The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

that is to say about 12 or 13 lbs. of it, or even more, according as
you wish to work on a large or a small scale.
The ancient Egyptians reputedly used the dry method and called it
the Saturn Regime . 759 The black powder of Khemeia, derived from the
chemistry of the stars, acted on kmt, or the black soil of Egypt. 760 To the
priests of Egypt, Khemeia was the body of Osiris in the underworld and
said to have marvelous powers. 761
Fragments from the writings of Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek
philosopher who lived about 500BCE, suggest that the dry and wet
methods have the same result:
Pleasure of souls is to become wet 762
The dry soul is the best of all and the most wise 763
The way up and the way down are One and the same 764
The wet way, from Persia, is convenient because it only requires a
simple flask, although it can take up to eighteen months to complete.
Appendix 2 describes the wet way of the alchemist Roger Bacon.
Bakr Ibn Bishrun, who lived around about 1000CE wrote of the
wet method: 765
With God's blessing, here is the treatment: Take the noble stone.
Deposit it in the cucurbit and alembic. Separate its four elements, which
are water, air, earth, and fire. They are substance, spirit, soul, and
dyeing. When you have separated the water from the earth and the air
from the fire, keep each one apart in its own vessel. Take the dregs - the
sediment - at the bottom of the vessel. Wash it with hot fire, until the fire
has removed its blackness, and its coarseness and toughness have
disappeared. Blanch it carefully and evaporate the superfluities of the
humidities concealed in it. It will thus become white water, which
contains no darkness, dirt, or disharmony. Then, turn to those primary
elements that are distilled from it. Cleanse them, too, of blackness and
disharmony. Wash them repeatedly and sublimate them, until they
become fine, subtle, and pure. When you have done this, God has given
you success.
Roger Bacon, like many other medieval alchemists, found the key
to alchemy in a book called Sirr al-Asrar or Secretum secretorum (Secret
of Secrets) by the great Arabic physician Abu Bakr Mohammed ar-Razi
(865-925 CE). After it appeared in about 1220 CE, Sirr al-Asrar became
one of the most widely read books of the middle ages. ar-Razi classified
minerals into six divisions:
1. Four spirits: mercury, sal ammoniac, sulphur and arsenic.
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