The extracting operations are chemically similar and lead to the achievement of a Mercurius since this ineffable substance is inside every atom. But… and here Sabine Stuart Chevalier is obsessionally repetitive, Mercurius from metals are richer, and gold is the richest, and a less rich Mercurius can help to extract a richer Mercurius. The great difficulty with her is she continually comes back to repeat the concepts already developed, which may seem different only for different wording, so old and new ideas pile up.
Page 52: “It is just a question of reducing this metal (gold) in a first Mercurius, quick and dry, in the same way as nature does.
The gold prepared in this way receives the nature of the quicksilver with the mixed sulfur, which cooks it, by separating all the raw sulfur in a way that remains just pure quicksilver, which takes the form of gold; in the same way, that nature gives the same form to pure quicksilver in the deep of the earth. For the same reason, we have to give the quicksilver a seminal virtue or, to keep it simple, we have to take only the purer substance of quicksilver because this one is likely to take the form of gold, of all its virtue of all its Spirits, from which the form of gold takes its origin”.
To put it in poor words: we have to get a huge amount of Secret Fire”, in fact, on page 53, we find the following words Avicenna, or ibn Sina.
Page 53: “ Avicenna says that the Sulphur used by nature cannot be found, but inside the two perfect metals and, in order to get it really perfect, we have to extract it either out of gold or silver because these two metals are pure and the Art has no other mine. The Mercurius which they are formed is the root of the Dye and the beginning of the Stone, and is the nature of gold that a real artist must know”.
Page 54: “Al Jabair says that the natural Sulphur color is always yellow because this is the real gold color. But when the Sulphur disappears, and the quicksilver becomes apparent, the color becomes white: thus, the white color is the real philosophical color, or better, it is the Philosophical Sulphur color because it is composed of pure quicksilver whose last sign is the whiteness and the crystalline clarity”.
We always find in Stuart Chevalier this confusing tendency to explain Alchemy through a supposed theory of the natural formation of metals. But what is here worth to be remembering is that Mercurius is white, and Sulphur is a Mercurius coagulated, which her archaic theory of formation can scarcely explain.
“ One has to pay attention that when gold makes Mercurius blossom, this sign announces the gold is up working to the generation of its root, which is already open in the time and which will grow like a plant.
The closed gold had already been putrefied in this period, and the germ developed. it pushes up flowers to give fruits once ripe. In this sense, Sulphur and Mercurius are really philosophical;
Is this step the first dissolution of gold, or its further incrudation (8)?
Page 55: “ When this young plant begins to appear, one must take care and not let it die. So one has to make the Mercurius fixing with Sulphur to keep alive each other; since if the Mercurius is left precipitate, it will not fix anymore and will die. This is why one must never forget to make this matter ferment with another gold fixed. This is what is commonly known as the allegory of the old man trying to rejuvenate; That’s to say that the corporal gold has to be divided and cooked till perfection, and when it’s divided, his limbs get reunified and solidified, then the old man will be rejuvenated according to his wishes and, while his guardian will be sleeping by means of perfect cooking, his limbs will get dissolved in vapor.
This philosophical allegory points at the perfect cooking of the gold, which has to be penetrated till its roots, till its Mercurius, which, alone, is able to receive the virtues of Spirits.
Page 56: “Soon after extracting this Mercurius, it must be set aside and fixed, since if it is cooked too long, it tends to fly away, and if it is also taken before its perfect cooking, it turns useless. The excess and the defect are both to avoid. If any essential point during the preparation of Mercurius Philosohorum fails, a golden tincture will never be produced.
There are rules to be observed which we cannot abstain from when a thing is cooked; it is not immediately removed from fire; it burns and wholly dies; on the other hand, if it is removed before being cooked enough, one cannot do anything.
So for all these reasons, we must keep an eye to see when the sign of perfect Mercurius will appear. This sign is no other thing than the mercurial whiteness to announce that all is arrived to the supreme degree of purity by means of cooking. The philosophers call this the first part of the Magisterium and what composes the real Tincture.
Hali says that when the Stone appears, it is like a plant”.
Page 57: “ To make a real tincture, we must have a quick substance, a Mercurius prepared in its essence and matter, according to the natural rules, in the same way, if it would be made by nature in the deep of the earth. Soon after Mercurius has been formed and well purified, it promptly takes the form of gold.
Thus we have to get hold of a quick Mercurius to pour a gold tincture into. One can take ( Stuart Chevalier uses the verb “ prendre” indeed) this Mercurius inside the gold, inside the quicksilver, or inside whatever else, where this quick matter actually is, and which has to be pure, subtle, bright as it was when nature gave it the form of gold.
Page 58: The whole secret of our art consists in making the thing as it was before, but in order to achieve that, we must be careful not to perform contrary transmutations; that’s to say, we have to make a simple separation of the terrestrial substance elements: we are not claiming to say that the matter should be deprived of all its elements, but that it must be separated in a subtle way”.
Read that as a “salts volatilization” with a final fixation of the product. Page 59: “Plato says that our operation is in no way similar to operations of nature, which from a simple thing can do a composed one by means of the elements;