P.O.N. Seminars 1992

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Theory: The Butter of Antimony

Lecturer: Jean Dubuis
Translator: Patrice Malézé
Commentary by Russ House is indicated as [RH: ...]

Warning: Safety in Practical Alchemy please read this notice from The Philosophers of Nature

As you will see it's a very touchy product because even with a lot of experience you can burn your skin. [RH: Sadly, experience proves this statement to be true. The best remedy I have seen for burns on the hands is to run copious amounts of cold water over the hand, and then to put on a loose-fitting rubber laboratory glove and to fill it with an aqueous solution of ammonia. It is better to avoid the trouble... after this seminar my lab was 'booby trapped' with deposits of butter of antimony and I would often have burns and not know where I had touched the material. I had to wash all lab surfaces, drawer handles, faucets with ammonia.] Please never touch the glass without gloves, wear always glasses. The butter of antimony has several uses. This, the butter of antimony will be very useful in the Urbigerus path, it's a very rapid path. I already said, but I will give you enough to develop it now because we have not done any security questions. But the butter of antimony has other interests. When the weather is very dry you cannot make the angel water with potassium carbonate, it does not work. The butter of antimony will deliquesce in the driest African desert. At anytime of the year, the deliquescence is very fast. A few hours are necessary. You must distill the deliquescence water that you get from it. The other advantage is that is more penetrating and more powerful water than you get from the water of the angels. And if you're very careful once you have the sophic butter - eternal. And for every distillation of the deliquescence, you keep the butter.

And you have to be very careful, a few drops of water on the butter transforms it to algaroth. And algaroth is a hassle to put back into butter. You will see the apparatus outside. This tube here and here - a tube inside it. This is filled with fresh stibnite and some fresh scoria. This is heated at between 240 and 260 C and the butter will come in the flask beneath. You just put a pan with cold water - there's no need to refrigerate. To get the fresh chloride there's 2 possibilities. First you make a cold attack of the sea salt with sulfuric acid, but you get a much better butter if you make a hot attack on the sea salt with nitric acid. So you have to have a heating device up there and the reaction occurs between 70 to 80 C.

Afterwards this seems very simple but rather simple. I repeat it gives you an advantage to have a deliquescence phenomenon - we can get the solar fire in the air that comes to the distillation water afterwards and with this water you can load the crystal useful to make a stone. Marc will give details of this afterwards. Now we'll show you the butter right now. This is butter but don't eat it. Laughs.