Concordances and Differences between Alchemy and Ancient Ordinary Chemistry

Neither Fulcanelli nor Canseliet were the first alchemists to recommend reading the treatises of baroque chemistry, but they were certainly the first to say it openly and without veiling it.

My master, paraphrasing a line from the comic strip Asterix, said that Canseliet “was born inside the pot”, meaning that since he was a teenager he had been in contact with the greatest practitioners of Alchemy of his time. His innate courage later made him a kind of braggart, in the positive sense. He dared to say that the first alchemical works could be found absolutely described in the treatises of baroque iatrochemistry. In the first preparatory work the procedures could be the same (see First-Preparatory Works.). The iatrochemistry of the Baroque era pursued the same goals of volatilization of salts because medicine intended to achieve high degrees of absorbability by the human organism. However, pharmacists used to stop at the first stages of volatilization. This aspect was expressed in many of their treatises.

Canseliet does not explain (and this is an aspect he inherited from Fulcanelli) what stage of the works he is referring to. Because if we do not understand the stages of the alchemical works, we get lost in the labyrinth.

Canseliet was French and recommended reading the French: Glaser, the Lefevres, Lemery etc…

I recommend reading the books of medical doctors and iatrochemists of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque, because I think that the Italians said things that their French colleagues kept silent. Among them, Fioravanti and Lancillotti are the best known. One problem could be represented by the translation, in fact, the Italian language, at least until the reunification of the country in 1870, was rather a collection of dialects, while French had been “centralized” for centuries.

It is still the iatrochemists, especially the Italians, who reveal that after the first volatilization, the alchemists continue to volatilize until they reach their Mercurius.

Not so sure. I believe that only an alchemist can understand what chemists define by saying cryptically “… and from here the alchemists go further”. See First-Preparatory Works, Eagle Wings or Volatilization.

Alchemists express themselves only cryptically or symbolically. See First-Preparatory Works, Eagle Wings or Volatilization.

The work of the iatrochemists ends at the first, or at most, second volatilization: therefore at the end of what an alchemist calls preparatory work. That is First-Preparatory Works, Eagle Wings or Volatilization.

As far as I know, no iatrochemist has ever described Second-Main Work and even less Third Work.

The iatrochemists of the Baroque era were great artists of volatilization and sublimation, and they candidly admitted that they did not dare enter the field of metallurgy. A field they left to the metal assayers.

In addition to having a life too short for our standards, too struggling, too spasmodic in the search for ancient wisdom, he was not even able to give a schematic and organized form to his thought. Paracelsus, unfortunately for us, was too much a victim of his era. He, definitely, left us only scattered hints.

Ancient chemistry has almost nothing to do with modern spagyrics. See Differences between Alchemy and Spagyrics.

Renaissance and Baroque iatrochemistry had some points in common with Alchemy: the heterogeneity of the starting materials; working more with elements than with the purity of substances; “aging” in dark and humid cellars; the practice of volatilizing and sublimating.

For a similar purpose: the aim of ancient iatrochemists was not to obtain active ingredients, but extremely volatilizable final substances because they were considered highly absorbable by the body. The alchemical Mercurius is achieved after at least seven volatilizations, the “highly absorbable medicine“ of the iatrochemists after only one volatilization.

True. Today we would say that they were substances so complex and long in molecular chains that they were difficult to detect by modern detection equipment (which are programmed to reveal active ingredients, generally simpler substances from a molecular point of view).

True. These were substances widely used in the iatrochemists’ work, as well as in the early alchemical works.

Tartar (and also urine salts), vinegar, wine. To which, optionally, gold could also be added.

True. The use of the entire ancient pharmacopoeia, composed of alkalis, tartars, wines, vinegars, urine salts, aromatic resins, soot, bones and horns always had the aim of dispersing, liquefying and sublimating. A practice evidently far from the acid/base protocol typical of modern iatrochemistry.

Very much so. Their customers were the first to believe that metal medicines were more effective than herbal ones. In reality, the basis of almost all preparations with metals was herbal: from the plant world (and also from the animal world) the ingredients were taken to prepare solvents, openers and lifting agents for volatilizing the mineral salts.

Iatrochemists believed that extreme oxidation of powdered metal led to easier volatilization, along with the above-mentioned plant substances. Calcination techniques varied depending on the metal. Some, mined as ores, often in sulfur formations, were purified by metallurgical methods and then grinded to powder; others, such as gold, were reduced to extremely thin sheets and then calcined by mixing them with sliced ox horns.

True. To begin with, let’s say right away that we could perfectly do Alchemy with Prussian blue, with both the methods of Kunckel and Dippel. To tell the truth, Kunckel speaks of enamels, and to make enamels one need metals, which are the basis of all of them. So, we have to take lead and tin,  which should be calcined, then boiled in water. Then they are calcined again and boiled again to obtain a nice slime. Then we add a white stone of well-cooked calcium carbonate and also white tartar salt. Everything should be exposed to heat for ten hours, then it is pulverized. Kunckel, instead, replaces the salt of tartar with purified potash. For the white enamel, they usually use manganese because it gives the milky white. Libavius suggests instead a method involving lead, tin, and pulverized glass. But the method that Kunckel prefers to make the white enamel is calcined antimony and nitro salt with pulverized glass. Kunckel purifies antimony with the classic recipe of antimony regulus purified with iron nails, to remove all parts of sulfur since antimony in mines generally occurs in the form of sulfide. Kunckel has one more secret of making this enamel: extreme pulverization in a mortar for at least a full day with the addition of distilled vinegar. Regarding the blue enamel, one should use copper. Kunckel recommends following Neri’s method, that is to use an oven to melt the glass, and repeat the operation, melting and cooling the mass in water and putting it back in the oven (it was the alchemists who repeated the operations, not the chemists.). As for Dippel, he finally reveals his recipe for Prussian blue: he calcinates the tartar salt with the dried blood of an ox, which is also called ‘martial earth’ because the blood contains iron. Macquer and Kunckel, instead of tartar salt, use alkali from lye plus distilled water. In any case, distilled vinegar should be added. Without it, nothing is done.

True. See Gold & Alchemy, Potable Gold.

Antimony pills existed and were more expensive than gold ones, due to the peculiar skill that a chemist had to have to make this metal no longer dangerous but medicinal (in practice it was the same process through the antimony glass of the alchemists).

No. Alkahest was too dangerous for medicinal use. Alkahest is in fact a synonym of Mercurius, and was used exclusively by alchemists, although it would not have taken long for iatrochemists to obtain it (it was enough to repeat the volatilization operations).

Iatrochemists also used dew and puddle water, which they collected at the two equinoxes, or rather a week before. Many also used Ros Maialis or May dew, just like the alchemists. With these “dirty” waters, iatrochemists prepared above all their vegetable solvents to open metals.

If you believe that these practices were exclusively alchemical you are wrong: they were a common practice. If the alchemists used to do it to increase the Spiritus Mundi, the iatrochemists did it to further refine and disperse their substances, precisely to “spiritualize” them.

“Magnetization” was a practice that iatrochemists rarely confessed to, but practiced widely. A classic example was urine, both human and ruminant.

True. Urine, even animal urine, was widely accepted by customers at that time, who would have been frightened by the idea of ingesting “perfumes”. At the end of the chemist’s laborious work, the urine no longer had anything of the original substance, not even the smell, obviously. Another substance that customers accepted without protest was hippuric acid extracted from horse urine. Also known as benzoic acid, this substance had the power to make calcined metals sublimate.

Among the many skills of the ancient iatrochemists was also the design of laboratory equipment. Only beginners used standard tools or those recommended by manufacturers, then developed their needs. In fact, some processes were possible only with apparatus built specifically for specific tasks. It was not just about stills, but also sublimation bells and even ovens.

True. It was one of the secrets of a competent pharmacist.

At least for the beginning of the works, certainly. The ancient chemists knew the right moments to distill, volatilize, melt metals, and collect the products of the sky.

Even for ancient chemists, opposites were represented by fixed and volatile substances that were ultimately “married” in a perpetual way.

Ancient chemists did not divide substances according to their molecular characteristics but according to their ability to move other substances and make themselves move. Thus, regardless of whether a substance was mainly aqueous or saline, what caused movement when placed in another substance was considered active; the substance being moved was passive.

From the chemical point of view, alchemists also make the same distinction between substances that move and substances that are moved. But from the alchemical point of view, the passive substance gives physical consistency to the active substance, or spark. Moon-sun symbolism is common.

Those solvent and/or lifting preparations from urine, tartar, alkali, sea salt, vinegar, cognac, wine, dew, etc. were called “spirits” because the nomenclature of the time called for anything that floated against the force of gravity (as we would say today). Nothing religious or alchemical.

It never happened. At most, chemists boasted of manufacturing medicines that were “highly absorbable by the human body”, but they never used the alchemical “spiritual” nomenclature. Also because it would have attracted unwanted attention and scrutiny.

True. These pills were made of limestone material printed with images, then sealed by a “sigillum”.

In the end, if it is true that many alchemists became cynical materialists and mainly pursued the path of easy enrichment through the powder of projection (to make gold) and the Elixir of Long Life, the so-called technicians instead retained a spiritualistic view of the alchemists’ works. A classic example are the Japanese swordsmiths who were perfectly aware of working with souls (of the metal, of themselves, of the client, of the beneficiary and of the one to whom the sword happened to be delivered by final chance).

On the contrary, the day the alchemists lost their ancient mindset, they also lost any possibility of reaching the end of their works: it was only competition with others. Never underestimate the alchemical souls, because, if the Mercurius is the main tool of the alchemist, the “invisible companions” are crucial for success (and unfortunately for the alchemist in the flesh, those “ghosts” use to reason like the dead).

Chemists had understood that alchemical work was a “work for clumsy incompetent people”, but with secrets that made it unattainable.

This is a redundant question. The answer is that there have obviously been many cases of chemists who have voluntarily and stubbornly searched for the philosophers’ stone. I could mention many names. However, mostly in the Baroque era, chemists were very careful to give the impression of being interested in Alchemy, since everyone (as Francesco Borri says) was after the Stone. So, given their technical knowledge, it was better for chemists to keep a low profil.

If for an alchemist to collaborate with a chemist would have meant learning new technical skills, for a chemist it would have meant quickly surpassing the alchemist and arriving first at the final goal. I believe that alchemists and chemists collaborated with each other like intelligence services do today.

If the chemist had insisted on doing the same operations (perhaps to obtain extreme volatilization), he/she could certainly have obtained Mercurius. If he had been so far-sighted as to save Mercurius to nourish the alchemical embryo and to keep some of the waste for the construction of the egg, then he were already alchemists and knew the properties of Mercurius. However, he would hardly have arrived at the philosopher’s egg by chance. See What is the Philosophers Stone?

The main secret of the Baroque age iatrochemists was their customized laboratory tools, so peculiarly personal that they were destroyed after a few uses. We must not believe that those famous pharmacists used only the specimens shown and described in their chemical treatises.

They were best-selling books due to their ease of reading, and contained a potpourri of folk remedies, superstitions, laboratory tips and alchemical truths.

Ancient chemistry certainly knew techniques and knowledge that are forgotten, and therefore unknown today, but at the same time, the ancients were victims of simple habits and superstitions. After all, if ancient iatrochemistry had really been able to produce miraculous medicines, we would still be using it today. And, in some cases, we do.