Canseliet talks about the tangibility of the Spirit, featured by, most amazingly, a characteristic color. The Spirit/Mercurius, our foundation, as a real physical entity.
Le Feu du Soleil, 1978, is a long interview by Robert Amadou to the french master Eugène Canseliet. Who here alternates moments of pure gossip ( although alchemical) at moments when, with the same levity, does reveal interesting details which only a laboratory expert like him can do.
Here Amadou takes Canseliet to introduce Mercurius, that’s to say the alchemical Spirit (as well as Spirit of Life and Secret Fire, resulting from extreme salts volatilizations in the end of the preparatory, or first, work ). Surprisingly enough, Canseliet doesn’t end Amadou’s words with a description of how Mercurius does look like in its first appearing, but shifts the attention to a rather neglected Mercurius aspect: how it is when unexpectedly invited to manifest itself. This will head to the consequent tangibility of the ineffable alchemical works foundation.
Eugène Canseliet: “ Spirit is attracted by matter. If you offer the Spirit a vitreous body, a fondant which it can go through, the Spirit colors it green. The simple substance will be enough, without any special device. It will be enough to weigh it and the difference is such to be measured in grams. All that is much more than mere traces. The Spirit does weigh. Not only it colors, it is the color, it is matter…..”
Canseliet concludes here, the following paragraph will be switched to Marcelin Berthelot. The editor, or perhaps the same interviewer, ends with some dot dot dot, may be to attract the readers attentions (1). So I will do the same. I will add nothing to Canseliet’s words. But let me to append something about the supposed Mercurius weight: the cooking alchemical matter is subjected to weight increasing. This feature is dramatically evident during the third, and last work, when the Philosophical Egg’s weight increment will produce weird sounds (2).