THE DEW SALT OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

Philippe Vaysal



The role played by the dew, within the alchemical work, appears in an obvious way in a number of Hermetic treatises from the 17th century and seems clearly linked to the Rosicrucian current. A plate from a rare manuscript, published under the title "the secret symbols of the Rosicrucians" (1) gives an important place to the precious dew:

"I am the humidity that preserves everything in nature and makes it live, I pass from the higher plane to the lower plane; I am the celestial dew and I fertilize the earth; nothing could live without me in time; yes, I am close to all things, in and through all things, and yet unknown."(2)

"this moisture must be seized lest it change into vapor or smoke"(3)

"The prima materia draws its existence from the Fiat, the Word of Creation. And this verb comes from the Father who is the creator of all things, and the Spirit radiates from both: It is the life of God giving air So, too, air gives life everywhere in the elements. Fire warms all things, water refreshes, enchants and saturates all things; air was born from fire and in turn causes fire to burn, so that he lives, but the air in the form of water is food for the fire, and the fire burns in this element: Water and the dew of the ground, the unctuous oily dew of the ground, it is the earth as guardian of the nitrous salt which nourishes it. For the bosom of the earth is salt, the only good thing that God has created in this visible world."(4)

Another treatise on Alchemy from the 17th century, the "Golden Testament" (5), which B. Husson also links to the Rosicrucian current, this fraternity of which "Solomon and the Prophets of the Old Testament belonged", refers to the precious Dew.

"The cross still gives a solvent and a quite extraordinary medicine, by two very universal subjects, which nature puts before our eyes; namely, by the lower coagulated, and coagulating sea water; and by the upper sea water , free and dissolving, or the dew."

Moreover, as E. Canseliet rightly points out, the brothers of the Rose-Croix actually constituted the fraternity of the Rosée-Cuite. In many treatises on alchemy, the Dew appears to us as the vehicle of the "Spiritus Mundi", nourished by cosmic radiation, in which that of the sun and the moon participate. It is he who presides over the emergence of life on Earth and makes it possible to ennoble the essential saline melting agent by enriching it with its "celestial isomer", as the good master of Savignie liked to recall:

"Under the effect of heat applied wisely, thanks to its subtle nitre, the dew elevates and ennobles any salt whatsoever and, preferably, those which nature has reserved for the Great Work."(6)

Thus without the contribution of the Spiritus Mundi, nothing differentiates, for E. Canceliet, chemistry from alchemy because it is: "...the abundant sprinkling of celestial spirit - intense fluidic bombardment - which participates in the operation chemical or, more exactly, metallurgical and gives it its true character of alchemy."(7)

In his New Chemical Light , the famous Cosmopolitan, who is none other than Alexander Sethon, also highlights the importance of dew as being the indispensable agent for the production of secret fire:

"Indeed, you must take what is, but which is not seen, until it pleases the artist; it is the water of our dew, from which is drawn the saltpetre of the philosophers, by which all things grow and are nourished."(8)

In his Hermetic Triumph , Limojon de Saint Didier, in his turn and in the same filiation, defends the idea according to which, the alchemist must necessarily resort to an artifice delivered by nature to carry out the alchemical work that this- ci could not, itself, accomplish:

“As the sage undertakes to do by our art a thing which is above the ordinary forces of nature, like softening a stone, and causing a metallic germ to vegetate, he finds himself indispensably obliged to enter through deep meditation in the most secret interior of nature, & to make prevail the simple, but effective means that she provides; now you must not be unaware that nature from the beginning of Spring, to renew itself, & put all the seeds , which are in the bosom of the earth, in the movement which is proper to vegetation, impregnates all the air which surrounds the earth, with a mobile and fermentative spirit, which draws its origin from the father of nature; it is properly a subtle nitre, which makes the fecundity of the earth of which it is the soul,& which the Cosmopolitan calls the salt-petre of the philosophers."(9)

If the role played within alchemy by dew elevates the science of Hermes to the rank of a true vitalist philosophy of Nature, E. Canseliet goes so far as to confer on the celestial liquor a divine character, bringing it closer to of the heavenly Manna mentioned in the Bible:

"And when the Dew fell on the camp during the night, the manna likewise fell there."(10)

Other philosophers have always denied the role of dew. Pernety, who is not considered an alchemist strictly speaking, certainly, declared, almost a century earlier:

"…but when one meditates seriously on the texts of the true Philosophers, in which they speak of Dew, one is soon convinced that they speak of it only by similarity, and that theirs is a properly metallic dew, that is- that is to say, their mercurial water sublimated into vapors in the vase, and which falls to the bottom in the form of dew or light rain..."(11)

This is also what Philalète expresses in his Experiments on the preparation of the Mercury of the Sages :

"...in it thou shalt prepare a sand-heat of the first grade, in which the dew of our compound is lifted up and circulated ceaselessly, out of the compound, day and night without interruption... "(12)

The same meaning is given to the philosophical dew by the anonymous commentator of the treatise "drinking Gold of the Ancients":

"The Philosophers considered this upward and downward movement and called it sublimation because in this action the subtle things are made thick and the massive and corporeal are made light and subtle; so therefore these spirits differ in natural and after to be warred with each other for a long time, agree with time and make friends, joining intimately together, flying in the air and then descending together into the earth by which descent generates mercury or dew philosophy which nourishes our earth and makes it germinate and bear double fruit..."(13)

Despite the envious contradiction conveyed by certain philosophers, as we have just seen, the work on the Nocturnal Dew was the object of a philosophical secret, transmitted within small groups of authentic alchemists, true Rose-Croix. The secret in question makes it possible to obtain the salt of Dew. The one whose plates of the Mutus Liber , enlightened by the charitable words of Eugène Canseliet, then later by those of Patrick Rivière, describe the modus operandi without which he cannot be isolated. This salt deserves our attention because of the medicinal properties which it would carry, in particular in the cardiovascular field, according to E. Canselliet speaking during a famous radio interview.

The work is long and tedious, but it inevitably leads to success if the operator has respected the manufacturing process. The philosophical salt manifests itself in tiny quantities, of a pinkish-white color when dried by the rays of the sun. Its use provokes the manifestation of the green enamel or philosophical vitriol at the end of the first Work. However, the green coloring is curiously (and symbolically) the manifestation of the Spiritus Mundi, that is to say, of life in matter as E. Canseliet reminds us:

"This is what the artist verifies - provided that the external conditions are respected - during the reiterations of the first work, in the beautiful olive green enamel that he collects and which also reveals to him that cosmic radiation is heavy and fragrant. This subtle matter possesses, in truth, the ponderability of the incarnate Christ, its green color and its odor which is that of the smoke of incense."(14)

This physical characteristic of vitriol (an anagram of "gold lives there"), which constitutes its green color, is not unrelated to the medicinal properties of the latter, underlined by Le Breton in his opuscule Les clefs de la Philosophie spagyrique ( 15):

"The virtues of pure vitriol are marvelous; its spirit renders vulgar mercury a kind of panacea, and one can make of it a real medicine against any disease, if one knows what vitriol I mean, and what mercury."

Basile Valentin also confirms that:

"…the salt extracted from the ashes is the strongest and that in it are hidden many virtues."(16)

The ash in question here corresponds to the caput mortuum or faeces, that is to say the slag resulting from the separation-purification of the ore, completing the first work. This is also what is expressed - in the form of verses translated from Latin into French by A. Savoret - an unknown philosopher quoted by E. Canseliet, in his comments to the previously quoted work of the monk of Erfurt (17 ) :

"O surprise! from a charred tree trunk comes Salt (18): Purified salt, spiritual water. Let the waters be cooked by fire, a regenerated salt will be made of it: It will be of a great medical help for the sick. An imperishable force resides in the salts: It is demonstrated by Art, That the mysteries of the salt have something divine..."

It seems possible to draw from this enamelled green, according to the philosophers, a sovereign medicine, after the humidity of the air has fulfilled its function and the product of this slow maturation has been treated with philosophical vinegar, before to be taken over by the spirit of wine. The dye that results from these successive operations is ruby ​​red and is an evocation of the transformation, by a wet process, of the green lion into a red lion, which transformation usually takes place by a dry process, during the second work. But let us return, after these necessary digressions, to the elaboration of dew salt. Collecting the dew is the most tedious task and will put off the less courageous. E. Canseliet proceeds "by walking over cereals in green,

"Similarly, should we fear that the carrier plant has been inadvertently sprinkled or sprayed with any kind of fertilizer." (20 )

All that remains is to twist the cloths to extract the precious dew, like the couple from Mutus Liber. He installed these pieces of linen on stakes, which would increase the amount of dew collected. This process, also chosen by the author of the Golden Testament, with the difference that the latter uses glass plates instead of linen fabric, seems to us, all the same, less productive than the first. This is easily understood in view of the surface area that the first method makes it possible to treat, unlike the second.

The collection of dew directly on the plant alters its purity, which is why it must be carefully filtered. However, nothing proves that the presence, within the precious liquid, of organic particles, pollen and other debris of vegetable origin, can affect the quality of the salt obtained.

We would even tend to think the opposite!

Once filtered, in all its freshness, the dew must be enriched, as Sulat teaches us, by the radiance of the stars, as well as that of the Moon and the Sun at its rising. This exposure takes place in large basins, for the duration of the rising moon. It is important before, to add to the liquid, the essential magnet, without which the dew could not deliver its salt, namely this black and thick mud
mentioned by E. Canseliet in his comments to Mutus Liber. Undoubtedly, the magnet of the spiritus mundi of which De Grimaldi speaks:

"In agreeing that all that the Philosophers say sublime about Nitre is true, it must be at the same time agreed that they hear of an aerial Nitre, which is drawn into salt whiter than snow, by the force rays of the Sun and the Moon, by a magnet which attracts the invisible spirit; this is the magnesia of the Philosophers..."

The author of the Golden Testament (21) brings us a precious indication:

"Rx in the name of God of the purest and cleanest sea salt, as it is cooked by the sun; it comes from Spain by sea. Mine was from St. Uby. Dry it well in some warm place, plunder it subtly powder the good in a powdered mortar so that it can more easily dissolve in dew water in the month of May or June when the moon is at its full…”

If sodium chloride plays no role in the alchemical work, the geographical origin of this mysterious salt does not constitute, as B. Husson rightly points out, an empty secret. After 2 weeks of nocturnal exposure, the dew is now ready to deliver its Nitre Aérien which will only reveal itself after a succession of delicate operations, the first of which is distillation. This is carried out exactly according to the technical modalities represented by the Mutus Liber. The sour liquor resulting from the distillation must be cohobé during 40 days with a soft heat "of the hen brooding her eggs" in complete darkness. It is at the end of this period of maturation that the spirit of the dew, concentrated and present in the distillate, is revealed by a slow process of oxidation, and manifests itself in the form of cottony filaments, as Dr. Gosset speaks of in his experiments on dew (22). The success of this operation is based on strict compliance with the procedure. It is important, in particular, that the pots in which the distilled liquor is incubated are only half-filled and hermetically sealed. At this stage, the dew salt has not yet revealed itself. The mother liquor, in which it is in the process of becoming, must first undergo a second distillation-concentration. But the concentration process does not have to be carried through in the retort. It must be completed under the action of the sun's rays, a veritable catalyst, acting like light which causes the silver salts of the photographic film to precipitate.

“There is only to concentrate the fire of the world by concave mirrors, in a glass globe; it is here the artifice that all the Ancients religiously hid, and that the divine Theophrastus discovered. forms in this globe a solar powder, which having purified itself, from the mixture of the other Elements; and being prepared according to the art, becomes in a very short time supremely suitable to exalt the fire which is in us. "

The German doctor Jean-Henri Pott (24) brings us interesting indications as to the nitrous nature of the salt of dew finally isolated, during the subsequent operations, without mentioning the last one.

"He took away all of its flavor from the sea salt of the coasts of Spain, by making it digest or putrefy at least for forty days in the most subtle spirit of dew; which produced a completely different salt, fusible like the wax from the simple heat of a lamp; of an almost bitter flavor, which seemed to approach the flavor of nitre, without however having the cubic or prismatic form; the crystals were piled up in the form of small sheets so transparent, that he saw them only after having decanted his liquor."

The sequence of operations described by the Mutus Liber leads to the obtaining of the second fondant of the work by a dry process, which salt is not, strictly speaking, dew salt. It presents, unlike the first, little interest on the medicinal level. The lunatic Vulcan mystery surrounding the making of this second salt has stirred the sleep of more than one student. It is to him that the coagulum removed from the cucurbit must be exposed delicately with a spoon. The inanimate child designates this same coagulum called to feed on the lunar rays and to take on, in the long term, the properties of the lunatic vulcan, that is to say that of the secret fire of the philosophers. The epithet of lunatic represents the "cold" quality of this fire since, as Limojon de Saint Didier describes it (25),

"All you can reasonably expect from me is to tell you that the natural fire, of which this Philosopher speaks, is a fire in power, which does not burn the hands; but which makes its effectiveness appear as long as it is excited by external fire. It is therefore a truly secret fire that this Author calls Lunatic Vulcan in the title of his story."

The skimming of the second salt represented by the seventh plate is itself sufficiently explicit for us to have to add some comments, to those already very charitable of the good master of Savignie.

Let us simply recall that for the latter, the second salt constitutes the artifice, that is to say the trick, from the Greek Truks which designates the lees of wine, which is the source of the virgin salt (…) allowing to operate the initial separation .(26)

Our purpose is not to go further in the study of the Mutus Liber, which is very rich in teaching for the whole of the Great Work. The process of obtaining dew salt, described by Sulat and by so many other philosophers, seems worthy of interest to us in many respects. First of all, he demonstrates that the precious salt is not a chimera, despite what its detractors say, but is based on a manufacturing secret that has been transmitted to the present day, thanks to the benevolence of so many philosophers. . Moreover, it does not resist a well-conducted approach to mystery and in no way proceeds from a supernatural phenomenon.

It is from the principles implemented in this process and transposed in the spagyric field, that we managed, here now nearly ten years, to extract an extremely fragrant quintessence of Mistletoe. We had, by chance, one winter evening, escaped, by a few minutes, a strong explosion of the retort in the face, given the presence of nitre and other components, including the complexion, under the effect of heat , had turned out to be formidable, thereby betraying a lack of vigilance on our part. Fortunately, the distillate was not lost, and we were able to appreciate the strong and curious smell of rosemary which emanated from it, the joy of this success compensating for the loss of a precious and expensive glass material. The very fragrant character of the distillate is, for us,

Let us quote again, after Eugène Canceliet (28), Tollius who declares in his treatise Sapientia Insaniens sive Promissa Chemica that: "the sweet smell (which) is purity among chemists".