By A.M.W. House
What could be more important to an alchemist than isolating the seed of gold and cultivating it? The far reaching avenues of multiple opportunities that unfold, when success is achieved, have yet to be fully explored or imagined.
All that is knowable comes from a seed. The seed is the explication of an emerging something from a nothing. A seed needs to be nurtured either by man or by nature's womb alone. The seeds that develop and sprout their species are the progeny confected to its capacity for life here in the physical sphere.
Fermentation, germination, and putrefaction studies have revealed some of the most notable descriptions of seemingly incomprehensible and unfathomable processes in nature and the laboratory. These natural & artificially produced processes are the most fascinating life functions that can be scrutinized by man.
Celestial cultivators or Agriculturists are what some alchemists have portrayed themselves as. Perhaps not so subtly, they instruct enthusiastic seekers in this objective when they are approaching the philosophical work of nature.
An excerpt of Jean Dubuis from April, Seminar 1993, Chicago.
Reference is made to the text The Sky of the Philosophers - Coelum Philosophorum.
"It's in future projects to treat them [the scoria] quite differently."
Here is a reference to Coelum Philosophorum's treatment of the first scoria, which LPN has found to be very useful from this text.
"If you look at your text, it's just to extract the seed from the scoria, and this is a...what you want to do won't work" [i.e. using olive oil to get the seed]. A.M.W.H.
Note: Pierre Klein asked about using olive oil [here Pierre was asking about perhaps another process and Jean misheard his quesition] for obtaining gold seed.
Jean Dubuis's answer: "We have been working for 18 months on the problem, extracting the golden seed."
Jean notes that The Heaven of the Philosophers [Coelum Philo.] has a series of traps in it and LPN does not quite work in the direction of this book. "When I spoke this, I had not expected to incite questions, but since I am very much tuned on the problem, those quantities are false solutions in the book."
"I thought you were speaking of how to extract the auric seed, which is one of the rare and interesting parts of this book." (Coelum Philo.)
"This auric seed, you can have it with ammoniac salt revivified.... I was about to say, that human urine cannot be processed in the modern world."
Actually, there are two solutions:
1. "You make some butter of antimony, being very careful with your hands and lungs, and you deliquesce it, you distill the deliquescence, and keep the liquid. You re-deliquesce the butter, and then when you've got enough water after several deliquescence and subsequent distillations, you solve coagula on the dead ammoniac salt, and in the end you have what's called the armoniac salt. The R stands for the living salt that has authority."
["Ammonium chloride that is now Armoniac salt."]
"This term Armoniac is a participle of the Harmoniac or harmonius salt for man's use".
"It's a big problem, even if you have all the tools like me, it's a long work..."
2. "There's a simpler solution, that gives immediately the auric seed. Once you reduce the stibnite to Regulus you put the first scoria aside, especially the yellow and the green ones, and once their cold, put little chunks of them on a glass plate -- it starts deliquescing."
"I don't know about here (America) but at my place (France) it's done in two or three hours. It deliquesces in 2 or 3 hours. Those little parts that deliquesce you sand them with ammonium chloride, you put this armoniac salt on it, to just the limit of saturation, that they dissolve."
"You try to get the best [seed of gold] out of it, as you can. You don't have to go any further, the solution contains the armoniac salt and the seed."
First Scoria - Seed cont.
Q. "For the first reduction to regulus should we put tartar with niter in order to have the scoria?"
A. "If you are a very careful man, and not of an ancient structure, you prepare this thing with potassium nitrate and red powder (red raw tartar) if you go gently it won't burst, and you've got the whole thing the first time. If you're not too sure of how to conduct the experiments you don't put red powder (tartar) you put potassium sodium bi-tartrate, you have the same result, but to extract the seed it's a bit - not as good. All the extractions are good if you get what you want."
Note: The seed is most thoroughly captured by red tartar on the first reduction through the scoria produced, and subsequently deliquesced. Those places where the scoria show the deliquescence are sprinkled with armoniac salt. We're looking for the seed of gold and the deliquesced scoria that has been salted is placed in a glass pan with a cover and sublimated.
Q. "So what is the role of potassium sodium bi-tartrate?"
A. "The potassium sodium bi-tartrate prevents the antimony to transform into a glass, and once you've got this glass, which is a very black enamel - a very shiny, black, enamel. You put it back in a crucible, you put in twice its volume in bi-tartrate - you melt it and you get 50% of the Regulus [back]. You can do it 2 or 3 times, to have all the Regulus back, since it's not easy to obtain."
"It's a question of probability that's hard to measure, but if you work with gas it's much dependent on how you tune the flame, or on the presence or absence of oxygen in the gas (aeration of the torch tip). We're trying to tune the operation with electrical furnaces. We have a problem of preventing the oxygen to come on the Regulus."
This last sentence seems badly worded. It's more likely, that Jean meant that oxygen was having trouble getting to the Regulus. This may have been a mistranslation. Since with gas i.e. propane, you have the problem of oxygen solved. It's there in the flame with the fuel that's on fire. Whereas, electrical furnaces need a tube of sorts to inject oxygen to the regulus for a better blast effect of fluxing of the stibnite and iron.
Excerpt from first organizational group for Research in USA...
THIRD WORK: Sewing to get the Elixir, to get the seeds, to have philosophical sulfur.
1. Mercury Animated
Lunar Venusian Regulus - native gold - amalgamates with already animated mercury - the amalgam is washed & dried, when it is clean it is put in the incubator. The glass stopper must be Hermetically sealed [wax on top] for seal. at - 80 to 100 degrees Celsius.
Red powder forms (when using Lunar Venusian Regulus from the addition of copper to the lunar and martial regule, or white powder forms when using Lunar Regulus from the addition of silver to the martial regule).
2. Animated Mercury + native gold at 80 to 90 Celcius in incubator, you get white or red powder, as mentioned above.
3. Coelum Philosophorum: To make gold calx: Animated mercury + native gold - make an amalgam - put sea salt in the amalgam and distill. The sea salt is washed with distilled water. 1st a grey powder forms [the gold in an ashen state of reduction] - the operation is done 3 times and it obtains a calx of gold - a golden brownish color.