The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

The turtledove is Astarte’s bird and the song of the turtle is the
ritual song or liturgy of Astarte wooing Tammuz to the sacred marriage
and his death. 962 This is the Biblical Song of Songs or Song of Solomon.
In alchemy, vile terms about excretions tend to repel the nonadept.
However, they bring humorous delight to the alchemist who even
uses dung’s soft exothermic heat to warm his flask and urine to provide
nitrate and ammonia. The alchemist also calls his reaction residues by the
name faeces or excrement. Nicholas Flamel's 1629 Original du Désiré or
Thrésor de Philosophie identifies that the Philosophers’ Stone is in the
messy chemical substrate of the Alchemists’ crucible: 963
There is an occult stone, concealed and buried in the depths of a
fountain, which is vile, abject and valued not at all; it is also
covered with filth and excrement, to which all names are given,
although there is really only one.
The same sort of imagery occurs when Samson of Dan scooped
honey from the carcass of a lion and riddles: 964
Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.
It is exactly the same riddle as rose logic. That which the rose
embraces, in-turn embraces the rose, as we shall see in Chapter 17.
Although the Green Lion often occurs, only one technique in the
literature uses the green substance to make another, lilac colored
substance. This is in a seventeenth century manuscript in the Berlin
Staatsbibliotek, suggestively called the Messiah of the Righteous. The
name invites us to reflect both on the Teacher of Righteousness in the
Dead Sea Scrolls and Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness and Priest
King to the Most High: 965
This operation is the Messiah of the Righteous, and it is forbidden
to give it to the ignorant. Take smooth green sulphur and
quicksilver [never use this substance] and mix them together and
grind them well, and cook them together with rosewater at night
in a glass vessel, and the fire should be gentle, and the vessel
should be sealed on top, and in the morning take it out and grind
it and mix it with strong vinegar, and then return it to the vessel
as it was. Do thus six times until the quicksilver dies. Then take
these powders and grind them and distil them in a distillation,
and of twelve ounces three ounces will remain. Then take one
part of sal armoniaqe [sal ammoniac or ammonium chloride] and
one part of saffron of iron and úbr [A., eagle, sal ammoniac], and
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