Sulphur Salts

As knowledge became more accurate and more concentrated, the words sulphur, salt, mercury, c., began to be applied to distinct substances, and as these terms were still employed in their alchemical sense as compendious expressions for certain qualities... 

The next step away from the traditions of antiquity involved the addition of a third principle to Jabir s sulphur and mercury salt. Whereas the first two were components of metals, salt was considered an essential ingredient of living bodies. In this way alchemical theory became more than a theory of metallurgy and embraced all the material world. The three-principle theory is generally attributed to the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541), although it is probably older. Paracelsus asserted that sulphur, salt, and mercury form everything that lies in the four elements . 

Another important group contains the spinels, named after the mineral MgAl204 see Table XXX(b)). The compounds of the fourth and fifth columns in Table XXX(b) are generally written with the formula Fe304, Co3S4, etc. All these examples show quite clearly that there is no essential distinction to be made between oxygen and sulphur salts, on the one hand, and halogen complexes, on the other. 

Lead is capable of entering into combination with all tho metalloids in one and multiple proportions, and of giving rise to bodies which are saline or salifiable, according as the radical combined is capable or not of generating salts. Thus, with chlorine, bromine, fluorine, and sulphur, salts are formed whilst with oxygen, it constitutes several compounds, of which ono is salifiable, others neutral, and finally, a third class, under peculiar agency, manifest acid properties. 

It is prepared as follows native sulphur salt of the mountains, ashes, brontesinos (tliunder-stone) pyrites, equal parts. Mix in a black mortar at noon with the juice of the black mulberry and bitumen of Zacynthus, a natural liquid, in equal parts, to a pasty consistency. Add with care a little quicklime, grind carefully at noon. Guard your face for the material may take fire suddenly. Enclose it in a copper box with a cover, and keep it and do not expose it to the sun. If you wish to set fire to the arms of... 

For as many as there are kinds of fi uits—so many kinds there are of sulphur, salt, and so many of mercury. A different sulphur is in gold, another in silver, another in iron, another in lead, tin, etc. Also a different one in sapphire, another in the emerald, another in the ruby, chrysolite, amethyst, magnets, etc. Also another in stones, flint, salts, springwaters (fontibus), etc. And not only so many... 

Saw Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury unfold Amid Millenial hopes of faking Gold. 

God and Nature, His minister, alone know how to command the primal material elements of bodies. Art could not approach them. But the three, which result from them, become sensible in the resolution of the Mixts. Chemists name them Sulphur, Salt and Mercury36 These are the elements principled. Mercury is formed by the mixture of Water and Earth Sulphur, of Earth and Air Salt, of Air and Water condensed. The Fire of Nature is added to these as a formal principle. Mercury is... 

Chemist by this same means has discovered his principles Mercury, Sulphur, Salt, seeing from experiment that Chemical artificial resolution could well arrive at these three principles. It would stop at these principles and not go beyond it. Otherwise, it could destroy totally the virtue of the resolved body. But then this would no longer be chemical resolution which always has to conserve the virtues of mixts stops at the principles which sustain them, in order not to go beyond its goal, which is to dissolve c coagulate the mixt without losing anything of its internal virtues. ... 

From your extraction the oily substance is a combination of Mercury and Sulphur, the ashes from the remaining herb (which is calcined) is the Salt. The Sulphur can be separated from the Mercury by further distillation, but in herbal alchemy this further separation is not as essential as in mineral alchemy. In the forming of the alchemical spagyric medicine or elixir, the oil extract and the final product of the ashes are joined. But for other uses, i.e. oils and incense, the combinations vary along with any points of conjunction necessary in the recipe. All in all, the end result is the same—where Sulphur, Salt and Mercury make up the final product. 

Frater Albertus in the Alchemist s Handbook provides a simple explanation on distillation. He also points out that dried herbs are best used in this method, for the water from the fresh herbs would cause extra bulk which would have to be distilled off also, the dried herb still contains the three substances—Sulphur, Salt and Mercury. However, there are some alchemists who believe short-cuts must not be made and only the fresh, whole plant be used, as in the drying, vital properties are lost. 

At the end of this process you will have the Alchemical Elixir at its first stage an oily substance when warm and a solid substance when cold. This process can be continued by recalcining and a repetition of the circulation process. Each time the potency is increased. A further step is by placing the Sulphur, Salt and Mercury combined into a glass jar and sealing it, leaving it in a moderate heat for digestion. A stone... 

The beginnings of all material things, Paracelsus asserted, were not the elements of Aristotle (earth, air, fire, and water) but the three principles, or tria prima, of Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury. These were as much symbolic categories as rudimentary components of matter. Salt represented an unburnable, nonvolatile ash or earth Sulphur stood for combustible natures and Mercury denoted the volatile and metallic constitutions of bodies. Creation of the physical world was itself a process of separation. The mother and parent of all generation, he proclaimed, has always been, even from the very beginning, separation. Separation was the first divine act (hght separated from darkness), and as such was a miracle... 

In his books, Duchesne defended the chemical interpretation of nature, drawing on the universal significance of a microcosm-macrocosm analogy and the underlying creative principles of Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury. The three principles were, in this rendering, just the first of a number of things arranged in threes that linked the... 

Boyle s arguments were especially aimed at the four elements of Aristotle and the three principles (Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury) of the Paracelsians. Anyone could claim to have resolved bodies into sulphur, salt, and mercury, but what types of substances were these Did sulphur mean the marketplace stuff, or was it a reference to a kind of combustible principle Moreover, he noted, there was no real agreement among Paracelsian chemists as to which properties these principles were responsible for in mixed bodies. I could easily prosecute the imperfections of the vulgar chymists philosophy, says Boyle, and shew you, that by going about to explicate by their three principles. .. all the abstruse properties of mixed bodies [and] even such obvious and more familiar phenomena as fluidity and firmness. . . chymists will be much more likely to discredit themselves and their hypothesis, than satisfy an intelligent inquirer after truth (pp. 163-164). 

Fire A Air A Water V Earth V Sulphur Salt 0 Mercury Masculine 0 Feminine ([ Tincture J... 

The sulphurets of each metal are commonly equal in number and analogous in composition to its oxides. Metallic sulphurets unite together, as oxides do, and produce double sulphurets or sulphur salts, which are closely analogous to oxygen salts. 

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