This fruit does grow in a slow way, mostly at a moderate heat. You have to apply a non excessive warm. That will be the “Balneum Mariae”. The vessel can not be too narrow because this matter can not put on display its entire power when with little fire after being jointed and in fact its virtue will cease.
When you will be the lucky owner of the powder you may get it augmented as you want. This excellent and celestial powder will put on display some signs by means of different colors. But if you well understand the value of the red powder you have first to comprehend that the white and black powder are worth very much. At first the black color will teach you how to start the work and will open the door of the secret path. The white powder will give you the whole knowledge. The path is here well advanced and the redness is not so far. This human art also embraces the stars in the sky, so bright and beautiful. “
This powder is the Powder of Projection (4). The colors mentioned by Augurello are the stages of the main Work (5). This Art embraces the stars in the sky either because Secret Fire is a stellar substance, or this last tends to act as a magnet for stars (6).
“And each aster of an equal degree can measure the tour of the earth and sea. And the sand grains which are countless may easily realize the amount. By this art the human voice may follow the songs of the celestial domain, and try to imitate the seven celestial sounds through instruments and human songs.”
This paragraph is really intriguing. Surely Acoustics does play an important role in Alchemy.
“This art will bring you medicines and makes an unfruitful field to become fertile. To low word’s eyes nothing of this art is not attributed to human mind. But without this art the judicious man prefers not to do nothing. Augurello now beseeches Athene-Pallas as the personification of knowledge, being born directly from the head of her father Zeus and loved by Hephaestus, the god of furnaces, to help him in the search for the powder which can promptly transmute every metal in gold. And in the same way like the rennet cheese is prevented from its common use by warm water which makes the vessel full of milk to take the conformity with another milk, in the same way the sacred powder, by means of its quicksilver (living silver), prevents the action of mercury ( silver live), giving it the appearance of gold, of the same color as stars. That of giving the look of stars does seem the quicksilver primary feature. In fact this powder is above and beyond the perfect gold, it gives the return to a perfection stage. But you have to know that this powder can augment itself by means of hard work.”
See also picture number 11 in Cabala Mineralis part 2. Concerning the transmutation from mercury to gold, nobody knows why this may happen. Augurello’s idea that the projection powder acts as a rennet is at least strange, but effective. A concept of “Amalgam” is anyway often used (7) in Alchemy.
“A great part of mercury gets transmuted in pure gold by a tiny part of this powder, because this quick Spirit does enter this thick and still body incessantly mixing with its corpuscles. Often the powder cooked and pressed may its force increase, like a grain of saffron can expand color and virtue. Why this does happen nobody can understand, but inside this little powder a great force and power, since inside dwells a seed, is hidden. It is a mystery like the magnet which can attract iron, or the sailors looking for the great bear in a night sky.
Inside this powder the first seed of all metals is beginning to germinate. It is just in the last cooking that a metal take its singular appearance. Augurello notices that a metal to be transformed has to be previously reduced to liquid form, to melt. All the points are linked together in a single line, that’s way the regimen of fire is so important, in fact the strange fact is that when augmented the powder tends to decrease in volume. Augurello ends this second book assuring the reader that he will lead him safely to the exit thanks to a thread.”
A red thread, I guess.
To be continued at Augurello and the Art of Making Gold. Third Book 1 .
- See also Stuart Chevalier, Lessons on Earth: a Virgin Marriages ;
- See also Atalanta Fugiens and Mercurius Duplicatus ;
- See also Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Salt or Philosophers Gols? ;
- See also Cabala Mineralis and the She Horse on Urine Work, part 2 ;
- See also Kamala Jnana, Introduction to a Live Secret ;
- See also Cesare Ripa Cesare Ripa: Wheels, Spindles and Celestial Pointers and Introitus Apertus vs Open Entrance. Chap 4 ;
- See also Atalanta Fugiens & the Golden Apples , Ostanes, One Nature etc and Codex Marcianus Ouroboros ;