Philosophical Vitriol

There exist two vitriols, says Tripled, or rather vitriol can be found in two forms pure vitriol, and impure or gross vitriol...  

Tn truth, accord in g to Parace Isus, there is a sou I, w h ich he cal led the Predestined Element in all th ings. This predestined Element is composed, according to Paracelsus, of salt, sulfur and mercury, and is drowned and disseminated in a mass formed phlegm and (or damned ) earthy and th is gives us our body, the one that we see. The dead earth is clearly the hyle of the Gnostics. 

We have a striking example in the vegetable kingdom. What are the various alkaloids quinine, aconitine, etc, if not the pure and active principles of these vegetables which, once deprived of these principles, are without strength or activity  

in the case of material Alchemy, let us suppose that we are able to suppress this phlegm and th is dead earthy then we wou Id have pure vitrio I of not, then we have impure vitriol, and the Work will be so much the harder and longer when vitriol is more impure, or when the predetermined Element h in smal ler q uantity. 

it is th is vitriol which is the basis of the hermetic Work it is the primary material of the Art it is the salt (n ot Seel) wh ich, throu gh a series of action s, will take the form Mercury Of Secret FI re and by an intimate union of the Volatile with the Fixed, will g ive u s the 

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Under this title are brought together his two treatises Of sulphur, vitriol, and magnet of the philosophers. With his Basilius Valentinus. .. his last will and testament. 1656-1657. 

As they say, the whole of the Great Work and its Matter is contained within these very words. Nevertheless, because this term, Vitriol, is equivocal—because it could be taken to mean all the vitriols, whether natural or man-made, including extracts from pyrites or minerals or from vitriolic waters or metals, the Alchemists have taken pains particularly to apply the term to either Roman Vitriol or to the Hungarian kind, and the former belongs to Mars and the latter to Venus. Admittedly, Rupe Scissa writes that one must use the Roman Vitriol, but if he actually had needed to make use of it, and as if it were the same matter as that belonging to the Philosopher s Stone, would he have then called it by its correct name Once, however, one realizes that the Alchemists alu/ays hide the real names of their materials, and with almost as much care as they conceal the rest [of their alchemical operations], one then necessarily becomes wary in the face of the apparent ingenuity of these Hermetic Authors. 

There are a number of mineral and metallic salts which have a long association with the alchemical art. The fifteenth century alchemist, Isaac Holland describes The Hand of the Philosophers as being an assembly of important salts in alchemical works. These salts include Niter (potassium nitrate), Sal Ammoniac (ammonium chloride), Vitriol (copper or iron sulfate), Alum (potassium aluminum sulfate), and common salt (sodium chloride). 

The very concept of resonance originated in VB theory and was extensively exploited in qualitative explanations of stability and other properties of tt-electron systems [78], surviving vitriolic attacks by some Soviet philosophers of the time. Recent re-examination of these ideas [61,65,79-82], based on new semiempirical and ab initio results, shows that the concept of resonance or 7r-electron delocalization is very subtle and prone to misinterpretation when improperly isolated. 

In the same paper, Geoffroy also cautiously breached another subject of inquiry the composition of iron. He offered a conjecture that iron, like sulphur, might also be a compound of the sulphur principle or an inflammable part, a vitriolic salt, and an earth. " Common sulphur and iron would differ then only in the earth they contained, sharing two other common constituents. The facility with which iron was inflamed showed that it was sulphurous. The rust of iron, or the dissolution of iron by the humidity of air, indicated that iron was saline and vitriolic. In addition, Geoffroy produced a more philosophical proof by recomposing iron, the black, heavy powder attracted by the magnet, from the three named constituents ... 

ACETUM PHILOSOPHORUM — is Philosophical Vinegar, that is. Virgin s Milk, or Mercurial Water, in which metals are dissolved. One of its Hermetic names was Sophie Hydor. According to Theophrastus, the Philosophical Vinegar is the Chemist s Vitriol-water, but the Turba states that it is the water of mercury which dissolves gold. Others affirm that Philosophical Vinegar is that which is made from fresh shells of tortoises by sublimation and distillation. 

ANIMAL — The Philosophers have bestowed this name upon their matter after it has passed through putrefaction. It is so called because it grows in sublimation, and Chas a soul of blood colour, namely, the invisible spirit of vitriol. 

VITRIOL — The Green of the Philosophers is their Crude Matter. 

VITRIOL — Red Vitriol is the Colcotar, or Perfect Sulphur, of the Philosophers at the Red Stage. VITRIOL — Metallic Vitriols are the Salts of Metals. 

Copper is a red Venus-Metal, which is also red Earth. That is why it is also called premature Gold. Therefore, when the Philosophers speak of their "Gold" as the Corpus that should be dissolved, they are speaking of copper that must become Vitriol that means, to become the verdigris of the Philosophers (consider the Quabbalism Cupros = Corpus) ... 

Not all alchemical theories were derived from ancient or medieval sources. Some grew out of conceptions of nature and evaluations of what constituted a primary or universal matter propounded much later, during the period of the Scientific Revolution. In this regard, some alchemists who adhered to the views of nature advanced by the sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus (1493/94— 1541), sought to prepare the Philosophers Stone from vitriol. Others, who traced their procedural lineage to an alchemist named Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636) expected to produce it from nitre. A third tradition extending well into the seventeenth century and... 

Claveus had noted that if an equal quantity, or less, of philosophical Mercury be mixed with philosophical Gold, and they are digested or cemented together. . . the philosophical Gold will perfect more or less of the Mercury and this, Stahl comments thereafter, seems not improbable. The problem was how to make philosophical Gold. One way was to produce it from common gold, but Stahl records another method in which vitriol (sulfates of iron or copper usually) were used. The reason given for the use of... 

A philosophical spirit of wine prepared by repeatedly distilling alcohol with oil of vitriol must have contained ether. Volatile vitriol of Venus (copper acetate), obtained in blue crystals from a solution of verdigris in distilled vinegar, yields on distillation and rectification a colourless spirit of Venus (esprit de Venus), i.e. concentrated acetic acid. Spirit of Saturn is distilled from sugar of lead (sucre ou sel de Satume). The distillation of amber yields a spirit, an oil, and volatile salt (succinic acid) of acid taste, soluble in water, which can be sublimed in white crystals. One of Le Fevre s special preparations was a volatile salt of vipers obtained by distillation, and he extols the virtues of tobacco. ... 

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