In Augurello’s last part, the origin and making of the powder come innately along with natural processes. So the alchemical glass birth is not unlike pearls.
The first part of the final book of Augurello’s Crysopoeia, or The Art of Making Gold, is more exciting and challenging to read. Here the author tries to explain the alchemical progress as coinciding with natural phenomena.
We cannot be surprised if that, either because it was a cultural trend of ancient ages science or perhaps because some of Augurello’s superstitions may be true. Can we, above every reasonable evidence, deny the take the place of alchemical, or philosophical, Secret Fire in birthing, growing, and dying, occurring around us in every moment? Can we rationally keep Alchemy out of Life? But Augurello’s poetic statements here appear to be superstitions; he seems to ignore mysteries deeper than the taking colors of marine shells.
Along with what seems a figurative, poetic need to adorn his work, we cannot be surprised by the knowledge that the erudite, not an alchemist Giovanni Aurelio Augurello, puts on display in his Crysopoeia. The author puts a conclusion to the description of his alchemical operations to make gold. We ended the second part by introducing a specific powder to the purpose, namely the Projection Powder And there, the third book begins. My translation from latin of the most substantial parts. In some cases, the verses will be translated in total, though not verbatim, due to the poetic form of a work which is not a treatise but poetry.
The previous book Augurello and the Art of Making Gold, can be found. Second Book 2. The beginning of the work and an introduction to the author are at Augurello and the Art of Making Gold. First Book.
” A down-to-heart desire to describe the origin of this magnificent powder has taken me. So my verses will invoke you, honorable Nymph guarding this sacred fountain… “
Augurello has often called on ancient deities to help him in his task, and not only as a poetic chance since every mentioned god or goddess was not extraneous to either alchemical processes or matters. As in the case of this Nymph, we know that both Nymph and Fountain are synonyms of our Secret Fire/Mercurius coming out, like a white and diaphanous mythological Spirit, from the raw matter, like a mysterious water source.
” The first thing one eager to make gold or silver has to know necessarily are the regimens of fire. Or the great diversity in them. There are a lot of fires in this art, and chiefly two: one is a quiet emulator of nature, and the other is the demanding fire of the art, suitable to extract the seed tied to gold. When your gold is melted and gets humid, it emits abundant vapors and is violently raised upwards. The first fire, the one imitating nature, feeds the pure seed of gold.”
The wording “regimens of fire” is synonymous with ” transmutations stairs” (1) or the operations our matters ( both raw and spiritualized) must undergo. To perform these operations, we are availed by two kinds of Fires: our alchemical Secret Fire/Mercurius, which we extract from raw salts. However, it is the substance coming from stars and suns, and of course, the common fire that makes the gold “humid” or liquified by heating. Even though it is tough to sublime metallic gold to extract Secret Fire out of it directly, and here Augurello seems to suggest a similar path, indeed, metallic gold can anyway be “dissolved”, or sublimated, in Secret Fire/Mercurius to be in this way reincrudated, namely reduced in its “seed”. Which, as we know, will be fed on Secret Fire (2).
” To put your work to an end, you have to take various pure gold foils and conveniently reduce them in an excellent powder. You will grind it for a very long time till the powder becomes fluid. At the same time, this matter will be watered, sometimes by its very seed, as the author has already said, without mixing any extraneous thing.”
This operation is unlikely to happen by simply grinding metallic gold, which is too ductile to be powdered. The process is known as “calcination”, which likely involves oxidation or other chemical contaminations. Some of these proceedings involved cupeling or other calcination methods (3). Another way to calcinate metals was by using Secret Fire/Mercurius because of its strong oxidizing properties. The term seed always involves using Mercurius, likely from other raw salts than gold (4). When Augurello says not to mix extraneous things, he means not to use solvents other than Mercurius, a philosophical solvent out of repeated sublimations. But very often, using chemical solvents, like mild acids, to treat raw salts was necessary.
“Since nature has to be joined to its simile, to play in accord with, as a harp and its strings.”
A poetic verse to go over again the above concept.
” Even though our first matter is found in the deep of caverns, do not fail to remember that it arrives from the sky. And also, don’t forget that everything can, and must, be liquified.”
And I add: to be then solidified over and over again. Here we are before an authentic compendium of Alchemical axioms. That’s to say the necessity of “Solve et Coagula”, or continuing to go back and forth through elements, water, and earth because, strangely enough, our Secret Fire gets extracted by this weird method ( 5). Despite being extracted from raw matter, our Secret Fire is the same as that from the stars and sun. Augurello has discussed “Emerald” or Flos Coeli, or flux of sky (6) in Augurello and the Art of Making Gold. Second Book 1.
” When your matter will become liquified, to get fixed and liquid again, you will put your matter at the bottom of a very oblong vessel, since these matters must be “extended”. In this vessel, gold is made as well. A great heat will be necessary like the Spanish people used to do with earth in the glassware art, then brought to Italy. In this way, the vitreous mass gets purified day and night. Augurello encourages us to make our vessel out of this vitreous mass since a nice vase can be formed from this. In the same way, you can make a vessel out of other piles of earth taken from certain hills in the nearby Padova. You can make the necessary oblong vessel alembic from this material, and you will firmly close the mouth. You must also consider making a proper double-thick oven to provide long-lasting, strong heat. Gold will be reduced in the liquid inside this vessel and white as snow. Then suddenly, it will take a blue color and violet and the color of the stars in the sky. Together with a bitter taste, it will be a good indication to be on the right way because your matter will turn into the black”.
The foundation of this paragraph seems to be the alchemical vase. Namely, a final vessel made out of the very Mercurius becomes Sulfur in our third work. To some extent, like a vitreous paste, our Sulfurous Mercurius can collapse on itself while going on cooking itself. Another black phase, or putrefaction, is evidence of cooking (see an Opus Magnum scheme). The author, anyway, doesn’t separate works and phases. When Augurello says that the vitreous mass gets purified nights and days and finally becomes white as snow, he seems to allude to works to achieve our Mercurius in the preparatory stage. The art of making glassware is exciting; it might seem a pretty metallurgic path. It would contain all the elements that metallurgic paths use.
Nevertheless, the process is so different from our canonical dry ways. However, the author did mention the pelican tool at the beginning of his Crysopoeia, which is not a metallurgic device. Indeed, the fluid circulates inside a pelican’s vascular system and can get a very viscous texture. So it would instead seem an analogy (7).
” Augurello goes on to say that pearls are being born similarly. They certainly come out of marble, but the dew conceives their seed from the sky; according to Augurello, the different colors of shells come directly from clouds. Before dawn, at the time of the first sunbeam, this kind of dew falls, and shells drink it receiving nourishment. There we have a kind of stone, being born white and then acquiring colors, quite liquid and then turns solid”
Augurello explains the alchemical white and soft paste coming out of our preliminary work and announcing our mercurial white water. It was not uncommon for many alchemists of ancient times to try to justify Alchemical transmutations by looking for analogous phenomena in nature. Surely nature does follow alchemical models, but the case of pearls. It is difficult here to divide superstition from analogy.
To be continued.
- See also Guido Montanor & Regimens of Fire ;
- See also Ripley Scroll: the Soul Drinks only Blood ;
- See also Fioravanti & Metals Calcination ;
- See also Weidenfeld & Basilius Oleum Vitriolis ;
- See also Wenceslaw Lavinius and the Sky and Earth Properties ;
- See also Nicolas Lefevre and the Flos Coeli Medicine ;
- See also Baro Urbigerus & the Circulatum Tree ;