Some additional points:
Since
everything is a "coagulation" of "Spiritus Mundi" (see
Trithemius and of course Golden Chain), claiming that urine doesn't contain "Spiritus Mundi" is like claiming that water doesn't contain water.
Classical Natural Philosophy, as we learn from monumental works such as the Golden Chain, distinguishes between three distinct Principles. These three Principles are Volatile, Acid and Alkali, also known as Mercury, Sulfur and Salt (or "Tria Prima"). All three Principles are just different modalities/expressions of same "Spiritus Mundi".
In this regard, there is no such
separate entity as "pure" Spiritus Mundi, because
everything is made of it.
However, the "purity" factor comes into play when we dissect or "anatomize" each Principle
separately. We then discover that none of those three Principles is found
isolated in nature. This means that there is never Mercury/Volatile without Sulfur & Salt, there is never Sulfur/Acidum without Salt & Mercury, and there is never Salt/Alkali without Mercury & Sulfur. In nature or in the dissections of vulgar chemistry, we usually only notice the
extroverted aspect of a Principle. The complementary,
introverted aspects remain occult (hidden) to the chemists.
So, if we want to talk about "purity", we cannot
only talk about "Our Mercury". We must
equally discuss "Our Sulfur" and "Our Salt".
In light of the above, no substance is truly "dead". It is a Hermetic Fallacy to claim that metals (such as Gold Au & Mercury Hg) are "dead".
Even the most fixed metals contain in their "bowels" a
very volatile, LIVING Mercury, it's just so deeply buried and so tightly bound to the metallic Salt that it's a Herculean task to separate and retrieve. Even the most fixed of metals, Tungsten, with a boiling point of over 5,500°C, contains a hidden, deeply buried, living, volatile Mercury. But common distillation cannot separate it, because everything rises together without breaking the occult bonds. Therefore no fixed body or metal is really "dead". Suspended animation is a much better term for this.
For this Herculean task, we require a dissolving and
separating "Secret Fire", to "dissolve" our chosen matter for the Stone, and separate ALL its three
purified principles, not just one of them.
G. Perard, who knew Cyliani personally, wrote:
"The spear is the secret fire which is the true separating agent and which the artist must prepare himself."
And ICH, at the end of the foreword to his "Old Nature Path", signs his name with the addition:
"Separator of metals".
Cyliani also candidly admits that he has revealed everything except the Matter, the Fire and the Labors of Hercules. About the Matter, he only says that it is found everywhere, and in various forms. About the Fire, this is the spear with which he kills the Dragon, that he also refers to as the "Vinegar of the Mountains", which is the code name for a mysterious substance prepared by the artist. And the "Labors of Hercules" are the tedious repetitions/washings/sublimations (7-9 Eagles) required for the obtainment of the Philosophical Mercury.
Arthephius calls this Secret Fire "
Antimony, a mineral participating of saturnine parts".
St. Didier writes that this Fire is of the nature of Calx and Lime, and that it is of the same nature as the Stone.
The ORMES/Ormus people have done well to employ certain "Fires" in the form of metals that are very "fiery", such as Sodium or other Alkali or Alkali Earth metals, which ignite upon contact with water, therefore partaking of the mythological, combustible "Phlogiston". Except for the earlier, courageous Ormus producers who did Sodium Burns with actual Sodium metal, it became standard Ormus practice to employ the salts/lyes of such metals (e.g. NaOH in aqueous solution, etc.) to obtain the famous precipitates. However, there is a problem with using such metals or their salts as "Secret Fires". The often rectified (via pH swings) Ormus precipitates only give us the "purified" Salt/Earth Principle. It's a start, but still far from the whole picture, because the other two Principles are lost in translation. The ORMES/Ormus precipitates represent the most "inert" of the three Principles, and aren't really active unless they somehow incorporate/partake of the other two Principles as well. So in a way, ORMES/Ormus is only one part out of three, in the Triune Magistery of Trismegistus. The other two Principles (Sulfur & Mercury) are missing. The "Secret Fire" of the Ormus community is incomplete, to put it mildly.
It's worth noting that some mineral/metallic practitioners (in the Regulus paths, various Amalgams, Cinnabar, etc.) also employ one or two salts of such metals as "Secret Fire", e.g. KOH in the "Cinnabar Path". But as detailed above, it's apparently not enough. Others
additionally employ nitrogenous Dew Salts (e.g. Ammonium Nitrite), which are acidic and therefore "complementary" to the caustic/alkaline salts... and IMO are no better advised. This being said, in the so-called "Cinnabar Path", the Potassium component in the salt
may bind with the elemental Sulfur component of the Cinnabar and generate the "Double Salt", mentioned a few paragraphs below. But I don't really know, as I've never worked with Cinnabar and have no intention to do so.
Even if we mix the volatile, alkaline Spirits of Urine (Ammonium Carbonate or Aqueous Ammonia) with the more acidic dew salts, the result is either decomposition or even exothermic/flammable in certain conditions.
George Starkey tried a different route, making his famous soap by vigorously mixing an Oil and an Alkali. A certain Dr. Geoffroy seemingly perfected this soap-making technique.
Quoth Hermetic Recreations - Scholium:
Hermetic Recreations said:
Clay is an unctuous, heavy, grey Earth from which one makes Brick.
Alkalescence and not fat forms its unctuousness, and renders it soapy.
This is what makes it miscible with fatty substances, but not in an intimate way: with the slightest heat, the fat separates.
Clay is therefore not technically an Alkali; but it has a quality close to its nature. It is an intermediary.
It often passes to the lime or chalk state, but imperfectly, it retains more or less the greater part of its initial form.
The earths which are yellow, red, green, etc., are of this Nature, but with the addition of the Mineral Tincture.
This Tincture is produced by mutation of a part of the primary earth into the vitriolic of the nature of iron or copper.
Urbigerus, in his Circulatum Minus, emphasizes the need to first "saponify" the calcined vegetable earth with a "Bituminous Matter" (to "open its pores") before imbibing it with the essential oil and then with its own volatile spirit. According to Borgir-Verus, all the necessary ingredients for his "Circulatum Minus" (at least for his third way of making it) are commercially available at the apothecary.
Back to Artephius, who writes that the Secret Fire of the Stone
"partakes of Sulfur, and is taken elsewhere than from the matter". One can only interpret whether he refers to Common Sulfur or to Philosophical Sulfur. If it partakes of
common Sulfur AND also partakes of the same nature as the Stone, it would make sense, especially for those who work with sulfide minerals (Stibnite, Galena, Marcasite, Cinnabar) to use a Sulfur compound, such as the oft-mentioned Arcanum Duplicatum (either Potassium Sulfate or Glauber's Salt, Sodium Sulfate). This Arcanum Duplicatum not only partakes of both acid and alkali natures, but both elemental Sulfur and elemental Potassium are also "phlogistonic" (combustible) in their uncompounded, elemental form. Now, is this "double salt" useful in actual Alchemy? This, I do not know. What I do know is that it may have been the "Secret Way" of Golden Chain to "radicate vinegar", because it absorbs water yet does not react with organic solvents. They did not yet have freezers back then...
Still, other practitioners resort to strong acids, such as Aqua Fortis, Aqua Regia or Oil of Vitriol. The latter even "partakes of Sulfur",
chemically speaking. But we should also remember the warnings of the good authors, telling us that only the sophisters and vulgar chymists torture their subject matters with acids/corrosives. Again, quoting from Hermetic Recreations:
Hermetic Recreations said:
For this work, we need neither an Alembic, nor Retorts, and even less Salts, ardent Spirits, acids or corrosives, etc.
Also, from Sendivogius - New Chemical Light:
New Chemical Light said:
Now there are two kinds of solution, the violent and the natural; and under the former head come all those methods of solution which are in vogue among the vulgar herd of modern Alchemists, and the same are cold and useless.
The bottom line of all this, is that even if we know "The Matter", it is useless without its Secret Fire, which "dissolves" and separates it into the three
uncompounded Principles of the Tria Prima, without any introverted/hidden surprises or blind passengers. Such uncompounded Principles are
not readily available in nature.
The true "Secret Fire" of the Stone remains a mystery for most.
That's why I consider the
Separator Story to be one of the most powerful alchemical allegories I have ever encountered.
Thank you for reading.
