Air Alchemy, the Dust

By nourishment of life, Cosmopolita the alchemist means alchemical principles as sparks that have become true rays acting in dusts, dews, salts. Or even sparks that have become true rays acting in Auras, Ether, Quintessence, also called “thick air”.

True. The so-called “solar powders” or “lunar dews” are in reality “aerial” phenomena: no dust arrives from the Sun in molecular form and no humidity falls from the Moon in molecular form. However, that these particles are pushed or influenced by the two astronomical bodies is beyond doubt.

… opaque, dark, and “formless” air. According to the ancients, not because of any intrinsic property but because of the air proximity to the earth, to the waters, to thunder and lightning, to rain and snow.

In fact, for the ancients, the peculiar “humidity” of the dust in the air was not caused by terrestrial waters but by the proximity of the moon.

Pulvis Solaris is a dust probably caused by ionization of molecules suspended in the air. Prosaically, we can conjecture that it is a concentrated nitrogen oxide. The claim of being curative can also be: it is certainly quite ionized. The claim that solar dust is composed exclusively of condensed solar radiation, as some think, is highly unlikely, as well as chemically impossible.

… as well as Anima Mundi/Soul of the World, Astral Balm, invisible Fire, seed of the Universe. The entity and meaning of which can be deeply understood by reading the sections dedicated to alchemical works. See Before Preparatory Work, Spiritus Mundi.

The name that I would find semantically most appropriate for “solar dust” is Secret Fire. We will see in the following pages how the Secret Fire is also used as a station in the generation of the Mercurii. But, above all, the Secret Fire is an addition – secret indeed – a pinch of a very powerful salt, which is sometimes used to ‘couple’ two Mercurii (see Second-Main Work).

The claim here is to consider the etheric part or aura as something dense and which can “clump together” thanks to the agitation produced by special lenses or burning mirrors. These “agitated” rays are called by many symbolic names, for example Ignis, Latin for Fire. The material collected in the vicinity, however, must be considered “air dust”, most likely particularly “active” due to the ionization of the atoms floating in the air. That the aura falls to dust under the action of the solar rays is a highly unlikely phenomenon. Unless the alchemica aura is made of dust.

We have already seen how the alchemists gave so much importance to the mysterious “nature”, a name that does not even appear so symbolic (see Alchemy and Modern Physics Particles). We affirm here that this “nature” is of an undulatory attitude. See also Air Alchemy, the Fabric.

True. For alchemists, the Sal Naturae reaches the disposition of alchemists on earth in a whole scale of densities. See Before Preparatory Work, Spiritus Mundi.

Although it was a term that only an Italian could wholly understand, in fact in classical Roman Latin the translation of conserva fontinalis would be “servant of the Fontina gate”. But I guess that von Welling rather meant – in an Italianized baroque Latin – “conservator of the fountain”. The meaning is however easily understood as “salt that brings the power of the solar and lunar source to the earth”.

In this case we are before the processing of an “heavy” air that is knowingly highly contaminated by the earth. The recipe from von Welling is the following: Take rainwater, dew, or melted snow, put it in a glass jar with a long neck, and close it tightly. The jar should not be more than half full, so that there can be enough air in the jar. During the summer expose it every day to the sunlight, or to a warm place, and, after your vessel has rested a certain time in such moderate and constant heat, you will find that the water will ferment and putrefy, and that a fine earth will have precipitated. This fallen earth is nothing but a thin earth, dust or sand; but whoever knows this earth to its core, and not just its surface, will understand the meaning of Genesis 2:7 “The Lord God formed mankind from the dust of the ground”. If you proceed correctly, by distilling this putrefied water you will obtain a clear, transparent, wonderful oil, very fiery and hot like ardent spirits. This oil is sought by few and known by even fewer.

According to von Welling, during this operation, sunlight was embodied in air and water.

Yes and no, because the ancients did not consider voids between bodies, and therefore the air was a body in itself – however ineffable it was to our senses. In Alchemy, a battlefield is synonymous with “interaction” between two entities. But we will see on the next page how these interactions also include the “fabric” of the air. See Air Alchemy, the Fabric.

Yes and no, because for the ancients everything was intertwined in reciprocal interactions. So we moderns never understand when it is a question of raw matter, such as dews and airy dust, or “spirit space”. For an ancient alchemist it was perfectly plausible to make no difference between a spirit and something to be put in a pot.

As we will see in more detail in Air Alchemy, the Fabric, air was called the space below the moon, ether the space above.

Again, yes and no. But we can say that the Alchemical Light definitely “moved” in the Air. And it was part of the realm of the air. See also Alchemy & Light, Introduction and Alchemy & Light, Known Authors.

This is a perplexity of modern people, accustomed to divide and analyze individual divisions separately, without considering the connections that made the whole. For the ancients, Air is not only intertwined with the other elements Water-Fire-Earth, but also atmospheric Air is blended with physical Water-Fire-Earth. If we begin to think in terms of “sparks” and “rays”, everything appears, if not clear to our modern eyes, at least plausible.

We have already seen in Alchemy & Light, Introduction that the Alchemists considered light as a “medium“.

The Vesica Piscis, fish bladder, helps the fish stay afloat in the great “philosophical ocean”. See Flow and Reflux.

The alchemical mummy surrounds the bodies and does not escape the slightest breath of wind. So it should necessarily be a “persistent air”. See also Air Alchemy and Fire Alchemy.

Alchemists often used the symbol of the fish’s swim bladder to indicate Mercurius or the spirit of life.

In a certain sense, sure, we can define this mummy as a “field of action”.

No. The Alchemy of Air also includes the dust of the air and the fabric of the air (see Air Alchemy, the Fabric). And also, of course, the Air principle, that is, what unites the Fire principle or spark to the Water principle or flowing ray (see also Fire Alchemy and Water Alchemy).

By Air Dust the alchemists mean anything the “middle world”, pneumatikon ochêma – as an intermediary vehicle between the immaterial and the material – encounters on its journey to the earth, through the moon.

No at all. It is the “middle world”, pneumatikon ochêma, that travels, not the soul. The middle world is said to travel, but in reality it continuously doubles. See Doubles, Resonances, Unions, Seeds, Embryos, Births, and Processions.

True. For Agrippa, nature “analogous to the substance of the stars” was close to the concept of spirit and effluvium. Effluvium in Latin: spilling, pouring, discharge, outflow. See also Alchemy & Light, Known Authors.

Jabir ibn Hayyan speaks of the “Fifth nature” – quintessence, in neolatin languages – as dispersed dust twirling in the air.

The ancients said that the air lifts a fine powder from the earth and during the day the sun’s rays penetrate this airy dust. At night the moon moistens it to an atmospheric slime, which thus weighed down descends to the earth and filters into it. Today we know that these dust clouds have the ability to influence the climate and environment in locations thousands of kilometers away.

True. In fact, the ancients said that if a relentless dry heat keeps this fine dust floating in the air, the earth remains a desert. Today we know that these clouds of dust, if they do not fall in the immediate vicinity of the place from which they are torn from the ground, in any case they fall somewhere far away.

This glutinous embryo of life was said to be especially present in the May dew or, as the Romans said, ros maialis.

True. The ancient Egyptians believed that the ba of the deceased tended to hover in the high parts of the atmosphere during the day, prevented from approaching the earth’s crust due to the sun; and after sunset (and especially before sunrise) pushed down by the moon to seek refuge in the deepest and most hidden places. Otherwise, the ba simply returns to the corpse.

Titus Lucretius Carus, in De Rerum Natura, said: “… But, since I have taught what the principles of all things are and how different in variety of forms they spontaneously whirl, stimulated by eternal motion, and how everything can be produced from these, I will now begin to tell you what with these things is closely connected: there are what we call simulacra of things, which can almost be called membranes or cortex, since the image has an appearance and shape similar to the object, whatever it may be, from whose body it appears to have emanated to wander”.

Democritus was specifically talking of Psyche, that for the Greek philosopher is composed of atoms like the body, but so thin that they tend to exit the body, but with breathing they return. With death they exit the body and disperse.

Roger Bacon’s theory that seems to be contained in the world of rays emanating from every object that launches “species” of itself from every point of itself could have something in common with Lucretius Carus’ idea of ​​“membranes” that detach themselves from bodies and objects. Provide that a “celestial” consistency is given to Lucretius’ membranes and an “earthly” consistency to Bacon’s rays. What is most interesting in this section dedicated to air in Alchemy is precisely that the medium of propagation is air.

For some Pythagoreans, Psyche is in the dust of the air.

By Psyche these Pythagoreans do not specifically mean the particles of dust in the air but the movement that shakes the dust.

As already seen in Alchemy and Modern Physics Particles, pneumatikon ochêma was the name given by Proclus to the second vehicle of the souls in their descent towards the ostreoides ochêma, or earthly body. This middle world, or pneumatic world, in its journey from the immaterial augoeides ochêma had become “impregnated” with stellar influences and then swelled with air and its hovering corpuscles.

The aerial Saltpeter, or Saltpetre, should have indicated any salt that was closely connected to “descended from above”. But, basically, it often had a lot to do with common saltpeter. Also nitrates were believed to have a celestial root.

The ancients believed that everything passed through the air, to the point that it could even move water, rocks and trees.