The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

The red powder is gold chloride, although in its pure form gold
chloride is an orange-red color. Gold chloride is particularly useful for
medicinal purposes because when taken into the body the chloride acts as
a dispersing agent in the stomach and makes the body capable of
absorbing the compound. A major controversy continues over how safe it
might be to ingest gold compounds. Some say homeopathic gold chloride
is safe while chemical gold chloride, used as a medication for arthritis,
may not be safe since the metallic gold precipitates out in the human body
due to the body’s own pH. The wisest advice is always to fully
understand the medical effects of any metals before ingestion.
Traditionally, the blood red powder is the famous Philosophers'
Stone and that it takes only a few days to multiply this powder into any
additional amount of the red product.
It is undoubted that the alchemists created this red-powder. For
example, the noted alchemist Robert Boyle, who gave us Boyle’s Law of
Gasses, bequeathed samples of red powder to Sir Isaac Newton and John
Locke.
Some alchemists say there is another lilac stone above the red,
which is the true Philosophers’ Stone. Whether these scientists managed
to achieve the fabled lilac Philosophers' Stone in any significant quantity
is another matter.
In the second Perfection, alchemists seek to move gold through
its oxidation states. Gold has five standard oxidation states but is mostly
found in Au(I) and Au(III) compounds and complexes. These are
uncombined gold, sulphide ore and arsenide ore. Refiners easily extract
gold metal from simple compounds using cyanide complexes.
In the commercial process for extracting gold from low grade
ores, gold is oxidized in the presence of aqueous sodium cyanide: 4Au +
8NaCN + O2 + 2H20 -> 4Na[Au(CN)2] + 4NaOH. The gold and sodium
cyanide are then recovered in the presence of carbon 2Na[Au(CN)2] ->
Au2 + 2NaCN or zinc is added to release a gold metal precipitate:
2Na[Au(CN)2] + Zn -> 2NaCN + Zn(CN)2 + Au2.
Natives in Indonesia, New Guinea and the Brazil still use the
age-old metallic mercury (Hg) method. It recovers about two-thirds of
the gold present. They wash to rock face with high-pressure water and
break the ore in a hammer crusher; alloy the gold sediment with metallic
mercury (called amalgamation) in a sluice-box; filter; and vaporize the
mercury from the gold with heat. The mercury vapor that results can be
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