In the Baroque era many experiments were done to replicate seedlings from their own ashes…
Until the mid-18th century, there is a vast literature and scientific reports on experiments, accompanied by various drawings and sketches, by countless researchers who experimented with the possibility of “resurrection” of plants from their ashes. The few successful experiments turned out to be unreplicable, as they seemed to be random arrangements of nature.
In De Natura Rerum Paracelsus dared to give a real recipe for resurrecting little birds from their ashes…
De Natura Rerum, on the nature of things, is just attributed to Paracelsus, anyway, here is the recipe: subject a live bird in a tightly sealed retort to the third degree of fire, burn it and reduce it to dust and ashes. Then let it putrefy closed in its primary shell to the highest degree of putrefaction inside the belly of a horse until the state of mucilaginous phlegm. This phlegm can be hatched again, renewed and regenerated, and eventually become a bird, provided that this phlegm is closed again in its first vessel or shell. It means resurrecting the dead by rebirth and transfiguration, representing a great and noble mystery of Nature. Through this process, every bird can be killed and brought back to life, renewed, and regenerated”.
Gruesome method, which however would be alchemically acceptable if instead of birds there were metallic salts. Was Paracelsus perhaps speaking between the lines?
Closed again in its first vessel or shell it is equivalent to making it return to its origins of hatching from the egg, that is, of reliving its birth. And that’s not gruesome, that’s impossible. Even a neophyte would have understood that “enclosing” in the first vessel could only be symbolic, unless one thinks that a generic still could be considered the original container.
Yet many alchemists are confident that they are operating rightly by pouring over the ashes the spirit of life and the soul previously extracted with skill.
In the alchemical jargon, pouring over the ashes the spirit of life and the soul previously extracted with skill, it means to unite the fixed (soul) and the volatile (spirit) in a new body. Unfortunately, almost every stage of alchemical works, from before the beginning to the end of the last cooking, features processes that are all defined as to unite the fixed (soul) and the volatile (spirit) in a new body.
I guess that only experience can lead to distinction.
Perhaps Paracelsus symbolically chose birds because they were born from an egg. And this detail immediately brings us to the Philosophers’ Stone.
Do you think Paracelsus chose the little bird as a metaphor to instead indicate the Philosophers’ Stone?
In fact, I think the little bird is a metaphor for the Philosophers’ Stone, and this deduction is supported by the fact that the little bird is a singing animal, singing to attract another little bird. A perfect metaphor for the waiting for the eighth note of the philosophers’ egg, as we will see later.
The procedures involved in theurgic rituals seem very different. Is there any common ground with metal Alchemy?
There are no equivalents in Christian culture to grasp the subtleties of the ancient Egyptian soul differentiation. Therefore, let’s not look for the differences now—they could instead be expressed by the alchemical differentiation between the spirit of life and the soul. Let’s focus instead on what appeared to be the practices of theurgic rituals for recalling parts of the soul. Now, I’m not an Egyptologist, but as an alchemist, I find the ritual of the “opening of the mouth” to have interesting analogies with some phases of alchemical work that involve the “arrival of oscillations” or the “extraction of oscillations from raw matter”. Alchemists call these phases “reduction to Prima Materia” which is not Materia Prima, first matter.
Prima Materia. They note, indeed, that each alchemical path leads to materials of very different compositions and textures. Clearly, to have such a high-sounding base name, this Prima Materia, first matter, must have a common basis, which cannot be merely chemical.
2 But what if we are to apply the same concept to reigns with a necessary DNA?
Leaving aside Platonic palingenesis (which we leave to theurgists and philosophers), it’s not easy for a modern apprentice to understand what these “matters that had made their own grave” have in common with Prima Materia. They note, indeed, that each alchemical path leads to materials of very different compositions and textures. Clearly, to have such a high-sounding base name, this Prima Materia, first matter, must have a common basis, which cannot be merely chemical.
4 So what could have gone wrong, in the resurrection of those lively little birds? Perhaps the intervention of a “dry water” was missing? The real one that “does not wet our hands”?
If water intervenes, it’s not ordinary, but as a principle. We will see that the principle of water gathers together everything that flows, even the air around us when it moves. Water that does not wet the hands can be understood as a matter or an oscillation. In the second case, we are totally in the realm of physics.
5 Commonly translated as a principle pertaining to cosmology, we cannot help but mention the concept of àpeiron without mentioning its etymology, which appears to derive from the Akkadian word meaning “earth”.
In the case the word dust shouldn’t be taken literally, Anaximander’s àpeiron seems very promising in that regard. We cannot talk about the concept of Apeiron without mentioning Anaximander: in fact, the term àpeiron ἄπειρον was just created by him. So, Anaximander’s fragment, fr. B 12 1 from Simplicius of Cilea: Anaximander … said … that principle of beings is the infinite (ἄπειρον, àpeiron) … where beings have their origin, and also the destruction as necessary: because they pay each other punishment and atonement of injustice according to the order of time. Why did I mention àpeiron? Because its etymology appears to originate from the Akkadian meaning “earth”. The well-known fragment of Anaximander, which says that all things come from and return to ‘àpeiron, therefore, does not refer to a philosophical conception of infinity but to a concept of “belonging to the earth” that can be found throughout an earlier sapiential tradition of Asian origin and which is also present in the biblical text: “dust you are and dust you shall return”.
6 Are ashes a material used in Alchemy?
The ashes are not used as primary raw material – since nothing more can be reduced – but are used as a secondary product for purely instrumental purposes as was the tradition in ancient chemistry.
7 So why do they specifically talk about ash?
Because the ashes can no longer be burned. They are indestructible unless scattered. So, we have to think that there is something indestructible in the ashes.
Now I will speak as an alchemist: what survives death comprises salt that remains in the human body, which neither art nor ingenuity can destroy, and which is called dry water and central or humid radical salt because of the conjunction of the humid with the dry spirit in it. It accumulates in the subject and cannot be destroyed by the fire. Therefore, there’s something eternal in the salt that remains in the ashes and in the subject worthy of being revived. All things comprise volatile and fixed salt. The fixed salt correlates with the volatile like the earth correlates with the sky – the correlation between animated being and the being that animates. And the volatile salt is the envelope of life, the seat, and the abode of the volatile spirit. Fixed salt inhabits the earth and the water, and therefore the physical bodies, and human bodies as well. The depths of this fixed salt contain the air, the wind, the spirit, the sky and the light, and the virtue of all the elements, but invisibly. The volatile salt is the key to the fixed salt so that the captives are set free, and the dead return to life.
8 Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris, Remember, man, that you are dust and “through” dust you shall return. What symbolic value can be given to this “dust”?
You translated the Latin noun pulvis-pulverem as dust, but powder is also suitable, meaning very finely ground matter. Additionally, strange that you didn’t use it, pulvis-pulverem also indicates the ashes of the deceased. But also, the place where running races were held, hence the field/track. And finally, the powder on which geometry and mathematics lessons were held.
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