Fifth Chapter
Here you will find the ultimate tincture for dry and humid ways, starting from magnesia or bismuth.
To make you know all about manipulation, you must know that from the earth, one can get a matter by which the ancient prepared their lapis medicinalis, that’s to say, the real stone of the ancient. That’s the magnesia, a heavy black mass of insignificant aspects. And the magnesia is nothing more than a mineral the ancients called puch ( Archarion’s note: “Our ancient called this matter as puch, but it is not the common stibium, but a heavy grey-black stone, often veined white or even with other beautiful colors” R Abraham Eleazar, Uraltes chymisches Werk. – “Albaon, abackozodi is a heavy black stone that Persians called puch; it is covered with a grey-black garment because it must be unknown to enemies” Writings of Baruch). It contains a great quantity of spiritus mundi or mercurii, or better, the real semen metallorum, seed of metals).
If you take this subjectus – per se absque additamento (appendix) – and before placing it on the fire, you distill vulgari modo, commonly, per retortam, in retort, a liquor, which is very sweet and has prodigious powers, put a small quantity in a little glass vessel and place inside a dry plant or flower with the root, some hours after these shall become green as they were just sprung from the earth. But – even weird thing – if in the small glass vessel to the plant ( or flower) and this menstruum, you add a bit of salt and make they stay moderately warm, after three or four days, the plant resumes growth and takes the form of the plant from which the salt has been extracted. But you must not shake the glass. Otherwise, this thing disappears: if you let it be, it can still be seen.
Further in the magnesia, the spiritus mundi has become the real semen seu principium metallorum, seed or principle of metals. But if you want to have the other parts, the first method is the following: take some fresh magnesia, freshly up from the hill, grind till powder, and fill it with a retort; place the retort in an oven and heat with moderate fire till it becomes liquid. If you heat by first, second, and third-degree fire, you get a spiritus or sweet liquor. Remove the caput mortuum and calcine it, make salt from lisciva, purify it by melting, filtering, and letting it coagulate, then pour over your distilled liquor and let it putrefy together for four days and four nights; in this way, the salt will melt. Decant this liquor in a clean glass, and immerse the glass in the sand in a cool place; some crystals shall form: so you have the vitriolum philosophorum. Get together all these crystals and have then dried. Or do that: put them in a vapor balneum to make them become liquor. To this liquor, join some gold, close them in a phial, and make them go through colors, so you have the lapis medicinalis.
Or, when you have dried the crystals, take them, put them in a glass bowl, close well by melting, place it in our scalable oven, and fix the salt per gradus by degrees, turning the bowl so that sublimes remain in the bottom. Repeat this operation many times till all is fixed. Then take the substance and extract it with the over-rectified spirit of wine. Decant the liquid and distill again till a liquid salt will residue. Place this salt in the cellar and have it liquified to humid air, or let it be like a powder. Grind one pound of this powder with one dram (1/8 of an ounce) of gold calx, close together in a phial, and make them go through colors. With liquor or powder, you can imbibe and improve this salt whenever you want; in this way, you have lapis medicinalis, which acts on metals.
You can also do that: take some salmiac (Archarion’s note: antimony chloride) and quicklime (CaO) in equal parts, cement together for four hours, lye from these the salmiac again, make it coagulate again, and if it weighs 3/4 of pound add to it 1/2 of fresh salmiac and 1/2 pound of quicklime. Get cemented and coagulated again. Cement the coagulated again with an equal quantity ( in weight) of quicklime. After the cementation, extract and get coagulated. Place the coagulation in the cellar so it becomes an oily liquid. Pour this oil on the well-ground magnesia and make it digest together in an alembic; the solution becomes green, of an herbal greenish. Decant this green solution and add other fresh oil. Repeat many times till it is not possible to extract anymore. Pour all the extracts together in an alembic, distill some phlegm, and place the residue at a cool so crystals form, and you have a herbal green vitriolum that the ancient called green lion or green dragon. Get this salt dry, grind it well, mix some red greasy earth, which makes some small lumps, have them dried, fill with them a retort, and distill vulgari modo, common way, a spiritus , which you will separate at least three times again from caput mortuum.
Then separate the phlegm. But it is better if, once removed, the spiritus, taking the caput mortuum, extract from it all the salt, pour over the distilled spiritus, and sometimes distill the spirit by cohobation. However, even the caput mortuum is not to be thrown away. So get all the phlegm separated from it till a beautiful green oil remains in the bottom. On this oil, pour the phlegm with the spiritus, or better: before it has the spiritus separated, pour it on the residual liquor and extract it again and again till your oil becomes black like liquid pitch. In this way, you have the chaos of ancient. Then put this pitch in a phial, seal the phial, and let it putrefy at a moderate heat, so the matter shall resolve in a crystalline spirit and dark red earth. This spiritus is the mercurius philosophorum or columba Dianae. Have it rectified, making all the phlegm out; with the phlegm extract from the dark earth, the sulfur, and after having calcined the residual lye extract, even the sal fixum. Then pour the spiritus on the sulfur and the salt in a phial, close it, and make it all circulate until all is melted and unified. Let the colors pass in our scalable oven till the substance is stabilized. So you have a fixed dark red powder. Take this powder, add to it some purified gold, and let them ferment together at fusion heat; so you shall obtain a tincture whose 1 grain of that can transform into gold, some 1/2 ounce of imperfect metal. But you must also know the following: take our matter; it is of two species: lunar and solar (1).
The Lunaria is called magnesia; it is grey and presents every kind of color, like a dove’s neck. The other is grey overall and bright like velvet. They are both heavy. The lunaria – in my opinion – is easier to work with and gets quicker dissolved. So take the last one, grind it well, and place it in some glass bowls. During springtime, when the weather is fine to have, it stays outdoors so that the dew can fall inside, and above it, the moon and stars can shine, but no rain must fall inside; during the daytime, keep it out of the sun; then nigh-time and place outdoor again. Go on like that until your matter melts and gets green and oily. You can also moisturize it by adding some fresh dew making it stay outdoors nighttime, daytime indoors in a humid place. Then put this matter into a high alembic, seal it at moderate heat, and let putrefy all for four weeks. Then fit a helm with beck, set it with sealing compound, and gradually distill the spirit. When this has passed, fit another gathering container and increase the fire so all the phlegm rises; decant the phlegm, so the corpus shall remain completely dry on the bottom of the alembic.
You can perform this operation even with a retort and increase the fire strength until all the white fog goes past. Remove the matter from the retort, and put it again in the air for dew to impregnate and slightly moisturize it. After four weeks of putrefaction, distill, and repeat the operation for the third time. Then put the residual matter in a glass retort, pour over all the distilled spirits, and let them digest for some days—Distill two or three times again by cohobation. In the end, increase the firepower till all has been passed. Pour this spiritus into a phial, close it well, and make it digest in a water balneum for four weeks; then distill the spiritus, at first by moderate fire, then by intense fire; decant the phlegm; Have the spiritus rectified over and over till it becomes very beautiful and penetrating, keep with care. Get the residual caput mortuum calcined and extract from it by phlegm a salt. Have the salt purified by melting and coagulating, then pour over your spiritus, close it in a phial, and let it digest in vapor balneum till the salt is dissolved; in this way, your liquor universalis is ready (2).
Or: when you have extracted the spiritus from the corpus, take the caput mortuum, put it into a sublimatorium, and sublime all that wants to sublime: put away these flores ( flowers, sublimated), after having sublimed them other times alone. These are the columbae Dianae. Take them, or join the spiritus and distill the whole in a retort by cohobation. From the caput mortuum, you should extract the sulfur. Nevertheless, there is little of it as it has been almost all sublimed, so it doesn’t pay.
If you pour the phlegm on caput mortuum, you extract a caput mortuum, which is nonetheless not enough. As to the opera, one cannot in any way add any foreign thing; it is far better you let drop this opera and content yourself to calcine the caput mortuum. Then extract the salt, have it calcined, join to the spirit, place them in a cool place, and wait for crystals to form. If crystals don’t form, add a bit of spiritual phlegm, just as much as you repute enough. Place it at cool: so crystals do form. Collect all of them, put them into a glass bowl, seal them, place them in our athanor, and stabilize them by making them rotate; this way, the lapis medicinalis is ready. Now it is just a matter of extraction by pure wine vinegar, as you have already been taught.
Or: pour your liquor over the salt in a phial, seal it, and let them digest for four weeks; in this way, the salt will completely melt, unifying with the spiritus mercurii, and will become a liquor, with which you can operate: But you can also take the crystals, close them into a phial and make them stay in a vapor balneum till they melt. Even in this way, you can obtain the liquor universalis, with which you can operate. During the fixation, beautiful colors are produced. Set your gradus ignis, degree of fire, according to those.
Or: take your crystals, and grind them nicely; if they weigh 1/2 pound, crush together 1/4 pound of purified mercury, put them together in a large glass bowl, seal them, and have them sublimed in a sand balneum. A day’s sublimation can be circulated again, even the day after, till all has become a red powder. Remove the powder and extract by the rectified spirit of wine, collect the extracts, and have them distilled till a red salt shall residue. Make the salt liquified in a glass plate: it will turn into an oil; with this oil, you can operate as you have been taught.
You can pour the oil on the fresh mercury and distill by cohobation; the astrum mercurii, the aster of mercury, will pass.
Nevertheless, please work only with vitriol and prepare with it the lapis medicinalis: As for the dry way, do as follows:
Take the magnesia and grind well. To it, join 1/4 pound of flour of recently cooked powdered brick. Old brick uses salt, which is not suitable for this use. Put the whole into a good stone sublimatorium, place it in an oven, and fit a helm to the sublimatorium. Then for 48 hours, heat per gradus, degree by degree, but in the last twelve hours, you must increase the fire very much. Frequently change the helm: when it is filled with flores, sublimed, remove it and place another one. Go on like that till all have risen.
When no more flores rise, allow the fire to extinguish, put all the flores together into an alembic and sublime over and over. In the end, you can also add a silver calx and get sublimed the other two times so that they will become very pure and have a very beautiful columba Dianae. Keep with care. Calcine the residual caput mortuum until it becomes a grey powder or dark red because of the brick’s flour. Pour over distilled water and extract all the salt. Let the salt putrefy, then take four parts weight of the salt and two parts of the columba Dianae, grind them up, and make them go through colors. With the columba, you can improve your opera; otherwise, do the following: take the salt and, together with it, grind at first a gold calx, then the columba Dianae make them all go through the colors.
But you can also do the following: if you want to extract the salt, you can do it with vinegar. Distill vinegar until a salt contains residue, and purify the salt with distilled rainwater. Then take some fresh matter, it is enough 1/2 pound and calcines.
Make sure not to melt it during the calcination. When it has become a grey cinder, take 2 ounces of the cinder and 4 ounces of your salt and melt it in a crucible till you obtain a vitreous mass. Take 2 ounces of this vitrum and 4 ounces of columba, grind them together, put them in a steady phial, seal it, place it in the sand, and heat by degrees till all become a steady mass. Remove that mass, grind it till powder with 2 ounces of columba, put them together in a phial, and go as before. Go on like that till you have consumed all your columba Dianae, so you have the lapis medicinalis fixum. But if starting from that, you want to prepare the lapis universalis, liquify gold, and when it is melted, put 2 ounces of this lapis on 1/2 ounce of gold; melt well, so this too becomes a fragile red mass, whose one grain you can transform in gold 1/2 ounce of imperfect metals.
Summa: with magnesia and liquor universali, liquor of the universe, you can perform your opera starting from microcosmic and vegetal reign too, or even better, from macrocosmic. So – as you see – the Highest provides you with many paths. Nevertheless, Nature will obey you only if your heart is good. If not, you must be worthy of it before turning your heart to God, your creator, and relying entirely on him. In this way, everything will be fine. But there is another path in which you can start from the red gold mineral.
It follows another method: starting from the red gold mineral.
Take 3-4 marks of the red gold mineral, mind using at least 2-2,5 ounces of silver per pound, as there is much semen metallorum. Grind it, put it into an alembic, place it in warm sand for fourteen days and fourteen nights, then heat per gradus, degree by degree, with subliming fire; in this way, the sulfur philosophorum will rise adhering to the glass as a delicate and soft white wool crystal. Go on subliming for more days and nights till no sulfur rises, and only earth as black as coal remains into the alembic. Allow the vessel to chill out and cut to separate the inferior part of the alembic, just a bit over the black matter But do it carefully since if you shake it too much, the sublimed falls to the ground and gets contaminated, and all your work is gone. Remove the sulfur, and make a little flask of good silver with a cover. Put into your flores and throw into an alembic. The little flask should contain 2 drams (1/4 of an ounce) of sulfur. Place the alembic in the sand, heat progressively with subliming fire, so all the gentle and very subtle mercurial soul will pass through the flask’s walls; it will sublime and in it remains only useless earth.
In this way, you get a crystal transparent sulfur, the columba Diana, which may also be called mercurius philosophorum. You will only get one ounce or even less from one mark of red gold mineral, depending on whether the mineral is rich or poor. Take this pure sulfur. In any way you want to name it, this is sulfur and mercurius because they are together in it. Take what remains in the sublimatorium and get it reverberated ( heat it cautiously directly on the flame) as long as it becomes soft and rises as wool. Still, while reverberating, you should be careful not to make it liquid but soft and subtle like wool. Now, when you see your earth rising like wool – which happens after a few hours – remove it, put it into an alembic, pour on a strong wine vinegar, and extract the salt. Decant the extracted in a clean glass to be well closed. Reverb the earth for the second time ( calcine directly on the flame), pour on the distilled vinegar again, and extract. Add the extracted to the previous one and repeat the operation for the third and fourth time, constantly reverberating the earth and extracting till you think you have extracted all the salt. Then pour all the solutions into a clean glass alembic and extract all the vinegar till nothing remains but the salt or 1/4 of the solution. Place the salt in a cool place and wait for the crystals to be formed.
Melt these crystals in distilled water, filter, make to evaporate, and wait for other crystals; repeat the operation some other times till the utmost purity. Then take one ounce of these crystals and one ounce and a half of sulfur, grind them together in a glass mortar, place them in a steady phial; seal it, and put them in our secret oven; since they are very volatile and penetrating, heat at the moderate fire, in this way they will become water because the salt quickly melts. Once the solution has happened – I warn you that this substance is easily melted almost in balneum vapori (vapor balneum) – take your glass, place it in cinders or a scalable oven, and let the colors pass; in this way, you will get a fiery lapis medicinalis. To remove disease and dignify a metal grain of this lapis is enough. With it, you can transform into gold and silver, a whole sea of imperfect metals.
The improvement occurs as the following: take 1/2 ounce of the tincture, and 1 ounce of crystals, grind them very well, put them together in a phial, seal it, and place it in athanor heated at moderate temperature. After one hour, the matter will become black; then, the colors will appear so that you can accomplish the opera in a few days. When the matter has been stabilized, you can further improve the salt. One can get plenty of salt. One mark of red gold mineral supplies some 5-6 ounces of salt. But you must know that, in the beginning, when you turn up the heat, you must proceed cautiously and without rushing; otherwise, the sulfur becomes liquid, and all your work is gone. If, instead, in the beginning, one proceeds with caution and after skillfully setting the fire, the work is happily accomplished; Now I will teach you how to proceed with tartar and how to prepare the mysterium starting from it.
The next chapter at Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis. Part 5.
- Archarion’s note ( I don’t know why Archarion here does not resist the idea of complicating things searching for his usual patchwork of difficult quotations): Isaiah verses 11, 12, 13, and 16 of 54 chapters make us know this Saturn well, well interpreted by the earth from Naxagoras. The prophet’s words are: oh thou afflicted, disconsolate, disrupts all weather! See, I’m the one who puts your stones away in the puch and wants to give you sapphires. Your trivial matters will be carbuncles and stones to aspire to. And the Lord will teach all your children. See! I have created the artist blowing on the coal fire and who, accomplishing his work, produces the matter, etc.”. Translation from the original Hebrew! In the cited excerpt, the prophet doesn’t say that the puch at raw state, crude, is the very lapis, but only that in it he wants to put away all his stones: as in it it is hidden the cause (origin) both of the primitive universal stone and of the other medicinal tinctures, included those metallic, as well as of all their properties. The same thing can be said of our solar Saturn; one can put away all the stones and turn them into minerals. Basilius Valentinus confirms it about the lunar Saturn in his Via Veritatis, book 4, chap 1 ( still unpublished) with the following words: “Nature produced and offered us a matter that the ancient called in various names. But this matter is the real tinctured matter of metals: in it is hidden and enclosed the spirit of metals and minerals and – supernatural fact – the Highest put all in one only thing, ha given to a unique thing the metals, minerals, and precious stones power, a thing that nobody can believe, but the eyes are opened like the disciples in their voyage to Emmaus. It is the real mother of metals and minerals, and man has been created with that, giving origin to this matter. It can be compared to the middle world since what is in the macrocosm exists in the microcosm and the man, but all that is even found in the middle world. In its inner, this matter is fixed incombustible sulfur, which attracts to itself continuously from the air, when the weather is fine, the spiritus mercurii.
- For this reason, in it, one can frequently find the spiritus mundi, both the red liquid gold of the wises and the wonderful salt. But it is very close in the state where it is coming from the mountain, so for the beginner, it is challenging to enter this house.” So far, Basilius Valentinus. Blessed the young on the way to Emmaus whom the eyes in our sapiential houses have been opened and who have learned to know this wonderful creature and dismembered according to nature. Anyway, the word puch seems to particularly point at the lunar Saturn” Der Kompass der Weisen;
- Another Archarion’s note: “An analog proceeding is described in Chymia Universa in Nuce: Get the Minera Saturni opened before the Minera, i.e., our black magnesia as soon as stars and meteors begin to operate when the shepherds graze their cattle in the fields when the sky and sea get married. With the due carefulness sublime from MR, a mercurial salt armoniacum or alumen plumosum of philosophers dissolves in the spiritus of dew secundum legem artis (SLA) according to the art’s law, with it extracts the soul from the residual corpus and employing perfect dew produce the core of the central salt. Then take these three principles in solution and solve in balneum siccum, dry balneum, This is the philosophical azoth, sulfurous water, lymph heavy like mercury, clear water as sour as tartar, a blessed menstruum, the liquor which dissolves gold the most, gets it cooked perfectly by its ferment and multiply it with its water, in this way you will have the Lord’s Blessing; make praise to God for the eternity, amen”.