Essais chimiques d’eckartshausen

acetum philosophorum is required. Not every key will open every lock.

These are called Nature's Fire and Thunder Stones. They are real stalachiles of silty earth and, although mixed with iron, their essential base is nevertheless fire, fixed by the medium of acid.

They are produced from topsoil fertilized by salts of vitriol. All the vitriolic salts from which their combustibility is robbed give the vinegar of nature or phosphoric acid.

When pyrites are decomposed we can derive the three Principles of nature. There are different kinds: the real ones are iron pyrites, martial pyrites44.

In themselves, they are nothing more than iron transformed by sulfur. Iron lime (Eisennkalk) is clayey earth and phosphoric acid, - or phosphoric clay transformed with vital air or oxygen.

When, therefore, phosphorus is associated, in suitable proportions of oxygen, with clayey earth, iron results.

When you immerse a bar of red iron in a sulfur ball, the iron immediately melts; if one receives the molten iron in water, one obtains small black balls which are true pyrites.

By these pyrites one can obtain a beautiful production of metal containing the three principles: the metallic base, the phosphoric acid and the vital air. This production is not difficult to achieve45.

<sup>44 In French in the text.

45</sup> All this is subject to several adaptations. Here is one: to obtain iron, it is necessary to combine sulfur,

mercury and talciform earth in proportions which are that of iron. So have it analyzed. The alchemists did not wait for Lavoisier to use scales.

On the other hand, the last eight paragraphs have a general meaning, and a particular meaning of the utmost importance, touching on a certain problem of the great work, which sometimes obliges the author to play somewhat with the words. The last sentence may sound ironic, which it is not.

It is also necessary for this realization, to know the first agent. The ancients had a good knowledge of soluble and insoluble metal salts (chemically means). Vitriols and other "atraments" played a large role in the making of artificial mines. We know, on the other hand, that the Roman vitriol or green vitriol constituted the support of the famous beam of sympathy, to which R. Amadou devotes a very objective and very interesting monograph. There were thus quite a few single or double salts endowed with unusual properties, either symbolically or really, I mean in vitro. E. Canseliet to devote precious pages to some of his sympathetic salts. One will also find in History and Doctrine of the Rosicrucians of Sedir, more useful information,

Analysis and Synthesis of Metals

Having learned to divide metals into their elements, it is necessary for us to consider their reunion. Observation shows us the way.

In mines, it seems that nature first forms compacting, talciform earth. This gradually takes hold of the sulfur-phosphorus which rises in vapors and, depending on the form of the mixture and the proportion, composes noble or common metals46.

When we have pure earth analogous to talc, we have the metallic base, the corpus. This corpus, by digestion, by means of phosphoric acid which contains in itself the vivifying principle, vegetates and finally becomes ennobled by the vital air which is the true spirit of the metal.

The talciform earth is therefore the body; phosphoric acid, emu; the vital air, the spirit of metal. The production of metals is analogous to making a pastry. The ferment is phosphoric acid: it is the sour dough, the leaven.

When the earth is entirely acidified, it then requires digestion, just as bread requires baking when it is penetrated by the leaven. And, as the leaven turns all the rest of the flour into leaven, so the metallic base, penetrated by the acid, transforms the metallic subject into a new ferment.

Phosphoric acid can turn a nice red on digestion. When it turns solid, it becomes the natural sulfur of the Sages.

Part of this sulfur dissolves in three parts of its water, and this solution was called by the Ancient Blood of the Sun. With fire and water - they said - you can get anything. There are three works

Preparatory work,

Supplementary work, Perfective work. The preparatory work makes the sacred fire.

Auxiliary labor, holy water - or phosphoric acid.

The perfective work consists in the digestion of the metallic base. The Ancients also said: There are three Stones or fundamenta

^{46 Telluric energy metallifies the Gur and densifies it… Gold, as I have said, after many others, are formed on the surface, preferably in silicas (sand, quartz, etc.). Sulfur and iron, in various combinations hasten this process of gold, as well as certain other pyrites, playing the role of catalysts, stimuli (Le Brun de Virloy) or stimuli (D'Eckartshausen). ). Antagonist and complementary to gold, iron is a metal of the depths. In the meeting of these two metalliferous energies of opposite directions or signs, one can suppose that telluric energy tends towards iron and that cosmic energy tends towards gold. It is not out of fancy that the alchemists of yesteryear traveled, sometimes very far, to go and observe the mining lodges.}

The stone of Heaven or the stone of fire,

The stone of the Earth or the stone of water, The stone of the Sages or the Tincture. The first stone is the Light or the Alcali.

The second is Fire or the acidum of nature.

The third is the union of these two into one essence.

The ancients called phosphoric acid their Sea, their Sea of ​​Fire.

If the golden lime was dissolved in this water, they called it Water, the Sea of ​​the Philosophers, in which the King is drowned47.