Page 26 - Compound of Compounds

After the putrefaction, distillation and clarification, the water is pure and more
perfect, stripped of any sulphurous, igneous and corrosive principle. It is not a water
that corrodes, neither does it dissolve the bodies, but it reduces them to Mercury. It
owes this property to a Mercury that has been dissolved into its first state and putrefied
to the third degree of perfection. It contains no faeces or earthy impurities whatsoever.
The last distillation separated these and the black impurities were left over at the
bottom of the alembic. The colour of this water is blue, limpid, rusty; put it aside. For
it reduces every calcined and putrefied body into their first, radical or mercurial matter.

When you want to reduce calcined bodies with this water, prepare the bodies as
follows.

Take one Mark of the body you want, Sun or Moon; file it gently. Pulverize well
these filings on a stone with common prepared salt. Separate the salt by dissolving it in
hot water; the pulverized powder will return down to the bottom of the liquid; decant.
Desiccate the powder, imbibe it three times with tartar oil, each time letting the powder
absorb all the oil; then put the powder into a small phial; pour onto it oil of tartar, so
that the liquid has the thickness of two fingers; then close the phial, let it putrefy in
horse dung for eight days; then withdraw the phial, decant the oil and desiccate the
powder. This done, put the powder in an equal measure of our Living Water; close the
phial and allow digestion by a very gentle fire until the all the powder is converted into
Mercury. Now decant the water with precaution; gather the corporeal Mercury and put
it into a glass vase; purify it with water and common salt; desiccate by the rules, wet it
with a fine linen and wring it in droplets. If it passes entirely, that is good. It there
remains a certain portion of the amalgam, due to the distillation being incomplete, put
this residue with a new quantity of holy water. Know that the distillation of water must
be done by Balneum Marie; for air and fire, distil over warm ashes. The water must be
drawn from the moist substance and nowhere else; the air and fire must be extracted
from the dry substance and nowhere else.

Properties of this Mercury

It is less mobile, it runs less quickly than the other mercury; it leaves traces of its
fixed body by fire; one drop deposited on a plate heated red-hot leaves a residue.

Multiplication of the Philosophical Mercury

When you will have obtained your philosophical Mercury, take two parts and one

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