34. Chemical procedure names are to be interpreted philosophically
…… Statistical Significance ………
Supporting sources: 7 Contradicting sources: 0
Statistical significance: 0.9999390
This premise is statistically significant
…… Supporting Quotations ………
[66] Our Philosophical Distillations consist only in the right Separation of our Spiritual and Mercurial Water from all its poisonous oily Substance, which is of no use at all in our Art, and from the Caput Mortuum, which is left behind after the first Distillation.
[520] When we call all these Operations ours, they are not all to be understood according to the common Operations of the Sophisters of Metals, whose Industry consists only in disguising of Subjects from their Form, and their Nature: but ours are really to transfigure our Subject, yet conserving its Nature, Quality, and Property.
~ Urbigerus, Baro. Aphorisms of Urbigerus. 1690 AD. Alchemical Tract
[115] all the preparations of the stone, as of Geber, Albertus Magnus, and the rest, are sophistical. Their purgations, cementations, sublimations, distillations, rectifications, circulations, putrefactions, conjunctions, solutions, ascensions, coagulations, calcinations, and incinerations are utterly profitless, both in the tripod, in the athanor, in the reverberatory furnace, in the melting furnace, the accidioneum, in dung, ashes, sand, or what not; and also in the cucurbite, the pelican, retort, phial, fixatory, and the rest. The same opinion must be passed on the sublimation of Mercury by mineral spirits, for the white and the red, as by vitriol, saltpetre, alum, crocuses, etc., concerning all which subjects that sophist, John de Rupescissa, romances in his treatise on the White and Red Philosophic Stone. Taken altogether, these are merely deceitful dreams. Avoid also the particular sophistry of Geber; for example, his sevenfold sublimations or mortifications, and also the revivifications of Mercury, with his preparations of salts of urine, or salts made by a sepulchre, all which things are untrustworthy.
[117] The white and the red spring from one root without any intermediary. It is dissolved by itself, it copulates by itself, grows white, grows red, is made crocus-coloured and black by itself, marries itself and conceives in itself. It is therefore to be decocted, to be baked, to be fused; it ascends, and
34. Chemical procedure names are to be interpreted philosophically p.119
it descends. All these operations are a single operation and produced by the fire alone.
[118] This is the opinion of the philosophers, that when they have put their matter into the more secret fire, and when with a moderated philosophical heat it is cherished on every side, beginning to pass into corruption, it grows black.
This operation they term putrefaction, and they call the blackness by the name of the Crow’s Head. The ascent and descent thereof they term distillation, ascension, and descension. The exsiccation they call coagulation; and the dealbation they call calcination; while because it becomes fluid and soft in the heat they make mention of ceration. When it ceases to ascend and remains liquid at the bottom, they say fixation is present. In this manner it is the terms of philosophical operations are to bc understood, and not otherwise.
[555] From the fact that the philosophers make mention of certain preparations, such as putrefaction, distillation, sublimation, calcination, coagulation, dealbation, rubification, ceration, fixation, and the like, you should understand that in their universal substance, Nature herself fulfils all the operations in the matter spoken of, and not the operator
~ Paracelsus, Theophrastus. The Aurora of the Philosophers. 1575 AD. Alchemical Tract
[91] Malignant men have darkened our Art, perverting it with many words; they have called our earth, and our Sun, or gold, by many misleading names. Their salting, dissolving, subliming, growing, pounding, reducing to an acid, and white sulphur, their coction of the fiery vapour, its coagulation, and transmutation into red sulphur, are nothing but different aspects of one and the same thing
~ Anonymous. The Glory of the World, Or, Table of Paradise. 1526 AD. Alchemical Tract
[125] digestion is the same as solution, and putrefaction the same as destruction.
~ Sendivogius, Michael. The New Chemical Light. 17th Cen. Alchemical Tract [265] Nature uses only one substance in her work of developing and perfecting the metals, and that this substance includes everything that is required. Now, this substance appears to call for no special treatment, except that of digestion by gentle heat, which must be continued until it has reached its highest possible degree of development. For this simple heating process the cunning sophists have substituted solutions, coagulations, calcinations, putrefactions, sublimations, and other fantastical operations - which are only different names for the same thing; and thereby they have multiplied a thousand-fold the difficulties of this undertaking, and given rise to the popular notion that it is a most arduous, hazardous, and ruinously expensive enterprise. This they have simply done out of jealousy and malice, to put others off the right track, and to involve them in poverty and ruin. But they will find it difficult to justify their conduct before God, who has commanded us to love our neighbours as ourselves. For out of sheer malice they have rendered the
p.120 34. Chemical procedure names are to be interpreted philosophically
road of truth impassable, and perplexed a simple natural process with such an elaborate tissue of circumstantial nomenclature, as to make the amelioration of the metals appear a hopelessly difficult task. For while you heat, you also putrefy, or decompose, as you may see by the changes which a grain of wheat undergoes in the ground under the influence of the rain and of the sun; you know that it must first decay before new life can spring forth. It is this process which they have denominated putrefaction and solution. Again when you heat, you also sublime, and to this coction they have applied the terms sublimation and multiplication, that the simple man might err more easily. In like manner coagulation takes place in heating; for they say that coagulation takes place when humidity is changed into the nature of fire, so as to be able to resist the action of fire, without evaporating, or being consumed. And heating also includes that which they call "circulation," or conjunction, or the union of fire with water to prevent complete combustion. Thus you see that that which they have called by so many names is really but one simple process.
~ Anonymous. The Only True Way. 1677 AD. Alchemical Tract
[1] truly our dissolution, is only the reducing of the hard body into a liquid form
~ Bacon, Roger (Pseudo). The Root of the World. 13-7th Cen. Alchemical Tract [842] note, that to dissolve, to calcine, to tinge, to whiten, to renew, to bath, to wash, to coagulate, to imbibe, to decoct, to fix, to grind, to dry, and to distil, are all one, and signify no more than to concoct Nature, until such time as it be perfect.
~ Anonymous. The True Book of the Learned Greek Abbot Synesius. 16-7th Cen.
Alchemical Tract
…… Commentary ………
As in the previous premise, specific chemical procedure names are in almost all cases meant as a deception. That does not mean they are not performed, but rather that they occur by themselves as long as the operator has the substance under suitable conditions.