Alchemy Behind The Philosopher's Stone

Winner of the II Prize
Juan Antonio Cebrián

Historical Disclosure
Luis Silva
ALCHEMY
BEHIND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

© 2012. Luis Silva.
© 2012. Cover illustration: Iván San Martín.
Misstaggart - www.misstaggart.com
© 2012. Editorial design: Arbotante Patrimonio e Innovación, SL
Edited by: Arbotante Patrimonio e Innovación, SL
www.arbotante.com - www.glyphos.net
1st edition, December 2012
ISBN-13: 978-84-940699-2-5
Legal deposit: VA-1043-2012
Printed in Spain / Printed in Spain
All rights reserved. No reproduction, reprint, or
use by any form or means, whether electronic, mechanical, chemical or
other type, both known and those that can be invented, including photocopying
or
recording, nor is it allowed to be stored in an information and retrieval
system,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Winner of the II Prize

Juan Antonio Cebrián
Historical Disclosure
Town Hall
by Crevillent
To my alchemist brothers and sisters who give their hearts

to this sublime and divine Science. To them and them my deepest respect
and consideration.
To Kali of Saa, for her invaluable help in revising and composing
tion of this book, and especially because of the affection and fervor that
has
dedicated.
To my wife and daughter, for understanding and enduring my philo-
sophic. Many hours I have stolen from them.
To the alchemists LL, Santi Jubany, JM Castillo, JM
Marimón and Artefuego, for sharing their altruistic translations of
old texts not edited into Spanish. In this work we point them out
as footnotes.
To Raimon Arola, Professor of Symbolism at the University
Barcelona and manager of www.arsgravis.com, website of the subject of
Symbolism of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona-
canvas, for his effort in keeping alchemical imagery alive.
And my sincere thanks to the Mil Caminos de
Alcobendas (Madrid), organizer of the Congresses on Mysteries
of Science and History, because they trusted me, they surrounded me with
darling and they allowed me to broadly discuss such an unknown subject
like this. Thanks to them everything has started to roll, giving impetus to a
new alchemical rebirth.
7
INDEX
FOREWORD .................................................
................................... fifteen
I. PRELIMINARY ...............................................
....................... twenty-one
ALCHEMY. ETYMOLOGY AND DEFINITION ........................... 21
Etymology .................................................
..................................... twenty-one
Alchemy is a sublime, divine Chemistry ........................ 22
Definition .................................................
...................................... 24
Alchemy, a branch of Natural Philosophy ...................... 25
Alchemy is a Science .............................................
.......... 27
Alchemy is an Art .............................................
................. 28
Alchemy, a Science or Art of separatory that
imitating Nature recreates the universal Creation .......... 28
Alchemy accelerates natural processes ........................... 29
Differences between Hermetic Chemistry and
Vulgar Chemistry ...............................................
......................... 29
ALCHEMISTS .................................................
............................. 31
Adepts, philosophers and children or children of Art
................................ 31
Blowers, charitable, envious and greedy alchemists. 32
CLASSIC TEXTS OF ALCHEMY ......................................... 33
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ALCHEMY ...................................... 37
II. METAPHYSICS .................................................
.......................... 40
DEEPERING INTO NATURAL PHILOSOPHY ............. 40
LOGOS, PHYSIS, ETHOS .............................................
............... Four. Five
Logos (Logic) ..............................................
................................. 46
The Pneûma and the Logoi Spermatikoi
........................................... 48
Representations of the Logos ...............................................
........ fifty
Symbols of the Pneûma or Universal Spirit ............................. 55
Luis Silva
Form and matter ...............................................
........................... 56
Alchemy is a Donum Dei ............................................ ..... 58
Something else about the Universal Spirit
o Soul of the World of Alchemists ..................................... 60
Body, soul, spirit .............................................
................... 63
Physis (Physics) .............................................
.............................. 65
The alchemical concept of Nature .................................. 66
Alchemy. Fundamental theories and principles ....................... 67
The unity of matter .............................................
.............. 67
The four elements. Fire, Air, Water and Earth ............... 69
The three principles ...............................................
...................... 72
Ethos (The Ethics) .............................................
................................. 73
III. PHYSICAL .................................................
.................................... 77
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. PROPERTIES,
FORMS AND VIRTUES ...............................................
................. 77
Physical properties of the philosopher's stone
.................................. 78
In sight ...............................................
........................................ 78
Touch ................................................
.......................................... 79
Smell ................................................
........................................ 79
Chemical properties of the philosopher's stone .............................
80
Forms and other virtues of the philosopher's stone ..........................
81
In the form of universal Medicine
............................................. .. 81
In the form of projection powder
............................................ . 86
Multiplication or increase of the transmuting power ... 87
How is a transmutation carried out? ................................... 88
Special transmutations ................................................
..... 89
Transmutation elixir. Cold Transmutation .................... 89
Non-metallic transmutations ............................................ 89
In the form of a perpetual light or lamp
....................................... 92
TRANSMUTATIONS .................................................
................ 94

Natural transmutations ................................................
.......... 94
In inorganic bodies ...............................................
............... 94
In organic bodies ...............................................
................... 95
1. Investigations of Louis Nicolas Vauquelin ..................... 95
2. Investigations of William Prout .......................................
95
3. Louis Kervran Research ...................................... 96
Artificial transmutations ................................................
........ 97
Rutherford .................................................
................................... 97
Transmutations with the philosopher's stone. Testimonials ............. 100
1. Van Helmont ..............................................
.............................. 100
2. Helvetius ...............................................
..................................... 102
3. Richard Chanfray ..............................................
...................... 103
OPERATIVE ALCHEMY ................................................
............. 107
Metallic alchemy: Metals ............................................. .....
107
Metallic genesis ................................................
.......................... 110
On the need for gold in the philosopher's work
............................... 114
Preparation of gold before its natural dissolution ............... 116
Live metals, dead metals ............................................. ...
121
Vivify the dead and martyr the living.
The natural dissolution of gold
............................................. ....... 124
Of the necessary matters in the philosopher's work.
The philosophers' salt and gold ..........................................
.......... 125
The salt of the philosophers .............................................
................... 125
Gold ................................................
........................................... 126
The different alchemical pathways
.............................................. ....... 128
Philosopher's stone and particular stones.
Universal road and private roads
............................................. .. 129
Dry route and wet route .............................................
................... 130
The golden solution. The universal wet and metal way.
The phases and regimes or kingdoms of the Work ......................... 133
Nigredo. The work in black or putrefaction of gold.
The Regime of Mercury and the Regime of Saturn ......... 139
On the Mercury Regime .............................................. ......
141
Of the Regime of Saturn ..............................................
........ 148
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Luis Silva
Albedo. The work to the target or the whitewashing of the gold.
The regime of Jupiter and that of the Moon
..................................... 151
The Regime of Jupiter ..............................................
.......... 151
Of the Diana or Moon Regime ........................................ 153
Rubedo. The work to the red or the redness of the stone.
The Regime of Venus, Mars and the Sun .............................. 155
On the Regime of Venus ..............................................
........... 155
On the Regime of Mars ..............................................
............ 156
Of the Regime of the Sun ..............................................
................ 157
The fermentation of the stone .............................................
........ 161
The Multiplication of the Philosopher's Stone
................................... 162
The universal short route ..............................................
.................. 164
The most universal or simple way of Nature ............. 166
Golden rule of the most universal way.
A single substance, a single glass, a single regimen
or provision ................................................
.............................. 169
Only one subject, but what subject? ................................ 170
The glass or glasses .............................................
.................... 176
The regime or disposition of the fire.
The Alchemist's Athanor ..............................................
........ 179
The Mutus Liber or the universal path of spring dew ....... 181
Elaboration of the universal solvent and the philosopher's stone ... 181
The pitfalls of the Mutus Liber
............................................. ...... 182
Imaginative Reading ................................................
.................. 183
An original from the Mutus Liber in Madrid ................................
183
Other old editions of the Mutus Liber ............................. 184
Mutus Liber Interpretations ........................................... 185
The dew, food of the Gods
and of our lower universe ............................................. ....
185
Unveiling the first sheet ..............................................
........ 186
Dew in the Bible .............................................
......................... 188
The two roses ...............................................
................................. 190
The Angels ................................................
................................... 190
Stairs ................................................
.................................... 192
eleven

The Vertically Traversed Circle .........................................
192
The crossed circle ...............................................
......................... 192
Spring ................................................
................................ 192
Jacob .................................................
............................................. 193
The Selage of the Druids .............................................
................. 193
The stars................................................
.................................. 194
Moon ................................................
......................................... 194
IV Plate. Dew Collection ...............................................
...... 195
Aries, Taurus, Gemini. Spring ....................................... 196
The triangle. The symbol of the Fire or Universal Spirit ....... 197
Flos coeli ................................................
....................................... 198
The sun and the moon .............................................
............................... 198
Clouds ................................................
...................................... 199
V Plate. Distillation and digestion
.............................................. 199
Lunatic Vulcan ................................................
.......................... 200
Digestion .................................................
..................................... 202
VI Plate. New distillation ................................................
..... 202
Apollo, the Sun ..............................................
................................... 204
Calcination .................................................
.................................. 204
A little more imagery and alchemical praxis ....................... 204
Digby's Dust of Sympathy. 17th century .......... 205
Explanation of the emblems.
Preparation of the universal solvent .......................................
207
IV APPENDIX ................................................
.............................. 209
Working in the laboratory. A story in pictures ......... 209
The atanor and the still .............................................
................ 209
Dew Collection and Distillation ...........................................
212
The Land of Rocío ..............................................
......................... 216
The importance of light radiation .......................... 220
With solar radiation ...............................................
.................... 227
With cold light radiation .............................................
............. 230
The importance of the nitro salt of the philosophers
........................... 231
EPILOGUE .................................................
...................................... 238
Laborious Art That Converts Igneous Moisture from Metals into Mercury
Barent Coenders van Helpen. L'Escalier des Sages. 1686.
Source: French National Library.
fifteen
FOREWORD
Do not
the reader believes that the work in his hands is fruitful.

all of the 30 days, which was the time it took to
assemble it and build it. It is the result of more than half a life, and
We confess that we are already in the early autumn of our
existence.
We have learned practically everything we know about the
reading and rereading of the dark ancient texts, in principle
understandable, dealing with our alchemical Art. They some
intuitions and operative practice have been our true
Teachers What we offer the reader has taken us many years
study and praxis. The first years were learning,
development and consolidation and the latest implementation of
the learned. And although we go through stages of disappointment,
It is true that today we are very satisfied with our
discoveries.
The art of the ancient alchemists is by no means fanciful at all.
Tasia or imagination. It is real, true; you just have to investigate it,
enter its world, know its keys, unravel its symbol-
logy and take action. We guarantee that they expect pleasant
surprises.
Knowing the Philosophy that surrounds the alchemical cosmos has
filled with satisfactions, especially it has opened the doors to us.
You are going to a new interpretation of the Laws that govern the Universe.
On the other hand, an understanding of alchemical imagery has
trained in a new way of reading: that of reading images
or imaginative. The image is always much richer in information.
tion than words. In fact it was used in ancient times not only
as a mnemonic technique (images are very reminiscent of
better than words), but also to hide information.
In Alchemy only he who knows the key or can read the
16
Luis Silva
alchemical language, and that is acquired with the repeated reading of
the classic texts of Alchemy. It is what we decided in its day,
comply with the aphorism1 established by the ancient Mutus Liber,
a masterpiece of ancient Chemical Art: Ora, lege, lege, lege,
Relege, Labora et Invenies.2
Detail of the fourteenth plate of the Mutus Liber.

What we want with this book is for the reader to follow us and
learn to interpret these texts and their images, a teaching
very few contemporary authors have offered. For it
we will use the classic treatises. The present research work
section is full of excerpts and quotes from these old works, and each
one of our chapters begins with some of them.
We have divided our book into four parts: Preliminaries,
Metaphysics, Physics and an Appendix.
II
In the Preliminaries the reader will find some basic ideas of
what is true Alchemy, to differentiate it from any
another modern pseudoscience. Today the word Alchemy is
fashion and used for anything: in cinema, literature,
1 Brief and doctrinal sentence that is proposed as a rule in some science or
art.
2 Pray, read, read, read, reread, work and you will find.
17

commercial enterprises of any kind, there is even talk of a
mental chemistry and even, to our surprise, an alchemy
sexual. The Alchemy we offer is very different, it is based
mainly in the ancient classical Alchemy texts of the
Middle Ages and Renaissance.
We define true Alchemy and address its goal, which
it is the making of the philosopher's stone. We see their differences with
vulgar Chemistry and that existing among sincere alchemists and
the false ones; these were called by the philosophers with the names
of sophists or blowers. We deal with the apparent hierarchical scale
among the alchemists (which some divide into Adepts, philosophers
and children or children of Art), we explain what classical texts are
of Alchemy and we end with a very brief history of Alchemy.
mine, because we only intend to show that this is very old and
it has been practiced in the most important ancient civilizations.
We are sure that these preliminaries will place the reader in
alchemical reality. They are simple, basic ideas, but what have I-
We consider it necessary to treat.
III
In Metaphysics, 3 or beyond Physics, of the Physical or so-
gible, we deal with the philosophical principles that permeate the
Alchemy. The Stoics, heirs of Pythagorean Wisdom, di-
They divided their knowledge in three parts: Logic, Physics and Ethics.
The ancient alchemists showed total respect for the whole
of this Wisdom, which in ancient times was called Natural Philosophy, is
Furthermore, they demonstrated the reality of these principles, since the
principles
They became physical, tangible. Since ancient times it was believed in the
existence
the power of a cosmic force emanating from God, and the alchemist
confirmed his reality in the physical world, for he could catch it and
3 From the Greek meta, beyond, and from physis, nature, that is, beyond
nature or
beyond the physical or tangible. Metaphysics is the fundamental science of
Philosophy.
18
Luis Silva
fix and with it transmute the atomic structure of metals and
perform many other wonders.
The reader will find here the philosophical-alchemical conception
Logos (God) and Physis or Nature, the latter concept
very different from the current one. We confess that until we went
aware that Alchemy was a branch or daughter of this Sa-
ber, of Natural Philosophy, and we did not delve into it, we wandered
We are in Vulgar Chemistry. It took us many years, for example,
perceive the concept of the universal spirit of the world or soul of the
world, basic in our Art. We continually read the term
Mino, but we always missed it. Now, the reader
will have it handy and defined in a simple way. Many authors
Modernists, and even alchemists, understand Alchemy as if
It was a vulgar Chemistry, and for us there is nothing else
far from reality.
Here we also define the theories and fundamental principles
them who order our Art. They are very solid and necessary bases
if you want to undertake the alchemical adventure. The unity of the
matter, the four elements, the three principles, the concepts
alchemicals of body, soul and spirit or the dichotomy between
Ria and spirit are explained in an agile and simple way.
We also deal with the Ethics that oblige the alchemist. Practice
ethically no current author has considered this topic, without
However, hermetic treaties always usually begin with
praises and thanks to the Creator, to continue with the
description of the moral behavior that the al-
chemist who seeks to reach the philosopher's stone. Alchemy,
they tell us, it is a Donum Dei, a gift of God that He grants to
who pleases him, but especially the one who respects the rules of Ethics.
AC. The alchemist must respect the Creator, be charitable, good
heart, humble and sincere ..., and must ask God constantly
that will take you to the end of the Work. However, although it may
To say it, Alchemy is not a religion at all, nor of course
proselytizing. What's more, choose your own, keeping the rest away thanks
to the darkness and complexity of his method.
19

IV
In the title dedicated to Physics we deal, first of all,
of the physical and chemical characteristics that were attributed to the
philosopher's stone, of its three general virtues (wealth, health and
biduria), we mention three historical transmutations, famous and
recognized, ignoble metals in gold and we analyze, based on criteria
scientific questions, the possibility or not of metallic transmutation.
Next, we describe the alchemical praxis or the works
in pursuit of the philosopher's stone, and we do it with many
cha clarity. The reader will read, in minutes, concepts that we
it took us many years to find and assimilate. Alchemy, by
tradition, has never been made clear, and we break into
part that rule. In the manufacture of the philosopher's stone we put or-
den in the phases of the metallic wet universal work and we offer
with extreme clarity all the processes through which the gold passes
metal when it comes in contact with its universal solvent, a
process that is a real wonder to the eyes of the alchemist.
ta. In the manufacture of the stone of the sages we distinguish between
the real or universal ways and the particular ones. We unveil concepts
coughs like those of metallic genesis, essential to understand
our Science, the difference between living metals and dead metals.
cough, the meaning of vivifying the dead in order to martyr the living, or
the need for prior metallic purification before starting the
jobs. Surely all of them will seem simple to the reader, without
However, it took us many years to scrutinize them
the appropriate texts, because what some texts hide, others
manifest. In them, the different ways of philosophical work are mixed
clan and confuse, as well as the operative phases. All is
like a puzzle that has to be sorted, and here the student
you will find the foundations of your fit. The only thing we do not reveal is
the manufacture of the universal solvent, the true architect of the
work, the only one who starts it and finishes it, but we can't do it
Well, neither Tradition allows it nor we have it in our
hands for now.
twenty
Luis Silva
We also teach the researcher to decipher some images
alchemical genes - alchemical imagery was a very resourceful
used among Renaissance alchemists - a di-
This required many years of study from us. For
this, we open a part of the old Mutus Liber, one of the books
most appreciated among us. Four of his plates were studied
dian in depth, as well as one from an old book
from the seventeenth century entitled The Dust of Sympathy.
V
In the Appendix we show some of our own research.
tigaciones in search of this magnificent stone. We describe our
work route, called Vía universal del decío, which demands
a single matter, a single glass and a single regime or arrangement of the
fire needed. The reader receives explanations and photographic evidence
ficas of the creation of our atanor, built like that of the
ancient medieval athenors, from our imaginative furnace
cold light or that of our large artisan glass still. At the time
po, you will see in our own images how we put into practice
some of the works of ancient philosophers and we contrast
results.
SAW
Finally, we declare that it has motivated us, in the elaboration
of this treatise, the desire to spread Alchemy, the real, and homage
jear with it to those ancient wise philosophers who in the gloom
of their laboratories were dedicated to unraveling the secrets of the
nature.
Luis Silva
twenty-one
I - PRELIMINARY
ALCHEMY. ETYMOLOGY and DEFINITION.
Etymology
The word alchemy is composed of the preposition 'al' which
It is Arabic, which means sublime, excellent, and from 'Chemistry'. A) Yes,
following the force of the word, Alchemy is Chemistry superior to
blime or Chemistry par excellence.
Encyclopedia of Diderot and D´Alembert. 18th century. 4
The name of alchemy derives from 'Chemistry' and from the particle
Arabic 'al'. The Orientals had for a long time the cos-
to highlight the excellence of a thing by attributing it to
divinity. Thus, Alchemy literally means, 'Chemistry of
God ', because the word' al ', means the Supreme Being.
James Robert. Universal Dictionary of Medicine. Paris. 1746.5
The word alchemy in the Arabic language means fire.
Anonymous. Instruction of a father to his son about the solar tree.
In the Theatrum Chemicum Britanicum, Elias Ashmole, 1617.6
The anonymous author of a curious manuscript believes that the
alchemy is derived from 'als', which in Greek means salt, and from
'chemistry' which means fusion ... Others discover its origin in the
first denomination of the land of Egypt, homeland of Sacred Art
grade, Kemi or Kimi7 ... If we had to contribute our opinion,
we would say that in phonetic kabbalah it means what happens, mana,
flows, and indicates particularly to molten metal, the fusion itself
itself, as well as any work made of molten metal, would be this
4 Excerpt translated by the author himself. Source: French National Library.
5 Ibid.
6 There is an edition in Spanish by Indigo editions.
7 Black earth.
22
Luis Silva
a brief and succinct definition of Alchemy as a technical

metallurgical ca ... But we know that the name and the thing are based
in the permutation of form by light, fire or spirit ... '
Fulcanelli. The philosopher's abodes. 1929.8
Do not
the origin of the word alchemy is known exactly.

It does not seem to have a well defined root. Marcelin Berthelot9
argues that alchemy could be derived from an ancient book that led
by title Chema, a text that taught humans the first
arts, including Alchemy. He drew such a conclusion from the
ture of the book Imouth (Imhotep, Egyptian god), whose author, Zosimus
the Panapolitano, 10 is the oldest of the authentic alchemists
known. Chema's name is found in Egypt under the
form of Chemi, title of a treatise cited on a 12th-century papyrus
dynasty and entrusted by a scribe to his son.11 Champollion
also linked it to the Egyptian chemi, a term that the Hebrews
translated as' land of Ham'.12 Another credible etymology makes it
derive from Chemistry, in Greek cheuô, to melt, from which they would derive
chymos, chemistry and congeneric words.
Alchemy is a sublime, divine Chemistry
Indeed, this is how the classic Alchemy texts consider
to his Cienciartis, a sublime, divinized Science and Art. The
They call Excellent Chemistry, Divine Chemistry ..., because the artist
alchemist, although he follows chemical procedures in the search for
day of his goal, he moves away from the time of vulgar Chemistry. The
alchemists need a universal, divine energy. The con-
8 There are several editions in Spanish.
9 The origins of alchemy. 1885. There is an edition in Spanish by MRA
Ediciones.
10 3rd century Greek alchemist.
11 Maspero. Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient. 1875.
12 Son of Noah and alleged alchemist.
2. 3

they considered an emanation of pure God, a creative energy
and sustainer of the Universe. They claimed that this force could
be trapped, fixed and concentrated in a sensitive, pure matter
and subtle, and that without their participation all alchemical work would be
sterile. That is where the difference between vulgar Chemistry lies
and Alchemy.
Precise Alchemy, during the process of making
the philosopher's stone, from the participation of this subtle energy,
extraordinary, universal, but imponderable13 and unknown to
the profane. The alchemists called this force Spirit of the
World, Soul of the World, pure universal Fire, Light and other innu-
worthy names, while the various traditions have
called Prana, Chi, Ki, Ruah, Pneûma, Breath of God, Telesma, Spirit
Holy ritual, etc.
The alchemist, with the help of this Universal Spirit, his great
secret, retrograde matter to its first principles, its
roots or origin; then cleanses it of heterogeneities or im-
purities that it acquired during its long evolution. Reti-
these imperfections have been removed, and with new help of this energy
cosmic, will unite again those principles, now clean, and
will create a new body much more glorious, nonexistent in the
nature: our Philosopher's Stone.
The alchemist searches for his matter, cleans it, purifies it,
stands, sublimates her, 14 volatilizes her, spiritualizes her, so that she is
an auspicious recipient of this universal energy. Alchemy,
they tell us, it is the art of finding and working canonically15 the
matter that allows to trap, fix and concentrate this uni-
Versal. On this matter, a product of nature but necessary
taken from the hands of the alchemist, we will say that it is a "Salt"
known for Science to this day. The ancients called her,
13 That cannot be weighed or measured.
14 In the sense of making a subject sublime or excellent.
15 Traditionally, the manufacture of the philosopher's stone is called Great
Work, but also
also Canon Artis, which the 1st edition of the Dictionary of the French
Academy of 1694
defines as perfect work.
24
Luis Silva
among many other names, its magnesia, 16 for the attractive virtue
tive or attraction of this imponderable power. When is
matter is sufficiently recharged has the power to
to transmute, to change the atomic structure of metals -of
transmute lead into gold, for example - and prevent and heal
diseases and prolong human life.
Finally, we will not let the latest
Fulcanelli's words:
The permutation17 of the form by light, fire or spirit.
Fulcanelli. The philosopher's abodes. 1929.
For therein lies the real heart of the matter, of which
the astute reader will immediately discover its importance. In
Indeed, the ancient alchemists claim that it is light, fire or
spirit of God who permutes the form or, rather, permutes
The matter.
Definition
Alchimia is the separation of the pure substance from the impure.
Martinus Rulandus.
Dictionary of Alchemy. 1612.18
Alchemy is a Science and the Art of making a fer-
ment that transmutes imperfect metals into gold and
serves as a universal remedy for all the natural ills of the
men, animals and plants.
Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety.
Myth-hermetic dictionary. 1758.19
16 From the Greek magneto, magnet.
17 Swap. Change one thing for another.
18 There is an edition in Spanish by MRA Ediciones.
25

Alchemy is High Chemistry. It is the most subtle chemistry me-
through which extraordinary Chemistry operations are carried out
that perform the same things faster than Nature.
za takes many years to produce.
Encyclopedia of Diderot and D´Alembert. 18th century. 20
Alchemy is a very hidden part of Natural Philosophy
and the most necessary part of Physics, which is the investigation of
Nature; with it an art is made that cannot be compared
to no other, because it teaches to perfect all stones
imperfect, to lead human bodies affected by the
disease towards perfect health and transmute metals
in real gold and silver. All this is done with a certain body
universal medicinal ... that is prepared with the work of the hands,
through a hidden ingenuity and an Art that only know
children of truth.
Instruction of a father to his son about the solar tree.
Anonymous text from the 17th century.
We will give a much simpler definition. The the-
Chemistry is a Science and an Art that aims to elaborate
a product called Philosopher's Stone. Next develop-
We show these definitions.
Alchemy, a branch of Natural Philosophy
The metaphysical field of study of the alchemists was and is the
Natural Philosophy. Philosophy derives from the Greek words Philo,
which means 'love to, in love with, or who likes' and Sophia,
an ancient Greek Goddess of Wisdom, referred in this case to
the Prisca21 Sapientia, Gnosis or true, esoteric Knowledge
co, the traditionally hidden and only reserved for the elect.
20 Extract translated by the author himself. Source: French National Library.
21 From the Latin priscus, ancient, venerable. Prisca sapientia is considered
as the first
Wisdom born from a revelation of God to our first Parents.
26
Luis Silva
At the alchemical level, the diffusion of this knowledge takes place

It was transmitted by oral transmission from teacher to disciple, or
by acquiring the keys that allowed to interpret
both the indecipherable alchemical texts and the typical images
enigmatic genes of alchemical iconography. These keys, or
well they were revealed by an Adept, 22 which was generally received
given by divine revelation or intuition or, finally,
perceived after the repeated reading of the classic texts of
Alchemy and the deep study of its images. Alchemy,
say the alchemists, it is a gift of God that He grants to the student.
pure and sincere diante, who lives according to the norms of Ethics and
which follows the well-known alchemical maxim “Ora, Lege, Lege, Lege,
Relege, Labora et Invenies ”. The term "natural" refers to the
nature, but in the sense of its Greek conception, that is,
in that of physis, from whose study the ancient Physica was born, which
to understand the set of everything that exists in space and
in the time.
Ancient Physica was part of Natural Philosophy. Today the
physics has as its object the study of the properties of bodies
22 From the Latin Adeptus, the one who has achieved. That is, in Alchemy it
is the one that has achieved
the Philosopher's Stone.
The Garden of Wisdom

Who tries to enter the rose garden of the philosophers
without a key resembles the man who wants to walk
no feet.
Michael Maier. Atalanta Fugiens. 1618.
To access Sophia's garden it is necessary
know the keys or have the keys that
they open the locks of the philosophers' garden
or the palace of the Wise Men.
Image Source: Stanislas Klossowski de
Rola. The Aúreo game. Siruela Editions. 1988.
27

pos and the laws that tend to modify their status and movement.
without altering its nature - this alteration is the realm of
chemistry-. The ancients, under the name of "Natural Philosophy",
gave it a much broader meaning, encompassing the study
full of the properties of bodies and their relationships,
both material and divine. It is from this natural philosophy that
they learned mathematics, natural sciences and science
physical. The latter were divided into two parts: physics and chemistry.
mica. The alchemist is a natural philosopher. Study the origin and
composition of matter, the arising and dying of things and forces
cosmic zas; therefore, it is a physicist, from the Greek physikos, relative
to the
nature, and also a chemical, as we saw paragraphs earlier.
On the other hand, and with this we move on to the next point, the
chemistry has always been understood by alchemists as a
Science, and also as an Art.
Alchemy is a Science
It is a Science, because for alchemists it is so true, ver-
true, objective and empirical like any other, but the difference
fact is that it is hermetic.23 Its objective, the elaboration of the stone
philosopher that allows metallic transmutation, healing of
all diseases and prolongation of life, it is for them
an evidence. They have manufactured it and have defined both its properties
physical as well as chemical data.
23 Hidden. Esoteric.
Richard, English philosopher:

The study of Science drives away ignorance and leads to
mind to true knowledge.
Johann Daniel Mylius. Opus medico-chymicum. 1618.
Source: www.argravis.com
28
Luis Silva
Alchemy is an Art
Alchemy is also an Art, since this, like those
lla, they need a rule and a method to do a job well. The al-
chemist must be an artist, a craftsman, a Master of Art,
that the first edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy
sa24 defines as the one who is excellent in any Art or Science.
Alchemy has always been conceived and understood as
the Great Art, the Secret Art, the Priestly Art, Royal Art or
the Great Work, the Science of Sciences or the authentic Science
Hermetic.
Alchemy, a Science or Art of separatory that
imitating Nature recreates the universal Creation
Still respecting the definition of Martinus Rulandus, which above
As we mentioned, we will go further: Alchemy is the sepa-
ration of the purest of the pure.
The alchemist scrutinizes the interior of matter, the retrograde
grade by grade looking for its principles or roots. With this retro-
gradation or separation of the heterogeneous25 of the substance,
going to the first matter or protomatter that participated in the
creation of everything that exists, discover in its small and spherical
glass flask a series of phenomena that he considers as a
simile of the Creation of the World.
You children of the divine Hermes, imitators of Nature,
whom Science has shown you Nature in the open, only
you know how that immortal hand formed the Earth and the
Heavens from the formless mass of Chaos, for your Great Work
24 of 1664.
25 From hetero, different, and gene, beginning. Different principles. That is
to say, what is not
mogeneous or own.
29

clearly shows that, in the same way that our
Philosophical elixir, God has made all things.
Marco Antonio Crasellame.
The Light arising by itself from the darkness. 1687.26
Alchemy accelerates natural processes
It is a maxim of the alchemists to maintain that nature
follows its evolutionary course. Natura non facit saltus, they say. Nature
za does not jump, follows a linear path, continuous, step by step, but
slow. They claim that lead will end up being gold, as well as carbon
it will end up being a diamond. This occurs inside the earth, in
its mines, taking thousands of years to do so. The alchemist accelerates
this process shortens it; and what nature takes thousands of years, the rent
mista does it in one or two. "Help me and I will help you" is a phrase
well-known alchemical. It comes from a fictitious colloquium between the al-
chemist and Nature, where she asks for help from him, since her
I wish is to perfect myself. She wants to create something higher than
herself
alone it cannot elaborate. It is about the philosopher's stone. For it
it needs the hands of the artist alchemist. It is a mutual aid. Yes
the alchemist correctly helps Nature to perfect herself,
She will put this magnificent Stone in your hands that will give you
incredible virtues, and thus Nature will have kept her word.
Differences between Hermetic Chemistry and Vulgar Chemistry
Vulgar Chemistry is the art of destroying the compounds that
Nature has formed and Hermetic Chemistry is the art of
work with Nature to perfect them.
Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety. The Egyptian and Greek Fables
unveiled and reduced at the very beginning. 1758.27
26 Translation by Santiago Jubany.

27 Translation of LL
30
Luis Silva
Hermetic chemistry is another of the names that Alki-
mine. It is so named because Hermes28 is considered its founder. For
another, Alchemy, by tradition, has always been a hidden art,
hermetic, only reserved for the initiated. The Adepts followed the
old maxim that says "do not cast pearls to pigs." They were saying
that something so precious could not simply be handed over to the common
people, 29
because this would not be aware of its true value and would finish it,
never so well said, vulgarizing.
We said that the difference between Alchemy and Residual Chemistry
of the participation of a hidden and imposed universal energy
worthy that the wise alchemist knows how to catch. She manufactures her
dissol-
universal vents and produces the phenomena that the artist observes
in his flask.
Alchemy pretends with this secret solvent a dissolution
natural solution of metals. The metal, in contact with this sol-
Come, it resolves in a natural, non-corrosive way. Through
this process, its metallic active principle, or metallic soul
drawn to its deepest core and necessary for perfection
metallic, does not die. In contrast, Metallic Chemistry uses
corrosive acids which, while dissolving metal, destroy its
spiritual essence. Indeed, as Pernety asserts, the Chemistry
Vulgar mica destroys compounds, while Alchemy
perfects them.
28 Hermes Trimegistus (the three times great) is considered the father of

Wisdom,
of Astrology and Alchemy.
29 In the vulgar sense. Alchemy was offered to those who deserved it.
31
Alchemists
Adepts, philosophers and children or children of Art
Having reached myself, Philaletheist, Anonymous Philosopher, the ar-
canons of Medicine, Chemistry and Physics, I have decided
compose this little treatise in the year 1645 ... in order to pay
what I owe to the children of art and to reach out to those
Those who have been lost in the labyrinth of error, so that the
Adepts see me as their peer and brother ...
Ireneo Philaletheus.
The open entrance to the closed palace of the King. 1754.30
Philosopher: lover of Wisdom, instructed in operations
secrets of Nature, imitates its procedures to be able to
produce things more perfect than Nature herself.
Myth-hermetic dictionary. 1758.
It is common to find in ancient alchemical texts what
it would appear to be a hierarchical ladder among alchemists.
• The Adept, as we said, occupies the top, since he is the al-
accomplished chemist, the one who has crafted the philosopher's stone
and benefits from its virtues.
• The Philosopher would seem to be the seasoned alchemist who without being
Adept already has serious knowledge.
• The Son or Child of Art would be the apprentice or student who
it begins in our Work.
However, this is not exactly the case. All true al-
chemists, whether or not they are Adepts, are considered philosophers by
own etymology of his word. A philosopher is in love with
Sophia, of Wisdom, but at the same time is a lover of our
Science and Art, since sophos in Greek also means Science and
Art. On the other hand, any sincere student of Alchemy,
30 There is an edition in Spanish for editions 7 ½.
32
Luis Silva
whatever grade he is in, he is considered a son
of alchemical art. Even an Adept is the son of the Great Lady
which is Alchemy.
Blowers, charitable, envious and greedy alchemists
The difference between true philosophers and alchemists
vulgarity is as great as that between night and day.
The vulgar alchemists work with great effort, with
large expenses, with all kinds of ovens and fires and with a
multitude of different subjects ... they do nothing at all. The al-
true chemists, on the contrary, imitating Nature,
and with a small amount of matter, they do great things.
The false alchemists seek nothing more than to make gold, the ver-
True philosophers want nothing but Science. The first
they only prepare sophistication, nonsense; the others inquire about
principles of things.
Johan Joachim Becher.
Physica Subterranea. 1669.31
There have always been alchemists, but most have
managed and remain hidden in their laboratories. Traditional-
two different types have been shown:
• The charitable calls, who have offered some explanations
certain cations of alchemical operations, helping
with it to both neophytes and seasoned lovers
of Alchemy.
• The envious or greedy. Among them are those who are-
convict and work anonymously, offering no clues to
his discoveries, and others that, more open, offer
31 Extract translated by the author himself.
33

statements that, although true, do no more than
mislead.
As for the blowers, they were people devoid of theory.
estuary, who worked on an adventure, seeking only their enrichment
personal mentoring. Its name "blower" derives from the anti-
two bellows designed to fan the fire by blowing
air. Many of them were charlatans, scammers. More than one
blower was hung on the gilded gallows, torture reserved for
this sort of impostors.
CLASSIC TEXTS OF ALCHEMY
May he who loves the truth have few books among his hands.
us, but of the best and most faithful, that he considers suspect
everything that is easy to understand ... because the truth is hidden
under these veils and Philosophers never write more deceptively.
that when they seem to write openly, no more true-
mind that when they hide what they mean under terms
dark.
Jean d'Espagnet.
The Secret Work of the Philosophy of Hermes. 1623. Canon IX.32
Among the most famous authors who have written about the secrets
of Nature and Occult Philosophy, Hermes and Morien,
among the ancients, they occupy, in my opinion, the first rank. Between
the modern Bernardo el Trevisano and Ramón Llull, for whom
I have a very great veneration ... Read frequently your
First Testament and also its Codicil and its Practices, works
from which you can get as much as you want.
Jean d'Espagnet.
The Secret Work of the Philosophy of Hermes. 1623. Canon X.
3. 4
Luis Silva
Classical Alchemy texts are those written by al-
chemists recognized by the alchemical tradition as Adepts, and
others that even being written by non-Adept philosophers enjoy a
Inestimable value. The golden age of these treaties corresponds
with that of the Renaissance. Thanks to the invention of the printing press,
edited thousands of alchemical works, but, unfortunately, so-
both true and false, hence the Adepts advise the
reading those written by their peers, thus helping to separate
the good from the bad, the gold from the chaff.
Without a doubt, the best known alchemical text is the Emerald Table,
attributed to Hermes. A work that, despite its brevity and
easy to read, it reveals both metaphysical and physical principles.
Apart from the texts and Adepts mentioned above,
we highlight some that are the object of our predilection:
CENTURY TREATIES AUTHOR
xv The five books or the key to the secret of secrets
The Most Precious Gift of God
Nicolas Valois
George aurach
xvi The secret fire

Commentary on Ripley's vision
The triumphal chariot of antimony
The twelve keys to Philosophy
Jean pontanus
Ireneo Philalethe
Basil valentine
Basil valentine
xvii The New Chemical Light

The secret work of the Philosophy of Hermes
Natural Philosophy Restored
The Hermetic Triumph
The light rising by itself from the darkness
Mutus Liber
Instruction of a father to his son about the solar tree
The Cosmopolitan
Jean d'Espagnet
Jean d'Espagnet
L. de Saint Didier
MA Crasellame
Altus
Anonymous
35
xviii The hermaphrodite child of the Sun and the Moon

The Kingdom of Saturn transformed into a golden age
The Secret of Salt
Aurea Catena Homeri
Rosicrucian aphorisms and processes
Maxims concerning the universal salt of the Na-
nature
The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King
Myth-Hermetic Dictionary
Greco-Egyptian Fables
Myth-Physical-Horse-Hermetic Concordance
Anonymous
Huginus à Barmâ
Elijah Artist
Anonymous
Sigismond Bacstrom
Sigismond Bacstrom
Ireneo Philalethe
Sun pernety
Sun pernety
Saint Baque de Bufor
xix Hermes unveiled

Hermetic Recreations
Theories and symbols of the alchemists. The great
Construction site
Cyliani
Anonymous
Albert poisson
xx The Mystery of the Cathedrals

The philosopher's abodes
Fulcanelli
Fulcanelli
Hermetic treaties are obscure, it is true, but under that
darkness hides light. Once the alchemical theory was known,
ca, once you have the key to the main symbols, you can
boldly undertake the reading of Ramón Llull, Paracelsus,
Bernardo el Trevisano, Flamel, Roger Bacon, Philalethe. What pa-
freshly void of meaning he will find it logical, he will read like Marielle
read the hieroglyphs, you will even try to decipher them yourself,
spell this unknown language so to speak. To march step
steadily but surely towards the light.
Albert Poisson.
Theories and symbols of the alchemists. The Great Work. 1891.33
Indeed, if someone not initiated dares to look at one
of these texts or treatises will surely suffer some discouragement,
because they are not easy to read and can be even
ridos, as it happened to us. Your understanding needs
many years, patience and numerous readings and re-readings of di-
33 There is an edition in Spanish by MRA Ediciones.
36
Luis Silva
different authors. Only then, and with luck, the texts will open
to understanding. Of course another much faster way
knowledge is to find an advanced alchemist and
sincere offering clues for interpretation.
Another problem is that, by tradition, the texts described
alchemical work in disordered form, that is, they do not follow
the correct order of operations, but alter them. This has
always been a common practice. But the great stumbling block, where
really hide their true secret, it is in the early stages
Minerals of the Work, that is, in the manufacture of its Solvent
Universal. Very few authors have entered into this process and, without
he, the true Philosopher's Stone cannot be crafted.
Thus, the neophyte is faced with a difficult puzzle to compose:
a dark and enigmatic language, an imagery just as com-
pleja, some disorderly phases of the work and the almost impossibility
to elaborate the mercury of the philosophers or their universal solvent,
true anteroom of the mirific stone.34
Let's put a little track on the road.
The Work begins with the so-called Preliminary Works,
consistent in the elaboration of the Universal Solvent.
• Once it has been obtained in liquid form, if the de-
nominated Wet Route, it must be placed in a flask of
glass, oval or circular in shape, a part of this di-
solvent with another of gold, either in thin sheets, or in
dust. The gold must be as pure as possible, not alloyed. 35 A
then the flask must be hermetically closed
and placed in the alchemist's atanor or furnace. If it has
operated correctly, the gold will turn black and swell
chará: it is the so-called Work to the black or nigredo.
34 Wonderful, wonderful.
35 Mixed with other metals.
37

• Subsequently, gently increasing the temperature
gold will become a white earth: it is the Work at
white or albedo.
• Finally, raising the heat a little more, the
the red color, the red salt of gold, the embryo of the
sofal, also called Obra al rojo or rubedo. Now alone
It is missing, if what is intended is to transmute an ignoble metal,
ferment this salt again with pure gold, as later
will say and, finally, multiplying the strength of this salt will
tante, that is, to enhance it through a new reiteration
of the processes.
BRIEF HISTORY OF ALCHEMY
The origin of the Science of Nature is lost in time.
after the childhood of the world; the Patriarchs possessed it. To their
results owed them these long and happy days of which
they enjoyed. Hermes, his contemporary, was the first of the
philosophers to trace its principles and put a certain order in
they; but, not wanting to desecrate the mysteries of a Science
that God seemed not to want to make all men common,
invented the hieroglyphs, symbols and enigmas under whose veil
passed it on to posterity.
On the writings of Hermes the Schools of the
temples, among the Egyptians, among the Greeks, and among the Druids,
and, among them only the priests interpreted them and
they explained to their disciples.
Moses, perfectly instructed in all the Sciences of the Egyptians,
He was the one who brought Nature to the highest degree of glory ...
Saint Baque de Bufor.
Myth-Physical-Horse-Hermetic Concordance. 18th century. 36
36 There is an edition in Spanish by Obelisco editions.
38
Luis Silva
Born in the East, alchemical science spread to the West.

through three major routes of penetration: Byzantine, historical
panic and Mediterranean. Above all, it was the result of the conquests
Arab girls. The Arabs, educated by Greeks and Persians, towards the
8th century transmitted to Europe the science of Egypt and Babylon
by Byzantine and Hispanic way. The return of the crusades
in the twelfth century (via the Mediterranean) it also meant the importation
of
of many ancient knowledge.
It is not our objective here to capture a long history
of Alchemy that can be found in any encyclopaedia
day. We will only emphasize that the alchemical tradition affirms that
alchemy was born in ancient Egypt, 37 that such a unique secret art
could only be revealed among priests, 38 pharaohs and their
direct descendants, and that their improper disclosure is paid for
I was with death. The tradition goes on saying that, to avoid
its disappearance, Alchemy was hidden in myths and fables
Egyptians, and that the Greeks stockpiled them by adapting them
their culture.39 If true, it would only be necessary to know their
interpretation to unravel the ins and outs of the Great Art. It
several authors tried. Among them, Dom Pernety stands out with
his Greco-Egyptian Fables, or Saint Baque de Bufor author of the Con-
Myth-Physical-Horse-Hermetic cordance, to name a couple of them.
On the other hand, Alchemy has been practiced in different
civilizations. Before Christ, in Babylon, Chaldea, Egypt,
China, in India, Greece, among the Hebrews; later, between
Romans, Arabs…; In Europe, during the Middle Ages, Renaissance
foundation…, that is to say, there is an Alchemy of civilizations.
37 Others, more daring, like Fulcanelli himself, suspect that Alchemy arose
in a
civilization today lost.
38 Hence the ancient name of sacred art or priestly art that Alchemy
receives.
39 Its object of study is Mitoalquima.
39
Greek alchemy. We see above what is possibly the first

most still drawn, at least the first of the
that we have evidence, with its flask and its pointed capital that
ends in a receiving vessel. To his right, the kerotakis, the typical and
ancient Greek oven. We can also see its modern version
nizada, a hollow iron tube with its ashtray or fire zone
bottom, and top a kind of inverted glass fish tank, which is
where the matter is put to heat.
We close this chapter by going back to the beginning, remembering what
which is actually Alchemy, and we do so by highlighting the
figure of Louis Charpentier, a great esotericist, known for being the
author of an epoch-making book, The Enigma of the Cathedral of
Chartres. 40 We were always in love with the precise and precious definition
that he gave us about Alchemy and that shows the great knowledge
I think she had this character about her:
Alchemy is the art and science of collecting, fixing and concentrating
the vital current that permeates the worlds and is responsible for
all life. The concentration that the Adepts achieve and that
fixed on a support, is what is called the philosopher's stone. This
stone by its concentration, acts very strongly and allows the
Adept to carry out, above all things, an evolution that would require
long centuries, if not millennia, to Nature to consummate it;
mainly –and this is the stone test– exchanging silver or
I gold the base metals.
40 From the edition of Plaza y Janés. 1969.
Image source: EJ
Holmyard. The prodigious
history of Alchemy. 1970.
Guadiana of publications.
40
Luis Silva
II - METAPHYSICS
DEEPERING INTO NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
Alchemy is a branch of Natural Philosophy.
Larousse Encyclopedia.
Alchemy is a very hidden part of Natural Philosophy.
Anonymous.
Instruction of a father to his son about the solar tree. XVII century.
Alchemy is a part of Natural Philosophy that demonstrates
The way to perfect metals by imitating Nature.
za in its operations.
Denys Zachaire, 16th century alchemist.
Booklet of the natural philosophy of metals.
OR
Let's see the image that

appears on the right.
It represents Philosophy.41 It is
sculpted between the doors
entrance of the cathedral of Nôtre-
Give me Paris. In it we see So-
phia, the Great Lady, holding
his left hand a royal scepter,
symbol of power, of authority, of
dignity. Wisdom, knowledge
I lie, it is power. Is well known
the phrase that states that “whoever has
ne information, knowledge,
it has the power ”.
41 Fulcanelli affirms in his work The Mystery of the Cathedrals that this
great lady represents
Alchemy. We allow ourselves to disagree.
41

Sophia touches the ground with her feet, and the clouds or sky with her
head, representing the union between heaven and earth. In its
chest is supported by a ladder which, traditionally, is the symbol
of the union of the lower with the higher, of the higher with the
down. We go up and down a ladder; therefore, by analogy
gía, is also a symbol of the union of the celestial with the terrestrial.
Each step is a step in Wisdom. It goes up, gra-
do to grade, until you get to the top. In Alchemy, the one who reaches the
top
it is called Adept, because it comes from the Latin word Adeptus,
which means 'the one who has achieved'; in our case, the one that has
obtained the Philosopher's Stone.
In symbology, the ladder has the same meaning as the
bridges. Bridges serve to cross landforms,
to go from one side to the other. The Pope, the vicar of Christ, is
called the Supreme Pontiff or Pontifex, that is, the supreme bridger.
tes. From what bridges? Of those who unite the human with the divine,
the terrestrial with the celestial.
Sophia holds two books in her right hand. One of them
It's open; is always a symbol, by analogy, of wisdom
that is available to everyone: it is the exoteric book. The book
which is closed, on the other hand, is the esoteric book, to which not all
the world has access. Esoteric is a word derived from
Greek esoterikos and means intimate, deep, reserved exclusive
valy for initiates.
Pythagoras is said to have had two kinds of disciples. Some were
called "accusmatic", a word that comes from the Greek accusma-
tikoi (from akousma, 'auditory perception'), that is, the listeners. Is
the exoteric disciple, the student who goes to class to receive knowledge
general foundations. However, he also had other students
which he called "mathematicians", matematikoi, from the Greek root
matema, 'knowledge'. They were the Master's favorites, the
thermals, to whom sacred and secret teaching was given.
Finally, the Great Lady is seated in her chair, name
you get your chair. By similarity, the bishop's house is the cathedral,
for he, sitting in his chair, gives his master class to the faithful
42
Luis Silva
them. The same occurs with professors, who teach or
their knowledge to the students.
Let's now continue with another image of the style. It is a great
made of wood that also represents Philosophy. Is a
work that the great German painter and humanist Albrecht Dürer made
for his great friend and compatriot, the also humanist and poet
Conrad Celtis. The work is dated in 1502. Its interpretation us
will lead to knowing something more about thinking and knowing about
ancient philosophers.
Image source: Alchemy & Mysticism. Taschen. 2005.
43

Side and side of the crowned head of the beautiful lady, we read
the words Philo, on our left, and Sophia, on our right.
cha. The author wants to show us that his engraving refers to the
Philosophy, and it does so by decomposing the word. As we said
above, the Greek word Philosophia means' Love of
Wisdom'.
At the top of the image we can read:
Sophia called me the Greeks, Sapientia42 called me the
Romans, Egyptians and Chaldeans found me, Greeks
they wrote to me, the Romans transmitted me and the Germans
expanded.
The text makes it clear that Philosophy was born among the ancients
Egyptians and Chaldeans, which was recovered and written by the Greeks and
passed down by the Romans.
The lower inscription tells us:
What is in the sky and on the earth, in the water and in the air,
what is in all things and what the fiery God sends in all the
orb, I carry everything on my chest Philosophy.
Summarizing, the paragraph comments that there is a God who sends
or emanates its strength or subtle fire to everyone and that this force
za is found within the four elements (fire, 43
air, water and earth) and in all things.
The four heads represent the four ages of man:
childhood, youth, maturity and old age, which correspond to the
four seasons of the year: spring, summer, autumn and winter,
which in turn are represented by the four different
plant motifs.
42 Wisdom.
43 The ancient alchemists also called the element of fire 'heaven', surely
because
that this force comes from on high, from heaven. On the other, the earth was
considered the dense,
while the sky was the subtle.
44
Luis Silva
The four medallions show us images of large fi-
philosophers:
• Ptolemy, great astrologer and mathematician, representing
Egyptian-Chaldean Philosophy. He was the highest representative
of Sacred Astrology.
• Plato, the great Greek philosopher, passed on to the Romans this
Egyptian wisdom.
• The Latin Cicero and Virgilio gave poetic form to this
Philosophy.
• And, finally, representing German Philosophy, the philosophy
figure of Albert the Great, a great scholar and scholar
Collastic.
In each of the corners we read a series of words that
They refer to:
1. The four elements: fire, air, water and earth, which develop
We'll roll over later.
2. The four humors or temperaments of the ancient world.
Formerly it was believed that people had a character
or humor that characterized them. While all, in greater or
to a lesser extent, we are subject to any of these
characters, one of them predominates over the rest. The an-
Ancient Greeks classified them as:
• Phlegmatic: characteristic of apathetic people, of san-
gre cold, carefree, calm, impassive.
• Blood: corresponding to nervous people, im-
pulsating, variable mood.
• Choleric: typical of people who have a character
strong, often losing control or having seizures
of anger.
• Melancholic: typical of people prone to sadness.
teza. These, as they are not very satisfied with things
of this world, they look for others that fill their spirit. Do not
Four. Five

they tend to have a taste for fun, and are dreamers. Is
the typical character of alchemists, mystics, artists
like painters, sculptors, poets ..., people prone to
sas to an inner search that makes them happy. They usually
love art and spirituality.
3. Finally the gods of the wind, the Greek anemoi or ventis
Romans. The ancient philosophers, who were great
observers of nature, they realized that the
winds could come from any of the four points
cardinal coughs and that each one of them brought with it
different tions that related to the seasons, like this:
• The Boreas, which was the cold wind coming from the North
announced the arrival of winter.
• The Auster, the South wind –they said– brought the storms
late summer and early fall.
• The Zephyr was the wind that came from the West. Its soft
breezes announced the arrival of spring and the beginning
of the summer. For the alchemists it was very important because
that announced the arrival or fall of the spring dew.
• The Euro or East wind, warm and dry air that announced
the arrival of summer.
LOGOS, PHySIS, ETHOS
Alchemy is solidly based on theories and principles
cipios of the ancient world. The great Greek philosophers, especially
tially the Stoics, knew how to collect and recompose the remains
of a previous wisdom. The theories and principles they collected
they are still valid for alchemists.
46
Luis Silva
The Stoa44 compiled the teaching of great philosophers such as Pi
Thagoras, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Posidonius ...
developed and classified this knowledge into three parts: Logic,
Physics and Ethics. 45
Logos (Logic)
None of our thoughts can conceive of God.
Incorporeal, invisible, formless, cannot be perceived by
our senses. What is eternal cannot be measured by
rod of time.
Corpus hermeticum.
Logic was concerned with the study of the Logos, that is, of God.
The word Logos does not have a defined etymology, but it comes to
mean something like activity and efficiency of speech, word
spoken or murmur or sound vibration. This is how the ancients defined
the Creation of the universe, through a kind of breath or breath
divine.
The Logos was also regarded as a Great Intelligence.
cia, a Universal Dynamism, a Great Motor, the Great Creator,
a Whole. Ancient philosophers considered it ineffable, that is,
indescribable, something that our mind cannot describe for-
that she is limited and not ready to understand it. There would be
to transcend to perceive it. Others said that the Logos is in-
teligible, a word that was formerly related to the pure
knowledge received without the intervention of any of the five
senses. That is to say, the Logos is incorporeal, invisible, without form.
God is perceived nullifying the senses.
44 The Stoa (3rd century BC to 2nd AD), founded by Zeno of Citio, was one of
the schools
most important philosophical and longest-lived in history.
45 Classification that already came from the Pythagoreans.
47

The philosopher Posidonius46 affirmed that the soul can connect-
Be with higher vibrations through sleep or ecstasy. The
meditation can be a good technique to link with these
vibrations or achieve heightened states of consciousness. For other
On the other hand, the word intelligibility, in Latin, is also associated
with Ver-
boom, to the biblical Word that we will deal with later.
Heraclitus (5th century BC) defined the Logos as Reason47 or
Universal Law that gives order and harmony to the Cosmos. This concept
served as the basis for the Stoics.
The Logos is pure Fire. Many traditions symbolized the
Creator God through fire, as is the case with Mazdeism
o Magism of Zoroaster. In the Mithraic cult, Mitra or Mizra is
identified with the invictus Sun that was always born after the solstice
from December.
The Emerald Tablet, the most prized text among alchemists
tas, tells us:
The Thelesma, 48 the Father of All, is here, its strength or poten-
cia is complete when it becomes land.
The phrase reminds us again of the existence of a Father of
Everything, from a universal Creator and his emanation, defined in
this case as force or power. But for an alchemist the end
of the phrase is of paramount importance. This force can convert
fall ashore, says the Tablet, and the alchemist pretends to have that
energy, that spiritual fire in his hands, densified, embodied
fied in a terrestrial body.
The ancient philosophers kept instructing us, telling us
that the Logos, before the Creation of the World, was a power
latent that, at a certain moment, decided to manifest and
go from power to act, and did it like an explosion
46 Great Greek philosopher of the second century, compared to an Aristotle.
47 Intelligence.
48 Thelesma: Creator Father who gives harmony to the Universe. From the Greek
word Telein, which
it means initiating someone into mystery, into Wisdom.
48
Luis Silva
about himself. And as that energy emanated from
Himself, as that primordial Fire or emanation
was expanding and moving away from itself, it was cooling and, in
consequently, vibrating less intensely, to finally
densify. The spirit became matter, it manifested itself. If today the
matter is considered energy, the ancients defined it as
densified spirit, light or power.
This energy or cosmic vibration is dual in nature. One is
active, eternally generated by God, the universal spirit;
the other is passive, it is the body or matter that receives the energy
active.
The Pneûma and the Logoi Spermatikoi
The spiritus mundi is a universal dynamism emanating from the
divinity, which maintains life and movement ... This spirit
ritu, universal agent, constitutes in the realization of the Work the
unknown principle, the determination of which ensures total success.
Fulcanelli. The Philosopher's abodes. 1929.
This creative fire, this universal life force or ema-
Nothing of the Creator was called pneuma by the Stoics.
The alchemical concept of the Spiritus Mundi or Soul of the World
it has its origin in that of the pneuma of the early Stoics. For
these was a universal, spiritual life force, present in all
subject. Pneûma means in Greek 'breath' and in a broad sense,
breath of life and air.49 The pneuma is perpetually emanated by
the Logos, they told us.
This pneûma, also called the creative fire of the Logos, they say
that penetrates the matter as if it were a seed or sperm
and it constitutes it, vivifies it, fertilizes it, develops it. To this seed
or es-
perma intelligent and individualized in each subject, the Stoics
49 Hence the origin of words like pneumology or pneumatics that are related
to air.
49

they gave him the name logoi spermatikoi. It is a beginning
active, of a force inseparable from matter: “There is no matter
without force, nor force without matter. Force penetrates matter and
it originates movement and harmony ”, affirm the Stoics. It is the
seed or divine spark that the Creator has left in each of
us, it is his spiritual imprint.
Stoicism had a crucial influence on early Christianity.
tianism. Two biblical examples suffice:
In the beginning the Word already existed; 50 and the Word was with
God; and the Word was God… Everything was made by the Word… And the
The Word was life… it is LIGHT… The Word was the true light… and
the Word became flesh ...
Gospel according to Saint John, ch. 1.
This Word of Saint John is the Light, the word, the sound vibration.
ra of the Stoics, that is, the Logos and its emanation.
Then Yahweh God formed man with clay from the earth
and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life and was the soul man
living.
Genesis, ch. 1.
That is, the pneûma (breath of life) penetrates matter by
virtue of the Logos in order to give it the vital spark.
The myth of Adam is interesting because it takes us back to the classic
theory of the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. Adam
It is created out of clay. Etymologically Adam, in Greek, means
'earth' and in Latin adamus is red earth, that is to say clay, mud. East
It is made up of land, water, and air. God breathed into this earth (mat-
ria) the pneûma, the vital principle, the fire that gives life to matter.
It is the unknown force that makes the atoms not stop
vibrate. For the ancient alchemists all matter was composed
of these four elements.
50 Verb: Sound or sounds (vibration) that express an idea. As a word it
implies action.
fifty
Luis Silva
Representations of the Logos
How did ancient ideas as abstract as
the Logos? Among other ways, through anthropomorphism, 51 is
that is, giving the divinity human characters with the aim
of being able to interpret it better.
The Pantocrator52 are an example of this. Also called
Maiestas Domini or Majesty of the Lord or Christ in Majesty, re-
they presented this creator and computer God. At first symbolized
They zapped the Logos, the Father in the Christian tradition; later, they
were given
a double meaning, manifesting both the image of this Father
Creator and computer, like that of the redeeming Son of Humanity.
Father and son merged into the symbol.
The image is a gem
of the Catalan Romanesque.
Show the Almighty
in the form of Jesus, the
son of God.
The halo or nimbus crosses
cifer above his head
designates. In ancient art
Christian we found three
types of halos. Which
identifies the Father has
Triangular shape. I left her-
his is a cruciferous nimbus
and that of the Saints a sim-
ple halo.
His Majesty framed
ca in an oval fence, call-
mado mandorla word
51 Anthropomorphic, from the Greek anthropo (man) and morphos, morphe (form),
that is, form
of man.
52 From the Greek Pantokrátor, from Pantos (all) and Kratos (power), that is,
Almighty.
Above: Pantocrator in the apse of the

church of Sant Climent de Taull (Lleida).
51

Italian meaning almond. It is the mystical almond that some-
they compare us to the cosmic egg.
The right angle or square that your right arm forms, is
pointing to the sky, it corresponds to the squad that, looking
down, is on your chest and it designates the bottom,
the earth. He is the Lord of above and below, of heaven and of
the earth.
In the book he holds with his left hand we can read
Ego Sum Lux Mundi, that is, I am the light of the world.
On the left and right of his head we see the Greek letters-
Alpha and Omega gas, first and last of the Greek alphabet:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the one I was, the
who I am and who I will be. Almighty.
Revelation 8.
Note that these letters
hang by strings of
the arms of the nymbic cross formed
I control a scale. Balance that
in this case it shows us the judgment
of the dead or weighing of the al-
more (psychostasis), 53 very anti-
guo Egyptian origin.
In the image on the right you see
we again represent a
of the Maiestas Domini, in
this case giving order and harmony
to a chaotic world. Used for
it a compass, the instrument
measurement that, when drawing circles
los, is associated with spirituality,
53 Psychostasis: Convince that one survives in substance after death.
God measuring the world with him

compass. Bible moralisée. 1250.
52
Luis Silva
while the square, when drawing straight lines, is related to
materiality.54
When God created the world, He geometrized, Pythagoras said. Is
that is, he gave his Creation a mathematical order.
54 The celestial vault is circular while the horizon is like a straight line.
The eye means God, because just as the eye sees what it has
ahead, God sees and knows all things.
Image from The Hieroglyphic of Horapollon from Nilópolis.
Source: French National Library.
53

Another representation of the Almighty is that of the Great Eye or the
All-seeing eye. In 1419, a certain Buondelmonti Cystophore discovered
An ancient Greek manuscript appeared on the Greek island of Andros
It was entitled The Hieroglyphics of Horapollon of Nilopolis. Buondel-
Monti bought the manuscript on behalf of the humanist Cosi-
mo de Medici. Horapollon (Horus Apollo) is believed to have been a
mysterious Egyptian of the fifth century of our era, possibly a
professor of one of the last pagan schools of Alexandria.
The manuscript aroused lively interest in Florence and many
copies circulated among the Neoplatonic intellectual circles.
The manuscript, which claimed to reveal the hidden meaning of the
hieroglyphics
cos, it caused a sensation among humanists. The play was very commendable.
tada, and although his interpretation of the hieroglyphics mixes fantasy
and reality, the Hieroglyphica of Horapollon constituted a kind of
dogma of faith in the Renaissance, encouraging many authors including
so to invent hieroglyphs of his own.
Horapollon made a desperate attempt to save the
remnants of an Egyptian language and knowledge that were in full
na decadence.
Horapolo made this guy fashionable
of symbols or emblems, special-
mind during the Renaissance, and
one of them, the eye of God, was a
resource especially used during
rante and after the Renaissance.
Let's look at an example.
Of the central eye, attribute of which
he sees everything, a fire spreads,
light radiation. It is the spirit
universal rite of alchemists.
The dove has the same meaning
cation, since it is the emblem of the
Holy Spirit:
Jacob Boehme. Theosophiste

Werke. Amsterdam. 1682.
Source: Alchemy and Mysticism.
Taschen. 2005.
54
Luis Silva
The Holy Spirit is the Universal Spirit who gives life to everything
be in the 3 kingdoms of Nature.
The Ritual of the Knight of the Sun, Adept or regenerated man. 1765.
The dragon or snake that wants to bite its tail is the anti-
Greek guo ouroboros, symbol of the principle of Unity that affirms
I know that Everything comes from the One and everything will return to that
One. The triangle
upper designates the water element:
And the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters.
Genesis 1.
The form in X that the sentences draw designates the symbol by ex-
celence of the universal spirit. The radiation emanated from God.
The origins of the all-seeing eye are found in the ancient
ancient Egypt. It was called the Eye of Horus or Udyat55 and was found
represented, engraved, in the stone of all the temples. The you-
yat was a solar symbol that embodied order, the personal state
Indeed, cosmic stability. Its root is mythological. Horus, son
of Osiris and Isis, in a combat with Seth, the murderer of his father,
he lost his left eye. Thot gave him a new eye, the Udyat, which
it had magical and miraculous properties.
The Udyat was one of the talismans

most important among the Egyptians
55 The word Udyat means 'the one who is complete'.
55
Symbols of the Pneûma or Universal Spirit

It is very common in alchemical literature to use symbols
bowling pins and figures. The alchemical imagery is very vast. The symbol
the par excellence of the universal spirit is the same as the
setting the fire element, that is, a triangle.
Another widely used symbol was the letter X, with which
symbolized the irradiation of the universal spirit over the whole
subject.
The X is the symbol of manifested light, hieroglyph at its most

simple expression of light and divergent radiations
emanating from a unique home. It is the graph of the spark. Scheme
of the twinkling of the stars and the radiant scattering of all
how much it shines, illuminates and radiates. Lighting mark and stamp
and by extension of spiritual revelation. Translation of fire
celestial or terrestrial fire ... servant of the man who liberates it.
Divine fire, fallen, imprisoned in matter ...
The image comes from the Aeternae Amphitheater

Sapientiae. Henry Khunrath. 1619.
The owl, duke of the night, holds with his
legs the two fiery rods that form
an X. In turn, candles and rods draw two
crisscrossing D letters.
Maybe it's at night when the clever
artist should go out in search of matter
that encloses the universal fire that
Nature dispenses you. Spirit not visible,
hence the bird wears glasses.
The lower sentence instructs us:
What good are torches, light, or
glasses if the owl does not want to see.
56
Luis Silva
Form and matter
Hermes says: the soul, O Tat, is the substance itself or the
pia essence of God ... This soul is a God in men.
The Poimandres. 56
Materia is a word whose root derives from the Latin mater,
mother and matrix, matrix. Matter is the mother or womb. In terms
The alchemical mine is the vessel, the container, the container. But
What then should the content be? It's about the soul, spirit
or fire locked in the depth of matter. The Alchemist
does not perceive an empty matter. This needs the contest of a
individualized divine spark that animates her: logoi spermatikoi, 57 la
the Stoics called. In fact, soul in Latin is anima, and the ver-
bo animating implies activity. It is the soul that gives life, that
animates the body or matter. It is the divine breath that God breathed into
Adam's nose.
56 First treatise on the Corpus hermeticum.

57 Logoi spermatikoi or the sperm of the Logos.
God breathing the breath of life into Adam. Genesis, ch. 1.

Picture in the church of San Saturio (Soria). Author's photo.
57

Perhaps the origins of this divine breath are in the
ancient ankh, threaded cross or egyptian cross, symbol of energy
vital creator or vital breath of God. In Latin, the crux ansata, or
key to life, also symbolizes immortality.58 The images
The lower sections, which are only a sample, are very illustrative when
respect.
There are very many representations in the

that the Egyptian cross is directed right towards the nose,
as if it were that divine breath.
On many old tombstones it can be read: “Here lies the glass of
(name of the deceased). " It is the vessel or body of the deceased that
lies under the earth, but not his soul or conscience, which vibrates-
do in another much higher frequency ascends to another realm
much more subtle.
By definition, matter is the receptive substrate of form,
that is, the receptacle of form, the opposite of spirit. For
Plato and Aristotle matter is a pure receptacle. The way is
the substantial principle that gives attribute to being or matter
ending its specific nature in this world. Aristotle
He said that the soul is and gives shape to the body. We explain ourselves:
form of matter is its appearance, and this is determined by
his soul, for his spermatikoi logoi. The form59 or aspect of a being
58 The key to life is the soul, which is considered immortal.
59 The host that is consecrated and communicated in the church and that
represents the body of Christ
it is also called a shape.
58
Luis Silva
human, plant, animal, is determined by a
determining principle, your soul.
The ancients worked the art of palingenesis, 60 which allowed them to
I used to see the soul of the plants. Through processes of que-
ma of the vegetable and cleaning its ashes to extract its salt
internal, and after processes kept secret, by applying a
gentle heat to the closed flask containing this salt and a part
of the universal spirit, the soul of the plant was manifested, as
if it were a hologram and with the shape it had when
do was in our physical world. Some ancient authors
describe this process more or less veiled, among them the
father Atanasius Kircher in his Mundus subterraneus (17th century).
Alchemy is a Donum Dei
The knowledge and light of this Science are a gift from God
that He reveals by a special grace to whomever he pleases. Therefore,
let no one embrace this study if they don't have the heart
pure and yes, freed from attachment to the things of this world and
everything
guilty desire, is not entirely consecrated to God.
Jean d'Espagnet. The Secret Work of the Philosophy of Hermes. 2nd
Exhortation. 1623.
The Gift of God, the secret of the secrets of the Almighty,
that he has revealed to his holy Prophets of whom God has
their souls in Paradise.
Myth-Hermetic Dictionary. 1758.
60 Palingenesia, from the Greek words palin, new and genesis, birth,
beginning, is
say, return to genesis, to the beginning or rebirth.
59
In the Middle Ages the Gift of God was applied to the Secretum Se-
cretorum, which is precisely the secret par excellence, that of the
Universal Spirit.
Fulcanelli. The Philosopher's Abodes. 1929.
The Donum Dei, or gift of God, is a term widely used in
alchemical texts, even as a title, as is the case with one
one of the most appreciated among us, which is entitled The Price-
very gift of God, written by Georges Aurach and published in 1475.
When the ancients used this term they could refer to:
• The philosopher's stone itself, considered in itself as
a divine gift.
• The energy emanated from the Creator or universal spirit, au-
tentic gift of God necessary in the manufacture of the stone
Philosopher's Dra.
• An intuitive gift. Well, to know the secret of the fa-
making of this stone is necessary, they said, to be touched
by divinity. This gift is to be received, as if from a
infused science61 involved.
61 Infused Science, in Catholic theology Science received directly from God

or that which is
possesses or believes to possess in a natural way.
Representation of the Donum Dei

Double D compound monogram
criss-cross (Donum Dei) attached to the
letter H, sign of the Sun and of the spirit, then
is the Greek initial letter of Helios, the Sun,
the father of Light. The symbol also
represents the universal spirit, because
This is considered a gift from God.
Coffer in the castle of South Dampierre
Boutonne (France)
60
Luis Silva
Something else about the Universal Spirit
or Soul of the World of the alchemists.
In the beginning, God created the Universal Spirit, or Uni-
Versal of Nature, or Soul of the Universe. This is the first
emanation of divine light. She is Unity and Eternity, capable of
manifest itself when it moves or shakes in Fire or
Light. It multiplies even while dwelling in the Unit. Is omnipresent
although it does not occupy space or place, except when it manifests
in its third principle, Fire ... Fire is the subject of the stone
or medicine of the philosophers. Take this fire in its simple state.
ple, universal, unspecified, in a state of virginity ...
Sigismond Bacstrom. Aphorisms and processes of the Rosicrucians.
2nd aphorism. 1797.62
Some argue that the search for this universal spirit
It is the only object of Chemistry, since it is a stripped substance
of all corporeity ... Chemistry has discovered that the source and
the root of all things is a spiritual, homogeneous substance,
that ancient and modern philosophers have called with various
names like: vital substance, spirit of life, light, balm of
life, natural warm, radical humid, soul of the world, entele-
quia, Nature, universal spirit, mercury of life and others
numerous names ...
Nicolás Lefèvre Chemistry Course. First part.
Book 1. Chapter 1. Of the universal spirit. 1751.63
All things have been made by the power of the word
divine, which is divine spirit or breath, emanated from the divine
source in the beginning. This breath is the spirit or soul of the world.
do and is called world spirits.
This spiritual light that we call Nature or soul of the world
do, it is a spiritual body that through Alchemy can
be made tangible and visible, but as it exists in an invisible state
62 Translation of Artefuego.
63 Extract translated by the author himself.
61

ble is called spirit. It is a universal and living fluid, extended
throughout Nature and penetrates all beings.
It is the most subtle of all substances, the most powerful. For
its inherent qualities penetrate all bodies ... by its ac-
tion frees all forms from all imperfections and converts what is
impure in pure, the imperfect in perfect and it is the cause of
mortal reach the immortal ...
Abbot Johannes Trithemius. In The Round Table of Alchemists,
tasde Manuel Algora Corbi. 1980. Luis Cárcamo editor.
The alchemists also tried to collect the Spiritus
Mundi, the Spirit of the World. This substance spread in the
air, saturated with planetary influences, possessed a good number
of wonderful properties, especially that of dissolving gold.
They were looking for him in the dew ...
Albert Poisson, Theories and Symbols of the Alchemists.
The Great Work. 1891.
Universal Spirit: It is the nitro infused into the air, impregnated
swim of the virtue of the stars and that animated by the fire of the
Nature, lets its action be felt on all sublunar beings-
beef. It is their food, it gives them life ...
Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety. Myth-hermetic dictionary. 1758.
Spiritus Mundi: Name that the German Benedictine Tritemio
(15th century) and other alchemists gave to the philosopher's stone,
cia that would transform any metal into gold. Means spirit
of the world and according to other alchemists, it was a principle that
aunt in the air and that they were trying to capture.
The vanguard. In the May 9, 2001 issue.
Maybe we have been abused with so many dates, and we will still continue to
abuse.
learning from them a little more, but we do it aware that
here is the true turning point in real understanding
of Alchemy. We confess that when we perceive the amplitude
of the Universal Spirit concept, Alchemy opened one of its
62
Luis Silva
doors. For years we read and reread alchemical texts, but
the concept eluded us, slipped before our sight. It was
Fulcanelli who finally opened our eyes, thanks to our
Inestimable readings of The Mystery of the Cathedrals and The Houses
philosophers.
The lion is the symbol of gold ... but the texts give the same
name to the receptive matter of the Universal Spirit, of the fire
secret in the elaboration of the solvent.
The low relief synthesizes and expresses the condensation of the spirit
universal, which forms, when materialized, the famous bath
of the stars, in which the chemical sun and moon must bathe,
change nature and rejuvenate.
The universal spirit, materialized in the minerals under the
alchemical name of sulfur, constitutes the principle and agent
effective of all metallic dyes ...
Fulcanelli. The mystery of the cathedrals. 1925.64
... Universal dynamism emanated from divinity, which
sustains life and movement ... This spirit, universal agent
salt, constitutes in the realization of the Work the main unknown
acid, whose determination ensures total success.
Fulcanelli. The philosopher's abodes.
The universal spirit is in the air, they tell us. It is a dynamis-
mine, an emanation of the Creator Motor that can be materialized
zada. The procedure has been and is maintained in a deep
secret, because its knowledge leads us to discover the solvent
universal of alchemists or liquor where the sun and the chemical moon
that is, metallic gold and silver are bathed to rejuvenate
cerse, to become the philosopher's stone.
They also tell us that the universal spirit is embodied in
an aerial nitro salt, white as snow, and that the blood that
64 There are several editions in Spanish.
63

extracts you is this long-awaited universal solvent. But as for the
procedure, they took great care to keep it very concealed.
This Force, they affirm, permeated from the beginning of Creation to
Entire cosmos, penetrating the most intimate of matter. Thus, the
three natural kingdoms have within them a portion of this uni-
Versal that materializes in its root, in an internal and hidden earth,
that only the alchemist knows how to bring to light and that they call
Sulfur.
Finally, we can affirm that the universal spirit is
corresponds so much to the pneûma of the ancient philosophers - to that
breath, breath or breath of the Creator that invades the entire Universe
so– as with the logoi spermatikoi, that is, with the spark of life,
divine fire, seed or sperm manifested in every matter
concrete or, in alchemical words, manifestation of the spirit
ritu in each mixed65 sublunar66 body in particular.
We close, again, with one last appointment:
You can steal and fix the fire from heaven. The process is
scientist to the utmost, and declare that here we reveal if not
a great mystery, yes at least its application to philosophical practice.
In fact, various classical authors have claimed that the greatest
operative artifice consists of capturing a ray of sunlight and
Put it in a sealed bottle with the Hermes seal.
Magophon. 67 Hypotypesis. 19th century. 68
Body, soul, spirit
The Holy Spirit is the Universal Spirit who gives life to everything
be in the three kingdoms of Nature.
The Ritual of the Knight of the Sun, Adept or regenerated man. 1765.
65 Mixed or compound body is one that is made up of other bodies, be they
homogeneous
unique and / or heterogeneous. Dom Pernety's Myth-Hermetic Dictionary. 1758.
66 Sublunar. That is, under the Moon. Our land.
67 Pseudonym of Pierre Dujols, of the Fulcanelli circle.
68 In: Luis Miguel Martínez-Otero. Comments to Mutus Liber. Luis Cárcamo,
Editor.
64
Luis Silva
Alchemists relate the body to dense matter, and
the soul with the individualized animating spirit. Each one of
us, animals, plants, even minerals,
they say, has its own individual consciousness to a greater or lesser
degree, that is, your individualized soul. The spirit is the fire-
go69 or force emanated from God that perpetually invades all
the universe. This power is the true food that souls
they need to sustain the body. This vital spirit is the pneû-
ma of the Stoics, the universal, spiritual life force emanated
of the Logos (God), his breath, breath or fire.
It will now be easy to understand the Christian concept and so con-
fuso of the Holy Trinity:
• The Father is equivalent to the Logos, God.
• The Holy Spirit to the pneûma or emanated universal spirit
of the.
• Finally, the Son corresponds to matter, since it is
the symbol of the spirit or logoi spermatikoi made flesh, is
that is to say, the densified spirit.
All three are One, all three form One.
69 Spirit, rooted in spirit or pir, leads us to words such as r-espir-ación,

pyre or pyro-technique
(from the Greek pyro, fire and technology, art or specialty).
Artefio. Arab philosopher:

Of three things the
Wisdom of the World: body,
soul and spirit.
Johann Daniel Mylius.
Opus medico-chymicum. 1618.
65
Physis (Physics)
Dreaming, dreaming and ecstasy are the three doors to the beyond
where the science of the soul and the art of divination come to us.
Inscription in a temple at Delphi.
The middle Stoa was concerned chiefly with the study of the Phy-
sis or Nature. Its greatest exponent was the philosopher Posi-
Donio70 (135-51 BC), who elaborated a system of relations of
sympathy in the Cosmos, which he deduced by observing -in Gades (Cá-
diz) - the correspondences between the lunar phases and the tides.
Posidonius considered that all the sciences were subordinate
nothing to Philosophy, the only one, according to him, that could explain the
Cos-
we. In addition, he considered that Logic, Physics and Ethics were
inseparable parts and descendants of a whole. All works
that he wrote were both scientific and philosophical.
Posidonio, defender of the Unity and the interconnection of
Everything, conceived the Universe as a huge network. To its knots
of interconnection called them tones, a Greek word that means so-
to tension as vibration. Every vibration needs a tension
preceding sion. Everything is vibrationally connected, he said. The
soul can connect with those tones, and can do so in the
states of sleep and ecstasy.
Stoic Physis is a koine or common nature physis, which
it unitarily comprises the totality of beings. The nature-
Stoic leza is imbued with a spiritual and divine principle, for
it is alive, divinized, and rational.
The ancient Greeks were great observers of
nature. Suffice it to mention, by way of example -as already
we saw - that they studied the different annual seasons and
compared with the different stages of human life or the different
rentes winds and their effects.
70 He was hailed as the greatest polymath (in Greek, who knows, understands,
or knows a great deal
cho, who stands out in various branches of knowledge) of his time.
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Luis Silva
And also great experimenters. They checked, for example
For example, if a stringed instrument was played and next to it,
a similar one, by sympathetic relationship, vibrated the same strings
of the latter, a cause and effect that they transferred to the Universe. What
everything vibrates, the macrocosm and the microcosm, they said, are related
swims.
Also, to cite another, they burned plants to analyze what
inside it, cleaned its ashes and found its
you go out and within them its quintessence. As we said, work-
rum the art of palingenesis. But his most important contribution
was to reveal the laws that govern the Universe. Some of them
are covered in this work.
The alchemical concept of Nature
God himself, always attentive to his Work, that is the property of
Nature together with the laws that it established for its conservation,
causes why everything operates in the Universe. To this first
engine the ancient philosophers added a second to which also
gave the name of Nature ... It is a universal spirit, vi-
life-giving and fruitful, light created in the beginning and communicates
gives to all parts of the macrocosm, the ancients had
called Fiery Spirit, Invisible Fire and Soul of the World. The
The term Nature also applies to the three kingdoms, the animal,
the vegetable and the animal.
Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety. Myth-hermetic dictionary. 1758.
A careful reading of the Pernety quote reminds us again
the existence of a Prime Universal Motor and its emanation,
which he calls life-giving and fruitful universal spirit, which floods
gives the whole Macrocosm.
For the elaboration of the Philosopher's Stone it is necessary to know
natural secrets. To know Nature is to know the Creator
dor. The concept of Nature that they teach us today is limited to
67

set of the three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable and animal, but for
the ancient philosophers, for the ancient alchemists, that remains
short. Nature was Everything, from the Creator to his Creator.
tion, going through the way in which he creates with his eternal laws.
The alchemist, if he wants to be successful in his endeavor, must know
how Nature works, what are the laws that govern it.
For example, if we think of the three kingdoms, in any of
them, everything is birth, development, decrepitude and death. But
the time, after all death and putrefaction, they tell us, always comes
a feedback. The alchemist, similarly, must recreate
and regenerate in the course of his Work, just as he
God does. The process is an imitation, in micro, of Creation.
Alchemy: Fundamental Theories and Principles
The unity of matter
The unity that is the beginning and root of all things, is in
all things ... Nothing exists without a beginning ... and the beginning is
it comes from itself.
Corpus hermeticum. 71 Treatise IV.
All things come from the same seed. At the origin
they have all been conceived by the same mother.
Basilio Valentin. The triumphal chariot of antimony. 1604.72
71 The Corpus hermeticum, the culminating work of Hermeticism, was recovered

by Cosme de
Medici in 1463 by acquiring a Byzantine text containing the first 14 books.
Were
translated by Marsilio Ficino and edited for the first time in 1471. The text
says that they are
Greek translations of Egyptian texts, however, some historians point out that
They are Greek texts from the second or third century. The Corpus hermeticum
is made up of 24 sacred texts.
72 There is an edition in Spanish by Luis Cárcamo, Editor.
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Luis Silva
In the beginning everything was One

Everything comes from the One
And everything returns to Him.
Synesio, Greek alchemist of the s. iv.

Unity is the law of God
The number is the law of the Universe
Evolution is the law of life
Pythagoras.
Under the Latin axiom73 Omnia in Unum, or the Greek En To Pan,
All in One and One in All, the alchemists understood that
everything comes from the One, from God, who is all part of the Whole
and that, finally, one day everything will return to the Source, to the All
Creator.
The unity of matter is the basis of the Hermetic theory. The

matter is unique, but it can take various forms, and under these
new forms, combine itself and produce new bodies
pos in infinite number.
The Creator wished to create, and he did so by his own emanation.
tion, a force that, as it moved away from its emitting center, densified
73 Axiom. Obvious proposition that needs no proof.
εν το παν. The One, the All. All in one. One in All.

This maxim, the most important for alchemical philosophers,
appeared for the first time in an Alexandrian text of the s. ii d.
C. titled Chrysopoeia de Cleopatra (Chrysopoeia: from the Greek
crisos, oro y poeia, do), inside an ouroboros, the
Gnostic serpent that bites its tail. Set
symbolizes the unity of matter and the eternal return.
69

originating matter. To this first matter the alchemists
gave the name of Chaos or formless matter (without form), where
of the four elements were confused or disordered.
By God's will and through the biblical Fiat Lux74, the Creator
put order and harmony to his creation, the elements received order-
den and formless matter took shape.
In the beginning, Nature showed only one face, that of a
shapeless mass. Chaos it was called.
Ovid. Metamorphosis.
The four elements
Fire, Air, Water and Earth
Four generating substances contains the eternal Universe.
Two of them are heavy, always pressed to go down.
Because they are taxed by their weight: they are both land and water.
Many others devoid of gravity aspire not to be retained
for nothing to the heights: air and fire purer than air.
But although spatially separated, all of them is made, already
they all fall back.
Ovid. Metamorphosis.
Fire is the purest and most worthy of all the elements, full
of a corrosive unctuousness is penetrating, digesting, corroding and
very adherent. It is warm and dry.
Externally the air is light, volatile and invisible, but its interior
it is heavy visible and fixed. It is hot and humid. It is volatile, but can
fix and when it is fixed, it makes all bodies penetrable.
Water is a very heavy element and full of unctuous phlegm.
Outwardly it is volatile, but fixed inside. It is cold and damp.
The other three elements rest on the earth element. It's rude
porous and heavy. It is cold and dry.
The Cosmopolitan. The new chemical light. 17th century. 75
74 Fiat Lux. Let there be light.
75 There is an edition in Spanish by J. Fonfría (editorial bookstore).
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Luis Silva
This caustic heat, accompanied by light, vulgarly called

fire, is not the element of this name of which the sages have
dear to speak ... the Fire element is a fluid eminently
subtle, which comes directly from light ... or rather, it is light
same derived from its source ...
Hermetic recreations. Anonymous text from the 19th century.
Empedocles (5th century BC) already dealt with the theory of the four ele-
mentions, although he did not do so under the name of elements, but under
the roots. Surely he inherited it from past times. This
The theory, with some changes, was later adopted by Plato and
Aristotle.
The theory of the four elements arrived in Spain in the eleventh century
through the Arabs, and from there it passed to Medieval Europe.
Today, when trying to understand the thought of ancient al-
chemists, there is a tendency to believe that the four elements are simple
states or modes of matter. Thus, the earth corresponds
with the solid state, the water with the liquid, the air with the gaseous one
and the
fire with a very subtle gaseous state dilated by heat, but in
alchemical terms the concept differs.
The fire element corresponds to the force emanated from God,
called, as we said, pneûma among the Stoics. It is the creative fire
dor, the breath of God, his breath in the universe. When this force is
away from its origin is cooling and densifying, transforming
in humid air. This air, as it continues to cool, becomes
water, and this water will eventually become a solid element, in
a land. Thus, all the elements are nothing more than Dense Fire.
fallen and all, one day, will return to its source, to the fire. That is what
suggests Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher (540-480 BC).
The fundamental element is Fire, from this first
element will appear all the others, and by means of a pro-
reverse yielding everything will return to fire.
Heraclitus. About Nature.
71

This old theory, which apparently could be absurd,
perhaps it is not so far from reality. The scientific theory of
primordial nucleosynthesis establishes that after the great explosion of
Big Bang, the incredible heat (fire) generated the simple elements
light. First, hydrogen; from this arose helium and other ga-
ses, including oxygen. As the universe grew colder
the combination of hydrogen and oxygen generated water.
Later other solid simple elements appeared.
For an alchemist, all matter is composed of the four
three elements. If we burn a plant, we see that it comes off
water vapor (water and air) and that we finally have some
ashes (earth); if these are cleaned, we will have in our hands
the salt of the plant, substance where the ancients say that it rests
the fire or soul of the plant.
The ancients divided the four elements into visible and invisible
sible. The visible were the earth and the water, and the invisible, the air
and fire. They also said that fire could coagulate or fix
on land, and air in water. In fact, we remember again
which is precisely the fixation of the fire or soul of the world in
a solid, terrestrial matter, more specifically in a salt, where
of resides the fundamental aspect of the alchemical work.
The 4 elements
Philosophia Reformata.
1622. Fountain of the
image: Stalisnas
Klossowski de Rola. The
golden game. Editions
Siruela). Representation
traditional of each
of the four elements.
They all have shape
triangular.
LAND WATER AIR FIRE
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Luis Silva
The three principles

After God first constituted the four
elements, princes of the world, ordered that each of those
Four elements will act incessantly on the other. The fire
began to act against the air, and from this action the
Sulfur. The air acted against the water, and this action produced the Mer-
curium. The water acted against the earth and the Salt was its product.
The Cosmopolitan. The New Chemical Light. 17th century text.
In the beginnings of Alchemy, matter was divided into two
principles: sulfur and mercury. These two principles, united in
various proportions made up all bodies. -Everything is
composed of sulfurous and mercurial materials–, says the anonymous
Christian, Greek alchemist. Later a third prin-
pio, salt or arsenic.
Albert Poisson. Theories and symbols of the alchemists.
The Great Work. 1891.
When the alchemist retrogrades76 the matter that is the object of his
jos, especially metals, removing the heterogeneities that
over the thousands of years they have been covering them, discover that
there are two original principles or roots, both visible: a land,
which they called sulfur, and a water, which they called mercury. The theory
al-
Chemistry asserts that metals are not simple bodies, but are com-
posts. This metallic retrogradation is done with a salt or liquor
which they called universal solvent, menstruum, mercury or alkaest between
many other names. With this dissolution, retrogradation or pu-
metallic trefaction, the alchemist finds the metallic root, that is,
a land (sulfur) and a water (mercury), showing that the meta-
They are not simple bodies at all. This Sulfur and Mercury nothing
they have to do with common acquaintances.
76 Metal retrograde: bring the metal grade by grade to a previous state,
close to
back to its original composition, where the matter that actually forms the
metals and gives birth to them.
73

The alchemists took great pains to mainly dissolve the
gold, since its correct dissolution leads to the manufacture of the stone
philosopher, as we will see later.
On salt, Albert Poisson argues that, as a third principle,
nary, was introduced by alchemists such as Roger Bacon, Basilio
Valentine, Khunrath or Paracelsus. The ancient philosophers did not speak-
rum from her. One of the greatest alchemists, The Cosmopolitan,
gave it great importance, affirming the existence of a salt
primordial that not only gives rise to minerals, but also contains
It also has Sulfur and Mercury within it.
Indeed, the secret salt of the alchemists is of an im-
capital portance, since it is she who opens the doors to the sanctuary
alchemical.
Salt is a good thing, said Christ, the source of truth
eternal. He is the most noble and magnificent creature, the highest and
the greatest favor of God in the entire kingdom of Nature. A
unmatched matter, a center and a secret that no one has finished
still to learn ...
Elías Artist. The Secret of Salt. 1770.77
Ethos (Ethics)
1st Exhortation
The beginning of this divine science is fear and respect for God,
its end charity and love of neighbor. The gold mine that makes us
discover should be used to build temples and hospitals.
them ... Make masses to pay homage to God ... Help in the cala-
public communities and alleviate the misery of the poor.
2nd Exhortation
The knowledge and light of this science are a Gift of God
that He reveals to whomever He pleases ... So let no one embrace the
77 Translation by JM Castillo.
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Luis Silva
study of this science if you do not have a pure heart, free yourself from
attachments of this world and consecrate himself entirely to God.
Jean d'Espagnet. The Secret Work of Hermes' Philosophy. 1623.
The scrutinizers of Nature must be like Nature.
lence itself, that is, true, simple, patient, constant,
but most importantly, pious, respectful of God and not given
in no way harming his fellow man.
The Cosmopolitan. The New Chemical Light. XVII century.
Ethics, from the Greek ethos, personality, character, behavior
to, custom ..., as a branch of philosophy traces its origins,
at least to ancient Greece, enjoying special attention
with the Stoics. Suffice it to quote Seneca (who is credited with origin
Cordovan), Epithet, etc.
As we said, for the Stoics Nature comprises
all beings and is filled with a spiritual principle.
The golden rule of morality is to live according to Nature.
Cleantes from Asos.
This understanding of nature led to the conception of
behavior subject to criteria of:
• Fraternity: this common nature forces us to be loving
and philanthropists with others. Human values are exalted
hands.
Homo res sacra homini. 78
(Man is a sacred thing for man).
78 Phrase attributed to Seneca.
75

• Cosmopolitanism: 79 we are all citizens of a state
universal (the Cosmos), the differences being circumstantial
national companies.
Because I am Antonio, my homeland is Rome, but because I am a man, my
homeland is the world.
Marcus Aurelius. 80
• Denial of slavery: it is incompatible with the idea of
fraternity.
• Detachment: The person must be inclined to suppress the
attachment to material things and rise in a difficult as-
cesis. The Stoic sage must master all passion. Has to
face with equal indifference to fortune or
adversity.
You must be in soliloquies like a rock against which
all the waves crash. She is firm and the waves tame her
around.
Marco Aurelio.
• When you have achieved this ideal, in incessant struggle with
himself, he will have reached apatheia or absence of pa-
sions. This is what has characterized the way of life es-
toica. The path is not easy, but it is worth it. For
definition the stoic is strong and equanimous in the face of misfortune.
Great is the struggle and divine the work. The end is the reign, the
freedom, serenity, ataraxia. 81 Call on God to help you.
Epithet.
79 Cosmopolitan. From the Greek kosmos (Cosmos) and polis (city). Citizen of
the Cosmos.
80 Marco Aurelio Antonio Augusto. Roman emperor and philosopher, nicknamed
the Wise (2nd century).
81 Unperturbed, serenity.
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Interestingly, modern authors dealing with Alchemy
They do not speak of the ethics that surround it, they ignore it; however, to
The tenor of the classical texts is of paramount importance. Mu-
Many of these ancient treatises begin with exhortations and
praise the Creator, respecting him in the highest degree. In addition,
They include a whole series of moral behaviors that must be
follow the alchemist who claims to become the Adept. In the date
with whom we began this section, Jean d'Espagnet,
A great Adept, he offers us a sample of these values:
detachment from bad habits, banish pride, acts
of charity, detachment, seeking peace of mind, heart
pure, good manners, love God ... With or more or less di-
ferences, all the Adepts affirm that without this predisposition
moral alchemist, the stone will not manifest.
We confess today that we believe we have been advancing
in this science thanks to inspirations. These have come to us in
moments when there was a certain peace of mind, in states of
ditative; were ideas that appeared in our minds and that applied
we went to the lab to learn from their results, and so,
incidentally, to climb a little, step by step, through that
Sophia's famous staircase.
It must be made clear that Alchemy is not a Religion, but
nor does it contradict any of them, because all of them derive
of a common trunk, of an original knowledge and of
universal beliefs. Alchemy offers the sincere alchemist,
humble, studious, practical and industrious, the discovery of
ancestral knowledge that at the same time is part of
himself, because knowing Nature implies knowing oneself
same.
Know yourself and you will know the Universe and the Gods.
Inscription in a temple at Delphi.
77
III - PHYSICS
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
PROPERTIES, FORMS and VIRTUES
The Philosopher's Stone is generally regarded as a
pure chimera, and the people who look for it like simple madmen.
This contempt, say the Hermetic Philosophers, is an effect of
righteous judgment of God, who does not allow such a precious secret
be known to the wicked and ignorant.
I have seen and touched the philosopher's stone on more than one occasion;
its color is like powdered saffron, but heavy and shiny
like powdered glass.
Juan Bautista van Helmont, on an experience he had
in 1618 in his laboratory at Vilvorde, near Brussels.
As we said at the beginning of our work, Alchemy pre-

tends to elaborate what has traditionally been called
do philosopher's stone or philosophers' stone. In the Middle Ages and in the
Renaissance three virtues were especially attributed to this
stone:
• Wealth, because it is capable of transmuting implicit metals
perfect in gold.
• Health, as it is both a panacea or universal remedy
healer of all diseases, as a powerful re-
constituent that prolongs life.
• Wisdom, because it reveals to the alchemist the secrets of
nature.
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They have called it a stone because, they say, it is a heavy stone and
crystalline; and philosopher, because the process of its creation requires
the
knowledge of some philosophical principles or, better, of a Wisdom
ancient, ancestral life, which many called Natural Philosophy
and whose object is the supreme knowledge of the secrets
of the nature. That is why all the alchemists who say
having gotten this stone they call themselves, and among themselves,
philosophers, while being considered Adepts.
But how do alchemists define this lapis82 philosophorum?
Tas and other people who throughout history have had it
in his hands? What different forms does he manifest? What are
all the virtues that are granted?
We turn to Fulcanelli, 83 pseudonym of the most famous alchemist
moso of the twentieth century, a great connoisseur and scholar of the
alchemical cos - even considered Adept - to answer
to these questions. First of all, we make an orderly summary
nothing of what this author wrote in his Philosopher's Dwellings on
the physical and chemical properties of the philosopher's stone.
Physical properties of the philosopher's stone
We understand by physical properties those that our senses
they can perceive.
In sight
At first glance the philosopher's stone is shown:
• Red: its color is red, although it can vary in intensity,
as stated by Basilio Valentín:
Its color ranges from red to crimson, or from the color of ruby to that of
pomegranate ... Saffron colored when pulverized.
82 Lapis, in Latin stone. Lapis philosophorum, another name given to the
philosopher's stone.
83 Author of The Mystery of the Cathedrals and The Philosopher's Houses.
79

• Crystalline: similar to glass, like salt crystals.
• Diaphanous: shows transparency.
• Translucent: allows light to pass through, but does not let you see through
it.
• Shimmering: like powdered glass.
• Granulated: under the microscope it appears composed of small
Red or orange granules or crystals.
Touch
On our hands the stone is:
• Dense: regarding the relationship between its weight and volume, it is
very heavy. It weighs much more than its
amount.
• Friable: crumbles easily, like glass.
• Compact: tight and not very porous in texture.
Smell
Regarding its smell, it is generally odorless, although some author
states that it exhibits a certain smell of calcined sea salt.
Westminster Abbot, Philosopher:

The stone is transparent to the eye, translucent
and possessing a wonderful and resplendent
clarity.
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Chemical properties of the philosopher's stone
We will understand by chemical properties the result of the
tests performed on it. Thus, the stone is:
• Fuse: can be melted like wax, butter or
resin. Its fusibility is comparable to the degree of fusion of
the wax (64º). It melts with the flame of a single candle. For
this motive some alchemists gave the name of great
red wax to the philosopher's stone.
• Incalcinable: it has extreme resistance to fire,
also without emitting any smoke.
• Stainless: does not rust.
• Unalterable: is indifferent to any agent
chemical.
• Soluble: it dissolves in any liquor susceptible to softening.
give it.
• Dilatable: increases its volume in contact with liquors.
res that soften it.
• Staining: staining, transferring its color to the liquor where it
dissolves.
• Irreducible: cannot be reduced. May increase, but
do not reduce in weight.
• Penetrating: it has a great power of penetration or penetration
greso. It penetrates and penetrates solid and compact bodies,
especially metals, as oil penetrates the paper.
Vincent, monk of Beauvais:
The Elixir is called a stone because it can be ground, and
not stone because it melts and escapes through fire without
evaporate, like gold.
81
Forms and other virtues of the philosopher's stone

There are three different forms that the sharp stone acquires.
fal and in each one of them it contributes different virtues. These are:
universal medicine, projection powders and lamps
perpetual.
In the form of universal medicine
So that the Philosopher's Stone, in its initial form, saline and reddish
za, to become Universal Medicine must be, in the first place,
pulverized. Afterwards, it will suffice that a small part of this
the powders dissolve in a glass of a spirit liqueur, wine
white for example. The powders will dye this liquor by transmitting-
a reddish color. In this state, the philosopher's stone is called
elixir of long life, universal panacea84 or drinkable gold.85 It is the
objective actually sought by alchemists, much more than
the metallic transmutation that hardly has any significance for
them, except to confirm that they have the truth in their hands.
dera philosopher's stone.
All alchemists have been very careful in highlighting the virtues
you of this Medicine. It is generally considered a healer
of all human diseases, a preventive for all
them and a life extender. The same goes, they say, for him
vegetal kingdom.
However, other authors attribute still many properties to it.
cho most extraordinary. Let's see some:
Immortality: Artephius, a twelfth century alchemist claims to
have reached the age of a thousand years:
84 Panacea, from the Greek panakeia. Of bread, everything and Akos, remedy.
That is to say, universal remedy.
It was considered a universal remedy for both physical and soul illnesses.
(depressions etc.).
85 Drinking. That is, it can be drunk without harm. Like drinking water.
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Luis Silva
And I Artefio, after I became an Adept and reached the

true and complete wisdom, studying the books of the sum-
faithful mind Hermes ... when for the space of a thousand years, or
close, that have now passed over my head, from the moment
in which I was born to this day, by the sole goodness of God Almighty-
roso, for the use of this wonderful quintessence ... 86
Joannes de Lasnioro tells us that she resurrects the dying:
I tell you the truth that if a half-dead man could
contemplate the beauty and goodness of our stone, all species
a hundred of infirmity would depart from him; even if i was dying
would resurrect. 87
Arnau de Vilanova affirms that it rejuvenates:
Maintains health, increases value; of an old man makes a
young boy ... 88
Heinrich Khunrath further admits its influence on the soul:
If the stone is administered to a sick person, it expels all
diseases of both soul and body.89
Increase human intelligence:
Thanks to it, man can extend the limits of his power.
der, of his lights and of his reason, developing his genius, and
give him an amplitude, an intelligence and a penetration very
above what he himself can conceive.90
86 This is what he declares in his Secret Book. XII century.

87 In his Tractatus aureus de lapide philosophico.
88 In his Rosary of Philosophers.
89 In his Confessio de Chaos physico chimicorum.
90 In the Myth-Physical-Horse-Hermetic Concordance. 18th century text.
83
And divine:
He told me that if for nine consecutive days I used
see drops or nine grains of the Stone, it would be endowed with an
intelligence
angelic gence and that it would seem to me to be in paradise.91
It even grants psychic powers:
Purifies and illuminates both the body and soul of the person who possesses
it
who sees as in a mirror all the celestial movements of the
constellations and the influences of the stars, even without looking at the
mament; even in a room with the windows closed.92
We have chosen the text that we transcribe below, pro-
transferor of a nineteenth-century work, entitled Hermes des-
veiled, whose author called himself Cyliani, and we have done it for-
which is one of the closest to our time (among alchemists
considers him as one of the last Adepts) and because besides
sums up well the virtues of Universal Medicine.
This is the effect of universal medicine, which radically cures
all diseases that affect man during the course of his
life, and makes it go through in good health for many centuries, unless
God, in his designs he has ordered it differently. It thus has an effect
contrary to the opinion given by doctors, who hold that a single
remedy cannot cure all ailments.
If, on the other hand, they knew universal medicine, they would see that the
power of that salt is similar to the power of a magnet, which attracts,
instead
iron, the force of universal life, and serves as an envelope.
By administering it, they [physicians] would be forced to acknowledge its
celestial power, and they would kneel before that beautiful magnificent salt.
Ethical, endowed with a supernatural and miraculous force; proclaiming, of
body and soul, that no ailment resists its action, as of it
I convinced myself, dedicating my life to the ailments abandoned by them.
91 In the Young Peasant's Chest, anonymous text.
92 Sperber, in his Isagoge de materia lapidis.
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The intake of the philosopher's stone

Let's now look at the rules about the use of this medicine:
It is necessary ... to take of this medicine in very little quantity.
For fear that this celestial fire, endowed with an activity
eminent, do not act too impetuously and forcefully on
the weak spark that animates us.
The powder fermented with gold is called a stone and can
be employed in medicine as follows: we will take a
scruple or twenty-four grains, we will solve in two ounces
of spirit of wine and then two, or three or even four will be given
drops, as required by the disease, in a little wine or
in any other convenient vehicle.
Huginus à Barmâ.
The Kingdom of Saturn transformed into a golden age. 1780.93
The Alchemist: Lord, how long can he who possesses
this Universal Medicine?
The Voice: Until the end of death, however it is necessary to
laughed to use it wisely, because several sages have died before the
end of his life for the use of this Medicine.
The Cosmopolitan. The New Chemical Light. XVII century.
Alchemical treatises usually coincide in the form of inge-
laugh the philosopher's stone. A few drops of the elixir or a few grains
on a spirituous liquor such as wine, even in water, they stain the
receiving liquor. The consumption of this substance must be controlled,
its abuse can lead to death.
Some authors state that the intake of this substance in
the established terms and periods produces a feedback.
With each intake there is a new regeneration. From an old-
does not make a young man, they say. The stone produces an awakening
in the human vital spark. As if the soul received a dose
85

extra vital force and with it a greater capacity of this to
support the body. In short, a cell renewal, a
turning back in the biological clock initiated by a detoxification
cation, an elimination of toxins that manifests itself through
an initial fever and heavy sweating. As you consume
this substance, the body seems to dense, producing
an intellectual awakening and greater spirituality.
Source: Simeon Ben Cantara. Cabala Mineralis. 17th century manuscript.
We see in the lower left image an elderly person.

After taking the elixir of youth, enter a state that says
lasts from two weeks to a month. During this period,
dine in great sweats. Some alchemists claim that also
nails, hair, teeth fall out, but then they return to
grow with great strength; it is like a rebirth, a rejuvenation. Des-
then, as the lower right window shows, the old man
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Luis Silva
it rejuvenates itself. But the story does not end here, the alchemist has
deified, angelicized, or, to use more alchemical words,
has subjugated or densified, 94 has exalted his soul, just as
shows the upper right image.
In the form of projection powder
Projection powder: ... Powder that when projected on the
imperfect metals in fusion, transmutes them into gold or silver,
Whether the work has been taken to white or red.
Universal Medicine, fermented with the purest gold or silver,
By melting, it results in the projection powder. Is
then a translucent mass, red or white, depending on the specific metal
caught, sprayable and suitable for spraying only95
metallic.
The philosopher's stone must be oriented towards transmutation
metallic. If it is to be transmuted into gold, it must be put into
fusion with it, so that the stone receives, so to speak,
One way, the information of the atomic structure of gold. A) Yes,
oriented towards this information, transfers it to the other metals,
improving them, perfecting them, transmuting them into metal
par excellence, gold. It is the fermentation of the Obra al Rojo. The
The same process requires transmutation to silver.
From the above we can deduce why the anti-
Guys to this matter projection powders. Just because
they project their perfection to gold. Following his literal words,
stone cures vile metals of their leprosy, that is, of their en-
94 It has lost density.
95 Transmutation.
87

disease or inferiority. He perfects them, projects them to his
maximum expression, gold.
Multiplication or increase
of the transmutatory power
The Stone could have a more or less great virtue depending on
it would have been fermented more or less times.
Roger Bacon. Mirror of Alchemy. S. xiii.
The multiplication is done in this way: take a part of
your fixed red powder and ten parts of your menses96 and dis-
put it in a flask glass, on the spot they will embrace. Seal her-
the glass and put it in the Atanor ... until you have
the blackness on the globe ... the various colors of the turkey's tail
real and the color red. If you want you can multiply a second and
a third time proceeding in the same way.
In the first operation, a part of the powder will dye ten of
metal; in the second, one part will dye a hundred and in the third, a
thousand.
Huginus à Barmâ.
The Kingdom of Saturn transformed into a golden age. 1780.
Concerning multiplication, observe that so many times
as you dissolve it and fix it again with the Milk of the Virgin,
which is its dissolving water, as many times it is multiplied by
ten in quality and quantity, like ten to a hundred, a hundred to a thousand,
and so on
to infinity.
Anonymous.
The hermaphrodite child of the Sun and the Moon. 1752.97
96 Menstruum. Any solvent that has the strength to dissolve another body,
thus
They call him in Latin solvens. The purest of the watery menses is the
distilled dew, for
contain in itself many subtle saline parts that it has received in the air.
Felix Palacios. Pa-
lestra Pharmaceutica. 1706.
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Luis Silva
According to the classical texts of Alchemy, not all stones
Philosophers enjoy the same transmutative power. Us
we refer to the proportion between the quantity or weight of the powders
of projection and that of the metal to be transmuted. The more virtue or
Power has the Stone, it transmutes a greater amount (weight)
of ignoble metal. This basically depends on the purity of the
matter used to make the philosopher's stone and the number
of sublimations or secret fermentations carried out on it.
The more sublimations, the more power. Each fermentation o
sublimation increases the transmutation power by 10. Thus, the
second fermentation raises the potency to 100, the third to 1,000,
the fourth 10,000, and so on until the top that will be said
later. This fermentative and vir-
Your stone has always been called Multiplication.
Multiplication consists of enhancing the embryo of the skin.
Philosopher's Dra. Once made and fermented, it is necessary to feed
mentor it, nurture it, to give it power and virtue. In Alchemy,
this embryo of the red and fixed stone or powder is usually pointed under
the names of royal infant, regulus or little king. This Child King has
to be fed with their mother's milk, that is, with their own
universal solvent or menstruum that gave birth to it. Both,
solvent and dissolute, should be placed in an oval flask.
do or in the form of a balloon that must be hermetically closed.
If it was operated well, the compound will turn black, a
variety of different colors, a phase that in Alchemy is called
usually peacock tail. Then the compound will be
white and finally the initial color, red, will appear again.
This operation can be carried out several times, increasing by
ten the power in each of them.
How is a transmutation carried out?
The general rule for transmutation to gold is as follows:
• A part of ignoble metal is melted in a crucible
(lead, mercury, copper, iron etc.).
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• Once melted, another much lower part of the
projection powders, which previously had to be
turned in wax or paper to compact them and prevent the
Fusion fumes alter the properties of powders.
• After a few minutes, the molten metal changes its
color to gold, sign of the transmutation into gold.
Special transmutations
Transmutation elixir. Cold transmutation
Alchemical history also deals, although more rarely,
mind, of the transmutations not carried out with the powders of
projection, but with a tincture or elixir, and also cold, without
any need for heat. Let's see one of the most outstanding:
I took a watch glass, and put a small amount in it
of commercial fluid mercury, which had been distilled, which
It was pure, and he had just bought. I put on top, not my sulfur
transmutatory to the state of dust, but to the state of oil, in the
ratio of one part out of a hundred, and I stirred my glass
to give the oil a circular motion. We saw with joy the
mercury offer a very curious phenomenon, and coagulate with the
the most beautiful gold color; I just had to melt it in a crucible and
pour it; I did the cold transmutation like this.
Cyliani. Hermes unveiled. XIX century.
Non-metallic transmutations
In addition to the metallic transmutation, they are attributed to the
He has other, stranger virtues, such as that of making malleable and
ductile the glass, 98 i.e. allows the glass to be reduced to fine
sheets or sheets (malleability), or spread it into threads (ductility).
98 In the Clangor Buccinae or the Fragor of the trumpet. Old anonymous text,
possibly from the s. xvi.
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Luis Silva
It not only transforms rough stones into gemstones,
also perfects the latter:
... ruby, topaz, can be obtained by it, surpassing
natural in virtue, substance and color.99
It also transforms the crystal into ruby:
Melt the crystal in the above manner, casting the
powder inside: will change into ruby. 100
A very curious text from the 18th century, entitled La
key to the Great Work, 101 de Sancelrien102 de Tourangeau, provides a
good number of other curiosities. I extract some:
The crystal can also be transmuted into diamond:
... the crystal, which medicine reduces to a diamond, so brilliant
tire, so heavy and so fixed, that it is more diamond than the own
Diamond.
The water in glass:
Three grains poured into a glass of fountain water, the tor-
are instantly hard and transparent, as if it were true
dero cristal.
Create pearls and make jelly from them:
If they want to make pearls, they take their seeds and give them to them.
dissolve in our medicine that, over low heat, will reduce them easily-
99 In the Garden of Riches by Georges Aurach, 15th century text. There is an
edition in
Castilian by Indigo editions.
100 Ibid.
102 A curiosity: in French and in phonetic Kabbalah 'sans sel rien', that is,
without salt at all.
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mind as if it were a thick jelly, this jelly can be
knead with your hands and you can give it the shape and thickness that
want.
Stain or color the glass:
Internally stains the glass with all kinds of colors, as in
the stained glass windows of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.
Hardens the glass:
... you could hit and beat this glass on the anvil, like
all metals ... glass with which houses could be built
they would hardly ever fall.
... that would only show through in one direction:
and through which you could see everything that happens outside
without being able to see what is going on inside.
Makes fabric fireproof:
If a canvas or any other combustible material is immersed
ble, the fire will not be able to consume or attack it.
Increase the life of lamps and candles:
If it is mixed with ordinary lamp oil, or if it is
Add to the wax of the candles, they will burn continuously ...
Allows the construction of burning mirrors:
This mirror can multiply the sun's rays to such an extent
that from far away can burn and destroy entire peoples.
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Finally, something even more incredible, allows you to see the spirit
or soul of plants through the art they called Palingenesia,
and even create a small living being, like the famous homunculus103
of Paracelsus.
However, to finish this section, we must point out,
it would be unfair not to do so, that Fulcanelli, on the virtues bestowed
you give to the stone by Sancelrien, thinks that they are exaggerated.
In the form of a perpetual light or lamp
To get a perpetual lamp it would be necessary to carry
to the philosopher's stone from its solid state to the liquid, process
they claim is dangerous and should only be attempted by a
wise master of consummate skill. A series of operations
repeated actions produces this change of state in the stone. These
operations are called multiplications, and are intended to increase
tar the transmutatory potency of the Stone. Multiply the pie-
beyond the liquid state could lead to its abandonment of
our physical plane. Fulcanelli, in addition to advising that it would be
unwise to go beyond the seventh reiteration or fermentation,
defined very well the origin and functions of these perpetual lamps.
you, so we'll use your words:
When universal medicine in saline form, it is multiplied
gives virtue, changes form, and remains fluid like the market.
curium and in the dark it glows with a soft, red, and
phosphorescent, whose glow is weaker than that of a lamp
common. It then becomes a perpetual lamp.
The everlasting, inextinguishable, perpetual, burning lamps ...,
are one of the most amazing achievements of her-
103 Homunculus. From the Latin homunculus, little man.
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methics. They are made of liquid elixir brought to the state of radia-
tion and kept inside the flask in a vacuum as much as possible
perfect possible. In his Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences, Paris,
1731, Thomas de Corneille says that in 1401 “a peasant developed
terrored near the Tiber, near Rome, a Pallas lamp that would have
burned for more than two thousand years, as could be seen from an
inscription,
without anything having been able to extinguish it. The flame was
extinguished as soon as
a small hole was made in the ground ”. Likewise, under the pontificate
of Paul III (1534-1549) was discovered in the Tomb of Tulia, daughter of
Cicero, a perpetual lamp that still burned providing a light
intense, even though the tomb had not been opened for a thousand
five hundred and fifty years.
Cyrano de Bergerac showed his interest in them. Tells us:
... hung in the pompous graves of people
illustrious. Our contemporaries have found some of
them while excavating some famous tombs, but their ignorant
riosity has spoiled them, hoping to find behind their membranes
The fire that they saw glistening was broken.
Comic history of the States and the Empires of the Sun.
Finally, he also showed great concern for them
our illustrious Benedictine Father Fray Benito Jerónimo Fei-
joo (1676-1764), dedicating an extensive Discourse to these lamps
so104 where it deals with the possibility or not of its existence based on
the knowledge of his time.
Faced with the possibility of so many wonders, it is easy to understand
the sentiment of many alchemists who, locked in the background
out of their cabinets, they enjoy the study of Nature and
the sublime Alchemy.
104 Universal Critical Theater. Volume IV.
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TRANSMUTATIONS
Are transmutations possible? What does science tell us?
Yes, transmutations do exist and, furthermore, they are proven. Do not
only Science has transmuted, Nature itself makes it es-
spontaneously.
Natural transmutations
In inorganic bodies
A gas atom can turn into a metallic one, or to
conversely, a metallic atom can become a gaseous one,
such as radium, which is a radioactive metal that is
converts helium gas, or radon, which is a gas that transmutes
in lead.
Efferarius, Monk, Philosopher and Chemist:

Alchemists possess the ability to transmute
imperfect metals in a true way and not
feigned.
95
In organic bodies
1. Investigations of Louis Nicolas Vauquelin
Vauquelin fed a hen for 10 days exclusively-
mind with oatmeal. The total amount of oatmeal she gave him was almost
6 grams of calcium salt, but when analyzing your bowel movements more
the four eggs he laid, he found about 34
grams of this salt, 475% more. He could not give an explanation.
2. Investigations of William Prout

Prout worked with chicken eggs. These eggs have a
incubation period of 20 days. He realized, according to his
lysis, that in the first ten days there were 0.04
grams of calcium. However, as of the eleventh day of
cubing, as the chicken grows, a membrane that is
inside the egg, which creates more space and more air in its
inside. This, coupled with the constant heat of the brooding hen, and
other factors, produced an increase in the amount of calcium. Re-
It turned out that from day 11 to day 20 the amount of
calcium. From 0.04 it was increased to 0.18 grams. Prout could not explain
this considerable increase in calcium.
Louis N. Vauquelin (1763 -1829)

Naturalist, chemist and pharmacist. French.
William Prout (1785 -1850)

English chemist, physicist and theologian.
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3.- Louis Kervran research
This twentieth century French scientist deserves special mention, for
that their jobs are a tough nut to crack for Science. You
call the father of biological transmutations or transmutation
low energy natural tions. He showed that it is possible to
tar with little energy and that living beings do.
How did you prove it? Casually. In 1959, while
found in the Sahara, he observed some workers who under
a scorching sun sucked up what appeared to be salt. Asked them
about it and they confirmed that it was indeed sodium chloride.
co, that is, salt. It was curious to him and he kept asking them. You
They said that the salt refreshed them and at the same time prevented them
from suffering
perthermia, that is, the typical heat stroke and fainting product
from sunstroke. Kervran suggested analyzing their sweat and checking
bó that showed high levels of potassium, but not sodium. It
It would have been logical for them to sweat sodium, yet they exhaled
potassium. Where did the potassium come from? He wondered. Came to the
conclusion that sodium was transmuted into potassium in the organism
nism and then expelled through sweat.
Louis Kervran (1901-1983)

He did a lot of research. Among them, he planted
in lands without calcium certain plants: geraniums,
daisies, wheat, and many others, even trees ...
Then he analyzed them and detected calcium. From where
was the calcium coming? he wondered. For him it was logical
that it was the product of a transmutation.
He said that silicon, which is very abundant in
crust, under certain conditions
transforms into calcium.
97
Artificial transmutations
The word transmute derives from the Latin trans, which means
'beyond', and from mutare, 'to change or to mutate', that is, beyond
a simple mutation or beyond a simple mutation. Which
occurs when a transmutation occurs is that the
atomic structure of a matter, that is, a thing becomes
in other. Have we artificially transmuted? Yes.
Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, a twentieth-century physicist and chemist, who has the
honor of being buried in Westminster Abbey alongside
the genius of Isaac Newton, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
cover that radioactivity was accompanied by decay
of the elements. He also proved the existence of the atomic nucleus
co, being the first scientist to perform an ar-
tificial. As it did?
Lets start by the beginning. Atoms, in general, without en-
go into deeper detail, they are made up of a core and
electrons orbiting around it.
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Orbiting electrons are particles that have an electric charge.
negative tric, while the atomic nucleus is composed of
protons and neutrons. Protons are particles that have
positive electric charge, and neutrons, as the name suggests,
they are neutral, that is, they lack it.
The most important thing about the atom is its number or quantity of
tones, hence its name "atomic number." And it is important
because the number of protons is what defines the elements
simple. Hydrogen has 1 proton, it is hydrogen; helium has
2 protons, it is helium; nitrogen has 7, it is nitrogen, and so on until
the total number of elements that make up the periodic table.
Well, what did Rutherford do?
Ernest Rutherford
(1871-1937)
First transmutation of matter,
nitrogen to oxygen, effected
by Ernest Rutherford.
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Let's put it in a simple way. Took a nucleus of nitrogen
not that, as we said, it is composed of protons and neutrons
–In particular, nitrogen has 7 protons and 7 neutrons in its number.
cleo–; on the other hand, he took a helium nucleus, which is made up of
2 protons and 2 neutrons; impacted the helium core against
nitrogen, and what happened? That one of the helium protons
it stayed, it incorporated itself into the nucleus of nitrogen; therefore
already
It was not nitrogen, it was oxygen, because this is the element that has 8
protons in its nucleus. Rutherford transformed a nucleus of nitro-
Gene in oxygen with emission of a helium proton.
Years later, a German laboratory obtained traces of
gold working with uranium. Uranium ions were accelerated and
fired at a disc of uranium metal. Analyzed the disk
traces of gold were found. However, the cost of the process
was too high and it was not at all worth creating that
scant amount of gold through this transmutation.
Also working with mercury, traces of
gold. But this requires a huge and expensive amount
of energy. Now, did the alchemists find a way to
transmute at low energy and in a simple laboratory, as in the
kitchen of a home?
Let's see ... They are classic in alchemical texts transmutation
tions of lead or mercury in gold. Gold has 79 protons. The
mercury 80. Only one difference. Lead has 82, three
Of diference.
What if the philosopher's stone had the virtue of penetrating the
cleo from the mercury and remove a proton? From 80 it would go to 79. What
would we have then? We would have gold.
It happens that the philosopher's stone, in order for it to transmute, must
be
oriented to the metal that the alchemist wishes it to transmute to. Whether
you want me to do it in gold, you have to take gold and dissolve it (or in
alchemical terms, ferment it) on the philosopher's stone. Of this
the way the stone perceives the atomic structure of said metal and
then knows what to project into when merging with
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Luis Silva
other metal; it will be screened or transmuted into gold. If it were in
silver,
would project in silver.
If the philosopher's stone was oriented to gold, once melted
with mercury or lead, it will carry your message and strength
enough to extract the excess protons and get
those metals are transmuted into gold.
Transmutations with the Philosopher's Stone: Testimonies
Are there testimonies of these transmutations? Exist? Yes, and
they are numerous. We will summarize three transmutations that occur
There was a great commotion in their different eras.
1. Van Helmont
Belgian physician, chemist and scientist of the 17th century much
appreciated.
do in your country. He discovered the difference between air and gases. TO
that different fluid he called Gas, a word he coined himself to
from the Greek word kaos.
In 1618, in his laboratory in Vilvorde (a nearby town
to Brussels) received a visit from a stranger who wished to keep
have a conversation with him. Helmont thought he wanted to try
on medicine, however, the strange character ruthlessly approached
Give us hermetic art. He assured him that the philosopher's stone exists and
offered to give him a portion of that stone, depositing on
the scientist's table some grains of a powder that Helmont
fined as “red, heavy, and shiny like fragmented glass.
tado ”. The stranger told him how to proceed in order to see
a transmutation with his own eyes. He then asked
permission to withdraw.
Faced with the firmness of the alchemist, the Belgian sage decided to
proof. Took 8 ounces of mercury, 30-33 grams per ounce, plus
or less a quarter of a kilo of mercury, and put it on fire in a
foundry crucible; later, he threw inside the powder that
101

had been given to him, and had previously been wrapped in a
paper; after about a quarter of an hour, it cooled
the crucible in water, it broke violently due to the contra-
temperature, and what he found there was a piece of gold from
identical weight to the mercury used.
The scientist's surprise became news that was
spread quickly. Helmont made a written record of
said events and had them published under his name and res-
accountability.105
The experience was such an impact that he named his son
Mercury's bre.
We see below a picture of van Helmont and his son,
Francisco Mercurio. It has been extracted from his work Ortus Medicinae.
I have seen and manipulated the philosopher's stone. It was the color of aza-
Frankin powder, it was heavy, and it shone like shattered glass.
Jean Baptiste van Helmont (1579-1644)
105 In his Ortus Medicinae or Aurora de la Medicina.
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2. Helvetius
Helvetius (Johann Friedrich Schweitzar) was a famous physician
of the seventeenth century royal court who became famous as
doctor and wise. He worked in Switzerland for the Prince of Orange and was
at first a great adversary of hermetic art.
Similar to van Helmont,
one fine day, specifically December 17, 1666, a
acquaintance requested an audience. This one was in his forties,
low and dignified. Both dealt with various topics until
that the visitor asked him if he believed in the philosopher's stone. Helve-
cio, although he did not believe in it, recognized that it was the dream of
all
the doctors. The character took out of his pocket a small box of
ivory, opened it and showed the doctor inside, some powder of
saffron color. "Do you see these powders Master Helvetius?" He said,
"Well, there is enough to transmute forty thousand
pounds of lead in gold ”.
Helvetius asked for a demonstration, but the visitor
refused to do so under the excuse of being subject to a superior authority.
superior. However, he told him that he would ask the Adept for permission and
that if he gave it to him, he would return within three weeks.
After three weeks, the stranger showed up again
before Helvetius offering him a fragment the size of a
what a seed. The doctor thanked him and the visitor before
being absent explained the way in which he should proceed, in addition to
noted the duty to give public knowledge of the transmutation
to the glory of Almighty God.
Helvetius, with the help of his wife, melted a tube in a crucible
of lead and, as he was told, he wrapped those powders in wax,
He placed them in the crucible and after a few minutes the lead
poured into gold.
Likewise, that episode had a great stir. Swiss
was good friends with a goldsmith, and this man could not believe that
the gold also had an extreme quality. It was totally gold
pure. The goldsmith said he did not know such perfect gold.
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This much longer account is found in the work of
Helvetius entitled Vitulus Aureus.
I found an old lead tube and placed it in the crucible; how-

When it had melted, my wife threw the projection powder on it.
turned in wax. Then the matter boiled and was allowed to
They heard loud whistles. After fifteen minutes, the entire
from lead had turned to gold.
Swiss. Vitulus aureus. 1678.
3. Richard Chanfray
And to conclude this section we continue with this third story.
ria, much more recent. Year 1975. Let us remember the program of
Helvetius (1625-1709) Cover of Vitulus Aureus,

Hermetic Museum Library, 1678.
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Spanish television Directísimo, presented by José María Iñi-
go. We saw a live transmutation of lead into gold. On TV
Four, in one of the Fourth Millennium programs from now
for a few years that transmutation was remembered by interviewing
José María Iñigo himself, who made interesting comments,
such as, for example, that during the transmutation there was no
pa or cardboard. The transmutation was done in the presence of chemicals,
goldsmiths, even an illusionist magician ... No doubt the lead was
transferred
it mutated into gold.
Richard Chanfray offered some powder to those present and
told how to proceed. During the experiment he did not touch anything with
her hands. He said they had been given to him by a French alchemist.
called Fulcanelli with the aim of making some transmu-
public tions.
It seems that the beginning of his misfortune (he committed suicide in 1983)
it began when he ran out of this transmutatory matter. To see-
true alchemist, the one who offered it was left in the preferred shadow
laughing anonymity. His objective was to give a further testimony
in the twentieth century. Although Alchemy seems to sleep, it usually awakens
century by century by some transmutation.
The alchemical tradition holds that Alchemy must not
never laugh, you must always stay alive. If not, it would end
in the trunk of memories. Hence, from century to century,
cen public transmutations.
And before ending this chapter we ask ourselves the following:
you: if the philosopher's stone is capable, and it seems that it is so, since
there are all the tests to which we have referred, of trans-
mutate the mineral kingdom, will he be able to transmute people? Yes it is
capable of perfecting metals, will he be able to perfect the
human being?
There is a law in Alchemy that says that everything evolves:
that the mineral kingdom is eager to become a vegetable, that
the vegetable kingdom is because it is an animal, the latter, because it
becomes human.
hand, and the person, although many do not know it, is willing
for becoming something superior, let's call him "angel", for giving him a
105

Name. Alchemy is also a path in this sense. To the
just as the mystics seek to achieve realization, enlightenment
nation, through its ascetic practices, Alchemy does it by
a different path, by ingesting a substance that
possesses a large amount of energy that ancient alchemists
They called, among many other names, subtle, divine, spiritual,
celestial, cosmic, astral, luminous ...
Animal-plant - Elysia chlorotica

A link between the vegetable and animal kingdoms.
Elysia chlorotica, as it is called, is capable of carrying out the
photosynthesis. It makes chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants that
captures the
energy from sunlight. It is a plant-animal, a species of sea slug with
green leaf form that inhabits the North American coastline.
Source: Wikipedia.
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Scale of Creation. Ramon Llull. From nova Logica. 1512. Reissue of Logica
nova de 1303. Image source: Alchemy & Mysticism. Taschen. 2005.
In the image above, in the lower steps we see
the different kingdoms of nature: mineral, vegetable,
animal and, within this, the human. In the higher, the realms
heavenly, angelic and that of God, where Sapientia, or Wisdom, has
107

built his dwelling place. Shyly, the Sun pretends with some
its rays illuminate the dark entrance of the abode or palace
of Wisdom.
Let us remember, to end this section, the basis of the Philosophy
Natural trust of the pure brothers, 106 constituted by doctrines
Aristotelian combined with a clear Neoplatonic influence:
The prima materia107 is an emanation of the soul from the world.
It becomes manifest by virtue of the four elements, insofar as
mothers of everything; and, from these, are formed, in order, the
minerals, plants, animals, whose last member is the
man, and then angels.108
After having imagined the shape and characteristics of the stone
philosopher, discover his great virtues and accept the possibility
nity of metallic transmutation, we are now going to see aspects
more operatives of the philosopher's stone. But, before proceeding,
it is necessary to assimilate some basic concepts that, although
Adepts have insisted on them, we took years to
understand. The reader has it much easier.
OPERATIVE ALCHEMY
Metallic Alchemy: Metals
The metals of the Philosophers are that matter from which they
brings the spirit and from whose spirit the stone is made to white and
red-hot stone. His perfect metals are those same stones,
which they often call bodies. The old chemicals
have given the metals the names of the seven planets because
106 Sufi secret society founded around 950 in Basra (Iraq). The corpus of his
writings (51
Treatises) collects the thought of late antiquity.
107 Protomatter or first matter of Creation.
108 Gernot and Hartmut Böhme. Fire, Water, Earth, Air. A cultural history of
the elements.
Editorial Herder. 1998.
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Luis Silva
they have believed to see in them some similar properties and colors
those the astrologer sees on the planets. Consequently,
they have called lead, Saturn; to tin, Jupiter; to iron, Mar-
tea; to the gold, Sun; to copper, Venus; to living silver or mercury, Mercu-
laughed and silver, Luna. Metals are distinguished as perfects, which
are gold and silver and imperfect, which are copper, iron,
lead, tin and mercury.
Dom Pernety.
Myth-hermetic dictionary.
The best remedies can be extracted from minerals and
metals as long as they are purified for the necessary time.
necessary so as not to leave anything undesirable on these subjects.
E. Jourdan de Pellerin.
Posthumous Works of M. de Grimaldy. 1745.109
The seven traditional metals had long been known
old. The art of metallurgy110 was already practiced in the ancient
Egypt. Metals are very important in alchemical art
because they are the true and only agents of the philosopher's stone.
The metals were divided into noble, gold and silver, and ignoble,
lead, tin, mercury, copper, and iron. Gold and
silver did not precisely achieve their nobility because of their greater
radiant and permanent, but because of its similarity with the stars
brightest in the sky. Gold is the metal of the Sun, and silver of the
Moon. The ancient Sumerians and Egyptians also knew some
gún semimetal, like antimony; they made makeup with it,
and they made pots and medicines.
The ancient alchemists assigned metals a
medicinal properties far superior to that of natural remedies.
getales. The best medicines were extracted from gold and silver.
However, its production process is much more complex.
109 There is an annotated translation edited at Bubok Editorial. Madrid.
2008.
110 From the Greek words metallon, metal mine and ergon, work. Art of
extracting and treating
lower metals.
109

Metals must undergo extreme purification to remove
give them their infectious sulfur, which is their great poison. By means of
the
dissolution that they carried out on them observed that all the
Metals are made up of two elements they called sulfur and
mercury. In few treatises, among them the Posthumous Works of M.
of Grimaldy, the color and characteristics of the different
metallic sulfur and mercury.
In ancient times, in addition to attributing planets to metals,
he related them to ancient Gods. They were also assigned symbols
bowling to each of them, as we see in the following image.
110
Luis Silva
Metallic genesis
It is true and undoubted that metals and minerals, whatever-
Whatever they are, they are created by Nature through
same matter as that of plants and animals, so
that nothing else can be discovered but the universal spirit of the
world, the sky and the elements.
E. Jourdan de Pellerin.
Posthumous Works of M. De Grimaldy. 1745.
The true matter of metals is not if not a vapor, a
spirit that is embodied in the bowels of the earth, as
that the central fire sublimates it towards the surface, becoming
a viscous water that is alloyed with different sulfur, is cooked and
digests with them in a more or less perfect way, depending on the
greater or lesser degree of purity of the matrix where they are formed
the metals.
Dom Pernety. Myth-hermetic dictionary.
But if this steam and this fat had not met
never, ever would a metal have been made.
Nicolas Valois.
The five books or the key to the secret of secrets. 15th century 111
Because all sulfur metals are
Formed, and of the living silver that they have.
They are two sperms of metals.
Nicolas Flamel, 14th century alchemist. Summary.
Mercurius is living silver
the one with all the power
of the seven metals,
Well, it's his mother.
Jehan de la Fontaine.
The Fountain of Science Lovers. XVII century.
111

All metals derive from the same source: matter
first. The Hermetic philosophers are unanimous on this point.
"All metals are essentially similar, they only differ
by its shape ”(Alberto Magno. De Alchemy). "There is only
a single raw material of metals, which covers different
shapes according to the degree of doneness, according to the strength plus or
minus
powerful of a certain natural agent ”(Arnau de Vilanova.
way of way). Let it be said in passing that the theory is absolute-
particularly applicable to minerals. "There is only one subject
for metals and minerals ”(Basilio Valentín). "The Sulfur, the
Mercury and Arsenic (salt) are the principles that make up the
metals. Sulfur is the active principle, Mercury the passive,
Arsenic is the medium that unites them ”. (Roger Bacon. Brief brief-
rium by dono Dei).
Sulfur and Mercury, these two principles exist separated in
the bosom of the earth. Sulfur in the form of a solid body,
steady, unctuous. Mercury in the form of vapor. 'Sulfur is the
grease from the earth, thickened in the mines by a moderate action
gives until it hardens, then it constitutes the Sulfur '(Alberto
Great. Alchemical). Endlessly drawn to each other, the
two principles are combined in various proportions to form
metals and minerals ... 'The only difference in cooking and di-
management (within the land), produces variety in the species
metallic '(Alberto Magno. The Compound of Compounds). 'I know-
According to the purity or impurity of the component principles, Sulfur
and Mercury, perfect or imperfect metals are produced '(Roger
Bacon. Mirror of Alchemy). Here we dare to say that
Imperfect metals are born first. Metals run
a kind of cycle: 'We have shown that ... the generation of
metals is circular, they pass easily from one to another following
a circle. Related metals have similar properties, that is
This is why silver easily changes into gold. (Albert the Great.
The Compound of Compounds). Gold, which is perfection, is the
constant goal of Nature. 'I also say that the
purpose of Nature is to strive ceaselessly to achieve the
perfection, gold '(Roger Bacon. Mirror of Alchemy).
Albert Poisson.
Theories and symbols of the alchemists. The Great Work.
112
Luis Silva
The above quotes define well both the alchemical concept
of the generation of metals within the earth, as its
composition. Let's make a summary:
All minerals and metals have their origin in a
first teria or protomatter, a vapor that becomes a
viscous water that mixes with fatty sulfur. All metals
are composed of this viscous water or Mercury and of an earth
fat or sulfur. The degree of heat and doneness experienced by both
inside the earth, the greater or lesser humidity, the pressure,
the varying purity of these same components and various ac-
incidents, such as the opening of mines that affect this genesis,
they cause the differences between one and the other metals; now well, to-
two tend finally, by natural law, to their perfection, to gold.
Most of the classical texts warn the reader of the ne-
need to know the formation of metals. As we say,
its primary origin is viscous moisture. This humidity,
metallic mother, is at the same time the solvent of her metallic children.
This humid air can, they say, seize and liquefy if the
opportune places and the subject and the procedure are known. Yes
is not found in this way, the ancients tell us that this va-
by it can be extracted from the substances where it is. Later
we deal with this issue.
Thomas Aquinas, Italian chemist:

Art as Nature makes metals
with sulfur and mercury.
113

Finally, a very important note that escaped us during
for many years. The ancient alchemists understood the existence
tence of two suns:
• One, the celestial sun, the one we see every day.
• The other was called central fire or central sun. They claimed that
there was a sun in the center of the earth (hence its name of
central), comparable in heat output to the celestial sun.
This internal fireball, they said, causes evaporation
of groundwater and its rise to the surface of
the earth. Once this vapor reaches the earth's surface,
as it is a hot air, it continues to rise up to the sky,
to, when cooling, fall in the form of drops, thus generating the
dew that some alchemists use as a matter. Is
incredible that since ancient times the existence of
this central sun, perfectly comparable to the median ball
incandescent thalic or inner core found in
the center of the Earth, at a temperature similar to that of the
surface of the sun, about six thousand degrees centigrade.
There is also in the center of the Earth a terrestrial Sun that, for
its perpetual motion impels the heat or its rays upwards,
towards the earth's surface ... There is a central Sun in the center of
the Earth which by its movement raises a great heat that is
extends to the surface of the Earth ... Then this central heat
perpetual, works, heats and distills the water, and it by the
force of said heat is changed into air, which by this means passes
to the surface of the Earth, because it cannot be enclosed,
and after it is cooled, it is resolved in water.
The Cosmopolitan.
The New Chemical Light. XVII century.
114
Luis Silva
Of the necessity of gold in the philosopher's work

This is how gold produces gold, that is what the entire magisterium consists
of.
Epistle of Isis on sacred art.
Ancient Greek text quoted by Hoeffer.
The matter from which the sovereign medicine of the
philosophers is very pure gold or very fine silver joined to
our living silver.
Bernardo el Trevisano, alchemist of the 15th century.
The abandoned word.
The Science of the Philosopher's Stone demands personal knowledge
effect of the operations of Nature and Art concerning
the metals; His practice consists in seeking the principles of the
such by resolution; when the principles have been done long
more perfect than they were before, they are put together so that they
from there a Universal Medicine, very proper and effective to per-
fertilize imperfect metals and to restore health to the body
indisposed by any type of ailment, whatever it may be.
Jean d'Espagnet.
The secret work of the Philosophy of Hermes. Canon 3.
He who seeks the Art of perfecting and multiplying metals
outside the metals themselves, he walks in error, for it is necessary to
river to seek in the nature of metals the metallic species, as
in that of the man that of the man and in the ox that of the ox.
Jean d'Espagnet.
The most perfect bodies are also endowed with a si-
lies more perfect ... if someone knows how to extract it, they can conceive
Make sure you are on the right track. In the gold is the seed of the
gold, though hidden in its root and in the depth of its substance.
cia, more strongly than in the other metals.
Jean d'Espagnet.
115

The Philosophers' Stone is nothing but gold very
perfect, that is, brought to such a degree of perfection that it can
perfect all imperfect bodies. So Gold is
this Stone, but not the vulgar gold, since this is dead and the
ours is alive.
Thus, Gold is the matter that must be returned to its prime.
mere matter, namely in Sulfur and Mercury, for the separation
and purgation of these, that is, of their impure land that has this
body enclosed as in a tomb, cause that does not allow
let the spirit act as it will after being clean. It has been
to purify and cleanse this land, as has been said ... '
Nicolas Valois.
The five books or the key to the secret of secrets. XV century.
All the Adepts have been very clear on this point. Always
trying to get a philosopher's stone that transmutes into
gold it is mandatory to dissolve this metal in its universal solvent
and by this means extract the roots of this metal. While the Hundred
Today's company claims that gold is a simple element, the ancient
Adepts said the opposite: gold is a composite body; it
they form two substances, a reddish earth, which they called
neral sulfur, and a clear liquor they called mercury. I found out
they broke out thanks to their secret dissolution. This led to these two
golden roots, principles or seeds. This dissolution process is
they called reincrudation, 112 retrogradation, 113 dissolution or resolution,
among many other names.
These Sages also affirm that when the se-
metallic mile of gold, this can be multiplied, as if
potatoes are sown potatoes are harvested. To get it, both
principles, Sulfur and Mercury, or King and Queen, or Male and Female, are
cleanse themselves of their heterogeneities and re-enter
marriage. The result of their copulation is a beautiful prince,
the embryo of the philosopher's stone, which suitably nourished
112 In the sense of making what is now mature gold crude.
113 Roll back the metal grade by grade to a previous state.
116
Luis Silva
will become the true king, the red sulfur or philosopher's stone
that allows metallic transmutation. Later we try
this process with more attention.
Even the philosopher's stone made without any metal by the way
so universal it needs, in order for it to transmute into gold, to be oriented
or fermented in that metal. If not, if it is not oriented to the world
metallic, this stone will not transmute.
And to help those who are interested in reading the texts
classics, we will say that on many occasions gold is designated with
the terms of stone or body, a question that is not trivial, since
helps not to get lost in hermetic literary frameworks.
Preparation of gold before its natural dissolution

Thus, the first agent of the philosophers is Gold, which is
It has to go through the cementation to clean it of the mixtures
that could be included in your body and then put into
small irons or subtle powders ...
Our last intention is none other than to take this Gold, wash-
it by means of antimony or cement, after opening it inside
of our water and make the separation of the body ..., extract the
Mercury of the Philosophers and his first subject on which he works
you will go down as Nature wishes, namely, by the single decoction
Melchior Cibinensis. Hungarian philosopher:

The philosophical stone of philosophers must be
fed virgin milk, like a child.
117

within a single glass in which they will appear so beautiful
figures that will make you happy.
Nicolas Valois.
The five books or the key to the secret of secrets. XV century.
The gold of the common people is impure, stained by the presence of
foreign metals, sour, diseased, and therefore sterile. It's the same
applicable to vulgar silver. On the contrary, the Sun and Moon of the
Philosophers are the purest, they are not contaminated by any
strange mixture, healthy, robust, more abundant in general seed
neratrix.
Grever. Secretum nobilissimun.
He wonders if perfect bodies or luminaries should be
prepared before serving the Work. Answer: gold must be
purified by carburizing and silver by cupellation. Followed-
mind, it is necessary to reduce them to filings or similar sheets
those used by painters.
Arnau de Vilanova. Quoestiones tam essentiales quam accidents
tales ad Bonifacium octavum. 13th century.
It is with the stibium that you will prepare the male's bath ... in
As for the female's bathroom, Saturn will show you what it should be.
Huginus à Barmâ.
The kingdom of Saturn transformed into a golden age.
Perfect gold is mined from the entrails of the earth, where it is
it finds him in the form of lumps or sand. If you can have it
intact, 114 is quite pure; if not, purge it, either with antimony,
already by real cement, already making it boil with strong water. Redu-
Cement the gold into grains or filings, then melt it and it is ready.
The open entrance to the closed Palace of the King. Edition of 1754.
114 Native gold.
118
Luis Silva
From the above quotations it can be deduced that a preliminary
via preparation of gold or silver before proceeding to dissolve them
canonically. Vulgar gold and silver are often alloyed.
nes with other metals. Therefore, either these metals are used
pure, native, without having passed through smelting, or they are
prepare.
Formerly two systems were used to purify gold,
as Ph. Rouillac affirms in his Compendium of the Great Work: “passes
gold for real cement or for antimony ”.
Real cement is composed according to Macquer (Dictionary of
Chemistry), of fourteen parts of crushed bricks, one part of
red-calcined green vitriol and a part of common salt. It was formed
Make a paste of everything with water and urine, and put it in a crucible
with gold, overlaying layers of gold and alternative cement
valy.
Albert Poisson.
Theories and symbols of the alchemists. The Great Work.
The purification of gold by antimony consists in placing
both in a crucible and melt them. The cupellation of silver consists
to melt this metal with lead, formerly in the
I call you Saturn.
Antimony, with the chemical symbol Sb, was known to the
Greeks under the name of Stimmis and by the Romans as Sti-
bium. The ancient alchemists called him a wolf because he is a
metallic vorador. When antimony melts with gold in the
crucible, he leaves this cigar in the glass, cleans it from the alloys
nes you might have.
The importance of antimony in Alchemy lies in the
ability to purify or elevate gold. Gold for alchemists
of the trade is dead, the process of smelting and alloys to
those that are subjected to, turn off or cause latency in its principles
internal assets or seeds, making it unsuitable for the work
115 Cone-shaped vessel where gold or silver minerals are purified.
119

philosopher. Thus, it is necessary in the Great Work that the gold be native
(direct from the mine) and pure (without any alloy with any
other metal), otherwise it either melts together with antimony,
or it goes through actual cementation. Today you can buy gold from
great quality, 99.99% purity, but its current price is 42
Euros per gram. Silver is at 0.70 Euros. For its great purity,
both serve for the work.
These noble metal purifications used to be depicted
through fountains where the king (gold) or queen (silver) bathe,
to wash and get rid of alloys that could contain
to have. The same symbol used to be used to represent the bathroom
the king in his universal solvent, where he strips off his clothes
golden tidies to wear black habits, as later
we will see.
1st key of the monk Basilio Valentín.
The purification of gold and silver.
The two agents of the first work and their preparation.

In The twelve keys, by Basilio Valentín. Century XVI.
120
Luis Silva
Many alchemists work with the noble metals (gold
and silver), and they also seek to find, as we have already mentioned,
mentioned, the so-called universal solvent (authentic secret of
this philosopher's work), to retrograde them with it. It is about
compose them, open them, that is, dissolve them in a natural way.
natural and non-aggressive - contrary to what happens with acids
two or vulgar metallic solvents. Your goal is to find
the two primordial metallic principles they called sulfur and
mercury or living silver. Dissolved the metal, proceed to purify these
two principles, remove their impurities or heterogeneities to
then rejoin them already pure in their secret bath in
inside a hermetically sealed flask. If the work arrives
successful, after a series of phases or main colors of
the work (black, white and red), the result is the Philosopher's Stone
o Universal Medicine. From this procedure derives one of the
most important axioms of Alchemy: «Art improves upon
Nature ", that is, the alchemist ennobles gold (or silver)
turning it into something superior (philosopher's stone), something that the
nature cannot do by itself, so it is seen to be necessary
gives the help of the artist alchemist.
But before operating, a first work proceeds, the one that explains
this 1st Key of Basilio Valentín. Vulgar gold and silver are not
serve when these are alloyed or have passed through the casting
tion. Therefore, either you work with native and pure metals,
directly extracted from the mine, either purified or vivified
by means of the procedure that the emblem indicates veiled.
The emblem shows a king and queen, a wolf and his
right, old Saturn with the sickle that is his attribute, a crucible
and a cup. The king is metal gold, for he is the king of metals,
while the queen is silver. Both, before proceeding to
beginning of the philosopher's work, they must receive a prior purification
or washing.
• The first (the king, the gold) is purified by the antimo-
child, figured by the wolf, both are put to the fire in
121

the crucible. Gold in fusion with stibnite is released from
impurities and alloys that it may contain, that is, it is
cleanses itself, purifies itself, gets rid of its heterogeneous
des. Some classical authors warn of the convenience
perform this operation a minimum of three times to
have as pure gold as possible.
• The second (the queen, the silver), for the same purposes, needs
the location of lead (Saturn) in the interior of a
fired over melting fire.
The King's bathroom
Splendor Solis print. Illuminated Codex
from 1582.
The Splendor Solis is considered the
most beautiful alchemy treatise ever created.
Moleiro Editor published in 2010 the first
and only facsimile reproduction of the Splendor
Solis, in a deluxe edition limited to 987
copies.
Source:
www.levity.com/alchemy/splensol.html
Live metals, dead metals
Gold when in the form of a ring, tableware or coin is vul-
gar, but when mixed with our water it is Philosophical. In
the first state is said to be dead, in the later state
it is said to be alive, because it is potentially so. Power that
can, in a few days, be converted into action, then the gold already
It is not gold, if not the Chaos of the Sages.
This is what makes the Philosophers say that the fire of Vulca-
It is not the artificial death of metals, because all those who have
gone through the merger, they have lost their very life in it.
The open entrance to the closed Palace of the King. 1754.
122
Luis Silva
The vulgar gold, even if it is called dead, is likewise the

purest thing in all the earth and the ultimate effect of all Nature
nature and consequently the matter with which we are to begin
czar our work. The difference between dead gold and living gold
We owe it to the before and after preparation. Dead gold
who is as buried in a tomb is resurrected and laid
on the path of vegetation.116
Gold, even if it is called dead, has in it the seed with
the one that can be multiplied to infinity.
Nicolas Valois.
The five books or the key to the secret of secrets.
The metals of the common people are not the metals of the philosophers,
that to be such, they must be destroyed and leave
being metals, and that the sage only needs this moisture vis-
thing, which is their raw material, from which they make philosophers their
living metals, by an artifice that is also secret and that is
founded on the principles of Nature.
Limojon de Saint Didier.
The hermetic triumph or the victorious philosopher's stone. 1699,117
Always keep this maxim for sure ... the metals of the common people,
mainly vulgar gold, are dead, while ours
Others are alive and have spirit, and they are the ones who are necessary
have. Because you should know that the life of metals is nothing else
more than fire, when they are still in their mine, and than death
of metals it is also fire, that is, the fire of fusion.
The Cosmopolitan.
The New Chemical Light. XVII century.
This is a point that took us many years to assimilate, the
difference between living metals and dead metals, or between gold
alive and gold dead. The authors always refer to their "gold
alive ”, which they tell us is with which they make their philosopher's
stone,
116 Like the vegetable kingdom, the ability to multiply as with fruits.
117 Translation by JM Marimón.
123

but almost no one has clarified what this matter was. With this they have
always confused the student, because they claimed that their gold
alive was not vulgar gold. It was necessary for us to find the texts
suitable to get out of this quagmire.
The noble metals, although they have been purified, continue
being dead. They become alive or philosophical when
they bathe or dissolve in their living water, in their universal solvent.
Through this solution they recover the vital spark they lost
when they were melted and, dead that they were, they come back to life
metallic. The solvent nourishes them, nourishes them, makes them grow, bear
fruit
and multiply. As we said, coming into contact with your solvent is
return to its maternal womb, for this solvent is viscous moisture
that gave rise to them and that makes them regain their primordial faculties.
dials that human activity deprived them of. Their solvent reincrusts them
or retrograde, referring them to a state
close to its original state.
In alchemical imagery,
images of dry trees symbolize
to dead metals, while
the living trees, with metallic fruits,
they symbolize the living or philosophical.
In the right image, the branches of the
tree show the traditional symbols
endings of the seven metals. To the left
and right the sun and the moon predominate,
or gold and silver. Above, the rest of
ignoble metals. The upper triangle
manifests the graph of the element
go. The lower one, that of the water element.
Inside this are the symbols of
the three principles: sulfur and salt, above,
and mercury at the bottom. The al-
chemists need their solvent,
of its aqua ardens or fire water, sim-
Conversation between the vene-

Rable elder Senior Zadith and
Adolfo. Basilio Valentin. Treaty
of the Azoth or the means of doing
the hidden gold of the philosophers.
Paris. Edition of 1659.
124
Luis Silva
bolized by the two triangles (fire, upper triangle, and water,
lower triangle).
Vivify the dead and martyr the living

The natural dissolution of gold
That is why the Philosophers tell you to give life to the dead. If I co-
you know and prepare the dissolving agent, making the mixtures
according to the rules, your gold will soon become alive, and in this
vivification, your living menses will die. For this reason, the Magi
they order that the dead be vivified and the living mortified.
You have to take the dead body and the living water, and in this
composed, after a brief decoction, the gold seed
becomes alive and living mercury dies, that is, the spirit
ritu is coagulated by the dissolved body and that both rot
in the form of slime, until all the compound is dispersed in
atoms. This is the nature of our magisterium.
The open entrance to the closed Palace of the King.
He who does not know the generation of metals ignores how
they must be destroyed, and without this destruction it is impossible to
extract the
metallic moisture, which is the true key to art.
The hermetic triumph or the victorious philosopher's stone. 1699.
Cardinal Gilberto. Philosopher:

Who does not know how to destroy gold cannot know how to
form in Nature.
125

The texts coincide in considering that in the dissolution of the
mica from the previously purified gold, the solvent, which
They are alive because it is pure fire, it dies to give life to the dead,
gold. This becomes something else in its alchemical dissolution.
He loses his golden garments, his hard bark, to show his
metallic soul, its vital spark. Gold, they say, is quickened, reborn to its
true being, to its origin. It turns into living gold.
Of the necessary subjects in the philosopher's work
Philosophers' salt and gold
The salt of the philosophers
Only one or two are needed to work on the philosopher's work
subjects. With a single substance, the stone can already be obtained
philosopher, but this 'salt' has been kept in absolute secrecy. The
alchemist can, with her, not only get the famous and herme-
universal solvent of metals, but to arrive, with the help of
his hands and the intervention of Nature, to get the lapis
philosophorum. Nature, however, acts slowly. Natura
non facit saltus, they say, that is, nature does not jump, it acts
firm, but slow, step by step. And although the artist's hands
speed up the process, the goal lasts for many months.
It is called by some Vía universalísima or Vía de la
sky or air salt; salt, called among many other names, salt
celestial nitro, harmoniac salt, 118 salt of Ammon, 119 salt of sapientia,
salt
de la Naturaleza ... This road has been the subject of a large reserve.
It is the great treasure of the alchemists. It is surprising that this
Hidden salt has been kept secret for thousands of years. With
she elaborates her universal solvent, which has received infinity
other names, such as living silver, common mercury, mercury
118 Armoniac, of harmony, because they said it achieves harmony or sympathy
between heaven and earth.
119 Salt of Amon or of Solomon, the great Sage.
126
Luis Silva
philosophers curium, first mercury, aqua ardens, vinegar of
the mountains, menstruum, alkaest (from the words alkali est or sal
alkali), etc. etc.
Gold
However, the ancient philosophers discovered that working
Using metals accelerated the process of making the
stone, so they worked especially with gold, because it affirmed-
They believed that the metallic seed that has this body deeply
hidden within was the most perfect seed of all
metals. This metal, in contact with its universal solvent (or the
former salt in the form of liquor), led to the same results,
but in a shorter time. This conjunction between gold
and the solvent was called the Universal Wet Metallic Pathway. It is the
more treated route, almost the only one, in the classic texts. The Adepts
explained it well, expanded on it, taught from its
beginning to its end, although disorganizing the processes of its
elaboration.
The author of the Splendor of the philosophical sun:

From the seeds of the sun and the moon, what thousands are born
of people seek and rarely find.
127

The three phases of this secret metallic solution, defined
by the main colors that appear in the glass flask
of the alchemist (black, white and red), were subdivided into seven
regimes. Each of them gives clues about what happens in the
process, and this is where the Adepts did not tell the whole truth.
Some concealed regimes, others cheated in the periods
temples of each of them and others messed them up, so
the matter became a real gibberish for the poor
students who were constantly lost in these muddles.
Later we will give a timely order to these regimes.
Both processes, saline or metallic, produced the same end: the
obtaining a red, purple substance, which in the way of dissolving
They called, generally, elixir, 120 and in the metallic way, between
many other names, red sulfur, red wax, ruby, salaman-
red dra etc ..., always names that affect the color red.
But the alchemists discovered yet another process. He calls it-
rum Ars brevis, Short way or Dry way. With this process, which required
of a crucible, high temperatures and, as materials, a medium body
thalic together with the famous celestial salt, was obtained, in the term of
between four and ten days, a philosopher's stone, although of inferior
virtue and power.
Later we will develop these three ways of working:
• The most universal.
• The metallic wet universal.
• The brief or dry.
First, it is essential to know some preliminaries
basic.
120 Word from the Greek ksirá (dry) and the Arabic al'iksir, Philosopher's
Stone. In the
Old Pharmacy was considered a medicinal liquor.
128
Luis Silva
The different alchemical pathways
Philosophical Alchemy is divided into Universal Alchemy and Al-
particular chemistry. The first seeks to exalt metals in
quality and virtue, to endow them with the last degree of perfection
metallic. The second, does not use universal medicine, but
uses other particular or vulgar, non-philosophical means.
Universal Alchemy has two ways or paths, the one is the
the wet way, the other the dry way, through the first, the metals
are resolved or retrograde into a moist, diaphanous liquor, which is
the first metallic being, to extract from them what is superfluous and
endow them with a nobler quality and a more active virtue; this
It is, that this liquor is made a universal medicine for all
ills and diseases. The dry way, is the one that of the su-
objects that are properly metallic, a dry, opaque water is drawn
does not wet the hands, perfectly homogeneous and spirituous, with
which is made a medicine similar to the previous one although
of inferior power and virtue.
The wet way of Alchemy is divided into three: universalísi-
ma, universal and less universal. And the dry way is also divided
in universal and particular.
F. Antonio Texeda (Theofilo). Treatise on the analysis of the art of
Alchimia, for the north of its fans. Madrid 1727.
Alchemists work with subjects of their predilection.
personal tion. Many do it with semimetals (metalloids),
such as bismuth or especially antimony, pretending to extend
bring you your metallic soul or sulfur. Others practice the way of the
mineral acids, such as nitric and hydrochloric, seeking a
suitable solvent for dissolving metals. Others, the way of
acetates; others, the vitriol pathway, such as those of Mars (hieroglyphics)
rro), or Venus (copper), but always with the same purpose. Others, ways
potassium salt flats such as those of tartar or saltpeter, working with
them with the aim of transforming them into a magnet of the uni-
Versal. Others work with cinnabar ... Anyway, it is not the object of this
129

work to develop these pathways that some ancients call
particular, but ours, called the Universal Way of Nature.
nature, which aims to work with the universal spirit or soul of the
world that, they say, the morning dew traps in the nets of
its most intimate salt crystals.
Although we have practiced some other way, we confess that
we are only particularly interested in two: one that some call
also very universal of Nature and that does not need metal
some, and the metallic universal wet route. These are jobs that
they are almost risk-free.
In contrast, the dry route is dangerous, it requires a crucible,
a metal or metalloid, a scrupulously reserved celestial salt
by alchemists, and prolonged high temperatures to function
the compound perfectly and finally extract the internal salt.
na or sulfur that metals or semimetals jealously guard
inside.
Philosopher's stone and particular stones
Universal road and private roads
There are stones of different species, which stain in
particular. Because I call all fixed and staining powders stones.
But there are nevertheless always some that stain more effectively and
to a higher degree than another. The Philosophers Stone has the first
rank among all the others.
From antimony a stone of fire can be prepared ... but the
tincture of this stone of fire is not universal like that of the
philosophers.
fos, which is prepared from the essence of the sun, 121 because Nature
It has not given so many virtues for this effect. If not that stains only in
particular, namely, tin, lead, and the moon122 in sol.
Basilio Valentin. The triumphal chariot of antimony.
chap. XXXVI. Edition of 1604.
121 Gold metal.
122 Silver.
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Luis Silva
There are different transmutational stones that differ in po-
strength and virtue. Not all transmute into gold or silver all
metals. They have, therefore, a virtue inferior to that of the authentic
philosopher's stone, which transmutes all ignoble metals,
including semimetals, in gold or silver.
In short, the particular pathways chase stones with ca-
transmutational and medicinal pacity, but of reduced virtues.
On the other hand, the true philosopher's stone elaborated by way of
Versal is unique, it transmutes any metal and is the true and
true universal medicine.
Dry route and wet route

They call the following operation wet method: Sulfur and
Philosophers Mercury are cooked over a moderate fire in a
closed glass just until matter turns black, then
Kamala Jana. He worked with cinnabar.

The photograph comes from his book
All the great work photographed, from 1968.
Patrick Rivière, disciple of Eugè-

ne Canseliet, and this, in turn, of
Fulcanelli, claims to have achieved
a transmuting stone through
of antimony.
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the fire is increased until it becomes white, finally a fire-
go more violently stains it red ..., the dry way consists of taking the
Celestial salt, which is the Mercury of the Philosophers, mixed with a
metal body, placed in a crucible over a live fire. In four
days the work is perfect ... This is how the artist operated
Helvetius mentions in his Vitulus Aureus. 123
Barchusen.
Liber singularis de alchimia. XVII century.
That there are two ways, the dry way and the wet way. I have this last
cheating in preference, out of duty, although the first is very
family.
Cyliani. Hermes unveiled. XIX century.
Few alchemists agree to admit the possibility of two
paths, one short and easy, called the dry way, and the other longer and
more ungrateful, called the wet way ... In the dry way you have to cook
the celestial salt, which is the mercury of the philosophers, with a body
terrestrial metal, in a crucible over simple fire, for four
days.
Fulcanelli. The mystery of the cathedrals.
The first of these routes used by the art glass is long,
laborious, ungrateful, accessible to fortunate people, but
great honor despite the effort it requires, because this is the
that the authors describe preferably. Supports your
reasoning, like the theoretical development of the Work, requires a
uninterrupted work from 12 to 18 months, and part of the natural gold
prepared, dissolved in the philosophical mercury, is then cooked
suction in a glass flask. This is the honorable glass, reserve-
do for the noble use of these precious substances which are gold
exalted and the mercury of the wise.
The second way does not claim, from beginning to end,
more than the relief of a vile land, abundantly spread
and so cheaply priced that in our time 10 francs is enough
enough to purchase more than is necessary. It is the
123 Golden calf.
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Luis Silva
land and the way of the poor, the simple and the modest,
those that nature marvels even in its humblest
of demonstrations. Extremely easy, just claim
the assistance of the artist, since the mysterious work is perfected
by itself and is completed in 7 or 9 days maximum. This way,
ignored by most practical alchemists is performed in
a single refractory earth crucible. It is the one that the great teachers
others have defined as a woman's work and a child's play, she
apply the old hermetic axiom: a res, a way, a device.
ne. A single material, a single glass, a single oven. Such is ours
earthen vessel, despised vessel, vulgar vessel and commonly used
bad, that everyone has before their eyes, that is worth nothing and
found everywhere, but nonetheless no one
can recognize without disclosure.
Three ways to reach the stone are generally recognized
philosopher:
• The universal wet metallic route, which requires a furnace

(the atanor of the alchemists), a flask with the materials
correct (the universal solvent, in the form of aqueous liquor)
so, and metallic gold or silver), mild temperatures
applied to this flask, a long period of time and the
constant attention and patience from the alchemist.
• The dry way requires placing the celestial salt in a crucible,
pregnant with universal spirit, along with metallic body
land. The oven must offer high temperatures. Route
demands great attention from the alchemist for his
explosion risks. In return, it is greatly reduced
the time it takes to craft a philosopher's stone. The
Philosophers comment on a period of between 4 and 8 days. Some
authors believe that the stone obtained by dry method is of
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inferior virtue and potency124 to that obtained by
gives. The ancients called this way Work of Saturn.
• There is a third way, very hidden, some have called it
Simple way of Nature or very universal. It seems to indicate-
the Fulcanelli at the end of the last paragraph of his quote from more
above. The Adept in addition to the crucible also refers to
a land that is available to everyone, very
low price, and that has the virtue of acting as a container
or continent of universal energy. Only her and her virtue
allow the alchemist to make a fine stone.
losofal; Now, the vulgarity of this matter and the simplicity
plicity of the work that is needed to elaborate it is in-
versa proportional to the secrecy that surrounds it.
The golden solution. The wet and metallic universal route

The phases and regimes or kingdoms of the Work
It is a heavy, viscous, catchy water ... that solves all
bodies in their raw material, that is, in sulfur and silver
live. If you put any metal in this water, in filings or in
thin sheets and leave it for some time in a sweet heat, the
124 Healing virtue and transmuting power.
Geber. Arab philosopher:

Everything in Nature is in the Sun and the Salt.
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Luis Silva
metal will dissolve entirely and change into viscous water ...
She gains weight and color to the perfect body.
Artefio. Secret treatise of the philosophers' stone.
You will perfectly fulfill the objective if you reduce the Sun in Blue
Fre and Mercury, which are his first matter or substance, or what
It is the same, if by means of our mercury and by an artifice
secret, but known to Philosophers, you return the Sun to the
Since it was first arranged by Nature, it is
that is, if you reduce it to a very bright and diaphanous body.
Huginus à Barmâ.
The kingdom of Saturn transformed into a golden age. 1780.
Take a part of gold purged in sheets or passed by file
and two parts of our mercury ...
Have an oval or rounded glass tumbler, just enough
large enough to fit an ounce of water in its sphere ..., the
glass must have a neck of a span or ten fingers high,
the thicker and more transparent it is, the better, so that it can
You can see the actions that take place within.
Put in this glass half an ounce of gold with an ounce of our
mercury, and if you add three times the mercury, all the compound
it should not exceed two ounces. Such is the required proportion.
If the glass is not thick it will not be able to withstand the fire, because
the
winds that form in the glass will break it. The glass must be
hermetically closed at the top and that there are no cracks
otherwise the work would perish.
The open entrance to the closed Palace of the King. 1754.
The position of the planets in this figure is mysterious, since
Saturn occupies the first position ... In ascension, Saturn
is immediately followed by Jupiter, who in the Philosophical Work
ca, after the blackening of Saturn and the formation and
composition and after darkening of the Sun and the
Moon, comes out of the belly of Saturn, launches like an aerial dragon
towards the domain of Paradise ... making the black son appear
newborn born in the air ... now the Moon is presented to us,
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Snow white Diana, Queen fixed, streaked yet,
inside, with the cracks of its impregnation, with all the
colors of the peacock's tail and petrified in the whitest whiteness
fixed, enclosing in it the pure kingdom of paradise. With the continuation
nation of the dry celestial fire, it is oriented towards the fiery world
celestial and red tincture. After the Moon and in the position
supreme, is Mercury, the initiator, the mediator, the one who
finishes the entire work, the humedum radicale, the fundamental humidity
mind of the fixed white stone, after having thrown itself into
liquid form towards the fixed target, has the power to penetrate under
the dry form to the very center of the Sun.
Anonymous text.
The hermaphrodite child of the sun and the moon. 1752.
The Fable imagines four main Kingdoms of the Gods
also called ages of the Poets. The first was the Kingdom
of Saturn, called the Golden Age, the second that of Jupiter, or
Silver Age, the third the Copper Age or Kingdom of Venus and
finally the fourth the Iron Age or Kingdom of Mars ... but
the Adepts explain them in a philosophical-chemical sense, since
the four kingdoms are the four main colors that appear
in philosophical matter during the operations of the work, such as
can be seen in all the books of the Adepts dealing with the
stone operation. The first color is black, which they attribute
to Saturn, the second the target they give to Jupiter, the third
the sallow that characterizes Venus and the fourth, red or purple,
that suits Mars.
Dom Pernety.
The universal and metallic wet route is the route that almost everyone
the authors mention in their texts, always disorderly, with
the processes of their phases and regimes exchanged or hidden
blatantly do some of them, even misleading with the
duration of any regimen. Anyway, everything forms a
great hard-to-fit puzzle that put and puts everyone in check
the students.
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Luis Silva
Here the reader finds a suitable order of the phases and

regimes, that is, it has ordered what happens to gold in each
moment of its dissolution.
Once the gold (or silver) has been properly purified,
c, detached from any alloy it may have, or
the gold is native or very pure, the body is ready for the process
more importantly, its alchemical dissolution. This is totally
away from vulgar chemical corrosion. No is used
known corrosive, but its severely concealed natural solvent
mind by alchemical tradition. Without the knowledge of this sun-
hermetic sale it is impossible to dissolve the gold according to said
tradition.
Philaletus explains well the characteristics of the black glass vase.
necessary in this work: oval or rounded glass vase, just enough
large enough to fit an ounce of
Water. The glass must have a neck of a span or ten fingers of
height, the thicker and more transparent the better, but
We will add that the sphere of the flask will be larger or smaller depending
on
tion of the amount of matter to have in it and that although the
The neck must be long, it does not have to have a span either.
The compound should not occupy any of the long neck at all
of the glass as there must be a circulation of vapors in its
inside. As they say, a rise and fall of the volatile. In
Juan de Aquino. Philosopher:

It is easier to make the purest gold than to destroy it.
137

similar flasks can be found in specialized stores.
lares and suitable for the work. On the conditions of the gold, this
It must be arranged in a state of fine powder (filed) or in fine
sheets (laminate). Regarding the proportions, usually
usually all the authors coincide in a gold part by two or
three of its liquid solvent. The weight of gold oscillates between
and an ounce. 125
United the gold or male of the work with its dissolving mercury
or female in her crystal vase called the nest or nuptial bed, the gold
goes through a series of transformations that are generally divided into
mind in three phases that are designated by the main colors
that appear before the artist's eyes: black, white and red.
However, with the aim of helping or misleading the alchemist,
some Adepts divided these three phases into seven kingdoms or regimes.
menes, each of them of a determined duration and that define
the different effects that occur inside the flask.
Thus the artist knows perfectly whether or not he is on the right track.
Not all Adepts agree on the name of these kingdoms,
but it is not of great importance either, since, in general, the
The processes they define are always similar.
In explaining these phases and regimes we will continue to use
lizing quotes from classic texts, the clearest we know
on this subject, and regarding our comments we will use the
summary we made of a very revealing one. The reader will know per-
exactly what happens to gold, what transformations it undergoes,
how golden it is it turns black, then white and final-
red mind. A solution far removed from any corrosion
metallic modern chemistry. We can imagine the old al-
chemist looking, through the small window of his ata-
nor, to your small glass flask offering you a whole series
wonderful phenomena, smoke, color sequences, changes
radicals of state etc., something that modern science still seems to
pray far from getting. It will be Sir George's Vision Commentary
125 About 33 grams.
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Luis Silva
Ripley, 1677, written by Aeyrenaeus Philalethes, an alchemist
an Englishman, who will guide us through all these visual wonders.
But first let's say that this dissolution of gold used to represent-
I know through the image of the king bathing in his water source
life, or through figures representing combat and
victory of lions, eagles, snakes or dragons that devour
the Sun or the Moon, or Apollo and Diana, symbols of gold and silver
respectively.
The python (in Greek phyton,
putrefaction), represents the solvent mercury
which is to devour the king (the gold).
Dissolve the gold, the king in that water, full body
and give it to Vulcan who will cook them until
get the best remedy. With this greasy python
the king and queen will become fruitful and have a
innumerable offspring.
Abraham Eleazar, Donum Dei, Erfurt. 1735
Image source:
Alchemy & Mysticism. Taschen. 2005.
The author of the Golden Cymbal:

Do not move away from the flask and you will see wonders because in
less than three hours it turns white and yellow.
139

Nigredo. The work in black or the rotting of gold
The Regime of Mercury and the Regime of Saturn
In this Mercury, we perfectly amalgamate pure gold, pur-
Filled to the highest degree of purity, powdered or reduced
sheets. We enclose it in a glass vase and cook it on the stove.
go continuous. Gold dissolves by the virtue of our water,
reducing itself to its closest matter, in which the
life prisoner of gold and receives the life of dissolving Mercury.
Dissolved the gold in this Mercury, the gold rots and after
this putrefaction dies, a new body is reborn, of the same
essence than the first but of a more noble substance ... This is
the order of our Work. This is our entire Philosophy.
Ready our mercury and our sun, lock them in
our glass and rule them with our fire, and after forty days you will see
all matter turned into a shadow, 126 or into atoms ... 127
If you had worked on the Sun or on the Moon to
check their Sulfur, examine if your matter is swollen like
a paste, boiling like water or rather like molten fish128
da ... wait for twenty days with the oven on, time
during which you will observe different colors. Towards the end of the
fourth week, and if the heat is continuous, you will see a friendly green
that will not disappear before approximately ten days. get happy
so why soon you will see it all black as coal, and all
the members of your compound will be reduced to atoms. This
operation is nothing other than the resolution of the fixed in the non-fixed,
so that one and the other, together from now on, do not form more than
a unique matter, part spiritual and part corporeal.
When you see all the dry and extraordinarily black land,
then the death of the compound will have arrived. The winds ce-
they will be and all things will be left to rest. This is the great
eclipse of the sun and the moon ... and the sea will disappear. Then
makes our chaos, from which, by command of God, are born-
There will be all the miracles in the world, in their proper order.
126 Black color.
127 Powder.
128 Resin.
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Luis Silva
Sometimes at the beginning of the real work a red color is seen ...
therefore the entire interior of the glass will be dyed a golden color, and
this color will not last and will soon be spawned green, then
wait for a little time for the black applying a fire
valid.
Sometimes you will see as small islands, spikes and bouquets-
tees of various colors appear on the waves and on the sides,
that will quickly dissolve and others will emerge. The land, greedy
germination, always produces something, and sometimes
you will imagine that you see birds in the glass, beasts or reptiles and
colors
pleasing to the eye that will soon disappear.
It is all about you constantly continuing with the fire
due and all these phenomena will end in a dust of a co-
lor very black within fifty days. If not, it will be your fault
Mercury or your Regime, or the disposition of matter, to
unless by chance you have moved or shaken the glass, which will
lengthen the work or even lose it.
The open entrance to the closed palace of the king. 1754.
Philosophical allegory of Merlin:

Saturn is the planet of death, notice where it goes
dressed in black.
141

Philaletus gives the children of Art a precious gift. Tells us
that no philosopher before him dealt with the Mercury Regime.
This one, which precedes that of Saturn, was missed. Previous authors
rests always began with the Regime of Saturn, and although
deceived, as they incorporated the phases of the reign of Mercury
in those of Saturn, they did elude the actual time periods that
they need both. Thus, the Regime of Saturn was interpreted
lasted between forty and fifty days, which is not exactly
sure. This mistake drove many alchemists to despair. The king
swim of Mercury, to reach Saturn, it takes between forty-five
ta and fifty days, while Saturn needs even more,
as we will see, to consolidate and pass the reign.
The Philatelic Sage warns us that Regime should be considered
of Mercury to the interval between the ignition of the furnace and the
arrival of
blackness, because it is the time of the philosophical or dissolving Mercury
vente, which is the one that operates during this period on the body
of gold, and not the time of Saturn.
Of the Mercury Regime

Once the body of gold and dissolving water is arranged
in its crystal glass and introduced in the atanor to a fire with
continuous, dew drops must first rise and form
like clouds that must then fall. This should happen not-
che and day and without interruption. Mercury rises and falls,
The Author of fraternal dialogues

of the sun and of the stone:
The stone made from gold is a poisonous worm,
The mercury made with vulgar gold proves it.
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falling on the gold, and little by little the metal begins to retain
a little of this water. But the body, as it is at first sup-
merged, it is continuously boiled and filtered by this solvent.
while the drops falling on your body pierce it, and
is finally extracted, by means of this continuous circulation and
a delicate and soft shape, the soul of the sun.
Some call the glass of this art or place where they place the
secret burrow compound or small glass barrel. The basis is-
cup is the size of a chicken egg, and
a total of one ounce of the preparation is placed inside it (one part
of gold over two or three of solvent). The neck of the glass should
be long, at least ten centimeters, and must be closed
hermetically.
Philaletus, one of the most respected Adepts, determines the
exact proportion of matters. One part gold in sheets
or powder for two or three of the solvent secret . They are placed in the
glass of Arte and then in the reverberatory oven under a
linear, continuous and smooth temperature regime.
The glass, inside the atanor, must be placed in a bowl
with sand or ash to keep this continuous and stable heat.
The oven may have a window with a glass to view the
phenomena that occur inside the glass. To observe them,
the alchemist can make use of a dim light.
This operation is said to be the Mercury Regime because
it circulates rising while the gold boils below, and this body
solar power is passive until the appearance of the colors, which appear
sparingly after about twenty days of boiling
firm and continuous. Then the colors are reinforced and multiplied.
apply and vary to perfection in very black black, which
appears on the fiftieth day if the stars are favorable.
Little by little the solvent will open up the dense and opaque body of the
gold and will penetrate its hard golden crust. Gold seems to sweat, and
his sweat penetrates again and deeply into his body. The
infiltrated solvent causes gold to change shape, swells it
like a toad, it tears, rots and blackens, makes it airy
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as if it were wind, smoke or steam. During the process,
which some say lasts between forty and fifty days, appears
inside the glass, first a paste, then a broth
bloody and a series of colors that the ancients called the
rainbow or peacock tail, and finally gold or King and dissol-
vente, symbolized by the eagle or the devouring lion, they die and
they both turn into a slimy black powder.
The exhalations when falling on the metal inflate it and rot as

if it were a grain of wheat, that is why the philosophers called
your water or solvent, your yeast, because like yeast
makes the dough swell, this water ferments the body of gold
and inflates it. This water is also called poison, because like
than him, it causes swelling.
The metallic lion, also called a reddish toad because of that capacity
ability to swell, he will give up and slightly assume the
nature of water, and water (the solvent) that of the body, is
I mean, they will bond closely. This union has been represented
through the two dragons, one winged (the mercury) and the other without
wings (gold). After the union appears a land that Hermes calls
foliate land or leaf land.
Avicenna, Arab philosopher:

The Magisterium is the eagle that flies through the air and the
toad that walks on the ground.
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The reddish toad, symbol of the gold that is inflated by virtue of the
solvent that is
found figured by the bird descending on the amphibian. The sweats con-
tinuos will open the gold and it will detach, exhale all its moisture and
fire
internal JC Barchusen. Elementa Chemicae. Leiden. 1718.
The exhalations are first white. The upper part
The top of the glass will be bleached by the fumes. This whiteness is
darkening and a mixture of dark and dark colors will appear.
bluish. Afterwards they will be yellowish and it will appear that the glass
is
gold-plated: it is the symbol of authentic copulation between the
male (gold) and female (mercury). Little by little the fumes are
will continuously condense and drip to penetrate into
the gold in an amazing way, and the more drops penetrate,
more inflates and swells the gold until it is completely rotten.
This phase is not very long. These effects can be seen
before forty days have elapsed. During that period,
colors are the signs of corruption and generation that produce
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the impetuous and devastating nature of Pontic water129 and the
metal strength. In the fight, the body of gold is defeated
and dies, and when dying causes these colors to appear, which means
that the eagles have managed to dominate the lion, but also
that the lion has infected them with their essence, because they ate
his corpse. The Sages give this operation the name of extracts.
tion and separation of natures, since the tincture of gold begins
to separate from the body. They also call it reduction to the first
matter, that is, the sperm or seed of gold, which by its
ble nature is compared to the two dragons that bite
viciously. Once they are grasped, they are no longer released until
because of their poisonous slime and deadly attacks are left
completely bloody. Then cooking on its own
poison, they become quintessential.
But before being renewed, these two natures have first
to go through an eclipse of the moon and another of the sun, or the darkness
of
purgatory, which is the door of darkness. After doing it,
the light of purgatory will renew them. This phase receives the German name
gory of Death. Our body, the sun of the work, resists during
long as a champion until mortally wounded and cu-
drained of blood, dies. When dying appears the blackness, that like
once it was foreshadowed by crows. This reiteration, rotation
or circulation of the solvent together with the heat that dries the body
po and the moisture that soaks it, kills and corrupts it
in a natural way, just as it happens after death to the rest
of vegetable and animal bodies.
When the fumes are gone, it is a sign that the spirits are
begin to set, turning to dust that settles to the bottom
of the glass. The putrefaction begins and the spirits remain in
the bottom for a while, without rising.
129 One of the mercury names of the sages, so named because of their
ponticity
(Dom Pernety's Myth-Hermetic Dictionary). From Latin ponticus, pontus, the
sea (salty water)
da) is the universal solvent. It also means poisonous, poisonous water.
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Therefore you have to control the fire well, lest it be
spirits, too exalted, rise so high that they do not fall
I won the earth. This operation consists, says Morien, in “extracting
the water of the earth and giving it back ”, doing it so many times and
for so long for the earth to rot.
When the combat ends, peace reigns because in this land
puff pastry, all the elements are reconciled, the national differences
turals embrace each other in the form of impalpable powder and without having
another
color more than the blackest black.
The subjects have been intimately united, they were cooked together
as if they were melted tar and they exchanged their shapes. There are
to be careful not to get instead of a black powder, a
useless reddish or orange dry precipitate, because without
gar to doubt there was a combustion of the flowers or virtue of
the vegetative seed.
Mastery is achieved in a totally natural way,
because once the body of the gold is filled with its yeast,
burns, calcines, dissolves and becomes a black water that
sometimes it changes color. This means that the spirits are coa-
gliding to finally turn into black dust. This is
the so-called period of lower darkness, which is the end of the eclipse,
phase that begins after the appearance of the different colors.
Calcination begins with these color variations, which take place
give to appear, if the process has been correct, about forty-five
two days, fifty maximum. Then the corruption takes place.
tion and putrefaction, where everything takes on a similar aspect to the
Of the filth like that which results from boiling blood or melting
pitch. The black color, even superficially, appears to
forty days, fifty at most, provided that the process
and the fire have been correct.
In this bath, gold is released from its solar qualities,
destroys, ceases to be fixed, sallow, earthy and solid, and becomes
in a volatile, black, spiritual, watery and phlegmatic substance. The
putrefaction does not begin until the
first original forms and little by little they become human
147

and winds, and, after approximately the period equivalent to
one season, bodies settle and rot.
This reduction of the body of gold, transforming it into something
resembling rottenness, with exhalation of gases or fumes, has
fact that some alchemists like Flamel used the image
of the smoke-exhaling dragons to represent this phase
of the work.
When the Mercury Regime ended, whose job was to
remove the King from his golden robes and exhaust him with various
battles with its solvent, the Regime of Saturn appears. To the
die the lion 130 the raven is born 131 The perfect black color arrives,
no smoke or winds are seen and the compound is dry, coating
a shimmering molten powder-like shape.
Then Saturn will rule over the earth. Those who divide the
operation in two parts, the kingdom of Saturn and that of his successor
Jupiter, they ascribe to Saturn all the part of the putrefaction and
to Jupiter the period of chromatic variety.
All the Adepts affirm that the regime of fire is of a
capital importance and the real difficulty of this operation.
Great subtlety is necessary to rule the fire after
the preparation of the compound in order to properly dissolve the
body without burning its tincture. 132
I will finish with the words of Ireneo Filaleteo:
It is wonderful to think (some children of Art are visual witnesses
them), that the body of the gold, fixed and completely digested,
dra and turn into something rotten, like a corpse, something
achieved thanks to the admirable virtue of dissolving water that does not
it can be bought with money. All these operations are summarized in
one ... kill the living and resurrect the dead.
Ireneo Philaletheus. Open entrance to the closed palace of the king.
130 Gold. The lion is the king of the terrestrial animal kingdom, just as
gold is of the metallic kingdom.
131 The black raven is the quintessential symbol of the work in black, of the
Saturnian regime.
132 Tincture. So called because it stains, that is, it transfers its color to
the substance where it is
dissolves. In this case the internal oil of the gold.
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Luis Silva
The combat between the two opposing natures. Pseudo Thomas Aquinas.
Aurora Consurgens. 13th or 15th centuries. Source: www.arsgravis.com
We are before the combat between the two natures. Gold, simply
bolized by the lion, king of terrestrial animals, who is at his
once the king of metals. His mount is a solar knight who
combat against the universal solvent or mercury of the philosophers
fos, called moon, living silver or queen of the work. The tap, half
eagle (queen of birds) and half lion, shows us that it is a
a substance that is both fixed and volatile.
Of the Regime of Saturn
The King enters the bathroom alone, dressed in a golden dress,
from which he gets rid of and surrenders to Saturn, from whom he receives one
black silk.
Bernardo el Trevisano Count of the Treviso brand.
Parable of Count Trevisano.
149
If the alchemist has been successful in the endeavor, the color black
bright should appear in its flask, now beginning the true-
dero regime of Saturn. This rotten, gloomy darkness
or total blackness lasts for quite some time. The authors do not
agree on the length of this period, but agree that
It is long. According to one of them, this black color has a long duration
portion and does not disappear for at least five months.
According to another, the King enters his bath, loses his golden robe and
gives it to Saturn, who gives him a black shirt that he will have on his
power for forty-two days, shirt he did not receive until
forty-two days after the start of his bath.133 According to
Augurell, the period of blackness lasts
forty-four days, and according to another fi-
lósofo, during the first forty
days the real raven appears, and then
go, at seventy days, the white dove.
133 The gold, after forty-two days lost its golden color, then Saturn gave
him the shirt
black, which he will have in his possession (or the color black will remain)
another forty-two days.
Rhodianus, excellent philosopher:

Death is dead and our son reigns, endowed with
our flesh and our heritage.
The Saturn Book of Philosophers:

It is given life until it dies from that form
metallic that is the leprous shadow of the stone.
Johann Daniel Mylius. Opus medico-chymicum. 1618.
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Philaletus thinks that if the two natures were mixed well,
if both were pure, the interior temperature of the bath was correct,
and the external fire the adequate one (not too violent so that
the matters can circulate well, the spiritual on the corporal),
after forty-six or fifty days it will be seen
the beginning of complete blackness appears; after another fifty-
on and six days will appear the peacock's tail and the colors of the bow
iris; and when another twenty-two or twenty-four days pass
you will see the perfect Moon, the whitest white. In his Introitus aper-
tus134 teaches us the reasons that led the Philosophers to call
to this phase Regime of Saturn:
The tomb where our King is buried is called Satur-
not in our work and it is the key to the work of transmutation.
Our lead135 is more precious than any lead, it is silt
where the soul of gold meets Mercury to produce
then to Adam and Eve, his wife.136
We will now understand well the words of the Trevisano. The

King who entered the bathroom dressed in his golden color, in the dis-
Lución lost it to wear black robes.
134 Latin name and abbreviated of his Entrance open to the closed palace of
the King, that is, the
entry of the solvent into the compact, dense and hard body of gold (the
king's palace).
135 Gold dissolved and blackened by mercury calcination. Saturn also
represents
to metallic lead.
136 That is, to Sulfur and Mercury.
Morieno, Roman philosopher:

The essential initial requirement is found in the
dunghill of our putrefaction.
151
Albedo. The work to the bank or the laundering of the gold

The regime of Jupiter and that of the Moon
Of the Jupiter Regime
Black Saturn is succeeded by Jupiter, which is of a different color.
because after putrefaction and conception made in
the glass you will again see changing colors and a circulating sublimation
culante. This regimen is not long and does not last more than three weeks.
During this time all imaginable colors will appear.
The King's bathroom

The king swimming in the sea exclaims: who
save you will get a great reward.
Atalanta Fugiens.
Michael Maier. 1618.
Rola. The Aúreo game. Siruela Editions. 1988.
The Black Work

The raven and the color black
they symbolize the phase of this work.
Rosarium philosophorum.
Prague 1758.
Source: www.arsgravis.com
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The rains will multiply throughout these days and finally

a beautiful whiteness will appear on the walls of the glass
seen in the form of stretch marks or hair. Then rejoice because
happily ended the Jupiter regime. Prudence must
be in this regime as much as possible, so that the offspring of the
crows, when they have left the nest, do not enter it again.
The open entrance to the closed palace of the king.
After the Saturn Regime, the Jupiter Regime begins,
it is characterized by the appearance of various colors. His reign
lasts between twenty and twenty-two days. You will see in it the turkey tail
real137 and the rainbow
Aeyrenaeus Philalethes.
Comments to the vision of Sir George Ripley.
Once the Kingdom of Saturn has ended, that of Jupiter begins,
characterized by the appearance of new and varied colors and by
that of numerous rains or dews that will finally leave the
walls of the glass very white streaks. This regimen is short,
it barely lasts three weeks. Irenaeus advises great prudence
with the fire so that the crows or the black color do not return
to the glass.
137 Term widely used in Alchemy to designate a succession of colors.
Allegorical parable that was

referring to Aristeo:
Conception and betrothal take place in the
putrefaction, and the generation of the offspring
takes place in the air.
153
Of the Diana or the Moon Regime

After the Jupiter regime is over, at the end of the fourth month you
the sign of the crescent moon will appear, and you should know that all the
Jupiter's regime was devoted to bleaching brass.138 The
cleansing spirit is very white in nature, but the body
The wash is very black. In this transit of the black
all intermediate colors appear to white and when these
disappear everything turns white. A target that is not of a
dazzling whiteness from day one, but appearing
very gradually from white to very white.
You must know that in this regime everything becomes, in sight,
as liquid as quicksilver139 and this is called stealth (sigi-
llatio) of the mother in the womb of the child that she has engendered;
there are in the regime several momentary, beautiful colors that
appear rapidly, but closer to the target than to the ne-
in the same way that the Jupiter regime involved
more of black than white. The regime of the Moon ends in
three weeks.
Before this kingdom ends, the compound will coat a thousand
forms, it will liquefy and coagulate a hundred times a day. Sometimes
will appear like fish eyes, others will mimic the shape of a
pure silver tree with branches and foliage. In a word, you will be in
every moment dumbfounded and admired by all that you will see.
And finally, you will have some very white grains, so fine
Like atoms of the Sun, more beautiful than any eye ever saw
human. Let us thank God who has produced this work. Is
the true perfect white tincture, albeit only as a primer
order and therefore of meager virtue with respect to virtue
admirable that you will acquire by repeating the operation.
Open entrance to the closed palace of the King.
138 It is matter in dissolution and putrefaction, which is also given the

names of
sepulchral land, filthy body, Babylonian dragon, raven head and blacker black
than the same black. Myth-Hermetic Dictionary, by Dom Pernety.
139 Living silver, mercury.
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Ireneo's words need little comment. Some
Authors say that this kingdom lasts between twenty and twenty-two days.
It is the realm of bright and beautiful Diana, of the perfect Moon, of the
whiter white that keeps getting brighter and brighter.
After the black color and before the white, a whole variety appears.
chromaticity in the glass, and what was a black powder is liquefied to
then undergo many of these liquefaction and coagulation,
until finally some very fine white grains will appear and
beautiful. It is the white stain of the first order, in itself already a
great medicine, but far inferior to red medicine.
The Work to the target.

The white queen and the two white flowers show
the reign of Diana, the Moon or work to the target.
It is the medicine of the first order.
Rosarium philosophorum. Prague 1758.
155

Rubedo. The work to the red or the redness of the stone
The Regime of Venus, Mars and the Sun
Of the Regime of Venus
... Our stone entirely perfect and capable of giving a
perfect tincture, of his own accord, humiliates himself again
and prepares, without any helping hand, a new volatility
dad. But if you remove it from its glass, the same stone, enclosed in
again in another, it will grow cold and you will try in vain to carry it
further.
The demonstrative reason for this neither I, nor any ancient Philosopher
we can give it to you, but such is the will of GOD.
In this Regime, pay attention to your fire, for this is the
law of the perfect stone to be fuse; therefore, if they increase
you tare your fire too much, the matter would vitrify and stick to
the walls of the glass and you couldn't go on. And this is vitrification
of the matter against which so many precautions are taken by all
Philosophers and that, before and after the work is perfect
white, it tends to accidentally reach the unwary; it runs
this risk after half the Moon regime and the seventh
or the tenth day of the Venus regime.
For this reason, the fire has to be increased very little, so that
the compound does not vitrify, that is, it does not form as
glass, while with benign heat, it will liquefy itself.
mine, it will swell and by the will of GOD it will be endowed with a
Spirit that will fly up and carry the stone with it, and
will give you new colors, first the green of Venus, which will last
long enough, not disappearing completely until after
twenty days. Next will come the blue and the purple color and
later, towards the end of the Venus regime, a pale purple
and dark.
Be careful in this operation do not irritate the spirit too much.
you, because it is more corporal than before and if you let it escape
high of the glass, it will hardly bring you down by itself. This precaution
must be observed in the regime of the Moon, when the spirit
it will begin to thicken; then you will be treated gently and not
with violence so that it does not escape to the top of the glass and what
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is at the bottom to burn or at least vitrify and lead to

the destruction of the work.
When you have seen the green color, you should know what it contains
a germinative virtue. So be careful with it, don't be
that excessive heat degenerates this green to black, and governs
fire wisely. You will have finished this regimen later
forty days.
According to the Philatelic Adept, at no time should the flask
to agitate, let alone open, as it would be the ruin of the Work. Everyone
the processes are generated by themselves through the internal force
shortlist of the two combatants. They are the spirits of both ma-
terias those who work. Therefore, as said, the glass must be
tightly closed and do not leave the oven until completion
of the Work. The operator can only cautiously admire all
two phenomena that appear before your eyes.
The philosopher also advises prudence and not to increase in excess
only the heat or fire regime due to the risk of vitrifying the matter and
lose the entire work entirely. A benign heat causes the
white matter liquefies by itself and swells, resulting in
the appearance of new colors, first green that will last a few
twenty days, then blue, purple, and finally purple.
It was pale and dark. This reign ends after forty days.
Of the Regime of Mars
Finished the regime of Venus, whose color is basically
green, somewhat reddened with dark purple, sometimes loving-
rated, they will have grown during this time on the Philosopher tree.
phyco branches of various colors with leaves and branches; happens the
Mars regime, which is sometimes yellowish, a yellow
157

diluted in brown and gloriously exhibiting the transitional colors
the Iris and the Peacock torories.
Then the state of the composition becomes drier and the
matter takes varied and ghostly forms. The color that
Most often featured is hyacinth with a golden touch. Is
here when the mother sealed in the womb of her child arises and
purifies; and this purity where the compound is bathed is such that
causes rot to evaporate (ooze). But the colors
that serve as the basis of this entire regime are obscure, although very
nice to see.
You must know that our virgin land suffers its last work
so that the fruit of the sun may be sown and ripen in it, he continues,
well, with the appropriate heat and you will certainly see, towards the tri-
the twentieth day of this regimen, a citrine color will appear which, two
weeks after its first manifestation it will infuse everything
with its citrine color.
Now matter manifests again a series of new
transient colors, such as lilac or violet with hints of gold,
but, in general, all the colors of this scheme are dark.
Thirty days after the beginning of this reign the color appears
citrine (yellowish like lemon) that lasts for a long time
two weeks, and during this period the entire flask acquires
this color.
Of the Regime of the Sun
You are now approaching the end of your work and you have almost finished
your work.
low. Now everything appears as pure gold and the virgin's milk
With which you imbibes this matter is made citrine to a great extent. Gives
thanks to GOD, giver of all goods, who led the work until
here and beg him on his knees to direct your judgment without interruption,
that by precipitation you lose your work so close to perfection.
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Consider now that if you have waited about seven months it would not be
wise to annihilate it all in a single little hour. You have to be more
cautious the closer you get to perfection. If you were true-
cautiously in the steps, you will be presented with these signs: Ob-
you will serve on the body a kind of citrine sweat, then vapors
citrines that, sedimentation of the body will stain violet, and some
times purple.
After a wait of fourteen or fifteen days, in this regimen
from the sun, you will notice that the matter is wet for the most part,
although heavy; however it will be transported all in the womb of the
wind.
Finally, around the twenty-sixth day of this regimen,
it will dry out; then it will become liquid and freeze, and become liquid.
liquid and freeze, and go liquid again, a hundred times a day,
until it begins to become grainy; and will appear completely
you dissociated into small grains, then it will concentrate again and
day by day it will take on spectral shapes and this will last about three
weeks.
In the end, by God's will, your matter will radiate a light that
you couldn't imagine. Then wait a short time for the end, which
you will see after three days, when the matter will form grains like
atoms of the sun and it will be of such an intense red color that next to the
red
most remarkable it will appear to blacken like a very pure blood clotted
lada, and you would never believe that art could create anything comparable
to
this elixir. He is such an admirable creature that he is unmatched in nature.
entire nature, there being nothing exactly similar to it.
The Work is finished. Apparently, there are still two processes missing:
fermentation and multiplication. The regime of the Sun, which reigns
between forty and forty-two days brings the Tyrian color, the color of
bright red, fiery vermilion, purple. 140 It is the blessed
red tincture, the balm of nature that expels all
diseases.
140 From the Latin purple. The pure of the pure.
159

The Adept reminds us that we must walk with much more
caution in this end of the Work. After seven months of work it would be
ruinous to lose impending perfection. Mastery requires the ar-
Take one more point of caution. You have to be very cautious now-
I use fire so as not to vitrify matter with an independent fire.
since it would prevent the advent of the supernatural son clothed
in purple, of the royal infant.
The citrine sweats of the end of the reign of Mars settled
they will be on the body and will dye in violet and purple. At fourteen or
fifteen days the matter, dry as it was, is moistened, and from
On the twentieth day the compound again enters a period of
dryness to continue with other phases of coagulation and liquefaction
repeated many times a day, until matter becomes
looks grainy, dissociated into small grains that later
they concentrate. Process that will last more or less three weeks.
Finally, matter will radiate a certain light, and three days later
After this phenomenon, it will again form small gra-
null deep red. The ruby and philosopher's stone has been born.
It is the fireproof red sulfur, the true salamander of the
philosophers.
But the Work has not reached the end of the works. Has to go
further if it is intended to transmute. A new twist is needed
wheel, that is, a reiteration of the processes.
The work in Red
The Red King or Red Sulfur. The color of the
flowers highlights it. The gold symbolized by
the suns, has come alive is now gold
alive.
Rosarium philosophorum. Prague 1758.
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Luis Silva
The conception. Johann Daniel Mylius. Auri anatomy. 1628. Fountain of the
image: Stanislas Klossowski de Rola. The Golden Game. Siruela Editions.
161

The image symbolizes both the marriage or union between the king
or purified gold and the queen or dissolving mercury, as both
metallic principles or roots, red sulfur and mercury (or silver
alive), symbolized by the king and queen, since both appear
naked, that is, stripped of their heterogeneities. Both
are married into the interior of the flask or herbed bed.
metic.
The end result of this union will be the birth of the child king,
manifested in the neck of the bottle. It's the red sulfur, embryo
from the philosopher's stone. Roses traditionally symbolize
the philosopher's stone, the end of the alchemical work. Three appear,
corresponding to the three phases carried out: black, white and
the Red.
The fermentation of the stone
Take three parts of very pure sunshine and one part of our
igneous sulfur. Melt the sun in a clean crucible and introduce your
sulfur, but with caution, do not spoil it because of the
smoke from the coals. Make everything melt, then fry
put it in an ingot holder and you will get a powdery mass of a drink.
It is a very intense red color and barely transparent. Take a part
of this mass reduced to fine powder and two parts of your mercury
philosophical, 142 mix them well and place them in a glass tumbler.
Rule the fire as before and in two months you will see all the
regimes that we have discussed and in their order.
Open entrance to the closed palace of the king.
What the Philosophers properly call Fermentation is the
Elixir operation. It is not enough, to do the Great Work,
with bringing the Magisterium to the red. The practice of stone says
d'Espagnet, is concluded in two operations, one consists of
141 Gold.
142 The universal solvent.
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create the Sulfur, or Magisterium, the other to make the Elixir, and
does through Fermentation. The project will be tried in vain.
tion if the stone is not fermented.
The red-hot Magisterium is a very subtle, extreme sulfur, or earth.
warm and dry, it contains a fire of the Nativity within it.
very abundant nature that has the virtue of opening and penetrating
metallic bodies, making them similar to himself, therefore
who has given it the name of Father and male seed, but
of this Sulfur it is necessary to create a second Sulfur, which can
then be multiplied to infinity. This Sulfur is
multiplies from the same matter from which it was made,
adding a small part of the first and fermenting the whole
with the red or white ferment, according to the artist's intention.
Dom Pernety.
The red sulfur obtained after the seven regimes must be fer-
mentioned if it is intended to achieve a projection or transmutation
metallic connection. Thus, a part of this sulfur must be put into
fusion with three part pure gold. After the intimate union of the blue
gold and metallic fre, the crucible will show a powder of beautiful color
intense red, which in itself could already transmute an internal metal
noble, but in little quantity. It is a philosopher's stone of scarce
virtue, which needs to be multiplied in power. It is because of that
the Master Philalethe advises placing in a glass vase a
part of this powder with two solvent and pass again through
all kingdoms. But now only two months will be enough to
finish this wheel spin.
The Multiplication of the Philosopher's Stone
Take the perfect stone and mix one part of it with three
or at most four parts of our mercury from the first
163

operation, 143 and dispose of it with the fire due for seven days,
with the glass hermetically closed. All regimes passed
They will and the stone will obtain a virtue a thousand times greater than
before
of its multiplication.
If you try this operation again, in three days you will go through
two regimens and it will be a medicine a thousand times stronger and
tingente144 yet.
And if you still want to repeat it, on a calendar day you will make it happen
the work in all modes and colors. If you tried once
plus the experience a single hour would suffice, but then no longer
you can imagine the virtue of your stone. It will be such that it will
ability of your wits if you ever started for the fifth time
The multiplication.
Remember then to give eternal thanks to God, for you have
in your power the entire treasure of Nature.
The open entrance to the closed palace of the King.
Multiplication. Operation of the Great Work through the
which multiplies the projection powder either in quality, or in
quantity to infinity according to the good wish of the artist. Consists in
restart the operation already done, but with matters already exalted.
and perfected and not with raw materials as before-
mind. The whole secret, says a Philosopher, is a physical dissolution
in mercury, 145 and a reduction to its raw material '.
It would be reckless, at least as far as the transmutation is concerned.
tion and medicine, go beyond the seventh reiteration ...
Multiplication consists of repeating the same ones again
processes, or in alchemical terms, take new turns of the wheel.
In each of these twists, the resulting sulfur binds again
143 The solvent.
144 That stains.
145 Understand the solvent.
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and in his glass to his solvent. The result is to give more power
transmutational power and virtue to this red sulfur or philosopher's stone,
that is, less quantity of stone will transmute more quantity of
ignoble metal. At every turn of the wheel, all the regimes pass
proportionally in much less time. Now how
We saw, Fulcanelli advises not to go beyond the seventh reiteration, since
the product becomes extremely volatile and is lost.
The universal short road
That the philosophers' stone must be done in three or four days.
That expenditures cannot exceed the sum of three or four
florins. And that a single crucible or glass of earth is enough.
Jacques Tol, 17th century alchemist.
The Way of the Chemical Heaven. 1688.
... The dry way, also called Work of Saturn, seldom tra-
duced in iconography and rarely described in texts. Based
In the use of solid crystalline materials, the short way (ars
brevis) requires only the contest of the crucible and the application of
high temperatures.
Henckel points out that the artist Elias, cited by Helvetius,
The preparation of the Philosopher's Stone should be started and
finished in four days, and has indeed shown this stone still
adhered to the walls of the crucible.
But the reverse of what happens in the wet, in which
glass utensils allow easy control and observation
fair, the dry way does not allow the operator to observe anything. Thus,
Although the time factor, reduced to a minimum, constitutes a second
In contrast, the need for high tempera-
tures presents the serious drawback of an absolute uncertainty
solute regarding the progress of the operation. Everything happens in the
Deepest mystery inside the crucible carefully
closed, sunk in the center of the incandescent coals. Is
It is necessary to be a great expert and know the behavior and power
of fire, since from the beginning to the end you do not obtain
165

the slightest hint. It is a blind path, with no more uncertainty than
faith and divine mercy.
However, at the end of the process, the researcher will perceive a
sign, the only one, whose appearance indicates success and confirms
Sulfur acceptance by total mercury fixation; this sign
It consists of the spontaneous rupture of the vessel. If the experience has
been successful, one or more lines of
dazzling clarity, clearly visible against the background
less shiny than the wrapper. These are the revealing slits
bearers of the happy birth of the young king. As well as at the end of
incubation, the chicken egg is broken by the effort of the
chick, so the shell of our egg breaks as soon as the
sulfur is consumed.
The sulfur obtained by dry means has a crystalline form.
The chestnut, whose spiny pericarp has earned it the name
vulgaris of hedgehog is a fairly accurate representation of the
philosopher's dra as it is obtained by the short way. It is a spe-
crystalline and translucent bone, practically spherical, of
ruby-like color, included in a more or less thick layer,
red, opaque, dry and covered with roughness which at the end of the work
jo tends to crack, sometimes even opens, like the shell
of walnuts or chestnuts.
Fulcanelli.
The philosopher's abodes. Excerpts.
Few are the Adepts who have tried this short way, but
all have agreed to speak of the need for a melting pot, for
high temperatures and that in a few days you can get
a philosopher's stone.
Regarding the materials to be put into the crucible,
There are different opinions, although all agree that one of
They are a secret salt, the celestial salt, astral salt or nitro salt of the
bios, which offers the artist the universal solvent used in the
wet route. On the second subject, some think that it has
being a noble metal. This, by action of the internal fire
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of this hidden salt and thanks to the high temperatures, it opens by
exhaustion and manifests its internal sulfur.
Others, like Eugène Canseliet, tried by introducing
this glass a metalloid, specifically antimony, together with
a combination of tartar, saltpeter and salt extracted from the dew, but
did not reach the stone.146 Patrick Rivière, disciple of Canseliet, yes
seems to have achieved by this system a stone trans-
mutatory.
We, although in its day we made our first steps with this
via, we do not follow. A good friend, now deceased, suffered an
cendio in his house. High temperatures require a lot of
attention and the risks of burns and explosion are high.
So we are not very close to this path. Ours is a way
simple. We follow the advice of the great Adept who cared for Him
Cosmopolitan: Simplicity is the true seal of truth.
The most universal or simple way of Nature
If you know Art, extract our sun from our mercury and
then all the secrets will emerge ... which believe me is more
perfect than all the perfection in the world. As the Philosopher says-
fo: If from Mercury147 you can only take up to
end the work, you will be an excellent researcher.
There is a very secret and purely natural operation
does on our mercury with our sun ... This operation is not
perform neither with fire nor with hands, but only with a heat
inside. The outside heat only expels the cold ...
Search, with all your might, our sulfur that you will find
believe me in our Mercury if fate calls you to it ...
There is, however, in the mineral kingdom one thing of admirable
origin in which our sun is closer than the sun and the
vulgar moon. If you look for her at the time of her birth, this
146 He explains all this process in his Alchemy Explained on Classical Texts.
There is a
Spanish edition of the Luis Cárcamo publishing house.
147 Refers to the universal solvent.
167

of in our mercury like ice in warm water ... This appears
Pray for the revelation of what is hidden in our Mercury.
River. This thing can be found after a digestion of
one hundred and fifty days on our Mercury. This is our gold
searched for the longest way ...
The way of gold is the way of the magnates ... the real matter
or sulfur you can search and find it in a week through our
easy and rare way that God has reserved for his poor despis-
two and their humble saints.
The two ways are true, because it is only one at the end ...
because all our secret is found in our mercury and
in our sun. Our Mercury is our way and without it nothing will
will do ... our sun is not vulgar gold, although vulgar gold
contain.
Open entrance to the closed palace of the king.
We do not need for this work neither alembic, nor retorts, nor
much less salts, burning spirits, acids or corrosives etc.
The astral, aerial and universal spirit, introduced in this subject
according to its purity, it gives it a more or less noble form.
It is necessary that this spirit, which is a fire, be dissolved
by another fire and turns into water.
As soon as the astral spirit is attracted, it is reduced to
water from which the wise make their secret fire.
Hermetic recreations.
Anonymous text from the 19th century. 148
... The philosopher cooks with sweet and solar heat and in a single glass
that
the only steam that gradually thickens ...
Marco Antonio Crasellame.
The light arising by itself from the darkness.
148 Translation by JM Castillo.
168
Luis Silva
This is the way of the poor. It does not need any metal, nor
no oven, no retorts or stills ... just a glass of Art
and one from Nature. In the latter the universal energy goes
accumulating and matter becomes the secret fire of
alchemists or universal solvent. Only with it can be made
the philosopher's stone, by means of a simple work operated by the
nature and with minimal help from the alchemist, who only has
ne the subjects. Natura does all the work, offering the artist
a living gold, a philosopher's sulfur, and if before the end of the Work the
craftsman wanted to speed it up, could make use of a noble metal,
but it is not necessary at all.
Very few are the texts that deal with this matter. The theme always
pre has been very secretive because his knowledge reveals the fa-
universal solvent brication. We are trying
unravel this path. This is, at present, our objective
principal.
In the last chapter, dedicated to our work, we will see
any of these procedures.
Joannes Chrysippus Fanianus:

The ore of the wise philosophers is work
hidden from heavenly power.
169

The Golden Rule of the Most Universal Way
A single matter, a single glass and a single regime or arrangement
The difference between true philosophers and alchemists
vulgarity is as great as that between day and night, and
That difference can be seen well in this: that it is not to be taken more
than
one and only thing to prepare the philosophers' stone. The
vulgar alchemists, on the contrary, pretend to take many
different subjects ... True Philosophers do their work
on time, at no expense, and operate silently with just one glass, one
only one furnace and one material, or two (which are, however, two of
the same nature).
Anonymous.
The thing is indeed very difficult to find, and many
They have gone crazy looking for her ... she costs little because there is no
more
than a single stone, a medicine, a glass, a regimen and a
provision.
George Aurach. The most precious gift of God. Text transcribed by
Albert Poisson from an undated manuscript. Perhaps 17th century. 149
This is the general rule of the universal way: a single matter
as an object of work, a single glass of art and one of nature
nature, and a single regime or provision. Any job that is
away from this alchemical axiom does not conform to the universal ways
and it will be, therefore, a private route.
As we said, gold is not necessary at all to make
a philosopher's stone of the first order. This can be obtained from
pull the universal solvent itself in saline form. Now yeah
it is fermented with gold, it is done for the purpose of:
• Create a transmuting stone.
• Confirm by transmutation that the alkaline
Mista holds the philosopher's stone in his hands.
170
Luis Silva
• Extract from metallic gold a universal medicine, the true
drinking gold 150
Only one subject, but what subject?
This is the great heart of the matter. What matter is ver-
true?
Each alchemist works with the matter of his choice, which
considers it to be correct. However, in the universal way this
matter is one. What happens is that it has been veiled for si-
glos. No Adept has dared to quote her by the literal name, and if
he has done it has been mixing it with a lot of other names
of other subjects. Nor has the shape been directly revealed
to find and elaborate this first subject. It is still surprising
It is surprising that this secret has been hidden for so many centuries.
All the Adepts have been respectful of the Tradition and only
They have revealed it to the people most worthy of their trust. Ade-
more, there is no doubt that upon discovering or receiving it, the alchemist
takes on a great responsibility. A stone that transmutes the
Matter can be very dangerous in the wrong hands.
150 Drinkable. That can be ingested without harm.
Oswald Croll de Wetter,

disciple of philosophers:
This knowledge is nothing but secrets
of the sages, teachers and philosophers.
171

Let's do a nice summary. There is a matter, a sa-
line that catches the call by the alchemists universal spirit or
soul of the world, a universal energy perpetually emanated
by the luminous stars. This subject has generally received
ral the name of magnesia (from the Greek magnes, magneto, magnet) by
your attractive or attractive virtue of this imponderable energy.
The repeated capture of this energy in magnetic matter
After a considerable time it provokes a reaction that di-
dissolves this salt, giving rise to a thick liquor, the uniform solvent
verse of the alchemists, with which you can make a stone
philosopher of the first order, and who is also capable of dissolving
metals to their principles or origin, which as we said, are a
land called sulfur and a water called mercury from the philosophers or
second mercury. But not only this dissolving matter has remained
had soiree, also its elaboration procedure.
He who knows how to fix and concentrate the Spirit or Fire in the Salt of
Nature owns everything and understands our art.
Sigismond Bacstrom. Maxims Concerning Universal Salt
of the Maximum Nature number 35. 1797.151
151 There is a translation into Spanish by Bubok Ediciones. Madrid. 2010.
Bad, philosopher:
This stone is under you,
above you, next to you and around you.
172
Luis Silva
Now let's see what the anonymous author of the Instruction tells us
from a father to his son about the solar tree, one of the most verbose
on the definition of this matter which, on the other hand, receives many
chos names, adapted according to the different forms that this
acquired throughout its production process.
Nothing is more certain that there is a certain matter with which
philosophers come down. In the same way, there is nothing so ignored
By ignorant chemists like this stuff they make use of
the Sons of Wisdom for the preparation of the Great Work.
The subject or thing that should be taken to do our Medi-
universal cina, it is a precious matter that is not found on
the land of the living.
It is a corporeal spirit or a spiritual body that, certainly-
It is the Nitro of the Wise and to tell the truth, a fat land, but
savory and succulent ... this excellent stuff is found everywhere
parts, in valleys, plains, fields, caves of the earth, in mountains
and even in your own home. It is the dew of the sky, the fat of the
earth and the very precious natural Nitro of the Sages. It is the ma-
viscous fabric with which Adam was made and, in short, our
Virgin matter on which the rays of the Sun have never shone,
although he is her father and the Moon her mother.
Philosophers call our Earth the nurse of the Gods
virgin because the Sun, the Moon, and even all metals extract
her origin. She is also called the wife of the starry sky,
because every day Heaven transmits its influences ...
nothing could live without our matter.
Often the Sages call her their androgynous and her brother.
phrodite, because it consists of two natures, that is to say, that of her
Sulfur and Mercury are extracted ... It is also called Proteus
and Chameleon of the Wise, as it transforms into all kinds of
forms ..., it is so mutable that it is even altered by the Sun and by
the air...
Our matter is only a land, but not that
on which we walk, rather it is the one that is suspended
above our head and that the Sages call their Virgin Land
foliated, that from the beginning of the world is earth and that
So much so, it was never land. It is the element that elements the earth and
173

has given its origin, in very few words, it is the very noble Earth
of the Sages.
The father is the Sun and the mother the Moon. It is a mineral fat,
a noble spiritual and corporal essence with which the
true Mercury of the Sages. To tell the truth it is the Mercury
common of the Sages, but not vulgar mercury of the vulgar. It is the
blessing from heaven that comes out of this heavenly earth, because it is
gada and impregnated with the celestial virtue of the starry sky. This
Precious matter can be sought and acquired in caves,
on the plain and in the mountains. Indeed, it is found in any
any place on the habitable earth, but you have to take it before
for the sun to see it.
When you have true knowledge of this unique subject
ca, you will extract from it the Mercury of the Sages, the Virgin Earth
of the Sapientes, the precious Salt of Nature, the Living Water
perpetuation of the Sons of Wisdom ... But what I tell you is, for
the general, impossible to discover and experience, no matter how
be the True and unique Matter of the Stone of the Sages, if not
it is faithfully revealed by a friend who knows her.
Anonymous.
Thomas Norton. English philosopher:

Our matter is something of low price, lacking
of value, who finds it not even
pick up.
174
Luis Silva
Let us now contrast the comments of this anonymous Adept

with the subject matter of our work, the morning dew.
The dew, as we will later see in depth, is a hot air,
a warm, volatile humidity, almost invisible in this state, which in
the auspicious time ascends to heaven, 152 where it receives the influences
celestial of the luminous stars; when night comes, when it gets cold,
it condenses in the form of drops of water (acquires a dense body)
that by their own weight fall to the earth. We have checked
experimentally, as we will properly show later,
that this moisture can collect and accumulate; that after a
determined process this moisture which is viscous and greasy leaves
a brown and greasy earth, and that from it can be extracted
a white salt similar to common nitro salt.
Let us now read Master Esprit Gobineau de Montluisant:
Through the Lamb and the Bull, as well as the Twins, who are-
are together, one on top of the other and reigning in the months of
March, April and May, it is taught that it is at this time that the
bio alchemist must go find the matter and take it in the instant
152 Hot air is less heavy than cold air, so it rises.
In the Ludus puerorum philosophicorum:

(Philosophical child's play)
It may be something that hardly anyone sees though
your feet are treading on it.
175

in which she descends from the sky and from the air flow, where she does not
more than kissing the lips of the mixed and passing on the belly of
the stems and plant leaves that are attached to it ...
Then her love makes her shed tears, which are nothing
more than light, of which the Sun is the Father, clothed with a
of which the moon is the mother and the east wind carries
her belly, in this state you have her universal and not determined ...
Esprit Gobineau de Montluisant. Very curious explanation of
the enigmas and hieroglyphic, physical figures, that are in the great portal
of the cathedral and metropolitan church of Nôtre-Dame de Paris. 1640,153
It is in the spring, during the season of the kingdom's awakening
plant, when the alchemist must collect the dew that falls from the
heaven, just when this kingdom receives the celestial force that is
it is inside this air fluid.
"Tears of the aurora" is one of the names given by the
Arabs to the dew. This air or humidity carries - as stated in the table
emerald - in its belly or center a universal force or power
salt emanated from the radiant stars. The Greeks called the ro-
cío rhôsis, a word that also means force or power.
153 There is a translation in Bubok Ediciones. Madrid. 2010.
Mercury.
The true architect of the Work. Is a body
fixed but at the same time volatile as manifested by the
wings on his helmet and feet. Its attribute is the caduceus
that symbolizes the two snakes or natures
faced. Two natures are extracted from himself.
contrary zas, fixed and volatile. Mercury is fire
of Nature to which external or vulgar fire
must excite. It is the salt of Nature.
Michel Maier. Atalanta Fugiens. 1618.
Rola. The Golden Game. Siruela Editions.
176
Luis Silva
The glass or glasses

There are two types of vessels in which philosophers cook the work.
fos: one is the vessel of Nature, the other that of Art. The glass
natural, also called philosophical vessel, is the very land of the
stone, which is like the female or womb in which the
seed of the male, where it is putrified and where it receives the
ration for the generation.
Jean d'Espagnet.
It is necessary that the shape of the glass vase is round or
oval ... your neck needs to be at least a span
high, or more, but that narrows towards the opening ...,
make it all of equal thickness in order to be able to withstand a fire.
go long and sharp ... It must be sealed for fear that nothing
stranger in, or the spirit escapes.
Jean d'Espagnet.
Vase: Philosophers have often given the name of
glass to its solvent, also calling it the Vessel of the Wise.
It is also the container where the material of the work is put to
cook it and perfect it. This glass must be made of glass, as it is the
Philosopher Ludovicus Lazarellus:

What we have sought and accomplished with the help of
Nature is the perfect elixir.
177

matter best suited to retain subtle, volatile spirits
and metallics of the philosophical compound ... But the secret vessel of the
Philosophers is their Water or Mercury, and not the crystal glass that
contains
has the matter.
Vase of Nature: First we understand the air, that it reci-
be the fire and transmit it to the water. Second applies to
water, which is the receptacle of the seeds and directs them towards the
land. Third, it is the earth, the matrix in which they are embodied
and develop the seeds. '
The vessel of Nature is the prepared earth to be
water with your spirit. It is called a glass and indeed it is. The spirit
that is added is not a strange thing, since everything has come out of
him and our land is made up of him. That is why it is said 'to bring in
the child in his mother's womb ', which can be done no more
that tearing at his entrails.
According to the classical texts, generally only one
two glasses to carry out the philosopher's work.
• One of them is the material used in the work itself. She
itself acts as a container, a container or a glass
of the universal spirit. This matter is virgin land that has
to be pregnant with this universal fire. Is the virgin mother
immaculate, 154 pregnant with the Holy Spirit, who is to give
gave birth to Jesus the Savior of men, to Christ the King or to
real fante, embryo of the philosopher's stone. It is the so-called glass
Natural, of Nature, Philosophical or of the Sages.
154 Without blemish, that is, without fault, stain or sin.
178
Luis Silva
• The second is the glass of Art, the glass that has

to contain matter. Spherical base flask and
elongated, which must be hermetically closed such
and as the Adepts affirm. This glass has also been
called egg, nest or nuptial bed, since it is the place where
spouses, male and female, agent and patient, dissolving
vente and dissolute, salt and mercury or mercury solvent and
metallic gold or silver, they are confused to generate a son
much more beautiful than his parents, the little infant
or regulus155 red, the purple metallic salt or embryo of the
Philosopher Stone.
D'Espagnet, in addition to the glass of nature, tells us about three
art glasses.
The first, the glass one, already commented; the second has to be,
he says, of wood, made of oak trunk, cut in two he-
concave myspheres, where the glass flask is placed; final-
Mind you, the third vessel is the atanor or alchemical furnace itself, for
it contains the other two vessels inside. The goal of this
triple glass is to achieve darkness and maintain a diet regimen
155 From the Latin regulus, little king.
Bavran, eminent philosopher:

Once our son is born as a glorious king,
he draws the philosophical tincture from the fire.
179

lor very stable, similar to what the hen does when brooding
the egg.
The regime or disposition of the fire
The Alchemist's Athanor
Philosophers say that everything consists of the Regime of
go ... All the success of the Work depends, in effect, on the regime of the
fire, but with that they do not understand only the conduction of fire
exterior, these words must also be understood in the sense
Regime of Philosophical Fire.
In whatever process you follow, whether with the vulgar sun or with the
ours, it will be necessary to operate with an equal and continuous heat.
You must know that our regime is one and linear throughout the
work, that is, cook and digest.
We call our oven Enrique the slow, 156 is made of the-
drillos or potter's earth ... We call this furnace atanor,
whose tower shape with a nest I really like. This tower has
to be about two feet, or slightly taller, and
inside diameter of nine inches or a common span ...
Ireneo Philaletheus. The open entrance to the closed palace of the King.
The real Atanor, the one who was known to the first
Western alchemists such as Albert the Great, Roger Bacon or
Arnau de Vilanova, was a type of reverb furnace that
could be disassembled into three parts: The lower part contained the
fire. It was perforated to allow air access and dis-
put of a door. The middle part, also cylindrical, offered
three projections arranged according to a triangle, on which
the bowl containing the fire was resting. This part was
jereada according to their diameters by two opposite holes, closed
156 He is also called Enrique the lazy, because the work is done inside very
slowly.
180
Luis Silva
two by means of glass discs, which allowed to observe what

happened in the egg. The upper part, compact, spherical, with
a dome or reflector, which reverberated the heat. That was the Atanor
generally in use. In the Mutus Liber there is an atanor
quite elegant in the form of a toothed tower.
Albert Poisson.
Theories and symbols of the alchemists. The Great Work. 1891.
Usually when alchemists talk about their regime
or arrangement refer to smooth, stable and linear temperature
they have to get. Its reverberatory furnace was designed to
maintain a constant and adequate heat. This required the continuation
the alchemist's attention, as excessive heat burns the
metallic seeds, while very mild heat causes
matter does not act. The correct regime of fire has always been
kept in some reserve, although they have compared it to that of the
brooding hen or inside horse manure.
But not only vulgar fire acts in matter. The rent
Myists tell us about other fires, such as solar radiation
and moles, or of a secret and necessary fire in the work, internal
in the universal solvent itself. The vulgar fire awakens this
fiery potency and makes it act by dissolving gold.
Others have also wanted to see in the regime the correct dis-
nutritional position of matter. Matter sweats and absorbs from
again his sweat in a continuous circulation. Matter must im-
drank, spray, or watered157 continuously, and as
does, grows in power and virtue.
Regarding the oven, the reader can go to the plates of the
Mutus Liber that we show, or directly at the end of this
book where you will find the construction of our own oven.
157 Regimen, in Latin regimen, regiminis, from the verb regere, to direct, to
govern, in our case
direct or govern our work properly. On the other, the root reg in Catalan is
irrigation, it is
say, water or spray matter.
181

So far we have dealt with general and in-
troducers of Alchemy, the philosophy that surrounds it, we have
defined the physical and chemical properties of the philosopher's stone,
the possibility of transmutation and the different operational pathways
torias ... It is time to try to practice the Great Work, it is
that is to say, of the elaboration of the philosopher's stone. We will do it
first
through the analysis of a book, one of the most enigmatic and famous
mosos of our science, the Mutus Liber, then we will continue
giving clues, to finally address the issue through our
own work, research and discoveries.
The Mutus Liber or the universal way
of spring dew
Crafting the Universal Solvent and the Philosopher's Stone
When two bibliophiles specialized in the occult
evoke their respective libraries, there always comes a moment,
delayed as long as possible, in which one ends up making this
Question to the other: And do you have the Mutus Liber?
A painful moment, and that most of the time, for not
always say, the answer is negative ... Few are the people
who own it, and happy are those who have seen it once
in the course of its life without it being a reproduction.
All specialized catalogs mention in one way
or in another this rarity ... 'Mysterious work', says the bibliography of
Caillet. "Extreme rarity," adds Rosenthal. 'Few examples are known
plares', specifies the Maggs 520 catalog. 'Extremely rare', summarizes
a 1934 sotheby's catalog '.
Guy Bechtel.
The great mystery books. Plaza & Janés. 158
158 Edition in Spanish by Plaza y Janés SA Editores. 1977.
182
Luis Silva
With these paragraphs, Guy Bechtel begins his chapter dedicated to
unrecoverable Mutus Liber.
The Mutus Liber or Silent Book - although it has nothing silent,
because it speaks through images - it is one of the most emblematic books
mathematicians of Alchemy. It was published in 1677, in La Rochelle, France.
Its author used the pseudonym Altus. It is a sensational book.
The drawings contained in its 15 plates reveal the totality of
alchemical practice, from its beginning to its end. Show to
who can read it the so-called Universal Way, which works with the
morning dew. We see in him from collecting this dew
spring until its distillation and the following works destined
two to get the universal solvent, and finally the Stone
Philosopher.
It will not fit in this chapter to comment on all of his gra-
given, as it would take a whole book, so we will only try
four of his plates, which reveal the first works of
the Philosopher's Work.
The pitfalls of the Mutus Liber
What at first glance would seem easy, that is, to follow the operations
portions that describe the 15 plates, it is not so much. The Mutus
Liber holds its secrets. The first forces to bring order to the
sequence of the plates, as they appear disordered. East
is the artist's first stumbling block: ordering this disorder, putting order
Give in to chaos ... in short, classify the operational phases well. The
second obstacle faced by those who intend to reveal
images is the need to know certain keys that
they watch over the ancient chemical art; without them it is not possible to
unravel
this Mutus Liber. Finally, the third, derived from the previous one,
it consists of learning to read these pictures. If the keys are known,
you learn a different way of reading. A reading in images
For this reason, we are going to call imaginative reading.
183

We reveal some of these obstacles here. Recognize-
We know that we are not the first to do it, but we are between
the few who have tried. Maybe we are, by the way
that we do it, one of the first to show great clarity,
as we will enclose in the last chapter of this book commence-
tables and photographs from our own investigations, which
very few have done.
Imaginative reading
By reading this section the reader will learn how it works.
into the mind of alchemists, how they read in the pictures, how
they keep their reserved information in them, how the study of
a simple image can extract a lot of information. Anyway,
you will discover a whole system of mental structure. Our gift
for the reader will be to show or demonstrate how to decipher a
book intended for the initiated, or the children of art, such as the
my book writes in its first few words.
An original from the Mutus Liber in Madrid
About what we said at the beginning, regarding the extreme rarity
of this Mutus Liber, we have to consider ourselves fortunate. Do not
many years ago the Library of the Complutense University
de Madrid acquired an original from the Fran-
Cisco War. We could almost certainly say that
it is the only specimen found in Spain. We request in
his day to the University a copy, which was sent to us in
CD format at a very low price. This is the one that has served us as
basis for our studies and works. Today any reader can
It will be easy to consult this original on the Internet. The Univer-
sity digitized it in December 2008 and it is free and
available.
184
Luis Silva
Other old editions of the Mutus Liber
Apart from this first edition, we know another from 1702
incorporated by the Swiss physician Jean-Jacques Manget in his Biblio-
theca Chemica Curiosa. Interestingly, there are some differences
between some plates of both editions. We also know
a late 18th century edition with color plates.
Cover of a color edition of the Mutus

Liber 18th century. Its author takes advantage
to include in the stairwells the
words "In her ter s". That is, in English,
In her ther's, translated: 'in her is' or' in
she exists'. In it (the water or dew), is or
there is the celestial vibration represented by
the angels blowing the trumpets.
Cover of the 1st Edi-

tion of the Mutus Liber,
edited in La Rochelle
(France) in 1677.
Cover of
Mutus Liber
included in
the Bibliotheca
Chemica
Curious
of Manget.
Edition of
1702.
185
Interpretations of the Mutus Liber

Regarding the various interpretations that have been made
of the Mutus Liber, we know the one that appeared in the Journal de sçavans
few months after the original edition, which we translated into
Your day; that of Pierre Dujols, of the Fulcanelli circle, who under the
pseudonym of Magophon, he titled it Hypotypesis, and which is
them of the nineteenth century; that of Eugène Canseliet, a disciple of
Fulcanelli,
who titled it L'Alchimie et son Livre Muet (Mutus Liber), edi-
dated in the last third of the twentieth century, 159 and others more
current, such as
the comments of Serge Hutin and Jean Laplace, those of our
friend José Antonio Puche Riart, appeared in the magazine Química
and Industry in the eighties of the last century, those of Luis Miguel
Martínez-Otero, 160 or those of Juli Peradejordi.161 Regarding the comments-
rios of the Spanish alchemist Simon H. we will say that they do not belong
to our work path.
We were very lucky, his good years ago, to enjoy
and share other private, contemporary interpretations,
renowned alchemists, such as those of the Granada-born Yabir, a good
friend, unfortunately recently deceased and of whom he keeps
we give a pleasant memory, those of Gothic, discreet alchemist, who
we were always kept anonymous, or those of Rubellus Petri-
nus, renowned Portuguese alchemist.
The dew, food of the Gods
and of our lower universe
But before beginning with the study of the first plate,
let the reader analyze the paragraph that we write below, since
its author, in a forceful way, compares dew with food
159 There is a Spanish edition by Luis Cárcamo, editor. 1981
160 Luis Cárcamo Editor. 1986.
161 Four Treatises of Alchemy. Edicomunicación SA 1986.
186
Luis Silva
ment of the mythological Gods, nectar and ambrosia, the man-
jar that gave them immortality.
Nectar and ambrosia on the fruits of the earth, it is the milk of
breasts of Nature that nourishes this entire lower universe ...
God loved a single dewdrop more than the rest of the world.
world, said Solomon ...
Binet, Étienne.
Essay des merveilles de nature ... 1622.162
Unveiling the first sheet
162 Extract translated by the author himself. Source: French National

Library.
187

This first plate, from the 1677 edition, was used, in addition to
more, as the cover of the MUTUS LIBER. In it we see a person
sleeping sound and two angels on a staircase that is surrounded
circularly by two stems of roses.
The central paragraph in Latin tells us:
Mutus liber (Silent Book), in which, however, all philosophy
Hermetic is represented in hieroglyphic figures, which is enshrined
to merciful God, three times very good and very great, and dedicated
only to the sons of art, 163 by the author whose name is Altus.
Here are some mysterious letters and numbers:
11-21-82 Neg.
93-82-72 Neg.
82-81-33 Tued.
The mystery disappears when they are read backwards. They are biblical
quotes:
Gen. (Genesis). chap. 28. Verses 11 to 12.
Gen. Cap. 27. vers. 28 to 39.
Deut. (Deuteronomy). chap. 33. vers. 18 to 28.
We will not expand on these appointments. We'll just say that I know
they refer to the story of Jacob, one of the first patriarchs. It
What interests us about them is that they deal with humidity or meteor
night we call dew.
We can read among these passages the following:
May God give you the dew of heaven, and the fat (fertility) of the earth.164
Then Isaac his father spoke and said to him: Behold, it will be your
habitation.
the fat of the earth, and the dew of the heavens above. 165
163 It can also be translated as children of the Sun.
164 Genesis 27:28.
165 Genesis 27:39.
188
Luis Silva
His heavens will also drop dew. 166

Indeed, this plate is shown to us as an ode to the
Dew.
Dew on the bible
One day we decided to search the Internet for a digital Bible. In
the Find window of Windows Internet Explorer.
rer we wrote the word dew, and the seeker was taking us,
one by one, to all the biblical paragraphs that contain this word-
bra. We were pleasantly surprised. Certainly the sacred text
consider the dew as holy, divine water. Let's read more
Scripture quotations:
Then Isaac answered him: Look, you will live far from the lands
fertile and far from the dew of heaven.
Genesis.
Isaac's message is clear. If you leave, you will move away not only from
ferti-
quality of the earth, necessary for harvesting, but also of the dew of the
Darling. In other words, fertile soil is as important as dew.
He said of Joseph: Blessed of the Lord be his land with the
the sky, with the dew and the ocean below, with
the best that the Sun produces, and with the best that the Moon gives.
Deuteronomy.
He said to Joseph: May Yahweh bless his land with the dew from heaven!
Deuteronomy.
166 Deuteronomy 33:28.
189

And here I will put a fleece of wool in the era. If the ro-
The water is only in the fleece and the whole earth is dry, then
I will know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said.
And so it happened. When he got up early in the morning, he squeezed the
fleece and drew the dew from it, a cup full of water.
Judges
This last quote is very curious, because it shows how they collected the
ancient dew, by means of a fleece or sheepskin. Make
years ago the experiment was carried out by a dear friend and
mista. The result was very satisfactory.
When the dew fell on the camp at night, the
manna descended on him.
Numbers.
That is to say, next to the dew the manna, the food of God, descends.
The collection of mana.

(1738-1740). Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo.
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Let's continue unveiling the Mutus Liber plate.
The two roses
Roses have always traditionally been the floral symbol
from the philosopher's stone. Its root, ros, means dew in Latin.
The red rose symbolizes the finished philosopher's stone,
which is red, rather purple. It is the one that transmutes the meta-
them in gold, and true universal medicine.
The white rose symbolizes the white philosopher's stone, the not finished
bada, which, however, makes it possible to transmute ignoble metals into
silver and is a second-order medicine. Curious that in ca-
talán the dew is called rosada, and that in French rosée (dew) and rose
(pink) are words with the same etymological root.
The rose is also considered a symbol of the philosopher's stone
because its stem is full of thorns, thus simulating the way
tortuous, difficult, necessary and prior to reach beauty,
the flower or philosopher's stone. It is a similar meaning to the labyrinth,
where the seeker gets lost and confuses until he finds, if he
get, the right way to get-
gar to its center.
The rosettes (large roses) of
our cathedrals are nothing more than
a tribute to the rose (fi-
nal) and dew (initial product) of
the alchemists.
The Angels
One of the angels, the upper one, comes down from heaven. The act of giving
his back to the starry night and his frontal position shows us
They bring the descent. The lower angel climbs the ladder. The dew was
behaves just like these angels, for this vapor rises to the
191

mosphere in the morning thanks to the first gentle heats
solar and low, falls at night, with the freshness, when cooling and
converting
pour into heavy drops.
Angels have always been considered the envoys of
God to Earth, his heralds or messengers. The etymology itself
Greek of his name thus manifests it: angelos means message-
ro. By classical definition they are celestial spirits created by God
for their ministry, specially destined to be heralds of the
Highest in our lower world. This symbology is equated
to that of the Roman god Mercury, represented in Art with wings
on his feet and on his helmet and carrying a caduceus. Mercury is
also the herald of the Gods. Both Angels and Mercury
represent the volatility of the subject matter of the work of the
alchemists. By similarity, dew is a volatile moisture. To the
gentle heat behaves like hot air and flees, rises towards
the atmosphere. The ancient alchemists considered it an air
invisible that only manifests in liquid form during freshness.
night cor.
The angel, depicted in alchemical iconography blowing o
playing the trumpet as in our picture, represents what
alchemists call universal spirit. It is a force,
radiation, frequency, or invisible energy (like angels) emanate
nothing of God and that expands throughout the Universe. The Angels
are the messengers, heralds or carriers of this energy that
they go to our Earth. In the picture, the angelic blast of trumpets
pretends with its sound vibration to awaken the sleeping matter
symbolized by Jacob. Similarly, the dew has been
always considered in Alchemy as the vehicle, the carrier
of a cosmic energy, of a divine vibration that they called
universal spirit, spiritus mundi or soul of the world, among many
other names. An energy destined to animate matter.
The making of the philosopher's stone consists only in finding
bring the conducive matter that allows to catch, fix and concentrate
this universal energy. Matter that has always been jealously
hidden by alchemists.
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Luis Silva
Stairs
As we discussed when discussing Sophia, the ladder is a symbol
both from wisdom, since you learn step by step, and from
the union between heaven and earth.
The vertically traversed circle
The ladder vertically divides the circle formed by the two
roses Thus was born the sign used by alchemists and later-
mind for the chemicals, nitro salt, saltpeter in Spanish, salni-
tre in Catalan. It should be noted that alchemists do not
It was about this vulgar salt, but about another, which by analogy or seems
to
acid called the same. Others called it the salt of harmony, because
it is born, they say, from the reunion of heaven and earth. The real salt
Nitro of the alchemists is a salt hidden deep in
the womb of spring and dew.
The crossed circle
The words MUTUS LIBER IN QUO TAMEN, which are in
uppercase and horizontally, they cross the staircase. This is how another is
born
symbol, the circle with a cross inside. This sign was used
used by alchemists to identify green-gray or verdigris,
which is the color or hue that the dew collected on
the plants. For alchemists this sign, the crossed circle,
it also personified the perfection of its enigmatic salt.
Spring
The outside temperature seems pleasant. Jacob goes up
gado, also the angels. To tell the truth, it is a temperature
193

spring, as can be seen when dealing with the next
ma sheet. We anticipate that if you want to work with dew, this
must be collected especially in spring.
Jacob
Jacob shows his bare knee, which traditional-
mind means that the character is an initiate. Jacob receiving
the angelic vibration symbolizes the matter to be awakened.
tada, worked by this universal energy. Let's also say that
Jacob, Jacobo, Yago or Iago, are Spanish variants of the name
Santiago (Sant Iago), the patron saint of alchemists. Your name in
Hebrew, Ya'akov, means 'held by the heel'. And sustained by the
heel was Achilles. In Greek mythology, Thetis, the mother of Aqui-
he fastened with a rope one of the heels of our hero
to immerse him in the Styx lagoon and make him immortal, but
forgot to wet the heel by which he was holding, leaving him vulnerable
that point. Achilles, the great warrior, symbolizes, like Hercules,
the alchemist, tireless fighter in pursuit of the philosopher's stone.
The selage of the druids
There is a glaring error in the drawing, perhaps intentional, to
confuse, related to the moon. What will that mistake be? Later
we clarify it. Now, to identify the sleeping matter in the
arms of Morpheus (Jacob), we will use words of Pierre Dujols,
who was an excellent scholar and alchemist, possessor of a
famous bookstore in 19th century Paris, called La Libreria de
How Wonderful. Pierre Dujols was one of the outstanding members
two from the FCH Society, where Fulcanelli was active. FCH means
ca both: Brothers (Frères in French) of Hermetic Science,
as Brothers of the City of Heliopolis (of Helios, Sol and po-
lis, city. Ciudad del Sol), but FCH is also the short form
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Luis Silva
Viada de Ful Can Helios (Fulcanelli), the volcano or Fire of the Sun.
Well, Dujols identified in his work Hypotypes Jacob with the
selage of the Druids, that is, etymologically, the matter that
gives hidden salt (from sel 'salt' and age, from agere, to produce). That is,
the
Nitro salt of the alchemists.
The stars
There are ten stars in the sky. The number ten not only
represents the excellent, the perfect job. In our topic,
ten stars can refer to the number of eligible days
for collecting night dew. Harvest I will deal with-
We are in the next picture.
Moon
We conclude the comments on this first sheet remarking-
do the error that is detected. Deliberate? The moon is not in
growing. This is a point of utmost importance. The dew was
collects in the period of approach from the crescent moon to full,
which is when lunar influences are most intense.
This lunar error, as well as the biblical quotes written backwards,
perhaps they will lead us to an ancient technique that Leonar-
do da Vinci, 167 and that reveals to us that this plate, for its correct
interpretation, you must use a mirror.
We said before that the sheet that serves as the cover of the Mutus
Liber was an ode to the morning dew of Spring. Our si-
following comments, restricted to only three other plates of this
extraordinary book, they will deal with the works that the alchemists
perform on this matter. This work or set of processes received
be from the alchemical Tradition the name of Via Universal.
167 Leonardo da Vinci used to write backwards.
195

We also said that the plates of the Mutus Liber were
ordered. It is then necessary to give them a correct order.
Thus, after the first, which we already discussed, the 4th, 5th and 6th would
follow.
plates, which are the other three in which we will stop.
IV Plate. Dew collection
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Luis Silva
The image is very clear. The pair of alchemists collects, is-
truing a canvas, the dew of the dawn. The procedure
it is simple. As the drawing shows, a few hours before the
put in the field, far from the city and low to the ground.
lo, five canvases on stakes, so that they were moistened,
they will be impregnated with the celestial liquor.
Aries, Taurus, Gemini. Spring
There is but one appropriate time to make this harvest
of astral spirits. This is when Nature registers
nera, because at this time the atmosphere is completely full
of universal spirit. Trees and plants turn green and
animals that indulge in procreation let us know their
benign influence. Spring and autumn are therefore
you, the stations that you should choose for this job; but
above all, spring is preferable ...
The lamb, the bull and the pair of alchemists designate the epoch
conducive to this collection. It is about Spring.
Both animals correspond to the Aries and the Taurus zodiac-
limes, and the two laborers with Geminis.
It is in the months of March to May when the alchemical sage
must go out to meet the matter and collect it at the moment in
that descends from the sky and from the air flow.
Esprit Gobineau de Montluisant. Very curious explanation of the
enigmas and the hieroglyphic and physical figures that are in the great
portal of the
cathedral and metropolitan church of Nôtre Dame de Paris. 1640.
197

The triangle. The symbol of Fire or Universal Spirit
Note the triangle showing the top of the
picture. It starts from a point in the sky and opens up in shape
fan. The interior of the triangle appears with points and with
lines in the form of rays. The dots refer to the dew,
that falls to the earth in the form of drops, while the rays are
correspond to what the ancients called universal spirit,
spiritus mundi, soul of the world and another good series of names.
The ancient alchemical philosophers claimed that there is a
imponderable energy, a cosmic influx emanating from a
center of the Universe by the Great Universal Engine or Great Inte-
lightness, influence that permeates the entire Universe and is collected
by the light of the sun, the moon, the stars. This energy was called
mada pneûma by the Greek Stoics, prana in Eastern philosophy
tal or fire, spiritus mundi, soul of the world ..., by the alchemists.
This cosmic radiation or universal fire, we are told, is trapped
inside the subtle salts of a moisture or air that
ancient alchemists called dew.
The triangle with the vertex facing up was between the alchemists.
both the symbol of the fire element and that of its fire
creto. The latter, which is essential for carrying out the
philosopher's work, it was strongly veiled from the eyes of the profane.
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Luis Silva
The shells or scallops of Santiago are also a symbol of this
universal fire. Note the radial similarity of the shell to
the image of the Mutus Liber. On the other hand, the shell is the glass
traditional holy water. Formerly they were used to
baptize. Even ancient baptismal fonts have this shape.
ma Thus, the dew is not only considered holy water by the
alchemists, it is also for other traditions.
Flos coeli
Flower of the sky or Flos coeli. It is a kind of mana that is found
tra scattered on the grass particularly in the month of May ...
It has almost no flavor. Through Chemical Art, it is extracted
del Flos Coeli a liqueur whose properties are admirable ...
In the alchemical Tradition the dew was also called flos co-
eli, celestial flower. It corresponds to the matter that traps the spirit
universal ritu, to the manna, to the strong force of all force that prays
in the Emerald Tablet, the text most loved by alchemists.
We will say that the dew, for its subtlety and for being impregnated with
terrestrial and celestial virtues, it is one of the vehicles that trans-
they carry the universal spirit. In the words of Eugène Canseliet: 168
It is the flos coeli, its magnesia that absorbs the universal spirit,
as the magnet attracts iron ...
The sun and the moon
On the one hand, the Sun and the Moon mark the pick-up time for us.
It must be at dawn. The drawing shows the conjunction between
168 The only known disciple of Adept Fulcanelli. He passed away in 1982.
199

the sun and the moon. With the first rays of the sun the alchemist must
leave work and hermetically close the container that
contain the precious content. The dew is volatile, but still
it is more the treasure that it contains inside, the universal spirit.
On the other hand, as we shall see, also lunar radiation and
solar are necessary in the universal way.
Clouds
The clouds are parted. The triangular beam separates them. The
dew does not fall if the sky is not clear. If the stars do not associate
man in the sky will be in vain the attempt of the alchemist. Do not
will pick up nothing. We say it from our own experience. Necessary
a clear sky, without wind, at the right time ..., and still,
maybe no luck either.
V Plate. Distillation and digestion
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Luis Silva
We can see in the image above, on the one hand, the couple
of alchemists pouring dew into a large spherical flask, and,
on the other, how do they put a capital on that flask to start a
distillation over high heat.
In the central image we see the alchemist holding the large
flask with approximately 4/5 parts of the destined product
side, while the partner picks up the other fifth of the
tante and put it in a glass bottle. This fifth part is
symbolized by four triangles, perhaps representing the
inner fire contained in this densest part, that is, the most
dew left from the dew.
Lunatic vulcan
The woman then hands the bottle to a stranger.
sound that seems lame. He has on his chest the symbol of the moon
and holds a small infant with his left arm. Under his
right arm appears a heraldic shield with another moon on its
inside.
We will reveal that the enigmatic character is the lame Vulca-
no, the God of fire and metallurgy, who among the alchemists
tas represents the internal fire of the earth, as its
name of Vulcan, and which also, by similarity, is a symbol of
his secret fire. Now this Vulcan is signed by a
crescent on his chest. It is the lunatic Vulcan of whom I speak
bla The ancient war of the knights, first edited treatise
time in 1604 and collected by Limojon de Saint Didier in his Triumph
hermetic. 169
The lunatic Vulcan is the personified image of light fire.
nar, from the radiation of the full moon. Moon that, as we said,
169 The Hermetic Triumph or the Victorious Philosopher's Stone, published in
1699, includes a treatise that
It is entitled The Ancient War of the Knights, whose first edition is from
1604. Here
our lunatic Vulcan appears.
201

It is also seen within the heraldic shield that is found
between Vulcan and the alchemist. Lunar radiation must
nurture this matter as Vulcan has to nurture the child who carries
on his chest.
Chymischer mondeschein, chemical moonlight. Leipzig. 1739.

Capture of universal energy or lunatic Vulcan
This is one of the very few images where you can see how
captures universal energy. You can see perfectly how the Sun reflects
ha on the Moon its light and polarizes it, how is it intended to increase
that
energy, that light, through a kind of magnifying glass and how it is
mite to a container where we see the symbol of the Star of Da-
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vine. The Star of David is for alchemists the emblem of the
harmony or the meeting of the four elements: Fire, Air, Water
and Earth. If we superimpose the triangular symbols of the four
elements gives us this six-pointed star as a result. I know
It is about the sign of his secret heavenly salt.
Digestion
Finally, the alchemist divides the distilled dew into four
containers, but up to half their capacity. A correct
digestion requires the contact of matter with air. To con-
Subsequently, the vessels are covered and a slow digestion is carried out.
The number 40 that stands out in the oven under fire could
refer to the degrees of temperature to be applied - similar to heat
of the brooding hen, a reference widely used by alkers
mistas - that is, a mild heat, because it looks perfectly like
the applied fire does not directly touch the dew, it can also
refer to the total number of days the dew must be in digestion.
Just as in a gastric digestion, the food, which is
finds itself in conditions of total darkness, itself and conti-
nna body temperature and under the influence of acids, suffers
a transformation that separates nutrients from feces, thus
also the dew, before the same dark conditions, tem-
temperature and under the influence of acid or celestial spirit containing
inside, it undergoes a separation of elements leaving a
brownish soil at the bottom of the container.
VI Plate. New distillation
The 40 days have passed. We see on top of
the image to the couple of alchemists collecting the dew already digested
arid. They then proceed to place it in a large flask to
distill it again.
203
In the central image we see again the man picking up

another 4/5 parts of the distilled product, and to the woman the other
ta. But this last part is symbolized by a flower.
When alchemists symbolized by means of flowers they pretended
They told us that it was something beautiful and delicate.
It is important to pay attention that in this new distillation
tion, the procedure called a bain-marie is used, that is to say, that
the flask is inside a vessel with water and receives the
heat from hot water and not directly from fire. Also I know
it is a soft fire.
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Luis Silva
Apollo, the Sun
The alchemist then gives that fifth floral part to Apo-
lo, the God of the Sun and of light, well represented by the rays on
his head and bow as attributes. The image represents the necessary
participation of the influences or solar radiation on the matter.
Calcination
In the last image we see how the alchemist couple places
in a crucible matter, which had previously been influenced
of Vulcan lunatic. The fire seems alive. With this the couple intends
to calcine this matter, to detach from it all that is fuel
tible, and then continue working with the resulting ashes.
So far our comments to the Mutus Liber. With them we have
intended to make a brief review of alchemical praxis. If the saying
says that a picture is worth a thousand words, also rents
mists have always said that they express themselves much better through
images than by words.
A little more imagery and alchemical praxis
Philosophers express themselves more freely and significantly through
enigmatic characters and figures, as if it were a language-
heh mute, that through words. The Table of
Senior, the allegorical paintings of the Rosary and, in Nicolás Flamel,
the figures of Abraham the Jew. Among modern works,
secret emblems of the highly learned Michel Maier, where the mysterious
rivers of the Ancients are so clearly revealed and unveiled
that come to be a kind of new glasses that make appear,
close to our eyes and in the brightest way, the truth
ancient, distant for the interval of many, many years.
Jean d'Espagnet. The secret work of the Philosophy of Hermes. 1623.
205

The mystery that we hide so hard is the preparation
tion of Mercury proper, which cannot be found
on the earth prepared for our hands.
The open entrance to the closed Palace of the King.
The ancient alchemists always expressed themselves better by
through images than through words. Thanks to the invention
of the printing press, Alchemy was widely disseminated during
the 16th and 17th centuries. Several thousand of
books on the subject. In many of them the image accompanied o
replaced the word. Hermetic emblems constituted
a language that transmitted alchemical secrets to the Brothers
us of the Art (alchemists) and their Sons (usually the
assholes). They were the true recipients of the secrets
hidden in the emblems and the only ones who could reveal them.
Among the most important emblematic hermetic works
noteworthy is the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, by Heinrich
Khunrath, 1602; Andreas Libavius's Alchymia, 1606; the
Arcana arcanissima, Atalanta fugiens emblemta nova de secretis
naturae chymica, Symbola aureae and Michael's Trypus aureus
Maier (17th century); the Opus medico-chymicum of 1618, the Philosophia
reformat of 1622 and the Anatomia auri, by Johann Daniel Mylius of
1628; De lapide philosophico de Lambsprinck, 1625, typus Mundi
of 1627, the Viridarium chymicum of Daniel Stolcius of 1624 or the already
commented Mutus Liber de Altus (1677), among many others.
Digby's Dust of Sympathy. XVII century
Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665), was Chancellor of the Kingdom of the
Great Britain and a renowned natural philosopher. Great scholar of
Astrology and Alchemy. His Speech made in a famous
assembly on the question of wounds healed by the dust of
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sympathy, where its composition is taught and many other
Wonders of Nature, published in 1658, became very famous.
The work was reissued numerous times. On the other hand, they were very
interesting the disputes between Digby and Helvetius, who did not believe in
the virtues of Digby's nice powder.
207

Explanation of the emblems.
Preparation of universal solvent170
170 We are facing a personal interpretation of the author.
The force or light power of God emanates

nothing in its own center is pure fire.
Thanks to this universal emanation, called
fire, spirit or soul of the world by al-
chemists, Nature and life maintain
a sympathetic relationship (of harmony, order).
The collection of dew. Formerly it was

collected dew using glass, wool or
linen. In the image you can see how the dew
is drained by means of a ball of wool or a
cloth. This is deposited in a vessel.
Empowerment of matter. The dew was

ingeniously recharges light energy.
Once empowered they say, the ancients
alchemists, that the dew keeps in itself a
pure natural fire, fire that is symbolized
by a snake or dragon (see background
jar). The dragon is pure fire, since
it emanates from within.
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Luis Silva
Fermentation and distillation. Below the

dew is left to ferment or rot in a barrel of
old oak wood; there it will change color,
will return golden like gold and like the
fermenting grapes, it will leave a residue. Through
from a subsequent distillation the earth elements
and water separate.
Fixation. Like the hammer sets the nail

in wood, fermentation and rot
they fix the universal spirit in the land of dew.
“Fixation is an operation that fixes a
matter of a volatile nature. Fix is convert
a volatile salt into a fixed salt ”. Dom Pernety.
Sympathetic relationships. The wet earth and

viscous spray is recharged or enhanced with
light energy. The terrestrial matter born
of the celestial liquor is akin to her, catches her, fixes her,
concentrates, has a sympathetic relationship with
own creative source. This harmonious relationship
is symbolized by the hand that pretends
play the mandolin. The other, by his side, without
no one touches it, it will resonate sympathetically.
The three fires of the Work. The vulgar fire,
symbolized by the fireplace fire, the fire
celestial or lunar and solar fires symbolized
by the bull (its antlers represent both the cre-
lunar cient like solar rays) and fire
secret of the alchemists or their nitro salt obtained
of the preceding works and that it is symbolic
lized by the shot, since the most
The important part of gunpowder is saltpeter or nitro salt.
209
IV. APPENDIX
Working in the lab
A story in pictures
B
Well, so far the theory. Maybe this is all very well

but ... is there any truth? Is it just talk and super-
chería? Has all this been a great montage that has endured
during centuries? Did the alchemists lie? Is the solvent uni-
Versal a pure chimera? Why did Isaac Newton, the great genius,
considered the first scientist, he dedicated thirty years of his life to
Alchemy?
One year before he died, Newton
commissioned the painter Venderkank a
self portrait. Why does it appear in the
top right of table
an ouroboros, the symbol par excellence
lence of alchemical art? A century
later, J. Faber made a copy
about this box where you worry-
good to highlight this snake
curled up. A direct message from
Newton for those who can read it: I am
a hermetic philosopher.
The atanor and the distiller

Well, we decided to check it out and take action. During
fifteen years we were waiting for the construction in our house
of a small laboratory. During these years we always had
the desire to make us an atanor and a distiller similar to the
drawn in the precious medieval alchemical images.
Isaac Newton.
Engraving by J. Faber.
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Luis Silva
So it was. Finally came the day. With the help of a friend, bricklayer
ex officio, we put up our winery and reconvert it into
cabinet.171 He was commissioned to build our furnace
with the help of the plans that we provide based on old
texts. It is something similar to the one shown in the images of the precious
Mutus Liber.
It is a three in one, as it allows the digestion of matter and
work with both mild and high temperatures.
Image of an Atanor of the Mutus Liber Body of our atanor
Atanor interior Top window with glass
171 Hermetic Cabinet. Word of French origin that was formerly used to
describe
to designate the room of the house, separated from the rest, that the
alchemists intended, in addition to
to store your gadgets, to study and teach Alchemy. It was an accessible place
only trusted people.
211
Thermometer Dome
The oven is simple. It was built with refractory bricks.
It has a small electric stove as a source of heat,
which we add a thermostat with probe to regulate the temperature
ration and keep it linear, continuous, without sudden ups and downs. Are
aware that some alchemists shy away from working with
electricity by the electromagnetic waves it emits, with
the conviction that they may affect the subject matter
tion. However, the system is doing really well for us.
Our atanor also allows, if necessary, to work with
charcoal or with oil lamps, as was done in the old days.
Find someone who could make us a still
glass similar to that of the Mutus Liber was a bit more complex.
It was Odracir, a good friend and great alchemist, who drew us the
drawings of the distiller we wanted and provided us with the
glass craftsman who made it. It is a great still. Has he-
cho and does his job very well. Is divided into three parts:
• 6-liter base spherical ball.
• A central part consisting of another ball attached to the
anterior with a weevil capital of another 6 liters.
• A 4-liter spherical receiver ball. Total, an authentic
handcrafted masterpiece.
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Luis Silva
Collection and distillation of dew
With the atanor and the still we were able to start the
dew distillation. In our beginnings, picking it up was not
not easy. We went through some adventures and misadventures before
of learning how to harvest it. We were beginners. In the beginning
We were in our thirties, the Mutus Liber system with
canvases on stakes did not work for us, so we tried with
sponges. It also failed. We finally end up harvesting it with
cotton and our hands. The cotton collected the dew that
plants received on their leaves and stems. In a couple of hours at night-
However, depending on the amount of dew that fell, we could
ger, between two people, a quantity that was around the
three quarters or almost two liters. Some alchemists are of the opinion that
the
dew should not come into contact with the plants, which is better
pick it up before it touches them. We who have
Using the two forms of collection, we can affirm that the roll
collected on the vegetable kingdom rots better and faster,
sibly because of the bacteria that they have on the leaves.
These bacteria or organic matter aid in rotting.
Before sunrise the collection must be completed, as the
Ancients said that if the sun fell directly on the dew, the
universal spirit that this catches marches towards its source, the light.
As soon as the sun appears on the horizon, the spirit moves away
you and you have to leave work.
Scholio number 33. Anonymous text from the 19th century.
The liquor must be filtered to remove small insects and boils.
bas that usually contains, and preserve it in a carafe or bottle of
glass covered with a canvas.
Thus, season after season, we gathered this
water, which we bottled, covered with a cork stopper,
213

We used to store and store them in our cellar. Little by little, and year by
year, we were accumulating good liters of dew.
In the Air is the Spirit and the nourishment of life, which
it also burns in the dew and the rain.
Maxims concerning the universal salt of Nature.
Sigismond Bacstrom. 1797.
We have shown by theory that dew and rain are the

regenerated universal chaos, the universal seed of Nature-
the spirit and soul of the world, from which and through the
which, all that exists is.
Aurea Catena Homeri.
Homer's golden chain or Nature unveiled.
Anonymous text. 1772,172
There is only one appropriate time to do the harvest
of astral spirits. This is when Nature regenerates
ra, for at this time the atmosphere is completely full of
universal spirit ... spring and autumn are the seasons
that you should choose for this job but, above all, it is necessary to
ferible spring.
Hermetic recreations. Anonymous from the 19th century.
214
Luis Silva
Through experience we learned that dew does not always fall.
More than one night we made the trip in vain. The meadow where I re
we caught is located about fifteen miles from our
home, so getting up at three in the morning to do the
trip to the mountain and return empty-handed left us
A big disappointment.
We found that the dew does not go down if the sky is cloudy or
windy. On the contrary, starry nights can give it
galore. One night with a cloudy sky, for example, I thought
We knew we weren't going to pick up anything anymore, but suddenly the
sky, the stars appeared and at the moment the plants began
to shine. They were all filled with dewdrops that glittered-
cyan reflecting moonlight. A really beautiful landscape. It was
an incredible experience that we will always remember.
To avoid unnecessary early rises as much as possible we think
in leaving our car parked on the street. If in the early morning
Gada the car windows were full of dew, we decided
leave; if they were dry, no. Usually the system gave us good
us results.
During those days of collection we wrote down in our
daily, day after day, all our experiences and experiences.
Diary
Early morning of May 8, 1996
Today my brother is with me. We left home at 3.25 am.
The car that slept serenely presaged a good harvest. Dew
it had fallen on him leaving his glasses very impregnated.
We arrived at the meadow at 4.05 am. At first it did not seem that
night was to be very productive, the sky was cloudy. Without
However at 4.45 h. the sky fully showed its stars.
Impressive vision. The manna from heaven fell abundantly
and suddenly. A shower of dew fell on us, leaving our
raincoats almost as if it had rained. The night was one
excellent harvest, 1 liter and ¾ approximately.
215

Tonight I have discovered something else. As the an-
old, some plants are more impregnated than others with the precious
liquor, they behave like authentic containers of our water
emeraldine.
A really great night. The 24 km. back and forth
They have been worth it.
Thank you brother for accompanying me this very fruitful night.
It is necessary that the sky is clean and that there is no wind in
absolute, just the cool of the night ...
Hermetic recreations. Anonymous.
... so that it can be easily dissolved in spray water
of the month of May or June, when the moon is full. Remain-
Pay attention to when the dew falls carried by an east wind or
south-east, because then it will be necessary to have nailed some
studs that are raised one foot off the ground. On top of them you will put
large glass squares, on which the dew will adhere
(the paintings are displayed when the sun has set and are removed
half an hour before dawn). Prepare a glass of glass that,
by one of its sides, it will serve to collect the dew that has
brá deposited on the crystals. Repeat this operation as many
times as are enough, because the whole quarter of the full moon is
well, at another time the dew would be weak. Following
it will be necessary to cover the glass with wax until you need it
of the same, so that the spirits do not get lost and to that end
you will keep in a cold place, not warm.
The testament of gold.
Anonymous 17th century text 173
It was a surprise to discover that the dew manifested in our
after hands a greasy sensation that in seconds disappeared
to later leave us with tremendously soft hands, more
than with any good pomade. Years later we read that
ancient Egyptians used to lie naked in the meadows to
173 Author's own translation.
216
Luis Silva
fill your skin with dew. Apparently our witches do it too.
they did. We have verified from our own experience and from friends
that the dew behaves very well on the skin: in addition to leaving it
very soft, heals small wounds quickly and can even
that helps against psoriasis, (as a friend is confirming
I send). We have also verified that the dew collected in
the appropriate season and lunation does not behave the same as the
taken in another time, which is already a weaker dew, exactly
as some classical text affirms. Doesn't offer that greasy feel
in the hands, at least not as much as the other. In fact is this
oil the one that the alchemist tries to catch.
The rain water and the dew are impregnated with the spirit of the
air, which makes them penetrating.
The dew above all contains much of this universal spirit,
which is acidic, because during the cool of the night it condenses and
a moisture precipitates that was scattered in the air.
The seed of gold, they also say, is everywhere,
is in great quantity in the universal spirit, being the dew, the
manna, honey, impregnated with this spirit.
All confirm that the universal spirit contains an acid
that serves the production of gold.
Chymie's Course.
Nicolas Lemery. 1675.
The land of Rocío
At approximately three months, the bottled dew and
Arranged in our dark cellar it rotted, seemed to ferment,
changed color, became cloudy, showed floating particles and
It stank horrors.
When we had our equipment, we began our first
mere distillation with several liters of dew, the first to be
we collected and bottled more than ten years ago. The dew smelled
fatal. To give the reader an idea, it smelled like sewer water.
217

Accumulate dew, or rain (better storm), snow, frost
or hail. Filter it and put it in a barrel ... Put this water in
a warm place indoors, where the sun, the moon, the wind and the
rain does not come, cover the barrel with a canvas or barrel background,
so that no impurity falls, leave it in this state
for a month without removing it. You will see during this time a
great alteration in its nature. Will soon begin to be put
in movement by the spirit that is implanted there. It enti-
It will rot, rot, and become stinky and hazy.
There the spirit or archeo174 will be seen operating a separation of
the subtle and the thick, the clear and the thick, for it will rise
a land that will rise higher and higher, become heavy and fall
at the bottom. This earth is brown in color, fluffy, so soft to the
feel like a fine, viscous, oily wool. Is the real
guhr175 universal.
The apprentice will find two visible items. Water and
land. Before there was only volatile water. Now land
has become visible by the benignity of putrefaction or
lukewarm digestion.
After this cloudiness of the water, remove everything together.
to, pour it into a copper flask that you will put on a furnace,
make a fire underneath so that the water evaporates ...
There will be a damp earth ...
Aurea Catena Homeri.
The rotten and dry fermented water forms a mud which is
can call dry water.
This mud, this dry water, is the clay from which the
Colossus world.
Anonymous. Scholia 3 and 4.
174 Arching. "Physicists and spagyric philosophers thus call the universal
agent that puts
Nature in motion ... ”(Myth-Hermetic Dictionary). That is, the uni-
Versal of the world.
175 Ghur. A primordial land. In ancient times many alchemists looked for it
in the
interior of caves and mines.
218
Luis Silva
Indeed, as we have experienced, the dew and
storm water will rot after a few months, whether or not it is
chopped in wooden barrels as in bottles or carafes of
glass. This water acquires a golden color in the barrel or, more
good, rust color, 176 (less intense on glass). About it we have
made numerous experiences.
If this golden dew is stirred strongly, it froths. Is

as if its fermentation were activated. As the ancients said,
all movement generates heat and this activates the spirit enclosed in the
subject.
Mr. Henham, an English gentleman, having had the occasion
sion to employ a large quantity of May dew, he made about
this subject various experiences and observations, which he presented to
the Royal Society of England (the Royal Society).
... But having put it inside a wooden keg
and having left it in the shade for three weeks to a month, the
Rocio rotted on its own, stinking extraordinarily, and
it left a sludge-black sediment down at the bottom.
176 Rust, root, or, gold.
219

Philosophers find this experience admirable, and do not
tend why the dew rotted in the shade, and not in the fire
or the Sun, or inside the vessels of earth or other matter that does not
be the wood.
Excerpt from an article from
Journal de savants, January 11, 1666, pages 208 to 210.
Extracted from the French National Library. 177
Thus, "captivated by esteem" by Juan Bautista Van Helmont,
Gosset put about twenty-five pots of
dew, carefully filtered beforehand.
Mr. Gosset ... Revelations cabalistiques d'une Medecine universelle
Tirée du vin, avec une manière d'extraire le Sel de rosé et a
Dissertation sur les Lampes sepulchrales. Amiens, 1735,178
Over time we learned to harvest dew in good quantities.

dades. In the foothills of Sierra Nevada (Granada), for example,
a group of seven alchemists collected in about two hours about
178 In The Alchemy explained on its classic texts. E. Canseliet. Luis Cárcamo
editor.
220
Luis Silva
30 liters of spray ... scrubbing ... yes, scrubbing lawns. Necessary
that the mop is made of a natural material, such as, for example,
cotton, and leave it for about three days in rain or mineral water to
that the impurities that it may contain dissolve. Later
let it dry in the sun, and the mop is ready. On one occasion, he asked
We asked a friend who had greenhouses if they would collect the
dew ... Without saying anything else, he made a reception installation of the
dew falling on the ceiling. One day he brought us two carafes of 20
liters each.
We became experts in its collection, learning
also in other creative ways used by other alchemists.
such as the bottle of frozen water that is placed on a
Bowl. Dew loves coolness, clings to it, binds
to the cold bottle, it condenses and little by little falls to the plate. Is
collected
little per bottle, but the more bottles, the more. Other
method is the placement of large plastics arranged in a
nera that they collect the dew and deposit it in a container ... and so on
so many others ... Anyway, as they say, each teacher has his book
llo. Today we can collect many liters per night.
Indeed, the dew rots and leaves a dark soil in the
background. After distillation at 40ºC (most texts advise
that the hand supports well the heat of the container where it is
brought the liquor to be distilled) of about four liters of that dew, it
remained,
after about four months of slow distillation, a viscous earth,
oily, extremely smooth and chocolate color. On other occasions
sions, when we have dried other lands born of dew in the sun
fermented, these have shown a brown color.
The importance of light radiation
Let us now deal with the importance of sunlight and moonlight in
alchemical works. We already mentioned this subject, of capital im-
portancia, when commenting on the plates of the Mutus Liber. The influen-
221

light sources (or rather, what is in them) are necessary
in the making of the philosopher's stone.
Our astral gold has its center in the Sun, which with its rays
communicates them at the same time as its light, to all the stars that
they are inferior to him. It is an igneous substance and a continual ema-
nation of solar corpuscles, which being in perpetual flux and
ebb, by the movement of the Sun and the stars, fill the whole
universe, everything is penetrated by him in the immensity of the heavens,
on the earth and in its entrails, we breathe continuously this
astral gold, these solar particles penetrate our bodies
and are exhaled from them without ceasing.
The hermetic triumph or the victorious philosopher's stone.
Edition of 1699.
Let us carefully reread this paragraph of the great alchemist Limo-

jon. It has no waste. First of all let's say that the gold
astral is another name that the ancients gave to their spiritus mundi
or soul of the world, the energy to be trapped, fixed and accumulated.
It tells us that it is the Sun that supplies this astral gold through
222
Luis Silva
its radiant light and below, and this is the good thing, which is a
igneous substance, that is to say, a pure fire and a “continuous ema-
nation of solar corpuscles ”. Here's the thing.
It is said that there is an edition of the Hermetic Triumph of the early
1600. There is talk of solar corpuscles in the early seventeenth century!
Amazing. Today we know that light manifests itself both in waves
as in particles, that is, in small corpuscles. Well then,
was Isaac Newton, in his Optical work, edited in 1704, the first,
apparently in speaking of these corpuscles in the light. The most des-
of Newtonian optics, which will be admitted early
of the 18th century, it is the corpuscular theory of light. For Newton,
light is made up of small particles detached from the
luminous or illuminated bodies that move in a medium
"Mysterious" called ether ... Where did he get this idea
our famous alchemist Isaac Newton?
Newton claimed that if he came

where it got was because
walked on the shoulders of
giants ... His most
famous, where he described the
theory of gravity, carries
by title: Natural Philosophy
Mathematical Principles. Yes,
reader ... Natural Philosophy ... Is
that Newton was a philosopher
airtight. Furthermore, this
book is full of principles
hermetic, such is the influence
that this Science printed on him.
Isaac Newton. Cover of his
Philosophia Naturalis Principia
Mathematica.
223

But let's continue. Adept Limojon continues to tell us that
These corpuscles are in perpetual ebb and flow, filling
the entire Universe, which permeate everything, even the entrails of
the earth ... and of course, even our human bodies ...; tells us
that we even breathe them. Today Science talks about neutrinos
that emanated from the Sun flood everything and go through everything. What
curious, right? Alchemists claim that the influences of
celestial stars penetrate everything, participating even in the
generation of metals, and that these influences are in the air
that we breathe. In India they would call this energy Prana179.
Let's see and comment on the image that incorporates
It was the fabulous Hermetic Triumph.
179 Praná, Sanskrit word that means inspired air and breath of life.
224
Luis Silva
Up in the sky, next to the stars, we see Gemini, Tau-
ro and Aries. That is, the astrological signs of Spring. The
stars, celestial stars, symbolize both the starry night
like the influences that they send to the earth. They tell us the
right time to collect dew.
The triangle with the lower cross is the traditional symbol of the
Sulfur principle. The triangle with the vertex at the top symbolizes,
as we already know, to fire or pneûma. The lower cross means
its fixation and perfection.
Just below the symbol of Sulfur appears the caduceus of
Mercury 180 with the two serpents facing each other. In the center of this
caduceus, a circle crossed by the rod is observed: it is the symbol
of the hidden nitro salt of the alchemists. Behold, represented, the
three alchemical principles: sulfur, mercury and salt.
Below we see the circular flask with a long neck. It looks per-
exactly like this or, better, the matter contained in it, received
be directly the influences of the Sun and the Moon. Inside of the
flask fumes and drops are perceived. It is the vapor that gives off the
matter, consequence of heat.
The lower circle is a representation of the central fire o
central sun that comes from the interior of the earth and that makes the
sweat land, exhale fumes.
The caves in the two mountains, from which water gushes, symbolizing
They give birth to the springs of living water of the alchemists.
If we join the rays of the Sun and the Moon with the horizontal arm
from the cross of the sulfur principle symbol, a triangle appears
inverted, symbol of the water element and the glass of fire or es-
spirit.
The lower, middle and upper crowns represent each
one of them the three states of the work as the own
text explains:
180 A curiosity. Mercury in French, Mercure, de mer, mar (salt water) and
curer (heal
or wash), that is, water that has a clean and healthy salt inside. The
Mercury
it is the traditional name of the universal solvent of Nature.
225

Geber says that there are three stones that are the three medicines,
corresponding to the three degrees of perfection of the Work. The
stone of the first order is the matter of the perfect philosophers.
purified and reduced to mercurial substance. The stone of
second order is the same matter cooked, digested and fixed in
fireproof sulfur. The third order is this same matter
fermented, multiplied and brought to the last perfection of tin-
fixed, permanent and dyeing ture.
That is to say, recalling the humid and metallic universal path, it is
It deals with the Work in white, the Work in red and the Work in fermenting
red.
taded and multiplied.
The final sentence tells us: 'in the cave of metals it is hidden
that venerable stone '(Hermes). In the cave of metals, it is
cir inside, in its depth, the philosopher's stone is hidden.
... Sunlight is embodied in the water during this operation.
tion, and as the lapis philosophorum is nothing but corporeal light
rified, you can thus judge the importance of this procedure
truly natural.
The lunar rays, or the influences of the stars, are concentrated
transport and transport towards us the cold radical moisture that
can be collected in the form of cold water ...
Baron de Welling.
Extract from Conserva Fontinalis. 181
From this luminous torch, all the other stars take a pres-
all its light and the brightness that they reflect on us ... Some
Philosophers
sofos have called the Sun soul of the world.
The light of the Sun is a luminous spirit inseparably united with
this star ... He diffuses into the air, which is the receptacle of light.
Antoine Joseph Pernety.
The Egyptian and Greek fables unveiled. 1746.
226
Luis Silva
The Light, rarified and spiritualized fire, possesses the same virtues
tudes and the same chemical power as gross elemental fire.
Where do the heat and light come from? Of the simple shock
from cold and dark vibrations against gaseous molecules
of our atmosphere.
Spirits are real influences, although physically almost
immaterial or imponderable. They operate in a mysterious way-
inexplicable, impossible to know but effective, on the sus-
tances submitted to your action and ready to receive them. The
lunar radiation is one of these hermetic spirits.
Fulcanelli.
The philosopher's abodes.
Well ... it seems clear that celestial influences, especially
tially those emanating from the Sun and the Moon, must be very
present in the Work. The matter undergoes changes before the application
of this imponderable energy. We have sunlight every day,
but the influences of the full moon, only a week or ten days a
month at most.
But let's go back to our workplace.
One day, by chance, they showed us an underground garage. Us
It was surprising to see that it was very illuminated by natural light.
Some skylights, which as if they were mirrors, moved
sunlight overhead into the basement and illuminated it extraordinarily
laughingly. We ask for data from the commercial representative and, once
contacted, he provided us with system information. He told us,
among other things, that it is used by zoos -especially in
cold rooms, like those of penguins - because it offers cold light, it is
That is to say, it illuminates naturally and does not give heat, an advantage
that
save energy. We loved the idea and decided to install the pro
duct in the laboratory. Within a few days we had an artificial moon
ficial daily. Like the moon reflects and polarizes sunlight,
our system offered us cold polarized light. Now not only
we have moonlight daily in our cabinet, but an oven of
cold light.
227

So, in its day, we decided to radiate our first lands
extracted from the dew and we did it using solar radiation and light
polarized. Let's see what happened.
With solar radiation

We decided, by intuition, to build a double ball, with the idea
to simulate the birth of the dew. As we already discussed, the ro-
Cio ascends to the sky during the day and then falls during the night.
Our double ball was supposed to mimic the process. Wet earth
was placed on the bottom ball. We pretended that its humidity,
thanks to the heat of the sun, it rose during the day, so that, at
fall at night, this vapor will descend on the earth in the form of drops
and spray it.
On Monday, June 8, 2009, around 6:00 p.m., we started the
experiment. We placed the double ball so that it received
the influences of sunlight. To our surprise, at 8:30 a.m.
next, an incipient saline matter began to appear, a
white salt that floated on a thin oily layer that
gave the land.
And day by day the salt grew, increased. Let's see photos of the 10th and
11th of June. Saline islets first appeared, which little by
little they were joining.
228
Luis Silva
It seemed that the salt had a tendency to seek a radial shape,

since from the sides of the ball they came out as lines that went towards
the center of the glass. It was all a curious phenomenon. Even me
wife, oblivious to these issues, was surprised.
We do not know if the rising salt arose from within our
damp earth and rose to the surface, or if it manifested itself
steam duct inside the flask, attached to sunlight
that I received.
229
Unfortunately, it was a very hot day and on the 13th

June afternoon, when we got back from work, I observed-
We saw that the salt had turned brown. The precious salt was burned and
little by little it was absorbed by the land that gave birth to it.
230
Luis Silva
With cold light radiation

In July of the same year we had the same experience, this time
with cold light. We put a part of our lands born from
dew with another of her own mother dew. What happened was a
new saline manifestation. This time in the form of a thin layer
of white salt.
231

Day by day the salt increased, although more slowly than in the
previous experiment.
Sun ... Sometimes they (philosophers) understand it literally

when they talk about the remote matter of the work, because it is
then from this vapor that the celestial Sun and Moon seem to form
sea in the air, from where it will be taken to the bowels of the earth
to constitute there the seed of metals, which is the own
matter of the Great Work.
Dom Pernety.
The importance of nitro salt from the philosophers
Over the last few years we have made many ex-
experiences that we keep duly photographed. Our
photographic archive is extensive and we can affirm that we have gone
continually learning from Nature. We have tried
on various occasions the radical dissolution of both silver and
232
Luis Silva
of gold (using
pure gold), without getting it
so far, but after
every failure ensues a
new learning. We have
worked with vulgar saltpeter
in different experiments
cough for, by comparison,
glimpse what I should
occur to the nitro salt of the
philosophers, mother of vulgar saltpeter. Anyway, we have made a
good series of different essays. We have taken action with
the guide to classical texts. We have translated intuitions into
laboratory investigations to learn from them. And without a doubt,
little by little, we climb step by step.
But a tendency for these cubes is to grow until they form
crystalline pyramids.
Crystallization of nitro vulgaris

Our moisture dissolved with vulgar nitro that we collected from a mine,
placed in a crystal glass and subjected to heat and sunlight manifests
crystals
when they thicken, they fall in the form of perfect cubes to the bottom of
the
glass. The salt also multiplies on the walls of the container.
233

These pyramidal shapes bring to mind recent
articles that deal with the different geometric shapes of
molecules of water and that they say that they especially adopt the
pyramidal ma; This is based on works that the great scientist started,
crystallographer and double nobel prizewinner Linus Pauling. Apparently the
water molecule is a polymer of 5 H2O, that is, a H2O in
each of the five vertices of a pyramid with a square base.
As can be seen from these articles, the angle of the pyramid shapes
of the water molecules is 52º, exactly the same
more than those of the great pyramid. Is this pyramid a model
giant of a water molecule? It is a question that they are
currently raising some researchers and that also
we do with respect to our nitrous pyramids.
The Magisterium of the Wise is an Alkali salt, because it is the basis
of all bodies, but in vain to do it would serve us-
We must of soda or any other alkali salt.
The Salt of the Wise is the root and first matter of metals
philosophical.
Dom Pernety.
31
Nature has ordered Salt to be the seed of the

metals. For this reason, the Salt of Nature is called
mineral and metallic, since it potentially contains nature
metallic leza.
32
Nitro is the embodied spirit of the stars, and in its

inside lies the nature of metals.
47
He who knows how to fix and concentrate the Spirit or Fire in the Salt
of Nature, owns everything and understands our art.
48
The Spirit of the pure Salt of Nature is perfected and

fixes herself on her own body if aided by art.
2. 3. 4
Luis Silva
53
The spirit that rises inside the glass container when it is

excited by gentle heat is the agent that does it all.
54
You must suppress the volatility of the Spirit, enclosing it

Methically, and what you are looking for will come at the right moment.
62
Nature and art must mutually help each other to

perfect the work. Art operates abroad and nature
sparse inside the ball.
66
The pure salt of Nature, appearing in a form

white and bright, is under the influence of solar power,
turned to a purple color becomes a tincture for humans.
hands and metals.
75
Whoever has in his power to reinforce human nature

using a pure celestial nitro, you can live up to a
advanced age.
79
Astral salt, which is a celestial salt, is very volatile, sweet,

white, shiny, like pure silver and is a sweet Spirit
mercurial.
Sigismond Bacstrom.
Maxims concerning the universal salt of Nature. 1797.
This whole set of quotes confirms the importance of salt
hidden from Nature. We have referred them because they define us
well this hidden salt:
• It is an alkali salt and the raw material of metals, its seed.
• Actually it is mineral but potentially it is metallic.
• Catch, fix and concentrate the universal spirit or fire.
• It is perfected by itself if it receives the help of the artist
alchemist.
• With the help of the sun and the alchemist, it changes color to purple.
pure, thus becoming a medicine for the three kingdoms.
235

• It is an astral salt, celestial, very volatile, white, bright and
sweet when it's a medicine.
Now, our objective has focused exclusively on en-
contracting this secret salt and extracting from it both his purple medicine
pure as the universal solvent we have discussed so much.
We confess that today we do not work with vulgar dew.
We work with another. It is undoubtedly dew, because it conforms to
the definition of him that the ancient alchemists gave. Is a
liquefied moisture in the form of transparent, very crystalline water,
and pure fire. When you rub your hands with it, it shows in
seconds a lot of fat, feeling disappearing
early. Afterwards, the hands are rough, and one is left with the
want to want to wash them.
Dew is a meteor. 182 Meteors are phenomena of the
nature that take place in the atmosphere. They can be three
types: climatic (wind, rain, snow, frost, hail, dew ...),
optical (northern lights, rainbow ...) and electrical (lightning, fire
of San Telmo ...). Well, we find it disturbing that our
current dew, which is manifested in the atmosphere, although it is not born
in it, it does not seem to be included in the meteorological catalog.
We have extracted the salt from this dew:
• It's white. And whiter or brighter when it comes into con-
touch with reflecting sunlight.
• As with salts, their crystals accumulate and form
drop a stone.
• Tastes salty.
• In solution with its mother dew, it dyes it a golden color,
what vulgar saltpeter does not.
• Crystallizes in cubic forms that tend to tend towards the pyramidal.
• It multiplies if it is moistened with its mother liquor and exposed
ne in the sun and in the air.
182 From the Greek meteors, elevated, which is in the air, in the atmosphere
or in the sky.
236
Luis Silva
• It dissolves itself, liquefies if there is high ambient humidity.
environmental.
• It is a sublimated salt, since it is found within a
by (the steam rises with it) that we have learned to
liquefy, and once distilled over low heat, manifests it in
the bottom of the ball.
• If it is dried very well in the still, even on fire
low, it changes color to brown and if then it passes through the
marble mortar, fills with moisture, liquefies and nothing
on its surface a golden and oily liquor.
• If in the form of white salt it is allowed to dry well in the sun for
several days, when passing it through the marble mortar also
manifests a somewhat golden and oily liquor.
... But it is not yet time to reveal the birth of this
dew or comment further on its snow-white salt. In short-
see we will try to extract its spirit and dissolve with it, the old-fashioned
alchemical custom, some metal. We have high hopes.
237
90
The Spirit or power in the Water that is a subtle Sun is not visi-
until the Water is converted into a solid body.
91
When I saw that the Water became progressively more

thicker and harder, I was glad, for I knew I could find
bring what you were looking for.
92
When the Spirit or the power of nature in the Water,

he becomes a Salt, he himself is already a remedy.
93 Salt is an embodied spirit.
Sigismond Bacstrom.
Maxims concerning the universal salt of Nature. 1797.
238
Luis Silva
EPILOGUE
We remember very well that at the end of our first meeting

Conference on Alchemy (Alcobendas, March 12, 2011)
We were approached by a very awake young man who told us:
I understand what Alchemy is! ”. This is one of the objectives
of the present work, to make known in a clear way a Science and
Hidden art to the profane.
On the other hand, we have tried to show great clarity,
delving into little-discussed topics, deciphering texts and images
genes and contributing personal experiences. We break, in part
te, the general reserve that permeates Alchemy.
Finally, we emphasize that this is also a practical book
co. Anyone can see what we have experienced.
You just have to take action, regardless of believing or not
in the existence of the philosopher's stone.
And with this we end a treaty that hopefully more than a
end is a beginning, a source of inspiration and guidance in
the arduous way back home.
Patience is the ladder of philosophers and humility the
gate to your garden.
Nicolas Valois.
The five books or the key to the secret of secrets.
XV century.
HEALTH183
Sant Andreu de Llavaneres.
August 26, 2012.
Day of Melchizedek, high priest, prophet and king.
183 From root salt. The salutary salt.
In memoriam of Juan Antonio Cebrián.

Strength and honor.

Alchemy Behind The Philosopher's Stone

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Winner of the II Prize

Juan Antonio Cebrián

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Winner of the II Prize

To my alchemist brothers and sisters who give their hearts

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

the reader believes that the work in his hands is fruitful.

Detail of the fourteenth plate of the Mutus Liber.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

a brief and succinct definition of Alchemy as a technical

the origin of the word alchemy is known exactly.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

At the alchemical level, the diffusion of this knowledge takes place

The Garden of Wisdom

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Richard, English philosopher:

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

26 Translation by Santiago Jubany.

28 Hermes Trimegistus (the three times great) is considered the father of

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

32 There is an edition in Spanish by Indigo editions.

xvi The secret fire

xvii The New Chemical Light

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

xviii The hermaphrodite child of the Sun and the Moon

xix Hermes unveiled

xx The Mystery of the Cathedrals

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

36 There is an edition in Spanish by Obelisco editions.

Born in the East, alchemical science spread to the West.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Greek alchemy. We see above what is possibly the first

40 From the edition of Plaza y Janés. 1969.

Let's see the image that

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Image source: Alchemy & Mysticism. Taschen. 2005.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Above: Pantocrator in the apse of the

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

53 Psychostasis: Convince that one survives in substance after death.

God measuring the world with him

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Jacob Boehme. Theosophiste

The Udyat was one of the talismans

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

Symbols of the Pneûma or Universal Spirit

The X is the symbol of manifested light, hieroglyph at its most

The image comes from the Aeternae Amphitheater

56 First treatise on the Corpus hermeticum.

God breathing the breath of life into Adam. Genesis, ch. 1.

Alchemy. After the Philosopher's Stone.

There are very many representations in the

61 Infused Science, in Catholic theology Science received directly from God

Representation of the Donum Dei