gentle, graduated heat for 12 hours, stirring occasionally to prevent the mixture from melting, as if you were calcining Antimony to reduce it into glass. After the 12 hours have passed, and the heat has been gradually increased, remove the crucible and grind the mixture into a fine powder. Place it in a well-vitrified, red-hot flat crucible and ignite it to sublime the material, just as one does with regular regulus. Apply very strong heat to the material to melt it; stir occasionally with an iron spatula, being sure to remove it quickly to avoid the spatula melting with the material. If the material does not fulminate, you may occasionally add charcoal – willow charcoal works best – just as one would do to prepare stomach salts from Potérius or to fix Saltpeter with charcoal. Once the entire mixture has been projected and thoroughly stirred, keep it on heat until a rose with green leaves forms on the surface of your crucible. As soon as this sign appears, remove the crucible from the heat and pour the molten material into a clean, warm basin, or onto a polished, hot metal plate, as if making Antimony glass. Grind the material while still hot into powder and place it in a glass vessel, resolving it in the cellar, leaving it there until it is almost entirely reduced into red gum.

Take this red gum, which contains the aurific Sulfur of Zinc, and place it in a glass cucurbit with its vessel of union, along with the dead head that produced the gum. Digest for 10 days, then place its cap and distill all the liquid that can pass over a water bath. Expose the dead head to the cellar to resolve as before, then digest it again in the water bath as we instructed. Repeat this process as many times as necessary until, when placing this deliquium into a retort, it turns red. Carefully collect all the waters extracted from the deliquium to obtain a good mercurial spirit, as explained in the first section.

Once your gum is in this state, distill through the retort all the red liquid that passes, then cohobate the red liquid two or three times with one-tenth of its weight of the dead head from which it was obtained. Or, to do better, extract the alkaline salt and cohobate the red liquid onto it, and reserve this red liquid that has been properly deflegmated in each cohobation for the following use.

Next, extract all the salts from the dead heads and purify them, placing them in a flask and gradually nourishing them with the reserved red liquid until it becomes fusible like wax. Then, reduce it into liquid in a water bath and sand, distilling it until it is perfectly pure, and you will have an unparalleled solvent.

True Method for Sweetening the Greatest Corrosives by Means of the Rose of the Philosophers

Take the material on which a rose has appeared while it is still hot, before it has been reduced into red gum. Place it in a matrass and slowly pour over it one pound of Spirit of nitre, Vitriol, or another such substance, provided it is pure. Purify the oils or salts mentioned above, or the Sulfur oil, or Antimony butter, or either of these liquors well rectified and properly separated from their dregs or sediments. If these liquors are concentrated on the Zinc as previously stated, the operation will be better and faster.

Take one or the other of these liquors you wish to sweeten, prepared as we described earlier—one pound, and four ounces of the Rose. Digest everything together in moderate heat for 10 days, then deflegmate as in the case of concentrations, and distill by direct heat in gradual stages according to the Art. The liquor will come off as vapors; three-quarters of it will be phlegm, and only one-quarter will be a true oil or Essence.

Cohobate two or three times on the dead head, and it will come out without any corrosion, but sweet, though still very active and penetrating.

All corrosives sweetened by this method are reduced to a fixed liquor, which is the only agent that can radically dissolve both metallic and mineral Sulfurs, reducing them into an Essence of great virtue for both health and metals.

Reduction of these Oily and Sulfurous Liquors into Perfect Essence.

Take the alkali salt extracted from the same material that provided the oily liquor, ensuring it is well purified according to the Art. Place it in a matrass and slowly imbibe it with the said oily liquor, carefully drying it after each absorption. Repeat this process until it is fusible and completely saturated. Then, reduce it in a bain-marie and in sand into a liquor, which you will purify through repeated cohobations, separating it carefully from its phlegm each time. (It should be noted as a general rule that as long as there is phlegm, one cannot reduce the resolved salts or saline liquors into a perfect Essence, i.e., one that is penetrating and dissolving). These fixed essences possess infinite virtues over the metallic matter.

Way to Quickly Make a Sel Enixe, or Triangular Salt, so Highly Praised by Glauber and Rare Experiments

Chapter 4

Take one or the other of the alkaline salts of Zinc; it does not matter how it is made, as long as it is well-purified. Take 4 ounces of this salt and 1 ounce of sulfur oil or concentrated Vitriol on Zinc, as described earlier. Place the mixture in a vessel covered with its head. If neither of these oils is available, one can use either of the sulfurous and oily liquors mentioned in the previous article with success. Heat everything over a moderate sand fire until no more liquor remains in the mixture, then continue cooking until it becomes dry.

Next, add a large quantity of this liquor to the mass until it becomes highly fusible. This is the true triangular salt, used for the destruction and precipitation of metals and for separating and metallizing the pure metals from ores or other impurities.

For medicinal use, dissolve it three or four times in good brandy, purify it by the bain-marie and through filtration, then crystallize it each time. After this, it is ready for use. This salt is reduced to an essence-like, fixed liquid, like other salts of this nature, by using the bain-marie and sand.

Virtues of this Triangular Salt (Sel Enixe) for the Precipitation of Metals and Minerals

Take 4 or 5 metals, or more, and melt them together according to the rules of the Art, that is, avoiding having one metal reduce the other into scoria before perfect fusion, as is often the case with those who are not experienced in metallurgy. As a general rule, soft metals like Jupiter (Tin) and Saturn (Lead) should not be mixed with hard metals like Mars (Iron), the Moon (Silver), or Gold. These harder metals should be very red-hot and inflamed, and then add the softer metals like Saturn or Jupiter, which will help melt the other metals. In other circumstances, this process will be explained further in the chapters on the Sun and the Moon.

Once the mixture is complete and the metals are fully melted, throw 2 ounces of Salt Enixe onto every pound of the material and keep it in the furnace for 2 hours. Afterward, allow the crucible to rest. Once it cools, break open the crucible, and you will find the metals separated into layers according to their categories. To separate them, simply file them.

This operation, both useful and curious, is used to extract gold and silver from imperfect metals. That is to say, by melting gold and silver with other metals that may contain them, you can use the famous precipitant to extract with great profit the pure gold and silver from the imperfect metals.

It should be noted that all central salts derived from the family of Saturn, nourished by some oil-like liquid made from Zinc lime, possess all the same virtues.

Virtues of this precious Salt for changing the form of metals, reducing them to metallic Salt that is not altered in its seed.

Take two ounces of Salt Enixe that is very fusible and one ounce of Gold in lime, prepared as described earlier. Alternatively, if the aforementioned salt is unavailable, take an equal weight of the gum previously described when it was prepared to extract the red liquid by distillation. Grind everything thoroughly together in a glass mortar, then place it all in a vitrified crucible, and keep it in the furnace for two hours. From time to time, add a generous amount of the Salt you used, until you have added one ounce. Stir the melted mixture occasionally with a wooden stick, being careful not to burn it inside and taking care not to drop charcoal into the crucible. The fire should not be stronger than what is needed to maintain the mixture in a molten state.

After the two hours have passed and the Gold seems well-penetrated, pour everything into a clean, warm mortar and grind it again while still hot into a fine powder.

Then, have a good vitrified crucible, and melt in it as much Salt as you used initially, based on the weight of your mixture of Salt and Gold. Once your Salt is well molten, gradually add your mixture of Salt and Gold, keeping it in the furnace for another two hours. Afterward, pour everything into a copper basin. Pulverize it, then take it to the cellar to resolve it through deliquescence, and purify it through the bain-marie and filtration. Carefully collect the lees from all these resolutions, as well as the Tête morte (dead head) that remains on the glass.

Take this purified deliquescence and place it in a distillation vessel, then distill it over a graduated heat for the use described below. Remove the Tête morte from the distillation vessel and resolve it again in the cellar as often as needed until it no longer liquefies in the air. Purify this deliquescence each time, and distill it as described. Once everything is prepared, place all the liquids obtained from these resolutions into cucurbites (or vessels of encounter) to digest over a regulated bain-marie for 40 days.

During this time, take your Têtes mortes and all the sediments we instructed you to set aside, and reverberate them under a muffle (as done for Antimony to reduce it to glass). When this metallic lime has acquired a slight saline consistency, place it into a distillation vessel with three fingers of Vinegar of the Mountains, made from Nitre, Salt, or Vitriol through Zinc. Extract all the tinctures and the sweetness according to the Art. Purify this extraction and reduce it to very pure Salt for future use.

This Alkali Salt of Zinc imbued with Gold is the best of all for composing Salt Enixe, whether with oil of Sulfur, Vitriol, or Antimony Butter made and prepared as previously described.

Once your Alkali Salt is prepared, take the liquid in the bain-marie and distill it with the same heat, until it can no longer distill. At the bottom, a red liquid will remain, which you will keep in the bain-marie for 10 days. During this time, deflegmate the liquid that has passed through, concentrating it on your fixed Salt, following the same procedure as we taught at the end of the first article of this chapter.

Once your liquid has been deflegmated as much as possible, take the red liquid from the bottom of the Cucurbite in the bain-marie and place it in a cornue. Pour over some deflegmated Spirit, digest for three days, and then distill everything that passes clear and limpid. However, as soon as you see a red liquid passing, change the container and increase the heat, gradually increasing it until the cornue is red. When nothing passes anymore, reduce the heat. Recohobate what has passed clear onto the Tête morte of the cornue, digest as before, then distill and repeat this process until no more red liquid passes.

Afterward, assemble all your red liquids and digest them for 10 days in the bain-marie. Then, remove from the bain-marie all the clear, non-colored liquids, and at the bottom, there will remain a true animated gold oil.

Take this oil and gradually feed it to the Alkali Salt you reserved earlier, and continue until it is as fusible as wax. Then, reduce it in the sand and in the bain-marie to a fixed liquid, and you will have the double Mercury of the Philosophers, which only lacks being cooked, reduced to powder, and projected to be transmutative.

As for the white liquid that emerges above the gold oil, it is an animated mercurial spirit that holds the aurific principle. It is used to multiply, augment, and ferment the double Mercury mentioned earlier when it is reduced to powder in this way: take one ounce of double Mercury reduced to powder and place it in an egg with half an ounce of the above white liquid. Seal the whole and cook it with regulated heat until it reduces to powder. Take this powder and remix it with half its weight of the white liquid. Cook as before, and repeat this process as long as you deem appropriate. This operation is called incineration. It multiplies the powder both in quantity and quality, and it can be pushed indefinitely.

It should be noted that with this above-mentioned white liquid, one can make very lucrative mining operations with Gold and Mercury, and do so quickly. One can do this with the above-mentioned powder, and it is important to note in passing that it is from this single trunk and this Root that all the individual transmutative branches and operations arise.

Take the projective powder mentioned earlier and mix it with 10 times its weight of common Mercury. Cook everything together for 40 days in a matras, then add 10 times the weight of this common Mercury and cook everything as before. Take the cooked mass and divide it into two parts; melt one part, and you will find good Gold that stands to any test. With the other part, add its weight in common Mercury and cook for 40 days, and thus every 40 days, you will be able to melt one half, and add Mercury to the other. The same process can be done with the Spirit when Gold or Silver has been melted into it in sufficient quantity and then reduced into powder.

All Sulfurs derived from minerals, marcassites, hematites, expanded and animated by this white mercurial Spirit, produce the same effect, and these Sulfurs so prepared are called "Living Gold" because they contain common Gold in potency, being its seed, and it is from them that nature uses to form Gold in the depths of the Earth. This is practiced as follows:

Take a mercurial liquid from any mineral, as long as the prescribed methods have been followed. With this liquid, make fusible the alkali Salt derived from the same matter, and these two combined will form a homogeneous liquid called Double Mercury. Take some of this Double Mercury and gradually imbibe it with the Sulfur derived from the same matter, continuing until it is reduced to a homogeneous liquid; then this liquid is called Living Sulfur, or animated Sulfur, or Living Gold, because it is the pure part of the mixtures from which it was extracted. This Living Sulfur, through repeated cooking, becomes projective powder by itself, without further addition. This is what is called the "Work of the Poor."

But to shorten the time, Gold is destroyed with the mercurial liquid, its Sulfur and fixed Salt are extracted, and both are expanded, then reduced into a homogeneous liquid to make regenerated Gold. Take one part of this regenerated Gold and an equal amount of Living Sulfur from above, place them together in a hermetically sealed matras, and cook with regulated lamp heat until everything is reduced to powder, then expand this powder with Sulfur or with regenerated Sun. The first method increases its weight but very little its quality, and the last method increases both its weight and quality. This first cooking lasts for nine months, and during this time, all the color stages (regimes) pass, i.e., blackness, whiteness, and then bright redness.

As for the distillation, incineration, or multiplication, one can use a weight ratio of one to ten, meaning one ounce of Living Sulfur or Regenerated Gold to ten of the mixture of Living Sulfur or Regenerated Gold reduced to powder. In the first incineration, all the color stages pass in five months; in the second, in one month; in the third, in eight days; in the fourth, in one hour; in the fifth, in a moment. It is very difficult to reach the seventh stage due to the difficulty of finding vessels that can contain this mixture.

Another very quick way to destroy metals with the Enixe Salt, to reduce them into Alkali Salt, mercurial liquid, Living Sulfur, or homogeneous liquid.

Chapter 5:

The method to prepare the Philosopher's Saturn
or their Saturnal Antimony.

For the Philosopher's Saturn, take ordinary common Saturn (Lead), and project upon it Enixe Salt from Chapter 4, following the same process as with Gold. If Enixe Salt is unavailable, use the material from the Rose of the Philosophers from Chapter 3, that is, the specific material mentioned in the same article, which should be placed in a glass vessel in the cellar to be reduced to red gum. Perform the same operation on the Saturn with Enixe Salt or the aforementioned material, and you will extract the same principles, but much more easily. By this means, you will compose the Philosopher’s Saturn, which you will reduce to Salt, then into mercurial liquid and sulfurous liquid, which, when combined, form an immortal liquid or Philosopher’s Mercury that intimately joins with Gold.

The same operation can be performed on Antimony regulus made without the addition of charcoal, as mentioned, or preferably on pure mineral Antimony. One can also use Saturn ore. Any ore, metals, and minerals, including marcassites, can be treated in the same way. This Antimony, when worked in this manner, is called Philosophical Saturnal Antimony.

Sixth Virtue of Zinc Lime from the 1st Article

To make the Vinegars of the Mountains for all philosophical distillations and extractions, not only does this lime have the virtue of dephlegming, crystallizing, destroying, and softening all liquors, rendering them irreducible to the original substances from which they came, but it also has the power to purify them, remove their determination, clarify them, fix them, and make them suitable for all chemical operations, transforming them into true Philosophical solvents that are neither trivial nor vulgar.

The Vinegars of the Mountains, whether with Spirits or Oils – we call Spirits the first sulfurous liquor that distills immediately after the phlegm – These Spirits rise as subtle vapors from the three mineral salts: Saltpeter, Volatile Salt, and Sulfur, and all marcassites that produce sulfurous Spirits by distillation are included in this category. These are the true dissolvents of the mineral and metallic kingdoms. The Spirit of Tartar is the universal Spirit through any means.

All plants that yield acid Spirits also belong to this group and are the true dissolvents and extractors of vegetable tinctures, which they render fixed. The acid Spirit derived from the blood of the microcosm, urine, the skull, and other sources are also in this category and are the true menstruums of the animal kingdom. One cannot jump from one kingdom to another unless it is Tartar, urine, or macmac, which possess power over all three kingdoms, and with which one can easily compose the fire of hell.

As for the oils, we mean the most acidic and most fixed liquors from the three kingdoms, which are oily and colored. They come by distillation last and are the most caustic. They rise as clouds or flakes and only emerge through the force of fire. These clouds or flakes vary in color depending on their source. Finally, what we call oil is the liquor that remains at the bottom of the cucurbite after the sulfurous Spirit has been distilled from the mineral by sand. The oil from Saltpeter is yellowish and retains much of its smell. The sulfurous Spirit distills as red vapors. The oil from Common Salt is amber yellow, straw-colored, and has a slight odor. It is very pungent. The oil from Vitriol or Sulfur and all other semi-minerals is very red, odorless, and emits white smoke or flakes that resemble small pellets with several streaks. It is acidic. Those from the vegetable kingdom are Tartar oils; they are golden yellow and very fetid. All oils from plants are of the same color and have a strong empyreumatic smell. They rise as whitish smoke, causing disturbances and strong detonations. Those from animals are a beautiful dark golden yellow but very bland, like urine or macmac. It is from these that phosphores are extracted, as mentioned in Chapter 1.

All oils or acid liquors should not be muddy, thick, or vile, but they must be purified according to the Art, that is, recohobed (re-distilled or refined) two or three times with one-eighth of their weight of their dead head. Alternatively, one can take Antimony glass or Saturn without any additions, either in powder form, one pound, and two pounds of oil of Saltpeter, Salt, Vitriol, Sulfur, or other minerals. Distill over a reverberating fire, and with the first distillation, one obtains a fine, pure, clear, simple, and red oil, if it is made from Vitriol, Sulfur, or other minerals. For those from plants, refer to their purifications and those of animals.

In addition to these simple oils or acid liquors, there are also compounded ones, such as Antimony butter from different preparations, and other liquors of various nature found in different recipes within this manuscript, all of which can be used to make the Vinegar of the Mountains.

How to make the Vinegar of the Mountains with the specified Spirit

Take 4 ounces of zinc lime, prepared by one of the three methods discussed at the beginning of this treatise, and place it in a vessel for concentration; if the cucurbite is made in one piece with a long-necked funnel, it will be even better. Gradually pour one pound of Spirit for each ounce of zinc lime. Once all the boiling processes have passed, if any occur, place all the liquor in a retort and remove one-third of the liquor or until an acid liquor resembling wine vinegar begins to pass. Reserve this liquor aside: it is your Vinegar of the Mountains for extracting metals and minerals, with no further preparation.

The second way to make the Vinegar of the Mountains with oils is as follows: Take one of the oils previously specified, well prepared, and concentrate it gradually on the zinc lime due to the intense effervescence, and remove the oils by means of forceful fire from within this lime. After distilling the liquors once, weaken them with their own phlegm, which should be well-purified until the taste perfectly resembles wine vinegar. This can be used in the same way as the first method. The vinegar thus prepared and placed on the metallic lime forms with it a gum that, when dried, becomes a soft salt, like the salt of Saturn. This applies to all metals and minerals. All metallic salts prepared with the Vinegar of the Mountains can no longer be reduced to body, but upon distillation, they give off a flammable spirit that passes in veins like wine spirit, and a beautiful sulfurous liquor. Those who wish to see more of this should read the operations of the Children of Saturn.

This zinc lime not only has the virtue of purifying, concentrating, and reducing the most corrosive acid liquors into vinegar, but it also sweetens them perfectly by rectifying them two or three times on the zinc lime, always deflegming precisely each time. All antimony butters made with these vinegars are perfectly softened through this process. The oils from the most fetid plants and animals are completely purified by this lime. It should be noted that to make these concentrations, a three-pointed flask is used; in this way, deflegming is much easier, and the operation is much shorter. One finds the oils in the small container, and the spirit, which is very subtle, in the last flask. Only four ounces of deflegmated liquor are obtained for every pound employed.

All kinds of alkaline or acidic liquors concentrated on zinc lime two or three times and precisely deflegmated, then distilled in the large retort with a long neck, reduce to two liquors. The first passes in veins like wine spirit, and the second in globules like common mercury; it is therefore a true mercury, but a Philosophical mercury, or a vivifying seed of the mixture from which it came. This seed or mercurial liquor is the simple Mercury of the Sages. This Mercury is not found on Earth, since it takes so much effort to create; it is this liquor that is the root of metals, and consequently, their true dissolvent.

How to Operate with this Liquor that Forms Mercury Globules

Take a mineral or metallic alkali salt made according to the Art, and which can no longer solidify; either of the previously described Enixe Salts may be used, but the best option is the fixed alkali salt derived from the same substance that the aforementioned liquor was extracted from. For example, if you worked with Vitriol, and concentrated the oil three times, then extracted the veinous Spirit and the mercurial globular liquor, you will take the fixed alkali salt derived from Colcothar and purify it carefully until it is white and not at all earthy.

Then, place this purified alkali salt in a retort, and after a short time, imbibe it with the globular liquor. Dry it, repeating the process so many times that the alkali salt becomes fusible like wax. Then gradually add the veinous Spirit until it is fully saturated. Next, reduce the mixture in a bain-marie (water bath) or on sand, and distill it two or three times, or until no more sediment forms at the bottom of your vessel, and your liquor will be prepared.

This liquor is the Double Mercury of the Philosophers, their Hermaphrodite, which at once dissolves metals and quintessences. It attaches to the solar Sulfur of each thing or body as to its like, and both animate each other. It is with this marriage, if Gold has been used, that the Triple Mercury of the Sages begins. After it is cooked and passes through all the stages (known as "regimes"), it becomes a projective powder capable of transmutation.

How to Operate with the Veinous Spirit of Mixtures, and especially the Three Salts of Nature: Saltpeter, Common Salt, and Vitriol.

Chapter 6

Take the Spirit that rays and has passed into veins, like the Spirit of wine, but which is not flammable; volatilize the alkali salt of the subject from which this Spirit is drawn and extracted, by repeatedly pouring this Spirit over it. Being volatile, redden it with a lamp or regulated sand fire, then extract the tincture with the aforementioned vein-like Spirit. This Sulfur, or tincture, once joined with this Spirit, will never separate again; it rises by distillation with it. This is what the Philosophers have called ‘Quick Silver’. With common Gold, it passes through all the colors and, through heating, becomes a projecting powder. If one reduces the mixture of this Quick Sulfur with Gold, or the mixture of Gold with Mercury (double as previously called Triple Mercury), and if, I say, one gradually imbibes the aforementioned powder with mineral or metallic Quick Sulfur, one will increase both the weight and the virtue of the powder. This is what the Philosophers call nourishing their child with virgin milk, or with its own blood. This Quick Sulfur joins easily with either of these two powders because it is of their nature and has come from the same principle. This Quick Sulfur is the first ferment, but when joined with Gold, it is the second ferment, the one that, by simple heating, becomes a tincturing powder. It is with this second ferment that one performs the multiplications, imbibitions, and fermentations, always heating with a steady and continual lamp fire, and this by so many repetitions that what normally takes nine months, is done in one hour, meaning that the processes and colors pass in a moment.

The True Way of Making an Attractive Substance to Quickly Obtain a Simple Mercurial Spirit for Metallic Regeneration.
Chapter 7

Take zinc lime made by the aludel, or by the tubulated retort, but not by the other method; place it in a matrass, and pour over two fingers of the yellow, heavy liquid that passed into the recipient when making the said flowers. Digest for a few days, then distill and rectify three times, deflegming carefully each time. Set aside this precious liquid, which is a simple Mercury. Keep it well sealed.

Take the dead head on which you have rectified this liquid, and put it to resolve in the cellar by deliquescence. Treat this deliquescence as instructed in the first chapter by reducing the zinc lime into salt. By distillation, you will extract a subtle liquid similar to the first, that is, a simple mercurial spirit, which, when rectified on the zinc lime, transforms it into the same yellow liquid mentioned above, into an attractive mass that draws the specified and determined Spirit of the air towards the metallic, and this endlessly. For it is only a matter of having a little of this precious liquid and a lot of zinc lime made by one or another of the three ways of the first chapter; it precipitates layer by layer the different metals found in the same mine, metalizes them, and gives them their phlogistic principle. It revives all metallic limes, however worked and lifeless they may have been. It separates Gold from Silver by precipitating the former below, provided one has crucibles made in cones. Then, to achieve complete separation, it is only necessary to dip the cone’s ingot into Aqua Fortis and cut it with a file; by this method, the quick and easy separation of these two perfect metals is achieved.

Method of Separating Liquids Mixed Together by Means of Zinc Salt or Lime from the First Article

Make a mixture of all the acids, such as Spirit of Nitre, Spirit of Common Salt, Spirit of Sulfur, Spirit of Vitriol, and others of this nature; and then concentrate them on the said Salt, or on the Zinc lime, as we have taught in the 2nd chapter. All the phlegms will pass together, then the Spirits one by one, which can be recognized by their different colors, both in vapors, fumes, and liquids. By changing the recipient with each change in vapor, one will extract each Spirit pure and without mixture, properly deflegmed and with an increase in their virtues. This is an experiment that will satisfy the curious naturalist.

Universal Medicine
Chapter 8

Take zinc in granules or small plates made as previously described, or zinc lime; in the absence of zinc lime, one may use hematite stone. Take one pound of either, and four pounds of concentrated Spirit of Salt, prepared with the same care as taught in the 2nd chapter. Separate the phlegm carefully, and set aside the Spirit, which is a golden yellow color, in a double-sealed glass flask with fusible, soft, and greasy wax.

Take the dead head, place it in a matrass, and pour over it three fingers of tartarized wine Spirit, activated by some volatile salt such as that from Tartar or Ammoniac. Digest in a vessel of encounter, decant, and add more as necessary, repeating the process until your wine Spirit no longer extracts any tincture. Then take all your tinctured Spirits and purify them by using a water bath and filter until nothing precipitates. Place all the tinctured Spirits into a glass cucurbite and distill in a very gentle water bath until almost dry.

Take what remains at the bottom of the cucurbite and cook it in a matrass until it is dry: then you will have a soluble saline tincture, which is a balsamic salt with a pleasant smell. It has a thousand properties for both medicine and metallurgy.

Method to Turn This Precious Salt into Essence and Distill It

Take the saline tincture previously mentioned and place it in a well-sealed glass retort. Distill it at a gentle, graduated heat until no more vapors pass through. Then, increase the heat until the retort turns red, continuing until you observe that nothing more is passing. Toward the end of the process, a great deal of volatile salt of various colors will pass. Above all, avoid precipitation and excessive heat, as this operation requires great precision.

Quickly collect all that has distilled—flowers, cottons, liquids, whether in the retort or the recipient—and place everything into a sealed matrass with the vessel of encounter, keeping it on a moderate sand bath for the next stage.

Take the dead head that remained in the retort, and dissolve it in new, dry Spirit of wine. Perform as previously instructed. Repeat this process several times until the dead head becomes spongy and light.

To expedite this operation, simply imbibe and nourish the first saline tincture with dry Spirit of wine, doing this until the first tincture has absorbed ten times its weight in dry, deflegmed Spirit of wine. Then, distill it in the retort, and you will obtain an essenced Spirit and a volatile salt more perfect than by the other method. This can be done without needing to repeat the process, as from the first operation, the dead head remains light, ignites in the air, and becomes a Phosphorus, just as all other metals and minerals do when they are fully destroyed and reduced to true metallic or mineral Salt, which alone can give this ethereal Spirit and the flowers that are the true Ammoniac with the smell of saffron.

Preparation of the Essenced Ethereal Spirit and its Ammoniac Flowers with the Scent of Camphor and Saffron

Take all the liquids that have come from the mineral and metallic Salt; place them all into a cucurbite and distill in a water bath all the Spirit that passes in veins. Set aside the phlegm and continue distilling until something begins to rise; then stop the fire, and cohobate the Spirit onto the volatile Salt. Distill again, leaving one-third of the liquid. Repeat this two or three times, and by this means, you will make it so subtle and ethereal as you desire.

As for the volatile Salt with the scent of Camphor, sublime it, and once it is well purified, fix it using a round globe over a gentle sand bath, and cook it until it turns the color of cinnabar. Then remove the tincture from the said Salt by repeatedly pouring your Spirit over it, and what distills out colored will be your Essence, or rather the perfect quintessence with a prodigious virtue for health.

As for what remains of this frozen and fixed volatile Salt, it is a kind of grayish ash that easily produces flowing Mercury, provided all the tincture has been removed by the previously prepared ethereal Spirit.

To Reduce the Grayish Ash into Mercury

To perform this reduction, or Mercury, or vinification, take two parts of volatile Salt from urine, one part of Ammoniac Salt, and one part of the aforementioned grayish ashes. Sublime them three times, removing the Sublimate with the dead head. On the third sublimation, it will be used for the revivification of cinnabar.

However, if you do not care to obtain flowing Mercury from metal, expose this dead head to the cellar, and it will fall into deliquescence. Purify this deliquescence according to the Art, and you will extract a metallic Salt and a mercurial, metallic, mineral Spirit that has the properties and virtues of the other previously mentioned substances.

This method can be applied to reduce all metals, minerals, marcasites, and Salts. This Salt is an ethereal Spirit to create a perfect quintessence, or to combine with metallic Salts to form the previously taught Enixe Salt. You can also treat the ethereal Spirits as described in the second chapter, so that they distill into flowing Mercury globules, which can whiten (?) without corroding Gold and Silver. It is important to note that to achieve these Essences, they must be well devoid of phlegm.

Keep in mind that as long as the ethereal Spirits—those that pass in veins like the Spirit of wine, and are extracted from metals, minerals, and marcasites, reduced into true metallic Salt according to our precepts, and then regenerated—are called by the Philosophers, “double Spirit nourished on their own corrosives,” they form a volatile salty body that they have named Philosophical Ammoniac. This, when reduced to a liquid, is called volatile Ethereal Spirit, dissolving Salt, Alkaest, Hell Fire, Circulé, Universal Medicine, or Dissolving Universal Spirit. It is a double Mercury that reduces all metals and minerals into Green Vitriol, or Philosophical Salt, which, when nourished and satisfied by its own Spirit, that is, by the double liquid that formed it, becomes fusible and melts like wax. This Vitriol, when in this state, gives, through gentle distillation, an Ethereal Spirit as subtle as smoke, and an oil or balsamic sulfurous liquid that the Philosophers have called Narcotic Sulfur of the metals, meaning of Venus if Solar Venus has been used, or of Gold if Solar Gold or gold metal was used; similarly for the other metals, minerals, and marcasites, as will be explained elsewhere.

Beautiful and Particular Operation on Zinc or the Way to Quickly Make a Projection Powder
Chapter 9

Take a good quantity of the Philosopher’s Rose made with Zinc and refined Saltpeter, and instead of extracting it with the Spirit of wine (which draws a red tincture that coagulates after 15 days as if it were almond juice or currant jelly, containing a great secret, as we will explain later), use it to serve as Alkaest or Philosophical liquor that matures the juices of even the most poisonous plants, in order to create perfect oils or essences that surpass nothing in the field of medicine, except true potable Gold.

Therefore, take a large amount of the Philosopher's Rose, made as previously described in clear Vitriol dew, or, if unavailable, in some distilled water. Filter and then evaporate in an iron pot, and you will obtain a sulfurous Salt that is without comparison.

Take this sulfurous alkali Salt and triturate it with twice its weight in fine Saltpeter, then melt the mixture in a vitrified crucible, applying only as much heat as necessary to maintain the fusion of this substance for three to four hours. Then dissolve, filter, and evaporate as before. Repeat this process three times, always adding new fine Saltpeter to what remains. This method will exalt your aurific Sulfur from the Zinc in your Salt to such a degree that it will be truly incredible.

Next, reverberate this Salt without melting it, and continue until, from the yellow state it was in, it turns red, almost like colcothar. When it reaches this stage, place it into a retort without allowing it to come into contact with air, then add three times its weight in Venus Vitriol oil that has been rectified two or three times over Zinc, so that it is completely deflegmated and of infinite purity. Distill this oil over an open fire, but carefully regulated, making sure the neck of the vessel is wide and the container large, even with three points, to avoid cracking.

Once everything has been distilled, recohobate your oil onto the Salt and follow the previous process to fix your Salt and make it as fusible as possible. It is now prepared and called the true Zinc Enixe Salt, the usage of which we will explain next.

Take one ounce of ruby gold, that is, exuberant and of great purity.
Dissolve it in the Royal Water (Regal) made from equal parts of Spirit of Saltpeter and Spirit of Salt; once your gold is dissolved, digest it for several days in its menstruum, then place it in a retort and distill over a graduated fire until your gold has turned into oil or a well-colored liquor with the dissolvent. If any gold remains at the bottom, recohobate with fresh Royal Water and repeat the process. A very light, grayish ash of gold, the terrestrality of gold, will remain in the retort. Next, distill the menstruum that removed the gold in a water bath until nothing more distills. Be patient with this operation in order to extract as much as possible from the menstruum that served to subtilize the gold. At the bottom of the retort will be a very greasy and fusible mass, which will be dried as much as possible in a water bath and then on soft sand, until it is as firm as butter and as easy to handle. This mass is highly corrosive, but it is easily and perfectly softened by the following operation:

Take one part of this corrosive gold mass, place it in a glass matrass, and make a paste of it that liquefies easily when exposed to air. Then take ten parts of the aforementioned Salt and melt it over a small fire in a good vitrified crucible. Once everything is liquid, slowly add the paste or mixture from earlier, covering the crucible each time to prevent charcoal from falling in. Keep it in fusion without pressing the fire for 3 or 4 hours, then pour it all into a hot mortar. Afterward, dissolve it in a stone retort with clear water, filter, and coagulate, and you will obtain an admirable Philosophical Salt. A Salt will remain on the filter, and at the bottom of the retort, a lime will form, which, when reunited with the body by the melting of the aforementioned crystals, will create white gold.

Take this Salt and reverberate it under the muffle without melting, then place it in a crucible, covered by another crucible, and lute it well. Keep the whole thing over a very gentle Wheel fire for 60 hours, gradually increasing the fire until, toward the end, the crucible begins to glow slightly. Keep it in this state without forcing the fire for 24 hours. Then open your crucible, and you will find a thundering mass (?); separated from the dross, it will be very yellow and heavy, and one grain will transmute one ounce of Saturn and Jupiter into fine gold when projected onto them. It is important to enclose this grain in wax to facilitate its penetration into the molten matter and transmute it. You will normally find six gros of very fine gold that, when mixed with two gros of the Moon, also transmute it into gold without fail. The same operation can also be done on Antimony and several Enixe Salts that are found in this manuscript.

The way to make the Philosopher's Heaven and the method of concentrating the Spirit of Nitre and the Spirit of Salt by Zinc to purify and dephlegm it in order to make it suitable for various uses in chemistry.
Chapter 10.

The Adepts have called Heaven a certain very pure essence or oily substance. Many believed that this essence was made from the Spirit of ordinary wine, but after much work, they recognized that it was not from a common wine spirit, but from the Philosophical one, that is, from the ardent Mercurial spirit, or metallic in all salts or saline substances, all sulfur or sulfurous materials, like the frozen Jupiter called bismuth, Zinc, or Antimony, and in metals with Arsenic or Jupiter. The ardent or fermented spirits, which are called the Philosophical wine spirit, are made from these.

The ardent or fermented mineral or metallic spirits are extracted from the mineral family by various manipulations that can be seen in the operation of the Children of Saturn. The metallic wine spirits are rectified three or four times to separate their phlegm as accurately as possible. For this, alkaline salts are used, then this well-dephlegmated ardent spirit is sealed in a flask after having been rectified three times, and then placed in a regulated sand bath until a separation occurs, producing a very pure oily liquid with the sweetest scent in the world. This comes from the metallic and mineral sulfurs, which, when ripened, exalted, and fixed, give charming odors. This oily liquid is what the Wise call their Heaven, or their Mercury, which dissolves all bodies; it attaches to their pure parts to form with them only a perfect quintessence that, when cooked in the lamp fire to fixity, reduces to fusible red powder, cooks, and ripens the imperfect metals onto which it is projected; into Gold if this powder was made with opened Gold, and this is the Philosopher's Heaven, or into Silver if it was made with Silver. This is called Fermentation.

This solar liquid is just a concentration, or reduction of a large quantity of metallic spirit into a small volume, and by combining their forces, it is more capable of acting on metals, separating the pure parts from the vapors, joining the dry saline parts with the fatty sulfurous parts, and by its oiliness, making the dissimilar parts homogeneous, joining the dry with the wet, and forming a uniform substance. This is the difference between the Mercury of the Philosophers, which we call Heaven, and the vulgar menstruums.

These sulfurous and oily liquids, which we call Essence or concentrated metallic spirit, attach themselves to what they have dissolved, increasing their pure and homogeneous parts, forming a substance subject to the action of fire, and which can be brought to the degree of perfection that the artist desires. Whereas ordinary dissolvents separate from the menstruums they have dissolved, without making any separation, but only a mere attenuation; whereas, by the Heaven of the Philosophers, parts that could not touch homogenously, and these two parts of the dissolvable being joined to the dissolvent, they form a third body that contains what the artists seek.

Raymond Lully, Ripley, Zachaire, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and a few others teach how to make the Philosophical wine spirits through various manipulations. They suggest using different metallic limes, especially Saturn. The most open of these limes, and those that reduce the most slowly, are considered the best. Others propose using metallic or mineral limes reduced into glass, and from all the Saturnine limes, making an extract with a very volatile acid. Some have used simple or mixed wine vinegar, while others have used different mixed acids. These extracts are gentle and vary in color, ranging from yellow to more or less intense, depending on the preparations. The ones that are the sweetest and most colored are the best. These extracts must be purified by the double boiler and by filtration, then evaporated to the consistency of honey, and this substance has been called gum, 'Adrop.' Others have crystallized and redissolved this gum multiple times and reduced it to a form of white, light, shiny, talc-like, and sweetish salt. This salt is called Saturn’s salt. But since this salt or gum is nothing but the most sulfurous part of the metallic lime combined with the acidic salt of the menstruum used — such as vinegar, for example — one should not be surprised if this Saturnine salt, when melted with alkalis, turns back into Saturn, as it was before, and when distilled through the retort, it produces a flammable spirit, since it is nothing but the wine spirit that had concentrated in the vinegar and is released through the metallic limes. This is what led me to believe that, to remove any suspicion from this operation on the flammable spirit called Philosophical, it would be appropriate to use, as the menstruum, sulfurous saline spirits derived from saltpeter, salt, or vitriol, which I have known through several experiments to be as subtle as the ordinary wine spirit, which, like it, passes before the phlegm and in veins. It is true that these spirits have a sulfurous odor that is unpleasant, but in return, they are very subtle and have a great effect on metallic limes, though they are tasteless like water, with only their odor and their ability to rise distinguishing them from the phlegm.

The saline menstruums, when applied to metallic and mineral limes, will dissolve them, become corporeal with them, and form a gum or salt as per the will of the artist; this salt, when distilled, will produce a flammable spirit that cannot be suspected of being from wine, but will indeed be metallic.

I have noticed through several experiments that only salts penetrate metals. This is why spirits, although tasteless, must penetrate metals in lime more effectively than wine vinegar, however subtle it may be. Moreover, since saline spirits are tasteless, there is no corrosive to fear. Therefore, these menstruums should be preferred over others that contain acids, which several authors have described.

However, since the purpose of the artists in this operation is to extract the spirits from the metallic limes combined with the spirit of the menstruum they use, and for this purpose, they recommend using metallic limes that are well opened and so thoroughly destroyed that they cannot return to solid form, and so that their metallic spirits can easily attach to the spirit of the menstruum, I would suggest using limes or cotton from the Spaouter, also called flowers. Although they are white, when reverberated, they turn greenish or like dead leaves, and they can never vitrify on their own nor when combined with salt, and even less return to solid form, which shows that they are fully opened and suitable to release their metallic spirit. With the spirit of the menstruum, they form a white Saturnine salt, sweetish, and a gum that is completely similar in properties to ordinary Saturn salt, with the only difference being that this salt, when melted with tartar, does not re-vivify into Saturn or Zinc, which proves that it would be better than all other limes or preparations of Saturn or Jupiter, which several have mentioned.

Thus, the secret of the Philosopher's Heaven or the Mercury of the Wise lies solely in the secret of extracting the spirit contained in the metallic or mineral lime, which is in very small quantity. It is, however, with this that the Essences or oily liquids we call Heaven or Philosophical Mercury are made, which dissolve open Gold and Silver, and form with them a trine substance that is subject to the action of fire and can be directed wherever the artist desires.

This gum or Saturnine Salt, regardless of which metallic or mineral lime it is made from, and regardless of the acidic menstruum used, whether wine or salts, gives, through distillation, a flammable (inflammable) vein-like spirit almost identical to the ordinary wine spirit. After this spirit, a very heavy yellow oil emerges, which is acidic; this yellow oil serves as a menstruum to extract new gum or new Saturnine Salt by placing it on new well-opened metallic or mineral lime and doing with it as was done with the acidic saline menstruum, or others. By this means, one obtains a gum or salt that, by distillation, yields a flammable spirit and yellow oil. The more this process is repeated, the easier it becomes, and the less one suspects that the small amount of menstruum or agent used initially imparts and communicates any of its virtues; so that, by repeating this process, one can be sure that the flammable spirit obtained is physically the metallic spirit. Therefore, following this principle, it matters little which acid or menstruum is used as the agent the first time, since it communicates so little of its virtue. However, I believe that the one that is most easily available should be preferred over all others.

Chapter 11

To more easily rectify this metallic flammable spirit, all the yellow oils and fiery spirits must be placed in a one-piece cucurbite and distilled in a double boiler. Everything that passes as veins should be collected, and the distillation should stop as soon as these vine-like veins rise. Then, distill everything that passes as tasteless, which is the phlegm, stopping the distillation as soon as the acidic liquid rises and the pure oil remains at the bottom of the vessel. This is where the flammable spirit is recohobed for redistillation, following the previously specified process. This work is repeated three times until the flammable spirit no longer releases phlegm. Then, the Philosophical wine spirit is rectified, and this operation is called alcoholizing. Take this spirit and seal it in a three-quarters empty matras, and keep everything in a regulated and continuous sand bath until it has separated into two parts: one completely phlegmatic, and the other as an oily essence, heavy, with a very sweet odor, which is what we call Heaven or Philosophical Mercury.

As for the yellow, acidic, fragrant oil, it is the menstruum suitable for extracting the flammable spirit from metallic limes to make the Heaven or Mercury of the Wise, which, when joined with open Gold and heated in a regulated lamp, is reduced and forms a fixed, fusible red powder that is projective. Note that the metallic wine spirit is not powerful enough to dissolve Gold and Silver, which is why it must be circulated in order to freeze and contain all the metallic spirits scattered in the phlegm, which only separates through this circulation. Once this is done, the Philosophical Essence or Heaven is able to dissolve open Gold and form with it the trine substance we mentioned earlier.

Also, note that all the fiery metallic spirits, after being thoroughly deflegmed three times with their oil and circulated in the double boiler for six weeks, will form an Essence that floats on the phlegm. When separated from the phlegm by a funnel, and then returned to a constant fire in a sealed vessel, it will reduce into a white salt that can be sublimed in the heat of sand, like Ammoniac. Additionally, if the fiery metallic spirit has been thoroughly deflegmed three times with its oil, and all of it circulated in a double boiler for six weeks, the Essence of the Philosophical wine will float on top and be very green. This, separated from the other liquids, and returned to the fire in a hermetically sealed vessel, will reduce into a salt in three weeks, which can be sublimed. This green Essence, which is a particular Philosophical Heaven, dissolves open Gold and forms with it a projection powder, just like the other. These two operations are by Isaac the Dutchman.

Note that this fiery metallic spirit can be reduced through several operations into the oil or Essence that we call Philosophical Mercury. This is why one should not focus on its smell or color, but solely on what it does to open Gold and Silver. Its usual color is sapphire or celestial, sometimes green, but its smell is always very sweet. It is the celestial color that causes it to be called Heaven; its smell changes when it dissolves Gold and Silver, because then, with the slightest heat, it ferments and becomes corrupt. In short, with this Essence, one can do everything that the Philosophers say about their Mercury.

The Moderns have found a much shorter way to reduce the Philosophical wine spirit into oil or Essence, which we will discuss later, and it is not as tedious as the method of the Ancient Philosophers, which we have just taught the manipulation of.

Second method of preparing an acidic veinous spirit for the extraction of Adrop gum.

Chapter 12

Take Wild Celery (Apium Sylvestre), which is marsh celery, black pepper, euphorbia, solanum from the shops, roots of pyrethrum, and roots of bedstraw, a handful of each. Grind everything together and place it in a cucurbite with four pints of good wine vinegar, such as that from Orleans. Let it digest cold for a month, then distill according to the Art to obtain the most acidic liquid, or better, filter it two or three times through gray paper using a covered funnel, and you will have a very strong vinegar that dissolves metallic limes well and reduces them into gum, allowing you to easily extract the metallic spirit.

Method for extracting the metallic spirit made by the aforementioned acid

Take the veinous and flammable spirit obtained by distillation from the Adrop, or the azotic gum, or Saturnian salt, and the oil, or rather, the entire liquor that has come out of it. Place this liquor into a glass alembic, and distill gently until an acidic, oily, yellow liquid comes forth. Then place this liquor back into a glass alembic on a sand bath and distill gently until a yellow oil comes forth. Place this liquor into a clean glass alembic with one-third of the flammable liquor that was initially extracted. Distill the fourth part of this liquor in a water bath, then distill all that passes as insipid. Then distill a second time over the sand bath your oil or acidic liquor, and place it all in a long-necked flask—that is, your oil and your flammable spirit—and distill in a gentle water bath all that passes as veinous, which should be about a fifth of the total liquor, and your flammable spirit will be well rectified. You can repeat this last operation two or three times, making sure to rectify by the alembic and the sand the phlegm that remains with the oil.

Third Method to Make Ripley’s Water
Chapter 13

Take the metallic spirit distilled from the azotic gum or Saturnian salt. Take four pounds of it and place it in a flask with black pepper, euphorbia, and pyrethrum, each 4 ounces, all crushed. Seal the vessel well and circulate it for 3 months over a regulated sand bath. Then distill gently in a water bath with a long-necked flask, removing only half of the liquor, that is, two pounds. One pound will remain, which is Ripley’s water. Seal it in a copper flask and circulate it over the regulated sand bath until the liquor separates into two parts: oil and phlegm.

This operation differs from the vinegar described earlier in that in the vinegar method, the purpose is to make the vinegar stronger and more biting so that it acts more effectively on the Saturnian metal lime. However, in this method, the same plants combined with the spirit are only mixed and circulated with it to increase the oily part so that it has less difficulty freezing it and reducing it to the Essence we call the "Ciel" (Heaven), but not to strengthen the spirit. The spirit, being sulfurous, attracts the sulfur of the drugs with which it is associated, and absorbs as much as it can, removing (?) the separation of this pure oily liquor from the phlegm, which is its death.

One could add cinnamon or other aromatics to this fiery spirit as well as the drugs mentioned earlier, since it would still fulfill the author’s purpose.

Fourth Method to Make the Philosophical Spirit of Wine from the Little Parisian
Chapter 14

Take nine pounds of the metallic mineral spirit derived from Adrop gum or new Saturnian salt. Place it in a large flask, in which you have placed three pounds of good, newly deflegmated honey in a water bath. Seal the vessel and circulate it in the water bath for 40 days. Afterward, remove four pounds of your prepared flammable spirit from the bath, which will have properly removed the most sulfurous part of the honey. Note that all spirits that can pass in veins can be fermented with new deflegmated honey to further charge it with the more viscous and sulfurous parts of the honey.

Then take this fiery metallic spirit, seal it in a flask, and freeze it in a regulated fire to reduce it to Philosophical Ciel.
Note: Sugar and manna, purified like the honey, can also be used in this operation.

Fifth Method to Make the Philosophical Spirit of Wine by Paracelsus
Chapter 15

Take cream of tartar, well-dried and finely powdered, one pound. Place it in a flask with three pounds of fiery metallic spirit. Digest for ten days, then gently distill half of the spiritual liquor in a water bath. Add the distilled liquor to new cream of tartar, as before, using three parts of spirit to one part tartar, always distilling only half of the spiritual liquor. Repeat this process three times, and in the end, you will have a Philosophical Spirit of Wine.

Take this Philosophical Spirit of Wine, which some authors have called "Water of Life," "Fiery Celestial Spirit," and others "Spirit of Wine" or "Alcohol of Wine." Gradually imbibe it with volatile urine salt, macmac, human blood, soot, or other substances of this nature, or even common Ammoniac, provided it has been sublimed three times with common fused salt, changing the salt each time, and that the said Ammoniac salt is in small, very white, and very light flowers.

Gradually feed these volatile salts with the fiery metallic spirit of wine, keeping the flask well sealed in the water bath. When you see that your spirit is well-red, and the salt is completely dissolved, distill through a retort and cohobate two or three times, or as long as the liquor no longer leaves sediment, deflegmating it well each time. Then your Philosophical Spirit of Wine will be ready to be frozen and reduced into the Ciel or Essence.

Note that if these salts are dissolved and coagulated several times with the phlegm of the fiery metallic spirit, they will be more easily penetrated by the Philosophical Spirit, and the operation will be shorter. This coagulation should be done in a water bath, and at the bottom of the vessel, there remains a very white prepared salt. Then, this salt retains the fiery spirit and releases the phlegm, until only one remains. Then the salt rises with the spirit through distillation and forms a very easy-to-freeze and reduce Philosophical body into Ciel.

Note that this fiery metallic spirit combined with the volatile salt, after being well deflegmated, and with one part against two of ordinary deflegmated fiery metallic spirit on its oil, as we have previously taught, when mixed in a flask and well shaken, coagulates into a salt that is very similar to the dried Ciel and does so in a moment. This is called the Coagulated Philosophical Sulfur. This salt is as good as, if not better than, the Philosophical Ciel. When placed in a flask with two or three parts of open Gold or Silver to one part of the salt, sealed, and placed in a regulated sand bath, it dissolves the Gold and forms with it, after putrefaction, a Gold or Silver oil through distillation, which, when coagulated, forms a projection powder.

To Make the Vegetable Ciel of Raymond Lulle
Chapter 16

Take equal parts of cream of tartar and fine saltpeter, and combine them together, causing them to detonate, forming a very white mass, which is an alkaline salt. Grind it into a very fine powder, and while it is still very hot, pour on it some Spirit of turpentine. Stir the mixture occasionally with a pipe stem, and continue to add fresh Spirit of turpentine until the salt has absorbed three times its weight. This process is done cold, and it will take six months to complete. Then, decant the Spirit of turpentine, which will float above the tartar salt. Place the decanted turpentine oil in a flask with some ordinary Spirit of wine and extract all the redness, which is a fine and excellent tincture. You will be left with a volatile tartar salt at the bottom of the flask, which is ready for the next operation:

Take the said volatile tartar salt, one pound, and place it in a retort with four pounds of fiery metallic spirit. Digest for ten days in a water bath, then distill gently in a sand bath using a very large container, and all your tartar salt will pass into the spirit, forming the Philosophical Spirit of Wine. If everything doesn't pass, you will need to cohobate, circulate, and distill the liquor again as previously instructed.

Take what has been distilled and place it over one pound of new volatile tartar salt prepared as before. Repeat this process until the liquor contains three pounds of volatile salt dissolved into the spirit, for every four pounds of metallic spirit. At this point, your Philosophical Spirit of Wine will be ready to be frozen, as we have previously mentioned, to reduce it into Ciel or oily liquor, which can be carefully separated from its phlegm and the hypostasis that floats above it, similar to urine. This Ciel can then be used with open Gold or Silver for the wet way, or dried into salt for the dissolution of Gold or Silver through the dry way, as we have already explained.

Philosophical Spirit of Wine by Basil Valentin
Chapter 17

Take quicklime made from black marble (the liveliest and best burnt is the best). Reduce it to fine powder, and place it in a large retort, three-quarters full. Pour ordinary tartarized Spirit of Wine over it (preferably Philosophical Spirit). Add just enough to moisten the quicklime and turn it into a very thick paste — this should be done through a perforated funnel, as for a concentration. Then, distill the entire mixture in a water bath until it forms a very subtle, vein-like Spirit. Cohobate it onto the quicklime with fresh Spirit 7 or 8 times. In the final distillation, dry the quicklime completely in the water bath, then pass it while mixing in one-tenth of its weight in Tartar and as much of the soil-like substances that separate and deposit when purifying and crystallizing Tartar, ensuring they are carefully detached and well-mixed.

Distill this mixture in a retort, similar to how you would distill Vitriol oil, using a very large vessel that is well-sealed. This operation is easily carried out with a two- or three-pointed flask. In the last flask, place the subtle Spirit that you obtained in the first distillation to attract the white fumes we will discuss. Distill gently over an open flame until droplets of only phlegm come out. Once these pass, increase the heat until white fumes, similar to those from Vitriol, emerge. These fumes do not fall nor attach themselves to the phlegm but will join with the flammable Spirit in the final flask.

Take the spirituous liquor in the final flask, mix it with Spirit of Wine, place it in an earthenware dish, and apply heat. The Spirit of Wine will burn off, and the Spirit of the lime will remain at the bottom as an oily liquid. This oily substance cannot be separated from the Spirit of Wine except by this method because it rises with it through distillation. This ignited Spirit of lime is the Philosophical Spirit of Basil Valentin, which, when coagulated as other substances we have discussed, forms a Ciel for the dissolution of the two luminaries (the Sun and Moon).

Note that this Spirit sometimes appears yellow when mixed with Spirit of Wine, and in this case, it should be rectified two or three times. After rectification, it will become clear and transparent, having deposited the small amount of dregs that gave it its color.

Philosophical Spirit of Wine by Rupescissa
Chapter 18

Take Tartar Salt made by detonation with cream of Tartar and fine Saltpeter. Once the mixture is hot and powdered, place it all in a retort and gradually feed it with the metallic ardent Spirit, deflegming it each time, so that your Spirit comes out just as strong as it was when introduced. Then, take this Tartar, now nourished, to the cellar to allow it to decay. Purify this decay in a water bath and filter it, then distill until it reaches a honey-like consistency, or until it begins to produce a vein-like Spirit. Continue distillation in a sand bath, having changed vessels beforehand, until no more vein-like liquid passes through. You will then have a metallic ardent Spirit, which you will rectify two or three times to completely rid it of its phlegm. Next, freeze it in a regulated fire and turn it into the Philosophical Fire.

Note that honey, soot from chimneys, dry blood, macmac, and other materials distilled at a suppressive fire, all produce significant phlegm and an acidic Spirit. However, fetid oil and volatile Salt concentrate in the Dead Head, from which, when extracted by lixiviation with their own phlegm and purified with their acidic Spirits, they produce very penetrating white alkaline Salts. These Salts, when treated like the Tartar mentioned above with the Philosophical Spirit of Wine, easily combine with it and quickly form the Philosopher’s Sky for the dissolution of the two luminaries (the Sun and Moon).

This method provides a specific way to create a Philosophical Spirit, emphasizing the role of the correct materials and processes for transforming them into the final product.

Ripley’s Operation
Chapter 19

Take one ounce of very pure ordinary Mercury, such as the one revived when making Antimony butter, and three ounces of Philosophical Wine reduced to Salt, as we have described. It doesn’t matter which operation of these Salts, known as Philosophical Ammoniac Salt, is used. Triturate everything together in a glass mortar until the Mercury is no longer visible. Then place it all in a sealed retort in a water bath until it is reduced to a white liquid, like milk. Next, place this liquid into a retort with one pound of very pure common Mercury. Seal the retort, then place it in a water bath for 40 days. Afterward, distill gently over a sand fire until an insipid liquid passes through, which is discarded. Then increase the fire, and an excellent oily liquid, very yellow in color, will appear, suitable for fermentation.

Next, take gold that has been tinted by Venus and Antimony, reduced to a red powder according to the Art (one ounce), and add ten ounces of the first mercurial liquid. Seal the whole mixture in a retort and hold it over a lamp fire until putrefaction and regeneration have occurred. Then place the mixture into a retort, and distill over a sand fire. A very red oily liquid will come out, which is true potable gold. Cook this oil over a lamp fire until it is dried and reduced to a red powder, which will be projected in weight one-eighth onto pure gold in a crucible. All of this will turn into powder, which you can slowly feed with the yellow oil from earlier until it becomes fixed and fusible. You will then have a powder that can be projected onto all metals, especially Mercury, which will be reduced to pure gold.

This operation can also be done with the Philosopher’s Sky and Mercury, but it takes longer. It can also be done with the Philosophical Wine Spirit, provided it is well deflegmed. Here’s how it is practiced:

Take one pound of very pure common Mercury and place it in a retort with three fingers of Philosopher’s Sky above it. Seal the retort and keep it over a regulated heat until it is reduced to liquid. Then distill in a water bath everything that can distill, leaving the Mercury oil at the bottom, which is distilled by the retort over a sand fire to be used in the same way as mentioned above to create potable gold and a projective powder.

To obtain very pure Mercury, it must be sublimed with common Salt and Vitriol after being dissolved in Spirit of Nitre as many times as necessary to stop it from darkening the Salts with which it is sublimed. Then take one pound of this Sublimate, powder it, and impregnate it with Tartar oil through deliquescence until it forms a paste, which is then mixed with three parts of powdered Sulfur. Place the mixture in a retort and distill it with a half-filled water container. This will yield magnificent and clean Mercury for the operations described above.

This chapter outlines the process of preparing a highly purified Mercury and its use in the transmutation of metals, particularly in the creation of potable gold and projective powders. The process includes various stages of distillation, sublimation, and treatment with other alchemical substances to achieve the desired results.

Raymond Lulle's Operation
Chapter 20

Take ten pounds of ordinary corrosive precipitated Mercury, sublimate it with salts until it no longer gives off any blackness. Triturate it very finely with ten ounces of calcined Jupiter. Spread this mixture on an iron plate and place it in the cellar to allow it to fall into deliquescence. Purify this deliquium by using a water bath and filter it. You will be left with a very greasy green liquor, which should be distilled in a retort over a sand fire six or seven times, or until no terrestrials remain.

Next, distill this liquor in the water bath, keeping about one-tenth of the quantity as an insipid phlegm. Take what remains at the bottom of the vessel and, for every four ounces of the substance, add one ounce of volatile Tartare salt that has been prepared by turpentine. Place the mixture in several retorts and distill it in a sand bath with large balloons, collecting everything that distills. Afterward, weigh the distillate and add an equal weight of the same volatile salt as the first time. Repeat this operation four times with fresh salt, and you will have an excellent well-prepared Mercurial Water.

Take one ounce of very pure common Mercury and four ounces of the previously prepared liquor. Place everything in a sealed retort and keep it over a boiling water bath until everything dissolves. Then distill this solution to purify it, and by this means, you will dissolve as much Mercury as desired and reduce it to water.

Take this Mercurial Water and purify it in a water bath for 40 days. After this period, place this substance in a retort and distill it in a water bath until no more can distill. At the bottom of the vessel, you will have Mercury as white as snow.

Pour four fingers of your first liquor, which dissolves the Mercury, onto this Mercury, and then place everything in the water bath for 4 or 5 days, tightly sealed. Afterward, place it in a sand bath over regulated heat and distill. Your Mercury will pass into Spirit along with the menstruum. If anything remains at the bottom of the retort, add more menstruum and repeat the process, combining everything together. At the bottom of the retort, there will remain a black "Dead Head." This should no longer smoke when placed on a plate, and it must be reverbated in a closed vessel for 24 hours.

Gradually feed this black earth with the Mercurial liquor you have distilled, removing the insipid phlegm each time with a gentle water bath. Repeat this feeding process as many times as necessary until the black substance becomes as white as snow. Then, place this well-dried substance into a cucurbite in a water bath to sublimate it according to the Art over a very gentle fire, which will take three days. This sublimation will be powdery and is known as Magnesia or Philosophical Ammoniac.

Next, place this precious Sublimate into a sealed retort and keep it over a regulated lamp fire until it becomes fixed and no longer sublimes. This will yield a true Philosophical Sky reduced to Salt, which is used for the dry resolution of metals.

Note that instead of using volatile Tartare salt or another volatile salt, if you use Philosophical Ammoniac Salt made with the metallic spirit, which is the frozen Sky turned into Salt, your operation will be much better and more penetrating.

This operation involves distilling and purifying Mercury, which is then used to create a substance that can transmute metals. The steps lead to the creation of a true "Philosophical Sky," a vital ingredient in the alchemical process. The repeated sublimation and feeding of the black substance are essential for purifying it into a form that can be used in further alchemical operations.

Petit Circulé de Paracelse [process described by Paracelsus, a famous alchemist and physician, that is primarily focused on transforming common salt into a refined, spiritual essence.]
Chapter 21

Take common salt, or rock salt dissolved and coagulated very cleanly two or three times. Take one pound of this salt and place it in a retort with six pounds of fragrant yellow metallic oil. Seal the retort and let it rot in a water bath for 40 days.

Then, transfer the mixture to a distillation apparatus (a cornue) and distill it over a regulated sand fire, increasing the heat towards the end. Collect everything that distills and set it aside.

Take the residue from the retort and dissolve it in the phlegm of Philosophical wine spirit. Purify it very well in the water bath and filter it, then coagulate it. Cohobate the liquor set aside earlier over it. Circulate or rot and distill as before, repeating this process until the salt has completely turned into oil.

Take this oil of salt and combine it with the fragrant metallic oil. Cohobate it over Philosophical wine spirit four or five times (the more, the better), circulating it for eight or ten days at each cohobation. After this process, you will have a marine salt spirit combined with Philosophical wine spirit, forming a liquor that Paracelsus calls his "Petit Circulé," which can be coagulated into a Philosophical Essence or Sky. This will be the first being of common salt.

Note: This operation can be performed with all types of salts, following the same process, because all salts lose their salinity through circulation with Philosophical wine spirit and become sweet as they return to their original state. It is also important to note that this operation can be done more quickly with sulphurous common salt spirit (or corrosive oil), the oil, and the metallic spirit than with the previous method. Basile Valentin is the author of this approach.

Grand Circulé of Paracelsus [alchemical process described by Paracelsus, a prominent Renaissance physician, alchemist, and mystic. In his work, the "Grand Circulé" refers to a complex series of distillation, circulation, and purification processes that are aimed at transforming and refining substances, particularly mercury, into a more potent and purified form.]
Chapter 22

Take the corrosive Sublimate prepared in the ordinary way, but so pure that it no longer darkens the salts with which it is sublimated, and that they are well crystallized. Reduce everything to an impalpable powder. Place everything in a retort with four times its weight of the Petit Circulé described above, before it has been made into Essence. Seal everything and putrefy it in a warm water bath for 40 days. After this period, decant the liquid carefully from its precipitated dregs. Then place this liquid (which is mercury) in a cornue (distillation vessel) to dissolve with the Petit Circulé, and distill it over a gentle sand fire. Increase the fire and beautiful, very pure crystals will sublime.

Take these crystals and seal them in a flat-bottomed retort. Keep them over a regulated sand fire until they are dissolved into a red powder of cinnabar and fixed. Then add Esprit ardent métallique (fiery metallic spirit) and, using this menstruum, extract all the liquid. Filter this extraction, then distill it over a gentle water bath. At the bottom of the retort, a dry tincture will remain, which is the true crocus (saffron) of mercury.

Take what remains at the bottom of the vessel after the extraction of the tincture and carry it to the cellar to resolve it. Purify this deliquescence by the water bath and by filtering, then ensure the liquid you have extracted by fixing the mercurial crystallization, fermenting, and circulating for 40 days. Then distill it in a water bath and finally over sand to remove the phlegm completely. Rehobate the Esprit ardent métallique onto the residue in the retort, circulate, and distill as before until the primary essence of mercury rises with the Petit Circulé, and the two form one single liquid, which is called Grand Circulé, or Esprit acide métallique, which dissolves gold and silver. Freeze this liquid or Essence or Ciel Philosophique, and you will have the Mercure des Sages (Mercury of the Sages).

Note:
This operation can be done with the flowers of zinc, bismuth, or antimony, and the same procedure can be applied to them as with mercury.

Another Operation of Paracelsus
Chapter 23

Take the purest gold and silver ore you can find, that is, the least charged with earth or gangue and already separated. Grind it into an impalpable powder, one pound of ore and four pounds of Petit Circulé. Place everything into a sealed retort and put it in a warm bath for 20 days. Once everything is dissolved, separate the mud and the feces from the clear, floating liquid without mixing them. Then cook this liquid in a sand bath until it freezes and dries into a powder. Next, take it to the cellar to dissolve, purify this deliquescence using a warm bath and a filter, then circulate it for 40 days. Afterward, distill it in the retort, separating the veinous spirit. This spirit, properly deflegmated from its oil and frozen in the sand to form a Ciel or Essence, is the first being of gold—or antimony, depending on the material you have worked with.

Note: This is the method by which all bodies are resolved into or with the Petit Circulé, and by which the pure is separated from the impure. Once bodies are resolved into the Petit Circulé, they form a single body with it, known as Vitriol Philosophique. This can be resolved in the cellar by deliquescence to separate any remaining earthly substances. Then, the deliquescence is purified by circulation, which perfectly purifies these liquids. Distilling them yields a Fiery Metallic Spirit, which freezes into the first being and also into an aromatic acid oil, suitable for the purposes described above.

Note: This well-purified Vitriol Philosophique, when cooked in a sand bath until reduced to a very fine red powder, is projected onto the Moon in molten form, producing pure gold.

Note: If from this red powder, a tincture is extracted using the Esprit de vin Philosophique, as we did with mercury, Paracelsus calls it his Lily of Gold if it is with gold, or Lily of Antimony if it is with antimony.

Note: Furthermore, the Vitriol Philosophique that is well-purified and reduced into Esprit as described, and this Esprit frozen into Ciel or Essence, is the Ciel Philosophique, which, when cooked and dried into a red powder, is what Paracelsus calls the Being of Mercury if made with mercury, and Being of Gold if made with gold.

Sweet Spirit of Basil Valentine
Chapter 24

Take pure cinnabar—preferably the crystalline type that smells like violet, which is the best—and gold ore that is not heavily charged with gangue, rock, and earth, one pound of each. Grind everything into powder in a retort with four times its weight of mercury oil, that is, mercury reduced to salt or essence as we have previously described, or as we will explain below. Digest this mixture for one month in a well-sealed warm bath, then decant the liquid and add more until you find that little material remains in the black feces. This process should be done in the second or third cohobation.

Take this liquid, now well-separated from the feces, and place it into a cucurbite in the warm bath. Distill off all the phlegm, and at the bottom of the vessel, you will be left with a very heavy, oily liquid. To this, add three parts of a well-deflegmated Esprit ardent métallique (fiery metallic spirit) to one part of our liquid, then seal everything into a retort with twice as much as the total weight of calcined tartar, whitened to purity. Then distill in a sand bath until you obtain a very brilliant liquid, which Basil Valentine calls his Esprit de Mercure (Spirit of Mercury).

Next, increase the heat, and your metallic wine spirit, which had concentrated in the tartar, will emerge, and it will be as powerful as it was before. This liquid is the first being of mercury, which is gradually frozen at a regulated sand heat and is reduced into an oily form. This is called Ciel (Sky). When reduced to red powder, it is called the Astre du Mercure (Star of Mercury), which works perfectly on gold.

Chapter 25

Take very pure mercury oil and then corrosive sublimed material according to the art. The sublimed material must be sublimed 7 times, changing the salt each time, which no longer darkens, and when the material is crystalline, the sublimed substance is ready for the following operation:

Pulverize the sublimed substance very finely, then place it in a retort with three fingers of very well deflegmated fiery metallic spirit above it. Digest this mixture for 4 or 5 days in the warm bath, then distill all your Philosophical Spirit in the same bath. Place the cucurbite in the sand bath and gradually increase the heat until the material sublimates. Then, separate the material from the feces, only taking the crystalline material, which you will pulverize in the retort with three fingers of fiery metallic spirit above it for circulation for 4 or 5 days.

Next, remove the spirit to the warm bath in a cucurbite and repeat the process. Do this 7 or 8 times, or until no more feces are released, and your mercury rises and sublimates into large crystals.

Take these crystals and purify them, then place them in the retort and add three fingers of fiery metallic spirit. Digest for several days, then decant without mixing the sediment, which you will dry in the mild sand bath. Then, add new fiery metallic spirit and proceed as before, repeating this process 4 or 5 times, or until only an indissoluble substance remains, which is useless.

Next, take all the extractions, purify them through the warm bath and filter, then circulate them for 4 days in the bath. Afterward, distill in the same bath everything that can rise, which will be a fiery metallic spirit better than when it was used the first time. At the bottom of the vessel, there will remain a honey-like substance that will coagulate into a white matter, which is placed in the retort. Distill in a graduated sand bath everything that can come out, which is the pure mercury oil for the operation above. With this oil, you can make the Philosophical Sky and the Star of Mercury as described earlier.

Chapter 26: Method of Making the Green Lion

Take the aromatic metallic acid oil made by wine vinegar, or other acids, or menstruum with the Lime of Saturn, Jupiter, Zinc, Bismuth, drawn from my simple Adrop gum, or from the purified and well-prepared Gold Salt, well opened, so that all the extraction from the Gold body is completed. Then, purify this extraction and distill it with a gentle sand bath through the retort until it is reduced to a honey-like substance or gum, which is called compounded Adrop.

Next, extract this gum with fiery metallic spirit, purify the extraction from its feces, and then distill all that can pass in the gentle bath, which will be tasteless. Pour new fiery metallic spirit onto the residue in the retort, and distill it as before. Repeat this process until this spirit comes out as strong as it was the first time. Then your Adrop gum will be activated, and you will distill it, adding your fiery spirit in several portions to properly deflegmate it. Once this is done, your Green Lion will be well-prepared.

You can freeze it and reduce it to Essence, or solar fiery spirit; it is called the Green Lion because it is an immature Gold, still green, lacking the final cooking to fix it. The green indicates it has not yet completely volatilized the Gold; it must fix this volatile Gold. It is also called the Green Lion because it easily dissolves Gold, and this dissolution takes on a green color, ready to vegetate at the slightest heat.

This is a method for fixing the volatile Gold. However, this Green Gold can reach fixity through simple cooking, without adding new Gold, but the latter method is the shortest path. This Green Lion is what the Philosophers call their Living Gold, or their Mercury, which is only in potential.

One can also make this liquor with the compounded Adrop, but it is not as perfect or as powerful as the one we just described.

Those who imagine they can make the Green Lion from ordinary Vitriol are mistaken. The Philosophical Vitriol is the white, talc-like, and Saturnine salt, derived from compounded Adrop gum with fiery metallic spirit. Philosophical Vitriol gives the Green Lion with the slightest sand bath heat, whereas ordinary Vitriol only gives its spirit with strong fire.

Only the aromatic yellow oil that comes from Philosophical Vitriol and is used to rectify the Green Lion can penetrate the Sulfur of Gold, making it fusible and staining, so that after 30 days of cooking and incineration, it can be made into a projective powder. This abbreviation is from Raymond Lulle, who used very opened Gold.

The Saturn of the Philosophers is the compounded Adrop gum, which contains Gold in potential and, through distillation, gives the Green Lion and the fermentative oil that we just discussed.

Chapter 27: Method of Making the Milk of the Virgin According to Ripley

Take good Orleans vinegar, and digest it for eight days in well-sealed jugs with arugula and ginger. Then, remove the vinegar by tilting the vessel to keep it clear. Place the vinegar in a well-glazed earthenware dish or pottery and bring it to a boil with good Litharge or Saturn burnt and finely powdered, ensuring that the vinegar does not distill and that it remains four or five fingers above the Litharge. Boil the mixture while stirring constantly for an hour, then decant the vinegar, which will be properly yellowish and sweet. Add more vinegar as before and repeat this operation until the Litharge is dissolved. Ensure you have at least 20 pounds of dissolved Litharge, then gather the dissolutions and filter them thoroughly.

Next, place the filtered liquid into a stoneware or earthen vessel and evaporate it in a sand bath until it is almost boiling. Evaporate until about half of the solution (or slightly more) has evaporated, then allow it to cool and filter the liquid. This will yield a beautiful golden yellow liquid, which you will place in a retort to distill in a sand bath until an acidic liquid begins to pass.

Once this occurs, change the container, ensuring that everything is sealed tightly, then apply very gentle heat gradually until white vapors pass, which should take 12 hours. Increase the heat until the vessel begins to glow red. Continue heating until nothing more passes, then allow it to cool. Once cooled, dilute the vessel and set aside what remains in the last container, only keeping the acidic liquid in the two-necked flask. Continue this process with all your dissolutions, ensuring that the honey-like or gummy material remaining in the retort occupies at most half of the vessel.

Take your acidic liquids and place them in very large glass vessels with more Litharge. Keep the mixture boiling in the sand bath, having slightly weakened it with the phlegm that came from the previous distillation. Continue until all the Litharge has dissolved using this dissolution, then distill it through the retort in a sand bath very gently until an acidic liquid begins to emerge. At this point, distill at a graduated heat with both vessels tightly sealed, following the same steps as before, always separating what comes from the first vessel, and re-dissolving new Litharge with the oily acidic liquid, continuing distillation as before.

This operation should be repeated at least 20 times. Once the final acidic liquid remains, rectify it in the sand bath 3 or 4 times, or until it reaches a beautiful golden yellow color. Then, place it in a glass retort and pour in the liquid reserved from the first flask. The retort should always be half-full. Distill gently in a water bath, and a vein-like spirit similar to wine spirit, with a sweet fragrance, will pass. Change containers as soon as the veins disappear, and distill everything that comes through, which will be tasteless.

Recohobate on the residue of the retort with the liquid that passed as veins, then distill in the water bath as before. Repeat this process until your flammable spirit is well dried and well-deflegmated, and store it in a bottle for later use. This is the simple flammable metallic spirit.

Then, take your yellow acidic oil, which was used to rectify the flammable spirit, and seal it in a flat-bottomed retort, half-filled. Heat it all in the sand bath until it is perfectly dry. Once dried, open the vessel and extract it using your flammable spirit. There will be much residue to discard as useless. Purify this extraction by the water bath and filter until it is perfectly clear.

Then, distill everything that can be distilled in the water bath. What remains in the bottom of the vessel will be a very sweet liquid, much less acidic than the first one. You can freeze it again and operate as before two or three more times, and you will have the Milk of the Virgin, a very lucid liquid, which is the simple Philosophical Mercury.

Extraction of Gold and Silver Using the Virgin Milk Menstruum
Extract the Gold and Silver using the menstruum, then purify the extraction until it no longer leaves any residue. Afterward, heat the extraction in a regulated sand fire and dry it out. Perform a new extraction using the menstruum as before, then cook as previously. Repeat this process 2 or 3 times. During the final drying, extract the material, meaning the Gold and Silver that have been regenerated by the menstruum of the Virgin Milk, combined with the fiery metallic spirit.

Purify this extraction, then remove the fiery spirit in a water bath. There will be a very red oily liquid at the bottom, which you will distill through the retort, and you will have the regenerated Lion's Blood.

If you have worked with Gold, which is the double Philosophical Mercury, or potable Gold (Or Potable), that has been cooked in a regulated sand fire until it is reduced to a fine red powder, this becomes a projection powder for imperfect metals and can be multiplied infinitely.

Note that it is called Lion's Blood, or Potable Gold, and the Elixir of Life because it regenerates both humans and metals. It radically dissolves Gold and acquires fixity much more quickly through this method.

Method for Making Vitriol Azoqué (or Adrop) by Raymond Lull

Take yellow metallic oil—how it is made does not matter, as long as it is pure. Dissolve in it pure and well-opened Gold, as much as it can dissolve. Then place this solution in a regulated sand fire until it is completely dried out, and you will have Vitriol Azoqué. By distilling it in the sand after resolving it in a water bath, you will obtain an oily liquid that dissolves Gold quickly and perfectly, so that, when cooked, it forms a quick projection powder.

Note that this Vitriol Azoqué is very similar to alum, and it can be made more or less perfect depending on the operations performed on it. This Vitriol Azoqué gives off white vapors during distillation, which resolve into a red liquid, or at least a beautiful dark golden yellow. This liquid has the power to radically dissolve, purify, and regenerate Gold.

Also, note that this metallic oily liquid easily dissolves Gold, meaning its pure part, as its terrestrity remains. Through cooking, this Gold is reduced to green gum, which slowly condenses and becomes firm like Vitriol, earning it the name "Philosophical Vitriol," which is gently dried to avoid burning the flowers and losing its greenness.

If the Vitriol Azoqué is dissolved multiple times in the oil that caused the dissolution, it becomes much more perfect and will more easily yield the Philosophical Mercury upon distillation. This Mercury must be extremely dephlegmated if you want it to act quickly on metals.

The Philosopher's Sky (Ciel du Philosophe) by the Unknown Philosopher

Take metallic gum or Saturnian Salt made with the Lime of Saturn, Jupiter, Zinc, Antimony, Bismuth, and distilled several times with very acidic Vinegar. Then take this pure Saturnian gum or salt and seal it in a flask one-third full. Place it in a water bath until everything resolves into a yellow liquid, then filter it until it is clear. Put it into a retort to distill over a regulated sand fire, obtaining a flammable spirit and an oil that you will separate. At the bottom of the retort, there will remain a "dead head" that you will calcine and burn until it turns grey.

Then cohobate all the liquid in the container onto the dead head, distill the flammable and veinous spirit over the water bath, and dephlegmate it over the sand. The oil that you collect separately will be added back, and the "dead head" will be calcined again. Cohobate it with the oil and the spirit, then distill it over the water bath again, and continue with the same process until the spirit is well dephlegmated, and nearly all the yellow oil has been removed with the spirit, leaving a clear oil floating on top, which you will separate through a funnel at each distillation and keep it aside carefully.

Once your spirit is clear and has almost entirely removed the acidic liquid in the form of Etheric oil, place it in a flask with the collected oils, seal the entire mixture, and heat it gently over a regulated sand fire until your Etheric oil has separated and thickened, floating on a completely phlegmatic liquid that you will separate by funnel. This is the Philosopher's Sky (Ciel des Philosophes), which radically dissolves Gold and Silver, forming with them a homogeneous potable liquid called the Philosopher's Mercury, which, when cooked and frozen over a regulated sand or lamp fire, reduces to a projection powder without the need for any additives.

Note that during the aforementioned operations, particularly when distilling simple Adrop gum or Saturn's Salt, white vapor and filaments will pass into the container, similar to milk, which then resolve into a beautiful golden yellow or dark lemon-colored liquid, from which the very sweet Etheric oil is extracted, which we have named Sky or Philosopher's Mercury.

The Way of Making Roger Bacon's Menstruum (Chapter. 30)

Take good Litharge that is well burned and almost completely dried, then mix it with strong, undistilled Vinegar. Filter the resulting dissolution to make it very clear, and then evaporate it in a water bath until it is reduced by half. Filter the residue again and distill it in a water bath until a slightly acidic liquid starts to distill. What remains in the retort will resemble very heavy, yellow honey. Place this into a flask that is half empty. Distill over a regulated sand fire until no more white fumes are released. Keep aside everything that remains in the vessel, ensuring it is sealed carefully.

Take the "dead head" (the remaining black residue) from the retort, and finely pulverize it. Gradually moisten it with very good undistilled Vinegar, then dry it and expose it to the sun. Repeat this process until the "dead head" or black feces turn yellow. Then, place it into a vessel and dissolve it in strong Vinegar made earlier with the Litharge. Combine this new liquid with the previously obtained one. Repeat this process several times until there are almost no residues left in the retort after the final distillation.

If the Litharge was well opened and the Vinegar strong enough, there should be almost nothing left after the third distillation. Then, take everything obtained from these distillations and seal it in a flask that is one-third full. Purify it in a water bath, separating the veinous spirits, and keep them aside. Distill the insipid phlegm over a sand fire, collecting the acidic, oily liquid separately. Keep aside the dead head residue that remains.

Take the acidic liquid and veinous spirits, and seal them together in a flask to putrefy for 40 days in a water bath. Distill according to the previous steps. Repeat this process five or six times on the phlegm and the dead head, treating them as before, until no residues remain and everything turns into a fragrant and very sweet liquid. Then, digest this liquid over sand until the oily liquid naturally separates itself from the phlegm, floating on top as an Essence. This Essence, separated from the phlegm, is the Philosopher's Sky and Roger Bacon's Dissolver.

To make the Green Lion, meaning to dissolve the open Gold and reduce it into Essence or a potable liquid, which, by cooking, becomes a penetrating and coloring fixed powder:

Note that the Philosopher's Sky, when placed on well-opened Gold or Silver Lime, dissolves the purest and most sulfurous part. Filter everything, and remove some of the menstruum in a water bath. At the bottom, there will remain a gummy substance that crystallizes. These crystals are called Philosophical Vitriol, which, by distillation, gives a liquid, on which, through circulation, an oily liquid floats on the surface of the phlegm. This Essence is the sperm of the Philosopher's Stone, also called their Mercury, which contains everything the Wise seek. It is their Azoth, which only lacks cooking to achieve fixity. This is what led Ripley to say, "Fire and Azoth are enough."

How to Make the Green Lion of Paracelsus (Chap. 31)

Take the lime of Jupiter or Saturn, Zinc, Antimony, or Bismuth, the most open ones, and turn them into gum with the help of very strong Vinegar.

Take this gum and place it in a retort. Add enough fresh, undistilled Vinegar so that it is as strong as when you added it. Digestion is required at each cohobation for one or two days. Only add as much Vinegar as the weight of the gum. Filter the solution until it is clear.

Then, put everything together into a water bath in a retort, one-third empty, and distill everything that can pass, keeping it separate. Next, distill over a regulated sand fire, making the retort glow at the end. Keep aside whatever passes through.

Take the black "dead head" that remains, and cohob it with the first liquid. Digest in the water bath for 8 or 10 days, then distill as before. Repeat these same operations until only a very light, putrefying "dead head" remains, digesting at each cohobation.

Calcine this "dead head" until it becomes white, and then place it in the retort along with all the liquids. Distill and putrefy in a water bath for 15 or 20 days, then distill the ardent spirit over a sand fire and collect the oily liquid.

Carefully separate the residues, then calcine the "dead head" again until it becomes white. Continue the rectification and remove all phlegm from the liquids as much as possible.

Now, circulate the pure oil and ardent spirit over the sand fire until the Essence separates and floats above its phlegm. Separate the Essence from the phlegm using a funnel, and you will have the Ciel of Paracelsus with which he dissolved open Gold into very subtle lime.

The liquid he dissolved with this dissolution, and from which it came, he called the Green Lion, or Living Gold, which is the true Mercury of the Philosophers.

The Method to Make the Menstruum of the Two Dragons of Ripley to Reduce All Metallic Limes into Flowing Mercury (Chapter 32)

Ingredients:

Vitriol from Montpellier Verdigris, extracted using distilled Vinegar and then further rarefied with the same Vinegar until it has the same strength as when initially added (1 lb).
Metallic gum and Saturnine gum, also rarefied using undistilled Vinegar (1 lb).
Saltpeter (third calcination), separated from its alum and salt. Alternatively, use precipitated Mercury in its final purity, resolved in a cellar on an iron plate (1 lb).
Preparation:

Grind these three ingredients together in a marble mortar. Place them in a distillation retort to be heated over a gentle sand bath.
Gradually increase the heat as the distillation weakens. A lot of white smoke will be produced, turning the retort cloudy. These fumes will eventually resolve into a beautiful golden-yellow liquid.
Distillation Process:

Once distillation is complete, the retort will clear up. Rectify the resulting liquid according to the alchemical process, using the "dead head" (the residue from the distillation).
Reverberate this liquid 4 or 5 times, separating the phlegm (watery liquid) from the oily liquid and the veinous liquid.
Circulation:

Circulate these two liquids together until the Essence separates and floats above the phlegm. Separate this Essence using a funnel. This Essence is known as the Menstruum of the Two Dragons, a Philosophical Sky.
Reduction of Gold or Silver into Flowing Mercury:

To reduce Gold or Silver in its lime form into flowing Mercury using the Menstruum of the Two Dragons:
Take 1 ounce of Gold or Silver in lime and 3 parts of the Essence.
Place everything in a retort and circulate it in a water bath.
Distill over a sand bath, cohobate (mix) the menstruum, and repeat the circulation and distillation process as before.
Repeat this process three times. After washing the mass with common water, the substance will be reduced into flowing Mercury.
This method transforms metallic limes into flowing Mercury, which can then be used for further alchemical operations, particularly in the purification and transformation of metals.

Operation of Philalethes (Chapter quite unclear…)

Ingredients:

Saltpeter.
Verdigris, obtained by undistilled wine vinegar, rarefied until it is as strong as when initially added (4 lbs).
Adrop gum, made with vinegar and Litharge, also rarefied with the same vinegar (4 lbs).
Precipitated Mercury, made with Venus or Cyprus Vitriol and salt sublimated seven times, changing the Vitriol and salt each time. Once this Mercury is well-crystallized, it should be placed in a retort and distilled once or twice with good Venus Vitriol oil (not Mars Vitriol oil).
Sublimed Mercury, well-crystallized and powdered into an impalpable powder (4 lbs).
Preparation:

Combine the Mercury and other ingredients in a marble mortar. Place the mixture in a glass vessel (matras), and add about three fingers of metallic fragrant oil extracted from the Adrop gum or Saturnine Salt. Seal the vessel and place it in a water bath for 40 days.
Distillation: 2. After 40 days, distill the mixture in a retort over a graduated sand bath with the double-pointed balloon, sealed tightly. Set aside the contents of the final balloon. 3. Cohobate (re-distill) the acidic oil or liquor from the first balloon over the black "dead head" (residue) of the retort after pulverizing it. Repeat this cohabitation process 4 or 5 times, always separating the fiery liquor from the farthest balloon. 4. Combine these two liquors and distill them together in a water bath and over sand to separate the Fiery Spirit, the phlegm, and the oil. 5. Repeat the process until nearly all of the oil has passed with the fiery spirit, which should then be circulated over the sand. Continue until the ethereal oil separates and floats above the phlegm. 6. Separate the ethereal oil from the phlegm using a funnel. The result will be the Philosophical Sky (Ciel Philosophique), which is used to resolve Gold and make the Green Lion or Philosophical Mercury.

Commentary:
This operation is one of the later discoveries and inventions of the Moderns. It is shorter and more virtuous compared to the Ancient methods, although the essence of the process remains the same. The goal of both approaches is to exalt and volatilize the metallic spirit, transforming it into a spiritual essence or oily substance, which is the first metallic germ. This subtle part penetrates gold and silver, attaching itself to their sulfurous and oily parts, so that they form a homogeneous liquid known as Philosophical Mercury. By heating this liquid, it acquires the fixity necessary to turn it into a dyeing powder and fixative.

The salts used in these mixtures should not worry the alchemist, as they serve only to open the metals and release their metallic spirits. The metals, once opened and properly subtilized by the salts (which are the only ones that can enter them), volatilize perfectly with the addition of concentrated aqua fortis (strong water) in vinegar. This process draws out the pure metallic part, which is separated from its earthly nature and gross body. This pure metallic part is the Philosophical Mercurial Spirit or the Air or Sky. The sulfurous part is joined with the wine, which does no harm, as the fatty and oily parts of plants and even animals can remetalize and animate the metallic lime through the power of fire, a process well-known to any good metallurgist.

For me, my feeling is that, for this operation, one can use volatile Sulfurous Spirits, which are tasteless and extracted from Saltpeter, Salt, Vitriol, Sulfur, Feragine, soot, urine tartar, and many other substances, whose spirits are subtler than those in wine vinegar, and much more penetrating. If the salts have a body, after a few light preparations, that can open the metals and enter them, what will their subtle and fiery spirits do? These will be of the same nature as the sulfurous metallic part, to which they will surely attach, unite, and carry with them through their great lightness, creating even more homogeneity than the Spirit of wine contained in vinegar. This Essence or oily metallic Spirit will separate through circulation over a sand bath just as easily as by the other method, and you will still have a Philosophical Sky with which you can operate as with the other, confirming the famous philosophical axiom: metals are improved and perfected by metals, because they can only be attacked or regenerated by something of their nature that is homogeneous with them.

Now, nothing is more of the nature of gold than the pure metallic part or Essence, extracted from the imperfect metals by agents that are homogeneous and can unite with them to form a spiritual, oily, and fatty substance, which contains the coagulating principle that easily fixes itself when joined with gold, which is a fixed substance.**

Note that the acidity and corrosion of all salts are lost when they are circulated, distilled, and cohobated several times with metallic oil, or the Spirit extracted from the Adrop gum. Through the repetition of these operations, the salinity and bitterness of the salts are entirely lost and volatilized. They are exalted so perfectly that they rise with the fiery Spirit we call metallic, and after circulation, they float on top in the form of an Ethereal Oil, which is the Philosophical Sky.

This is why, to easily obtain Paracelsus’s Circulated Spirit, one must take Spirit of common Salt, concentrate it on Zinc or Calamine, and reduce it into an oily liquor. From one pound well-dephlegmated, you obtain only 3 or 4 ounces. Take these 4 ounces and combine them with 12 ounces of metallic liquor extracted from the Adrop gum, joined with its Spirit, all well-dephlegmated. Seal it and circulate this mixture in a water bath for 40 days. Then place everything in a retort, distill, cohobate, and circulate until all the Salt liquor has passed through the neck of the retort, leaving only a small amount of earthiness.

Then distill this mixture in a water bath to extract the Fiery Spirit, then over sand to separate the phlegm. Cohobate the Fiery Spirit over the residue of the retort, circulate it in the water bath, and distill again as before. Repeat this process until almost all the oil from the Salt has risen with the Fiery Spirit. Once everything is well-dephlegmated, circulate over sand until the Ethereal Oil has separated well from the liquor below. Separate this Ethereal Oil, which is the Philosophical Sky.

One can also perform this operation with alkaline salts from Tartar or Simple Saltpeter, or after having imbued it with some mineral Sulfur or Nitre fixed by Zinc lime—either of these salts should be resolved in the cave. Purify this deliquescence exactly through a filter, then place it in a matras with seven times its weight in oil or Adrop gum joined with its Spirit, and open as previously described. You will then have a Philosophical Salt, which Paracelsus calls the first Being of Salt, and Circulated Salt, which he recognizes as the greatest dissolver he has ever found for the reduction of metals into true Crocus (a golden colorant) or animated Saffron for medicine and metallurgy.

Basil Valentin's Water to Reduce Mercury into Flowing Mercury
Chapter 34

Take volatile urine salt (Armoniac Sublimed) with common salt, Tartar salt, or Saltpeter, one pound; mix them thoroughly, then place in a matras with 7 or 8 times the weight of the mixture in metallic oil extracted from Adrop gum. Seal the matras and keep it in a water bath for 40 days, then distill using a retort over sand until your salts remain dry.

Next, take these salts and mix them with three times their weight of new pipes powdered or Venetian Tripoly. Then distill the strong waters using a large container: a very lively spiritual liquid will come out, suitable for extracting flowing Mercury from Antimony regulus. Refer to B. Valentin’s Char Triomphal, chapter 10.

It can also be obtained from Tartar salt or other alkalis gradually nourished by ethereal oil of turpentine for a month. Then, after extracting the tincture with common strong waters, a whitish saline mass will remain. Combine this with three times its weight of Venetian Tripoly or powdered pipes, then distill everything as you did with the strong waters. A very subtle Tartarian Spirit will emerge, highly valued by Kirka and Van Helmont, which is suitable for reducing Antimony regulus into flowing Mercury after it has been desulfurized. This can also be used to make a Philosophical Sky.

Note that Antimony regulus, when sublimed with common Armoniac and reduced into flowers, can be placed in a retort with three fingers of the aforementioned first or second liquor, then distilled and cohobated two or three times. A white, saline substance will remain, which, when distilled with calcined Tartar until it turns black, and quicklime, will yield flowing Mercury as easily as ordinary cinnabar.

Note that all metals dissolved and dried in strong water, those that can dissolve in it, as well as in royal water, such as Gold and Lead, can be treated in the same way. Take one pound of this dried and corrosive mass and two parts of common Armoniac, then sublime with a graduated sand fire following the proper method, and metallic flowers will form. Treat them as you would regulus with one of the two waters above, and they will be reduced to flowing Mercury, indistinguishable from the common form, except that it contains a stronger metallic principle than the ordinary type.

To Make Alembroth Salt
Chapter 35

Take volatile urine salt, soot, macmac, common Armoniac, and borax, each one pound; fixed Saltpeter and very pure Tartar, each 8 ounces. Mix everything together and seal it in a matras with 7 times the weight of the mixture in Adrop gum. Digest this mixture in a water bath for 40 days, then distill it over sand in a retort and cohobate 4 or 5 times, or as long as the residue at the bottom becomes fusible like wax, which should be placed to resolve in the cellar. Purify this deliquescence 4 or 5 times, and the Alembroth Salt will be prepared.

As for the liquor that comes from the Alembroth Salt, it can be reduced to Ciel according to the Art by carefully removing its phlegm.

The Alembroth Salt has the same properties as Glauber’s admirable Salt. It makes the fixed volatile, the hard soft, the dead alive, fixes Arsenic, and transforms all poisons into a beneficial medicine.

Philosophical Antimonial Heaven of Basil Valentine
Chapter 36

Take corrosive Sublimate made with Mercury, Saltpeter, and Salt (if it is animated by copper Vitriol oil, it will be better), one pound; and mineral Antimony, one pound as well. Grind and mix well together in a marble mortar, then place everything into a retort with a very wide neck. Distill with a graduated heat using a large container to collect all that will pass through. A liquid will emerge that will freeze at the bottom like ice and produce a beautiful Cinnabar.

Take this antimonial butter and place it in a matras with seven times its weight of acid metallic oil extracted from Adrop gum with its ardent Spirit. Seal the matras and circulate for 40 days, then distill in a retort over a water bath, separating the veinous Spirit, and over sand, separate the phlegm, making sure no acid passes through. Cohobate the Spirit and digest for 8 or 10 days before distilling as before. Repeat this process 4 or 5 times, or until there is no more phlegm.

Next, distill all the oil over sand, and it will pass through as red like blood, with a sweet and pleasant odor. At the bottom, there will remain a dead head very dark in color.

Circulate this red oil with the veinous Spirit until it becomes so ethereal that it completely separates from the other liquid and floats on top like an essential oil. The Heaven will be prepared for both medical and metallic purposes. It possesses the same virtues and properties as those described earlier, meaning it can dissolve Gold to make the Mercury of the Philosophers.

Operation of Basil Valentine
Chapter 37

Take Roman Vitriol or Mars Vitriol, that is, Venus Vitriol or Mars Vitriol, very pure; Salt of Saturn and Salt of Jupiter made with wine vinegar, very light and white, and well refined—one pound of each. Grind them all together and then place the mixture into a retort or rather a balloon. Gradually nourish it with wine vinegar and distill until it becomes as acidic as it was when first added.

Next, place everything in a water bath and digest for 40 days. Then distill over sand all that will pass through, and then over an open flame with very large balloons, sealed tightly.

Calcine the dead head and extract it, reducing it to honey to perform the operation as described earlier. Repeat this process 3 or 4 times until no more dead head remains at the bottom of the retort. Don’t forget to add the veinous Spirit each time and circulate for 8 or 10 days.

Then dephlegmate the Spirit and red oil thoroughly, and circulate them together until the ethereal oil separates, which is a true Philosophical Heaven. With this, you can make a projection powder with Gold.

Particular Method for Making a Philosophical Heaven
Chapter 38

Take the Rose of the Philosophers made with Zinc flowers and refined Saltpeter. Extract all the tinctures using aqua fortis, then filter and keep this liquid for later use.

Next, extract the dead head of the said Rose using brandy. Gather all these extractions and filter them. Then, combine everything together, and the liquid will become cloudy, causing many feces from both liquids to precipitate. Filter this material and keep it in a bottle for later. After about 1 month or 40 days, it will coagulate into a jelly and become very heavy.

Now, extract the Zinc flowers with strong wine vinegar, slightly mixed with a bit of volatile, non-corrosive Saltpeter Spirit. Gather and filter all these extractions, then distill them in a water bath until a gum is formed, from which you will perform a second extraction with brandy; this will result in many substances. Dissolve in vinegar anything that won’t dissolve in brandy and set it aside. Filter the extraction and mix it with a similar tincture, as mentioned earlier. If the first tincture does not turn into jelly, this second one will not fail to do so. Once both have coagulated, take an amount equal to their total weight of good red oil, the least turbid you can find, and mix them slowly. Effervescence will occur from the heat. Vitriol oil or sulfurous oil will dissolve this gum-like material, which resembles frozen meat juice. A neutral liquor will form, which should be kept in large vases or flasks, tightly sealed for later use. Circulate for one month in a water bath.

Next, take the dead head of the Rose of the Philosophers, the dead head from the extraction of Zinc flowers through vinegar and brandy, and as much good Colcothar as they weigh, making sure that the salt has been removed. Put everything into a retort with 5 or 6 times the total weight of good Spirit and Vitriol oil (sulfur or iron filings). Keep it in a sands bath for 10 or 12 days, then distill very gently with a closed retort and a two-pointed flask. At the end, apply the strongest heat possible, and when no more white smoke comes out, stop the heat.

Now, extract the dead head using very acid vinegar, mixed with volatile Spirit of Saltpeter, then reverberate this dead head and proceed with a new extraction. Repeat as many times as necessary until it no longer produces any feces. Gather all these extractions and evaporate them to a gum consistency. Add all the liquor obtained through the previous operation, along with an equal weight of Saturn’s Salt. Digest everything for 5 days in a water bath, then distill gently in the two-pointed flask and finish with the greatest heat possible.

Next, separate the spirituous liquor from the final flask, along with the oil and phlegm from the first flask. Reverberate the dead head of the retort, place it in another retort, and distill the insipid phlegm over a sand bath. If any veinous liquor passes through, set it aside, changing the container as soon as you notice it, and continue until you see no more or nothing remains in the retort. You will then have a very heavy liquor of a beautiful yellow color, which should be placed in a flask with the Spirit reserved from the mixture of Vitriol oil and frozen gum. Digest everything for one month in a water bath, then distill the veinous Spirit in the same water bath, followed by the insipid phlegm over sand, and finally the acidic and oily liquor, increasing the heat.

Take this oily liquor and circulate it with its ardent Spirit, then distill in the water bath and over sand 3 or 4 times, or until there is no more phlegm. Continue circulating this oily liquor with its Spirit until the ethereal oil separates completely.

Paracelsian Process
Chapter 39

Take pure gold and place it in a retort with aqua regia made from Spirit of Saltpeter and Spirit of Ammoniac. Thicken it in such a way that it turns into red oil, which you will then dephlegmate in a water bath, followed by placing it in a cellar to crystallize. The crystals will be green and very pure. You will need two pounds of these crystals, which should be placed in a flask and saturated with distilled and concentrated vinegar on Zinc.

Then place everything in a retort with seven times its weight of Spirit extracted from the gum Adrop, and perform the operation as described earlier. This will yield a Heaven (Ciel), or a solar ethereal oil, which, when separated from the liquor it floats on, should be sealed and then cooked in a sand bath. This will reduce the substance to a red powder that is fixed, fusible, and projectable.

Isaac the Dutchman's [Hollandus] Heaven
Chapter 40

Take copper vitriol and mineral cinnabar, one pound of each. Mix them well together, then place the mixture into a matras with seven times its weight of saturnine ethereal oil with its ardent Spirit. Seal the matras and allow it to circulate for 40 days, then distill through the retort, separating the phlegm according to the Art.

Next, pulverize everything that remains in the retort, then add the oil and Spirit back into the mixture and circulate as before. Repeat this process three times. Afterward, dephlegmate the oil and spirits according to the Art, and then circulate them together until you obtain the ethereal oil, which is the Heaven of the Philosophers.

Philosophical Heaven of Isaac the Dutchman [Hollandus]
Chapter 41

Take Venus or Mars vitriol, one pound; sun-calcined salt to whiteness; hematite stone; red Mars crocus made by itself, using either urine or vinegar; artificial or mineral cinnabar; oesustum (?), and mineral antimony, one pound of each. Dry everything thoroughly and pulverize finely. Then place all of it into a retort with an amount of metallic oil equal to the total weight, along with its Spirit extracted from Saturn in salt and gum Adrop. Digest everything for 8 to 10 days, then distill at a graduated heat, similar to the process for making strong water, using a balloon with two points.

Cohobate the oil onto the dead head (residue) three times, always separating the ardent liquor. Once the oil is clear and a beautiful red, rectify it with the ardent Spirit until both the oil and the Spirit are well dephlegmated. Then, circulate everything together until the ethereal liquor separates, which will result in a Philosophical Heaven, a tincture of great value.

Spirit or Heaven of Basil Valentine
Chapter 42

Take Green of the Mountains, a type of copper ore that is of a beautiful velvety green. Pulverize it and make the entire extraction with strong wine vinegar. Purify the extractions by using the bain-marie and through filtration, then distill in a bain-marie until a film forms, then crystallize.

Take these crystals and dry them in the sun in well-sealed glass bottles, then extract them with the yellow oily acidic liquor that is obtained from the extraction of Saturn's salt. You will obtain a tincture of emerald green, which you will purify by using the bain-marie and filtration. Digest this for 8 to 10 days, then distill in a retort, similar to the process for making gum Adrop, and it will yield an ardent spirit and a red oil. Rectify these according to the Art.

Finally, combine them and circulate until the separation of an ethereal oil, which is the Heaven (Ciel).

Note: All metals reduced into vitriol can also be reduced into an oil or perfect essence that we call Heaven. Here's how this process is carried out:

Chapter 43

Take pure gold and dissolve it in a very spiritual aqua regia made from saltpeter and ammoniac. Remove the gold through the spout of the retort by repeatedly pouring this liquid over it. Then reduce this corrosive gold oil into vitriol. Calcine this vitriol (or gold) and make an extraction with the acidic liquor drawn from Saturn's salt. A white earth will remain at the bottom.

Purify this tincture and distill through the retort using sand heat, allowing all the non-volatile matter to pass. Recohobate the new Saturnian liquor over the residue until all the gold is volatilized and can pass through the spout of the retort with the Saturnian salt.

After 40 days of digestion, separate the veinuleous spirit at the bain-marie, and separate the phlegm using the sand heat. Recohobate the ardent spirit over the red oil until the flammable spirit has taken away all the soul of the gold.

Then circulate this soul of gold with the metallic veinuleous spirit until everything is reduced into a fat essence that is the Philosophical Mercury, which no longer needs to be cooked in order to project, because it contains enough gold for its fixation.

Chapter 44: Ciel d’Isaac

Take Vert de gris from Montpellier and reduce it with vinegar into a beautiful vitriol, and set it aside for later use.

Take a good amount of Saturn's salt, very soft, white, and light; distill it according to the Art through the retort, separating the phlegm and the veinuleous spirit. At the bottom of the vessel, the desired liquor will remain, which is a Philosophical Vinegar. This will be used to gradually imbibe the Vitriol of Venus (reserved previously), drying it gently each time it is imbibed, in order to remove all the phlegm from the said Philosophical Vinegar. The imbibition is complete when the vinegar comes out as strong as it was originally.

Then, keep this Vitriol of Venus under a muffle with gentle sand heat in a sealed vessel for 15 days, and afterward, distill it carefully in a glass retort with a wide neck and a large container (preferably one with two points), sealing it carefully.

The distillation will yield the most subtle spirit in the world, along with a heavy yellow oil, both of which will have a sweet fragrance. Rectify them according to the Art to dephlegm and resolve them in order to make a Philosophical Ciel.

Chapter 45: Ciel Vitriolique d’Isaac

Take any Vitriol you desire, provided that it is pearl-like and fully separated from its phlegm and metallic waters (or better, from very pure Mercury, corrosively resolved on an iron plate in a cellar, filter this deliquescent substance, and coagulate it into Vitriol).

Take one of these Vitriols, well-dried, and seal it in a flat-bottomed matrass. Pour in enough to fill about the height of one finger. Heat the vessel over gentle sand heat first, until the Vitriol becomes a very deep red after passing through all the colors. This process is known as Vitriol fixed by itself with its own spirits. The Vitriol of Mars and Venus are particularly excellent for this operation, but the Vitriol must be of a very bright red and as perfect as possible.

Once the fixed and rubified Vitriol is ready, place it in a cucurbite and extract it with the acid liquor derived from the spirits of Saturn or gummy Adrop. Gather all these extractions and purify them through a bain-marie and filter. Then, distill it gently until it reduces to a honey-like consistency, which must be nourished and soaked according to the Art with Vinegar of Saturn, as previously mentioned in earlier recipes. Afterward, distill using the retort. This will yield an ardent veinuleous spirit and a red oil with a bit of phlegm.

Both the spirit and the oil need to be rectified multiple times until the oil no longer releases sediment and becomes more volatile, while the spirit is entirely freed of phlegm. Then, combine these two purified liquors, seal them in a matrass, and heat them over sand until the ethereal oil, which we call the Philosophical Ciel, fully separates and floats above the liquor, as if it were an essence. This is then separated by funnel and later joined with Gold to make a fixed, penetrating, staining, and projective powder.

Note that the colors the Philosophers speak of in the work of the Stone only appear on two occasions:

The first, when preparing the Philosophical Ciel with Gold or without it.
The second, when dissolving Gold with Double Philosophical Mercury or Drinkable Gold, provided that the Philosophical Ciel was not made with Gold.
For if Gold is part of the composition, it is no longer considered Philosophical Ciel, but Mercury of the Sages, which, when combined with pure Gold, forms a body with Gold through multiplication, without passing through any color. It will always retain a red color, which grades as it multiplies. This multiplication, which is simply the addition of Gold to Mercury of the Sages, reduced by fire to powder (which we call the projection powder), does not go through any color, but instantly changes into its own nature of Gold (the metal?) when thrown onto it, transforming it into medicine.

And even though this dried powder is inserted by the repeated standing of Double Mercury (still in liquor), which we have referred to earlier as Drinkable Gold or Being of the Sun, it does not pass through any color. It simply becomes more penetrating, melting, and staining.

This is the warning that Isaac the Dutchman gives to the inquisitors of the Science.

Chapter 46: Opération d’Isaac

Take Gold that has been thoroughly opened and reduced to red powder according to the Art. Ensure that this powder is fully separated from its heterogeneous parts, the agents used to compose it. In other words, make sure the Gold powder is pure, well reverberated, and thoroughly opened.

Place this powder in a matrass and extract it with the acidic liquor of Saturn's Salt, operating as you did with the Vitriol mentioned earlier. You will obtain a honey-like substance, or a solar gum, or Philosophical Mercury if treated correctly according to the Art, as has been explained and reiterated multiple times in this treatise.

Note that this same operation can be performed on all metals. Once these metals are attenuated and purified by Art, fixed, and reduced to red powder by heating in sand, treat them with the oily acidic liquor of gummy Adrop or Saturn's Salt. The same process can also be performed with Mercury, which has been fixed by itself or precipitated by the usual strong waters, or otherwise reduced into fixed red powder, from which a tincture can be extracted by using the aforementioned Vinegar. This will allow you to obtain both ardent spirit and oil, and with these two liquors, you can form the Philosophical Ciel.

Note that all the Philosophers’ Salts dissolve and purify the lime of Gold in six weeks using the bain-marie. However, if Mercury is added to the Salt, either by joining the Mercury’s spirit or astral essence with the Ciel of the Philosophers, the fermentation will take only three weeks, which is a significant acceleration of the process.

Chapter 47: Opération de Basile Valentin on the Oil of Mars and Venus

Take Green of the Mountains, which is a true Venus mine, a beautiful velvety green used by painters to create a green color. If not available, take Verdigris of Montpellier, choosing the driest possible form. Pulverize it very well and then extract it with the total liquor derived from common salt (i.e., the Spirit, phlegm, and oily and acidic liquor). Extract all the tincture, gather the extractions, and purify them through bain-marie and filtering, then distill gently using a pellicle bath and crystallize. Alternatively, leave it in gum and apply acidic Saturn’s liquor in a matrass, distilling it until everything becomes foul-smelling. Then digest it in the bain-marie, and distill over three days with a two-pointed balloon.

Take everything from the two balloons and digest it for 8-10 days in a bain-marie. Afterward, rectify it in the said bain and sand as previously described to produce a pure red liquor well-purged of its feces, dephlegmated, and dry enough to ignite fabric soaked in it. This will result in well-prepared Venus oil and Spirit.

Alternatively, crystallize your extraction when it's pure, evaporate it to a pellicle, and then rectify it cold into beautiful green crystals. If they are well-purified and transparent, they are well-done. Reduce and coagulate them 2-3 times with the phlegm of distilled Vinegar to make them pearly and in their final purity. Then take this very pure Vitriol and add a small amount to flat matrasses. Seal them, and circulate the contents at sand fire until it becomes red like Colcothar (this process is called graduating or fixing Vitriol by itself with its own spirits). Once in this state, reserve it for the next steps.

Take fire stones or pebbles, wash them, and heat them until red, then quench them in good Vinegar. Repeat this process 3-4 times until they can be easily pulverized. Pulverize them finely, and then water them 2-3 times with Saturn's acidic liquor, drying each time. Take 1 lb of this powder and 2 lbs of the aforementioned Vitriol, grind and mix them thoroughly in a mortar. Then place the mixture in a three-quarters full cucurbite and seal a two-pointed balloon to it. Distill with graduated heat over three days, rectifying and separating the red oil, ardent Spirit, and phlegm according to the Art. You will then have well-prepared Mercury oil and Spirit.

Next, take steel filings or clean Mars and place them in a cucurbite with two parts of the red oil you just prepared and eight to ten parts of distilled water. Stir occasionally until the Mars dissolves completely. Purify this dissolution by bain-marie and filtration, then evaporate to a pellicle and crystallize. You will obtain a fine Vitriol containing the solar Sulfur of Mars and Venus. Calcine this Vitriol by itself, fixing and graduating it into red powder with its Spirit as previously described.

Finally, distill by the cornue without any addition, using the two-pointed balloon, as done with the Venus preparation. Rectify the liquor in the container and separate the mercurial Spirit veinuleux and the sulfurous red acidic oil.

Take the dead head of this Mars and Venus vitriol, and imbibe it with the acidic liquor derived from Saturn's salt, repeating the process 2 or 3 times. Each time, reverberate it under the mufle to extract all the central salt. Gather all these extractions and filter them each time. Then evaporate them until they form a gum-like consistency, to which you will add all the sulfurous oil of Mars and Venus. Digest it for 8-10 days in a bain-marie, and then distill with graduated heat, as before, so that the oil carries away its aqueous salt, thereby gaining more strength than it had previously.

Now your menstruum is prepared to create a particular stone as follows:

Take gold dressed in its purple mantle—that is, well-prepared, well-opened, and totally freed from all the agents that were used to prepare it—one ounce, and four ounces of the oil prepared above, purged of its own salt. Place everything in a sealed egg in regulated sand fire, and cook until everything is dried into powder, cooked, and has passed through all the colors. You will then have a projective powder that can multiply gold and mercury, with or without incineration, depending on the virtue you wish to give it.

As for the white Spirit, transparent like wine spirit, it should be dephlegmated well on its oil charged with its own salt. Then circulate it with the said oil until a separation forms in the essential oil, which is the Philosophical Sky.

Note that this spiritual liquor is the Mercurial Spirit of Basil Valentine, and the red liquor, purged by its own salt, is the Living Sulfur, which dissolves gold radically.

Note that all graduated vitriols by the Saturnine acidic liquor and calcined by themselves into red powder, when distilled, produce a white mercurial Spirit and a red sulfurous oil, which, when purged by its own salt, is the true dissolver of gold, or the Royal Philosophical Water, and the true Bath of the Sages.

Additionally, it is through this process that one can extract a true Spirit, true Oil, and true Salt from all metals and minerals reduced into vitriol. All mineral and metallic vitriols, graduated by Saturn’s acidic oil, resemble the taste of alum. When fixed by themselves and reduced into red powder, then distilled by the cornue, they yield a white mercurial Spirit, a red sulfurous oil, which, when purged by its own salt and cooked after dissolving the gold, reduces into a red powder that, when projected onto the Moon in fusion, will transmute it into pure gold, especially if it is made with Mars or Venus vitriol, as previously mentioned.

Note that this spirit, purged by its salt and combined with its Mercurial Spirit, and circulated until the separation of the essential oil, forms a substance that is the first Being of metals, or the simple mercury of metals. However, if gold is added and the aforementioned operation is carried out—i.e., if you combine the oil that has dissolved the gold with its mercantile veinule spirit, and circulate until the separation of the essential oil, or with a substance the Philosophers have called Azoth or double Mercury—it will form a Philosophical Sky that is fermentable, and when cooked alone, without any other addition, it will convert into a red fixed powder, fusible, teingeante (staining), and projective.

The Graduated Water of Isaac the Dutchman
Chapter 48

Take very pure Mercury and dissolve it in Spirit of Nitre, then evaporate and crystallize according to the Art. Take one pound of calcined Vitriol to redness, crocus of Mars and Venus, hematite stone, and salt (ana) one ounce. Grind everything together, then sublime it in a flask according to the Art with strong heat. Grind the Sublimate with one-third of the same drugs, and sublime as before. Repeat this process four or five times, or as long as the Mercury becomes red, because all the drugs are only added for the red Sublimate, or rather to remove the Solar Sulfurs that are in the drugs used to sublime it. Then, fix the Sublimate by itself.

Next, take oesutum, crocus of Mars and Venus, sanguine stone, mineral Antimony Sulfur, and Cyprus Vitriol (ana) one ounce. Put everything into a very fine powder in a flask with three times its weight of oil and Spirit of Saturn, then digest it in a water bath for 8 or 10 days, stirring occasionally. After that, distill it through the alembic with graduated heat, and it will produce a veinous spirit and a red oil which you will rectify according to the Art.

Take the oil and dissolve in it as much of the fixed red Sublimate as it can dissolve, then digest and distill it, and you will have a red oily liquor that dissolves open Gold and the complexion, forming with it a projective powder on the imperfect ones with much benefit. Different species can be made following this model.

Note that through all the recipes in this manuscript, you can achieve the creation of the Mercury of the Philosophers, for all Adepts agree on this point: without Mercury, nothing can be done. Their Mercury is of the nature of Gold, and when joined to it, they form only another substance, which they call Azoth, which, through cooking, becomes the powder of projection.

All the recipes above teach how to extract from metals and minerals, using Salts, a certain metallic Spirit that condenses into the form of an oily liquor, which they call the Sky; and this Sky is positively the true Mercury of the Philosophers, which is the essence of the imperfect and their pure part, by which it emanates from Gold and reduces it radically.

Do not trouble yourself with which path you take or which agent you employ, as long as you can open and sufficiently volatilize the metals, so they can easily release their fiery veinous Spirits and their pure and Sulphurous parts, which are the two materials with which the Philosophical Sky is made, which is the Mercury of the Sages.

You can take different paths and even use different substances, but you must always manage to extract from metals this oily matter, which alone can radically dissolve Gold, and remember that only the Salts open the metals, and that only from metals can a menstruum be derived, of the nature of Gold, and analogous to it. It is only in and through metals that metals improve. You can surely work with various materials to extract from metals this Philosophical Wine Spirit and this Sulphurous Oil, such as the volatile Salt of Tartar, the Circulated Vitriol that Paracelsus considered as the menstruum of metals, Venus' Vitriol, Mars’ Vitriol graduated and highly esteemed by Basil Valentine, or the Essence of common Mercury, which many have seen as the open metallic seed. Everything that can open metals and minerals and extract their Solar Sulfurs in order to graduate the Gold can be practiced profitably and lead to great secrets.

For all the secret of the Stone consists only in extracting the soul of the imperfect, in order to join and fix it with Gold, to make it exuberant and capable of coloring. This soul of the imperfect is their pure volatilized part, reduced to an oily Essence, which we have called Sky, and which is the first matter of metals, that is to say, their germ, and it is this matter that the Philosophers call their Mercury. It is from this only root that one can make the great Stone, and from it alone comes all the particulars.

All the writings of the Philosophers are stuffed with several and different menstruums that volatilize fixed things, and fix those same things, or other volatiles that dissolve what is coagulated, and coagulate and corporify what they had dissolved.

The menstruums of plants, being simple and without alkalis, only make extractions of tincture without dissolving the bodies. However, through their use, good remedies can be prepared. But for the metallic realm, the menstruums of minerals (or plants?) and acidic compounds dissolve the bodies without making an extraction, and it is very difficult to make good remedies with them, as some do what others cannot do.

The menstruums of compound minerals are all the more admirable than those of plants, in that the former dissolve all the bodies of the metallic kingdom and reduce their parts into oil or essence, which we call Sky; whereas the latter only make simple extractions. The former change into their nature everything they dissolve, whereas the latter change into what they have dissolved. The former increase in power through operation, while the latter are destroyed and no longer act.

Here’s how these menstruums proceed step by step: the fermented spirits of plants (annotation in the margin difficult to interpret) are simple menstruums, or the old leached salts volatilized by this simple menstruum, or the same plant menstruums combined with volatile Ammonium salt, are plant-based compound menstruums with which great secrets for medicine are made. These compound plant menstruums, when mixed with Tartar Salt, form an acidic menstruum, which is a Philosophical Vinegar and the first mineral menstruum. If this compound plant menstruum is combined with Salt or? instead of Tartar Salt, what Paracelsus calls his Circulated menstruum, or the second mineral menstruum, these two menstruums, when combined with the volatilized salts removed by Mercury, that is to say, with the Corrosive Sublimate, and well mixed together, form the third compound mineral menstruum. So, other combinations with varying drugs can form as well. All these menstruums are acidic and oily, dissolve metals, and reduce to Essence.

This is how, by progression, we obtain the menstruums or Philosophical dissolvents, and how one passes from the vegetable kingdom to the mineral. That is, from the plant-based menstruums (or those compounded from them) to simple minerals, and from these to compound minerals, in which metals are dissolved and volatilized.

One also understands by simple menstruum the Philosophical Sky made with the compound menstruums and metals. This is what we call simple Philosophical Mercury because it has not yet been fermented.

Some Philosophers have claimed that this kind of simple menstruum is a true Phosphorus that lights up the night, like the luminous Phosphorus extracted from urine or oily substances. They called the compound menstruum the Philosophical Sky, in which Gold is dissolved, which is its ferment. We have called it double Mercury, or Azoque Vitriol, or Azoth when it is reduced to gum, which no longer requires anything but fire, that is, cooking, to be reduced into projective powder without adding anything to it. This has led many to say that fire and Azoth are sufficient for the composition of the Magisterium. It is from this Azoth that the great Elixir is derived, that is, the Potable Gold, or Living Gold, which is used for the multiplication of Azoth reduced to powder, and when projected onto Gold, it reduces into powder, but it is dry and does not become fusible and penetrating until it has been inserted by the aforementioned Living Gold extracted from Azoth. This Living Gold, although it is Potable Gold, would immediately kill anyone who consumed it if it were not diluted and softened by the spirit of ordinary wine, as we will explain in its place, because it is very acidic, very lively, and very penetrating, being a fire that ignites everything. This is why it ripens the imperfect in an instant, doing on Earth what Nature takes a thousand years to do in the bowels of the Earth…