Gio.Battista Capello is an eighteenth-century iatrochemist here explaining how and when collecting Nostoc from the Sky. But what is Nostoc? Fulcanelli writes extensively about.
At times the French alchemist compares it directly with Secret Fire from Sky and less directly with a strange mucilaginous material falling together with equinox rains, and belonging to the domain Bacteria, more precisely cyanobacteria.
Dom Pernety, in his Dictionnaire Mytho-Hermétique 1758, writes about Nostoc identifying it as bacteria: “ kind of trembling terrestrial sponge which Rulandus called spurt from Stars”.
Giovanni Battista Capello, an apothecary in Venice, in his Lessico Farmaceutico-Chimico, or Pharmaceutical-Chemical Lexicon, Venezia 1754, gives an interesting collecting period for Nostoc or Nostoch, as he calls it. In the eighteenth century, iatrochemistry and Alchemy began to divert, and secrets were less tightened. My translation is easy from Italian:
“The livers of Paracelsus or Nostoc is a herb that was always highly regarded by most mysterious chemists because of its shape, its growth, and even more, its short life. They claim can get the medicine out of it to cure every illness and further the transmutation of quicksilver into gold.
As far as I know, the first to use it was Paracelsus, who, with a barbarous term called Nostoc, was then commonly known as livers since it was thought to be specific for liver diseases. Modern botanists recognized Nostoc as a plant like any other seed generated. Rajo and Seguier called it Ulva terrestris, and pingulus fugax, membranaceous pinguis and Michieli terrestris gelatinosa, membranacea, pallida viriscente fulva.
Nostoc seems, at first sight, something of a shapeless mucilaginous substance, fallen from sky to earth and without roots: nevertheless, it is an actual plant rising from the ground with very fine rootlets, like sea lettuce and kelp bowel-form born on the sea bottom, or in moist grasslands, in gardens walkway and other sandy places after rains, as an adult and newborn proliferate and a bit of sun, and wind destroys vanish.
To make it water, one collects Spring Equinox Nostoc, and the sooner gets it enclosed in a glass alembic with his cap, an adequate applied reservoir well sealed to the cap’s spout. Alembic is then exposed to sunlight until the Nostoc is destroyed, and the water passes into the bowl. Dose from half an ounce to one.
As far as chemists do assert, this water used for 40 days every morning helps to remove head diseases, epilepsy, dizziness, and paralysis; it preserves from heart diseases: it purifies spirit and blood, and therefore they want Nostoc valid in all chronic diseases and particularly in liver problems. It operates unconsciously and without any apparent secretion.
A chemical recipe, namely those in which science consists only of some recipes, or found by chance, or given by a friend, provides the following operations on Nostoc: on March 18, the only day in the vernal equinox (spring) in which it is full of virtues, collect the Nostoc, and clean it well with fine linen pieces, then get it ground in a stone mortar with a wooden pestle and place it in a well-sealed glass vase and get buried underground at one arm depth for 40 days in a dry place: after this time, remove the pot (1) you squeeze the Nostoc, and the liquid will be filtered and stored in a well tightly closed glass jar, and this liquid is called Man.
On 18 September, the only day during the autumnal equinox in which we can usefully collect the Nostoc, we must operate as in spring, and the coming out liquid is called Woman.
Then take two ounces and a half of each part of these two waters, and put them into a philosophical egg with three ounces of Mercury of Spain and one ounce of fine-leaf gold. Hermetically sealed, the egg is buried in the ground at two arms’ depth, where it should remain till the water is consumed, which will be about a year and a half and maybe more, depending on the soil’s quality (more or less warm).
The powder in the egg is wonderful to the point that if a part falls over a thousand of Mercury (2), convert it into gold. It is fair, however, to warn that the owner of this beautiful secret, reached the age of 70 years, was still very poor and troubled by various chronic diseases but still persuaded that the Nostoc waters Man and Woman, taken by mouth, did benefit all human diseases and that livers were not a grass herb, but pure excrement from stars, so thankful to the sun and that when you get up early in the morning, it brings it along.”
For Secret, Fire use sees an Opus Magnum scheme. Don’t underestimate Capello’s Nostoc collecting periods. In Alchemy, “Signatures” deals with those timing conditions.
As mentioned above, man and woman are just the names of the two Nostocs collected at two different times of the year. In Classical Alchemy, traditionally, the man represents the Mercurius Philosophorum with the metal dissolved inside, and the woman is Mercurius Philosophorum before placing the metal inside. Since everything is possible in Alchimia, I don’t feel like denying any validity to Capello’s statements. Alchemy is centered around Secret Fire.
- Capello first describes a glass vase, then passes to an earthen pot;
- Metal Mercury;