Caput mortuum

In addition to] these three principles truly active, there are two other substances which by Chymists are not admitted into the number of principles, because they are only as it were the Shells or Coverings of the said principles, and are destitute of all Hypocratick virtue one of which is dry, a sandy Earth or lifeless ashes, and it is called damnate Earth, and Caput mortuum, endowed with no other virtues then, than drying and emplastick, and it is easily converted into Glass. The other... 

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, water and earth had become the two passive elements in a way they were the old Aristotelian matter onto which various properties were impressed by the active elements, SPIRIT, FIRE, and SALT. Surely earth is the more passive, indeed, its recognition depends upon its extreme passivity. It is the otherwise undistinguished material that remains after a fire analysis, it s what doesn t distill off, called the caput mortuum. Later, some time in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, it was recognized that the solid residue of fire analysis had to be divided because it often contained salt, which could be... 

Earth, which is called Caput Mortuum or Damnatum, is the other passive principle, it can no more than the others be separated pure, for it always stubbornly retains some Spirits, and if, after being so far as possible deprived of these, it is left long exposed to the air, it takes them up anew. ... 

Which Sir Ripley calls Terra damnata, it is also designated as Caput Mortuum. They are the heterogenous parts of a Composite, those which remain from the body after the elimination of its pure philosophical elements. E.B. 

Close the urine in a glass vessel and let it putrefy for a month or more in a warm place. The odors involved with this process certainly class it as an outdoor activity. Filter the putrefied urine into a distillation train and slowly distil to dryness. Return the distillate to the solids that remain (the caput mortuum) and again digest for a month. Distil and repeat the cohobation of distillate on the solids a third time. 

CAPITELLUM — Water of Soap, also Caput Mortuum, or Feces. 

The ancient Philosophi called this work or labour, their descent, their cineration, their pulverization, their death, their putrefaction of the materia of the stone, their corruption, their caput mortuum. 

And the preferable time for this working should be in the heat of the day. On the seventh day of this operation thou shalt open the crucible and thou shalt behold what Form and Colour thy Caput Mortuum hath taken. It will be like either a precious stone or glittering powder. And this stone or powder shall be of Magical Virtue in accordance with its nature. 

It IS a pleasant remedy, having only a little sharpness, which to the palate is most grateful and yet this acidity is contradistinct from that acidity which is the forerunner of putrefaction, which it kills and destroys, as the acidity of the spirit of vitriol is destroyed by the fixed acrimony of its own caput mortuum, or that of vinegar by the... 

Let a medicine, thus prepared, be exammed, and the principles by which it is extracted, with the general methods of preparation if the distilled water, for instance, of any aromatical or balsamic herb, be took, common experience will convince us that nothing but its volatile parts come over the head but take the Caput Mortuum, and it win calcine after this process, and afford an alkali, which proves itself to be an essential salt by its pungency, and will, in the air, run to an oil, which is its essential sulphur. If you take the tincture extracted with alcohol, it is the same, only the more resmous parts of sonic herbs may enrich the extract, and the volatile sulphur giving the colour and scent, be retained, which escapes in distillation but the potent virtue or soul of the herb, if we may be allowed the expression, goes to the dunghill. It is the same if the expressed juice of the herb is used and if taken in powder, or substance, as it is sometimes prescribed, but little of its... 

Then, after the subtiliation of the matter, there follows its elevation or sublimation, the spiritual parts being raised up by the action of heat, which also acts upon the faeces or caput mortuum, those dregs that we are told not to despise, but carefully to preserve, rendering them more subtle than before, penetrating them and preparing them to receive back the volatile, spiritual part at a later stage. 

The CAPUT MORTUUM of alchemy is the reject residue left after the alchemical process has been ccmipleted. 

Sometimes CAPUT mortuum is confused with skuli, though properly this is the undifferentiated residual powder at the end of an alchemical process, much as the skull is itself the undifferentiated remnant at the end of the alchemical process of life. 

ALUM CALX CAPUT MORTUUM CREATION CROSSWKEET, ... 

This explains why earth caput mortuum) differs from the interconvertible triad of other elements. This restriction was relaxed in another interpretation whereby each element is convertible into an immediate neighbour by changing one of its two qualities ... 

The five elements, spirit (or mercury), oil (or sulphur), salt, earth (faeces or caput mortuum) and phlegm, virere apparently first proposed by the French physician Sebastian Basso, whom de Launay calls vir acerrimi judicii et scientiae maximae (see on him Vol. II). Basso says ... 

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