How can we define the dry path?
A way in which we get alchemical powders without solving and raising liquids, only using crucibles or sublimation tools. Dry ways deal with crashed ores.
How may a specific dry path look like the standard metallurgy?
Roughly this path consists of separating the ore into its purest elements and reunifying them in the second phase, with the production of the little remora. And although the process may seem close to standard metallurgy, strange events occur.
What about the nature of the Mercurius obtained through the Via Sicca-dry path?
The nature of the Mercurius can be misinterpreted only from the point of view of one of the two paths, either wet or dry. To the eye of a neophyte, they might seem to be opposites, but they are analogous since they point out the same process. After all, it is always a question of state changes which the ancients called the struggle of the elements. Changes in the state of metals can be almost instantaneous in metallurgy, and we can say that something has happened inside and near the matter. Practitioners know that compressions and decompressions take place in the matter during changes in its state, and these changes of state produce what our heart produces in our body and the universe. It can therefore be conjectured that Mercurius is not a state of matter but the set of effects from matter subjected to certain stressful conditions.
Only those who fully understand the reason for the repeated changes of state in the wet path, as well as the sharp and violent passage in the dry path, to which the raw material must be subjected for Mercury / Mercurius to come out, can guess the intimate nature of the Mercurius.
Which is better, the dry path or the wet path?
The wet path is didactical for releasing shapes and colors, while the dry path leads to a more direct and safe final cooking.
On the wet path, the danger is desiccation; on the dry path, the flood.
The wet way is more flexible in errors and can be defined as more intuitive. The dry way requires the exact imitation of a master’s operations because the slightest mistake can ruin everything.
As far as danger is concerned, explosions are dangerous on the wet path – but it must be said that they are often sought as a shortcut to speed up the reduction of the raw material into infinitesimal parts through the quick passage from the solid to the gaseous state. And then, many play with acid for the same reason.
The metallurgical path develops in an environment that requires prudence and attention.
The alchemical anecdote is richer in alchemists injured or deceased while handling acids or gunpowder directly than inhaling metal fumes. Canseliet describes the excellent displays occurring after the so-called abortions of the philosophical egg, very likely caused by a disorder in the regular electromagnetic scale.
Do alchemists, in their treatises, describe the dry path or the wet path?
As strange as it may seem, the two paths are not antithetical to each other: the way of antimony, for example, begins in one way and ends in the other. When speaking of regimes of fire, Philalethes describes the wet way, or rather the wet way phase. Reading the treatises of his contemporary iatrochemists can be of great help.
Is it true that the Stone can only be reached through the dry path?
The wet path takes you quite easily to Lapis Philosophorum Medicina Tertii Ordinis (Cabala Mineralis), Lapis Medicinalis Microcosmi and Macrocosmi (Testamentum Fratenitatis).
The dry path leads to the Philosophical Egg, but with great difficulty and uncertainty.
The Philosophical Egg is the antechamber of the Stone. I presently ignore if the Stone can be reached from the wet path Lapis Medicinalis.
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