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The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

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then be the ultimate mineral associated with both the Oak tree and the ram<br />

for the wet method.<br />

Tin became a familiar additive for copper after four thousand<br />

BCE. Crete exported tin to Mari in Akkadian times. In Chapter 5, we<br />

saw the extraordinary campaign by Sesôstris I to obtain tin and other<br />

minerals in Anatolia.<br />

<strong>The</strong> many traditional mines in Anatolia and surrounding the<br />

Aegean, such as the Laurion field, produced low-grade tin, copper, lead<br />

and silver. 806 <strong>The</strong> Black Sea sortie of Sesôstris I may have focused on the<br />

cassiterite mines at Kestel/Göltepe and Bolkardağ in the Taurus<br />

Mountains of Anatolia. 807 Cassiterite was highly prized in Egypt.<br />

Howard Carter found a golden box full of cassiterite in Tutankhamen’s<br />

tomb. 808 Even today, the mineral often substitutes for diamond because of<br />

its high luster and light dispersion. Three hundred years after Sesôstris I,<br />

in one thousand five hundred BCE, Czech/German miners began to<br />

exploit the main high-grade cassiterite sources in central Europe. As we<br />

saw in Chapter 12, the Cornish sources so famous in Roman times began<br />

much later in one thousand BCE.<br />

However, cassiterite is an oxide rather than a sulfide like galena.<br />

It is normally a drab brown rutile ore like titanium dioxide found in<br />

quartz, granite and gneiss. Even rich ore contains only five percent of tin<br />

and good ore only two percent. <strong>The</strong> bulk of cassiterite is other oxide rock<br />

or sands with quartz, fluorite, topaz, wolframite and pyrite. As<br />

compelling as the case is for tin, it does not provide the necessary<br />

antimonial basis for alchemical Mercury we have been seeking.<br />

A modern analogy to Fulcanelli’s riddle is that the alchemists'<br />

white rabbitt lives in the burrow of Mother Earth’s womb, among the<br />

roots of the mighty Oak-King from which the underground stream flows.<br />

<strong>The</strong> solution to this riddle is more straightforward. Isaac Babbitt invented<br />

an excellent antifriction metal for bearings in 1839. Babbitt metal<br />

combines eighty-nine percent tin with seven percent antimony and four<br />

percent copper. <strong>The</strong> antimony provides our enigmatic rabbitt under the<br />

Oak tree.<br />

Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 showed the archetype of Azazel,<br />

Bezaleel or Aholiab the son of Ahisamach of Dan released to mankind the<br />

secrets of metallurgy, the manufacture of weapons and jewelry, and the<br />

use of antimony in art and medicine. He taught women the art of<br />

cosmetics. We earlier noted that the ancient Egyptians used both galena<br />

and stibnite as cosmetic eyeliner and eye shadow. Stibnite added sparkle<br />

212

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