Alchemy and Remedies — Chemical Recipes

And if the substance is naturally red, the Salt will be red.

Metallic substances similarly become salts after their calcinations, and these salts have a penetrative and fixative power by reason of their subtlety and sharpness, because they are from fixed things and have been calcined in the fire for a long time.

Truly, because metals are calcined in the fire in various ways?, we must first consider the calcination of metals which pertain to the red, such as Gold [Sol], Copper [Venus], Lead [Saturn], and Iron [Mars]; then those which avail for the white, such as Silver [Luna] and Tin [Jupiter].

Calcination of Gold [Sol].

It is performed in a suitable vessel, in a glassmakers' furnace for forty continuous days. Then extract its salt with rainwater distilled through an alembic as if twice, by boiling in a copper vessel, and let the water be fourfold the amount of the calx; then congeal it. If you calcine the dregs again, they will turn white in three days in a reverberatory furnace. Nor should you marvel at this, because [when] a red thing has its tincture removed, it remains white, since whiteness remains hidden beneath the redness, but it is not converted; and therefore, if whiteness is beneath the redness, I say that if you calcine it for ten days alone without any admixture, and then, as was said concerning gold, you extract the gold [salt], and afterwards [extract] its dregs

in the earth which remained from the gold, [and] you calcine it again, it will be converted into whiteness; and if you draw these forth, it will be quicksilver. Therefore, I say truly that if you return the salt of gold, converted from its dregs into whiteness through calcination, an Elixir is made, both for tinting and for converting quicksilver into gold, and for tinting all prepared copper into lead.

Venus [Copper].

It is calcined in a suitable vessel for 32 days or for 2 months in a glassmakers' furnace, and then only its red tincture remains, in the appearance of blood. You shall draw the gold [salt] from the water as was said concerning the salt, and an Elixir shall be made. And know that the salt of any metal, made in the proper manner, tints and fixes Mercury [☿], and changes it from color to color and from state to state by reason of its sharpness.

Saturn [Lead].

It is calcined to a citron color in a reverberatory furnace, and it is better [done] in a closed vessel as in a glassmakers' furnace, which indeed neither