Bacstrom’s Apparatus to Draw Lunar Humidity

Is Bacstrom’s apparatus to draw lunar humidity and eighteenth century naivety? From Moon really
descends humidity? Does Secret Fire dwell in humidity?
In Manly Palmer manuscripts collection Sigismund Bacstrom introduces an astonishing, and too
much complicated, apparatus to attract lunar humidity. As you can see from the image, it is a typical
late eighteenth century vessels, recipients, cooker and coolers equipment to collect condensations. Is
this equipment technically sound? And sound for what?
This Bacstrom’s drawing, which is without a written description, apart from the notes
accompanying the outline, has been scarcely mentioned in alchemical environments. I’m not amazed
of that, since modern alchemists scarcely own the knowledge and the experience to make a point on
the topic. Here, this goes without saying, I don’t mean to state to possess such learning and wide
experience. But, perhaps naively, I think this article deserves a place in the alchemical search for
Secret Fire/Mercurius history.
We have already seen that our Secret Fire, in addition to dwell in terrestrial raw matter, comes
daily to the ground from the sky (1). We have also seen that collecting it directly from the sun is
extremely difficult (2). Also we know that raw matter has often to be “magnetized” for a certain
period under outdoor sun-moon conditions (3) before undergo laboratory operations. Of course to
magnetize is here a synonym of” increasing the amount of Secret Fire we can find inside our raw
matter. Nevertheless the verb “to increase” is not entirely correct in this case, because I was always
told that very hardly Secret Fire shows a “chemical” behavior, being not chemical at all but physical.
If you put salts to outdoor conditions, we can notice chemical variations like oxidation, acidification,
and deliquescence and so on. Sometimes unexperienced alchemists take this appearance (since it is
only appearance) as a sign of alchemical magnetization. In fact these exterior signs are totally useless
if certain conditions go unobserved. A deliquescence per-se means nothing.
Very know is little about Secret Fire behavior and even less about its composition. Although a sub-
atomic consistency is supposed (electronic cloud), there is a long alchemical tradition of mirrors-like
operations. Such as in Mercurius Duplicatus (4), for instance. A Secret Fire always needs another
Secret Fire to mirror upon, and vice versa.
But let’s start observing Bacstrom’s (since he doesn’t provide any different author) apparatus. An
orifice in a wall, a glass funnel, a series of communicating glass bowls. The first heated up, the others
chilled out by cold water. In ancient roman public latrines an ingenious ventilation system was
provided, consisting of an oven with an overlying cylinder: the hot air is less dense than the
surrounding cold air, and therefore floats as the cold air drops underneath it and pushes it up out-of-
the-way, this causes ventilation. In addition, the rising hot air currents were shrunk by the upper
cylinder and consequently further speeded, causing the surrounding air to move away from the oven.
In Bacstrom’s drawing under each chilled out vessel an ending container is provided. It is easy to
suppose that a kind of humidity is certainly gathered. A condensation of water molecules, I guess.
Could Bacstrom conjecture this condensation actually was “lunar humidity”?

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 We have already seen, in articles as Nuisement and the Sun Resisting Capture and Pietro Perugino
and the Lady of the Wind, that the Secret Fire coming from the Sun is sent to earth through the Moon
during the night. What we haven’t seen yet is that ancient alchemists defined the Secret
Fire/Mercurius, necessarily coming from the Moon, as a “lunar dropping”. In seventeenth century the
military surgeon John French, in his ”Art of Distillation” hazardously presented a method to gather
this supposed humidity with a sponge. In twenty-first century Fulcanelli, more wisely, said that the
closest representation of our Secret Fire/Mercurius could be the lunar beams. Bacstrom did probably
take these words as real. And we have no evidence he failed to understand.
I want to add a technical detail: orifices. Being them either slits or holes. We know that when an
air flow is forced through a narrow opening it is also speeded up. Although I’m not sure this is the
theory intended to explain the Secret Fire increase phenomenon, a large space after a hole and/or a
slit seems to collect humidity and sounds. And we know that they both can be involved in Secret Fire.
To end, surely a precipitation of droplets of the common air humidity could take place in the
condensation vessels. Has this product something to do with a supposed lunar humidity? I don’t
know, but orifices do miracles in Alchemy.

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 A Didactical Alchemical Scheme by Sigismund Bacstrom

If for personal use, or not, he introduces the more easy to be explained path: that of metallic gold.
Of course not all alchemists wish, or can, follow this expensive and not short method. It is fair to
say that the virtuosi, or skillful ones, tend to perform other paths, with easier and cheaper to find raw
matters, or simply faster. But these different paths, to untrained eyes, may not seem so different
from common ancient chemistry recipes. While the metallic gold path disclosed by Bacstrom, from
the beginning, necessarily shows its peculiarity.
Sigismund Bacstrom, although his being known mostly by English mother tongue researchers, was
apparently son of a Swedish father and born in Germany. He claimed to have been “regularly
educated at the University of Strasbourg as a physician, Surgeon and Chemist”. From 1763 to 1770 he
served as a surgeon on war ships of the Dutch navy. In 1772 he applied to naturalist Sir Joseph Banks
on his discovery voyages, who engaged him perhaps because of his remarkably clear handwriting.
Then he “suffered” (as he later wrote) a not comfortable career as a merchant ship’s surgeon. Finally
he became acquainted with a gentleman, an unnamed “Lover of Chemical Experiments” who
established him in an expensive laboratory and supported his efforts in natural philosophy.
Unfortunately he had to leave this lucky position and, while in France the revolution raged, he was
engaged in a five years ship voyage around the world. His much talked about stay in Mauritius island
didn’t exceed a few months.
Bacstrom apparently did not publish his own treatises, but he is chiefly known for his generous
task of translating into English some ancient outstanding alchemical German and Latin works. On the
negative side, some of these treatises went abruptly abridged in too many practical nutshells.
Bacstrom then formed several manuscripts, with his appreciated remarkably clear handwriting. Some
of these texts now belong to the Manly Palmer collection. From this, generously available on-line
thanks to Getty Research Institute, we can find a section with an interesting “Alchemy in a nutshell”
summarize.
The whole section is entitled: “Alchemy, a selected collection of Testimonies about the Doctrines
and Practice of the Ancient Alchemists: extracted from their writings.
The following extracts, selected from many authors, contain a full elucidation of the hidden art on
which so many thousands volumes have been written. The writings of these philosophers are written
with studied ambiguity to conceal the art; a disclosure of which could not fail to throw prejudicial to
mankind, though, eventually, it would certainly be far otherwise. The obscurity, however, which
pervades their writings, ought not to be wholly ascribed to their wishes to conceal their
knowledge…….”
Bacstrom’s cautious courtesy here demonstrates he is not writing a note for himself, but for a
larger audience. And, as we can see further on, he is preparing readers to the fact that very hardly
ancient authors used to handle the same paths:
“ A slight cursory reading of a few of the authors, who have written on their art, will not enable
any enquire to discover where harmony exists among them; much will it enable him to reconcile

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differences which arise from the different ways in which they have respectively chosen to handle their
subject…”
Unfortunately, many of these different ways very little differ from common ancient chemistry
methods, but for some details. Letting the untrained reader to be perplex and, even worse, unable to
appreciate to real differences of Alchemy from chemistry.
“Anyway almost all speak of “one”, “two”, “three”, “four” and “five”. But these differences are
mere “quibbles”…..
Or wordplays. In fact the substance is always one, our Secret Fire/Mercurius in all its
transformations and divisions (1). But let’s go directly to what Bacstrom correctly defines a
compendium:
“1. The first principle, the ground work and foundation of the whole art is Gold – common pure
gold, without any ambiguity or double meaning. This is “our Sulphur”.
2. The second is Mercury not common quicksilver, however, but that substance to which the
Philosophers have given the name of “our Mercury”, “our Diana”, “our Moon”, “our Luna”, “unripe
Gold” and many other names.
3. The third is what they call their “Secret Fire”, “our mercurial water”, “Dissolving Water”, “Fire
against nature”, “Spirit”, “Spirit of Life”, “the Mover”, “The Priest”.
The first being well purified, and the second properly prepared, they are then joined together, and
the compound, which is called Rebis, is then reduced to powder and mixed with the third. Thus are all
the three principles united in proper proportion.”
This is the same way poetically described by Augurello in his “Crysopoeia, or the Art of making
Gold” (2). Only, here is schematically reduced. To be clearer, the first and second principles are
misplaced: the real number one is the preparation of what Bacstrom calls “Mercury”, that’s to say
our Mercurius, which is not so different from the third principle, or the “Priest”. Why a Priest?
Because a person authorized to perform certain rites was also administer of marriages. In fact our
Mercurius tends to get “married” with common gold. That results in a Mercurius Duplicatus” (3), or
double Mercurius. Since the metallic gold cannot aspire to be tied with an aristocrat Mercurius
without being an aristocrat himself (4). That’s to say without being another Mercurius, since here we
are talking of getting calcined metallic gold powder to be dissolved in our universal dissolvent /
Alkahest / Mercurius, the same come out of the preparatory works (see an Opus Magnum scheme).
Mercurius comes from complete insoluble salts volatilizations. I used plural because a single
volatilization is not enough, and that is one of the difference between Alchemy and ancient
chemistry. As the Mercurius/Secret Fire is our Spirit of Life and Spirit of Life, unlike Soul, is the same
for every organized molecule, we can virtually extract our Secret Fire from every ( actually just a great
number though) starting raw matter. Only, metallic salts do contain more (5). Generally speaking a
Mercurius is a wonderful dissolvent for metallic salts, which in their turn become Sulphur, that’s to
say a means to fix a too much volatile Mercurius (8). All substances fitted to fix Mercurius are called
Sulphur, anyway Sulphur is also a Mercurius self-fixed. Ancient alchemists, like their colleagues
chemists, were more interested in substances functions than molecular composition.

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Bacstrom’s scheme is even too complicated, we can simplified in this way: 1. Produce a certain
amount of Mercurius/Secret Fire and divide it in parts. 2. Use a part to dissolve metallic gold calcined
powder, which in so doing becomes a Mercurius from gold. 3. Then put into another part of the first
Mercurius, and then another one. In Cabala Mineralis Rabbi ben Simeon provides “weights” to
perform the operations (6). In Atalanta Fugiens Michael Maier defines this system as a method to
stop a fast running Atalanta girl (7).
To summarize the whole process it is important to understand that each immersion in Mercurius /
Secret Fire helps to extract Mercurius / Secret Fire from raw matters. In fact, once achieved
Mercurius out of preparatory works, Alchemy becomes just a huge extraction series of processes.
In fact Bacstrom goes on: ”The first being well purified, the second, properly prepared, they are then
joined together, and their compound, which is called Rebis, is then reduced to powder and mixed with
the third. Thus are all the three principles united in proper proportion.”
The following of Bacstrom compendium is a potpourri from several treatises, but, as mentioned
above, he puts together a too much heterogeneous selection, and, as we know, this approach more
than often may cause confusion and not certainty. Bacstrom’s method is here to take just the
excerpts that should confirm his theories, but in so doing find their room also excerpts from authors
dealing others paths. Alchemy is not a puzzle board.