Canseliet talks about the tangibility of the Spirit, featured by, most amazingly, a characteristic color. The Spirit/Mercurius, our foundation, is an actual physical entity.
Le Feu du Soleil, 1978, is an extended interview by Robert Amadou with the french master Eugène Canseliet. Here alternate moments of pure gossip ( although alchemical) at moments when, with the same levity, he reveals interesting details that 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 salt volatilizations at 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 in its first appearance 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, and the difference will be measured in grams. All that is much more than mere traces. The Spirit does weigh. Not only its colors, but it is also the color, it is a 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, maybe to attract the reader’s attention (1). So I will do the same. I will add nothing to Canseliet’s words. But let me append something about the supposed Mercurius weight: the alchemical cooking matter is subjected to weight increase. This feature is dramatically evident during the third and last work when the Philosophical Egg’s weight increment will produce weird sounds (2).