On Plant Distillation
Aphorism I
The distillation in the plant kingdom is the purification of their dissolved radical humid.
II
This distillation is done both with cold and with heat. The cold closes the bodies together, so the heat gathers in the center and grows, then escapes and carries the thinnest parts of the matter with it. Then the water, having lost its warm spirit, freezes.
III
This happens with wine and other vegetable juices, and if the spirits are kept in an alembic, they will have been distilled with the cold in the container.
VI
This escape of the spirits caused by the cold causes the plants to die during the winter.
V
After putrefaction, when the fixed substance is dissolved, then both roots, having become volatile, rise with distillation.
VI
The heat in the distillation must be very moderate; otherwise, the spirits, rising too abundantly and with precipitation, cause the vessel to burst.
VII
With this operation, the roots are exactly purified and become the same inseparable and permanent watery substance, which according to the Philosophers, is susceptible to flame, but inextinguishable or incombustible.
VIII
This operation prepares the lamps which always burn without consuming the oil. Such was the one found in Tullia’s tomb, the daughter of Cicero. It was not yet extinguished after about two thousand years when it was discovered under the pontificate of Paul III, who lived in the sixteenth century of the Christian era.
Such was also the one described in the history of Padua, which was found still lit in an ancient sarcophagus. This Latin inscription was around the earthen vessel that served as a lamp.
Plutoni sacrum nunus ne attingite fures. Ignotum est vobis hoc quod in orbe latet. Namque elementa gravi clausit digesta labore. Vase sub hoc modico Maximus Olibius. Adsit foecundo custos tibi copia cornu. Ne pretium tanti depereat laticis. (LeBreton does not put commas in this quote: the Latin commas are essential to give complete meaning to the sentence. However, this is a warning to thieves not to touch Pluto’s work, as what is hidden in the world is unknown to us).
IX
The secret of the incombustible lamp can be extracted from every animal and vegetable, but mainly from wine because it contains more of the two roots than any other mixture.
X
This water distilled and made from the two roots is the humid root in which the natural heat is fixed and permanent.
XI
This water is a very appropriate food to preserve life.
XII
All that is animated receives its life from the radical humid; plants draw this moisture from the juice of the earth, and animals extract it from the juice of plants.
XIII
This very general humidity is a spirit matter composed of the elements which have united and reunited in the bosom of the Earth, and which are impregnated with
volatile spirit.
XIV
This composition of the elements receives the power of its magnetism from the impressions of the Sun and other astral influences.
XV
This celestial spirit binds itself to this radical humid and dwells there more easily the more the nature and of one is similar to that of the other.
XVI
The radical humid is nothing other than the pure and nearby food prepared by cooking, not the distant and impure food.
XVII
The natural and specific heat, both of the plant and of the animal, is incessantly busy with carrying out this purification and with gradually producing in the food substances a uniformity of parts and a consonance of magnetism and action, which makes them suitable to be the nourishing balm and the intimate nourishment of all the nervous and vesicular filaments of the machine. For this effect, Nature has arranged many warehouses and channels that derive from them, in which the food juices receive a continuous elaboration and ever-new purifications until they have acquired a homogeneity that no longer resists the action of the vital fire of the individual.
XVIII
But whatever foresight that nature has had in the mechanics of the funnels and filters of the organized body, the agility and vivacity of fire, which possesses all its current strength, cannot so precisely separate the chaos of liquors destined to serve as food, nor can it lead them to such a perfect purification, such as to ensure that no extraneous parts remain, which resist by their density and mass the penetration of spirits and ferments which produce digestions.
XIX
The too large quantity of foods, the abundance of parts incapable of digestion and the weakness of natural heat likewise make the liqueurs impure and allow the crudities to increase every day and to interrupt more and more the specific magnetism, what finally causes the destruction of the compound.
XX
The chemist (1) separates the elements of the mixed from all that is opposite and heterogeneous to them; he introduces a perfect union between the principles, and composes a permanent and astral or celestial substance, the magnetism of which, that is, in the highest degree of exaltation to which it can be carried, for the parts of his subject very immediately touch and intertwine very intimately by the proportion and convenience of their natures.
- LeBreton uses the term “spagyric“, but he certainly means the term “chemist“.
XXI
This celestial substance in purity is Physical gold in every realm, for the pure essence of gold is to the same degree of perfection in its realm, and art cannot carry it beyond.
XXII
In order to extract the pure essence of gold, it must be dissolved in hyleal water which is of its own nature; these two homogeneous natures must be cooked to the consistency of very white and then very red sugar, which can melt into any sort of liqueur, get confused and be digested in the substance of the chyle by means of the heat of our stomach.
XXIII
This pure essence of gold preserves our humid root, enhances and completes it. It preserves it, because its elements are not against it, although they are much stronger, and they are stronger only for their purity, and their purity makes their magnetism much more powerful, less susceptible to the impressions of a different magnetism and contrary and able to remove from the damp radical these spirits that could corrupt and dissolve it. The essence of gold increases and completes the moist root because it insinuates itself down to the smallest fibers analogously to the nourishing juice, and it is the most appropriate for being able to cook the liqueurs in all the channels of the animal machine.