Iridescent, peacocks tail

When I got involved in alchemy and learned about the importance of the peacocks tail colour scheme I am graced to see it again and again.

And behold today walking past some few months old dry bottles from the leyden process I tried with rain, snow ... I saw this:

Link1 = 16 MB

Link2 = 300 MB

I made a Youtube vid but you can hardly see the iridescent layer.
Therefor I decided to upload the big avi file.


This very bottle had snow and dead sea salt in it and I used a cork stopper which didnt give me the results I hoped for so I spilled the snowwatersolution away and put the bottle aside however I never dared to clean it yet.

It looks totally incredible and it seems like the whole bottle is layered inside with iridescence. Sadly even the avi video doesnt do it enough justice because it looks so much more shiny in reality.


Wilfried

Thanks for the videos Wilfried.It looks like you were on the right track but what happened to your other experiments?!

Did they failed too?

Iridescence appears in a lot of things in alchemy. In the acetate path, after distilling the acetate salt to obtain the acetone and many other compounds, then redistilling the liquid again, you can see an iridescent oil floating on the surface which I photographed and you can see in my youtube video "Busy Alchemist".

It also appears when you distill normal gold chloride with commercial acetone. Little bubbles start forming and the beautiful iridescent colors start spinning around the bubbles.

But for the work with dew, the true Peacock's Tail that has been made the center of so many alchemy books is produced during the digestion of the of the spirit you obtain after 7 distillations (but 10 in the Mutus Liber work). Now, you don't just distill the dew 7 times, you eliminate the first 1/4th that distills over each time, so you are getting rid of the useless phlegm, and obtaining a more concentrated spirit, which eventually looks like milky white water and stains the distillation column like calcium does. Even by digesting this water alone by itself, it shows the Peacock's Tail, and will turn itself into beautiful crystals and stones, which can be multiplied in strength and power like the stone from metals.

So perhaps in the Mutus Liber work, there isn't a page missing, and you don't need to dissolve gold to make the stone, and you can indeed actually use only the feces that remains behind after distillation, and the white mercurial spirit obtained from the dew water. But of course, the stone would need to be "fermented" with gold by heating it with gold leaf in a crucible for many hours to make a red glass powder of projection to be used on other metals for conversion to gold.

Calcium ... hmm that is exactly what I thought I have in my dew. Because right now at my 4th time distilling dew I see this white substance. I thought it to be Calcium just today heh. Although the yellow substance is still way more prominent right now. Probably because I poured back all the distilled dew each time so far.

I also smelled at my dew and the stench is really ugly. And now since you mentioned that bad stench in the first place Nick, I belive this stench led me to throw away that work with the snowsaltwater because I thought that really ugly smell to come from the cork stopper I used.



Hmmm hasnt crude tartar a smiliar bad stench to it? Not trying to mix the dew with the tartar process again ... but I ll gona have to smell at both of them next to each other.

Wilfried

Distilling my dew totally dry resulted in this:






a beatiful white transparent crystal from dew



Wilfried

Wow, nice pictures wilfried..
Did you petrifie the dew before starting distillation or can we start distillations right away?

There is one more iridescence I would like to add. It forms when you circulate alcohol distilled once from wine.



The body of the alcohol also, changes from transparent to milky white:


(milky white, after - transparent, before)

If I remember well, according to PON seminars, this iridescence is supposed to be the "bad" part of the alcohol that makes you sick. By this way you can separate it and keep only the good "stuff".

jairo wrote:

Wow, nice pictures wilfried..
Did you petrifie the dew before starting distillation or can we start distillations right away?

I let my dew stand for about 2 months in a flask closed with a glass stopper. Before I started to distill it I filtered it through 2 coffee filters … the dew stayed slightly yellow but you wouldn’t belive how much stuff is still in there as you can see in my pictures …

Wilfried

Wilfried

Love the photos! I love to see the progress of others

Somewhere in the threads I thought I read that we boil the dew, let putrefy then distill. I took about 1000ml of dew and mixed it with about 600ml of rainwater from a thunderstorm. I forgot to boil it and set it out in an Oak bucket with a wood cover over it. I brought it in after about a week and boiled it for about two hours in a ceramic crock pot. I hope it still works out.l

Love the work and have fun with it!

Chemical Wisdom from RAMs library:


Regarding the difficulty which you encounter with the sevenfold sublimation of our water, that is, whether or not it is then perfect, I reply as follows: The philosophers want us to distill the water 7 times, but they say septies, aut pluries (seven times of more). And Sendivogius indicates when it is perfect, namely, when it leaves white feces at the bottom, so that is the unmistakable sign of its perfection.



Composition of the Universal Medicine

Take some purified Air-Salt, put it into an iron vessel and let it gradually melt. When it is melted, pour on it some finely ground lindenwood charcoal which will immediately burn and be consumed. That is why one has to let it burn gradually till the salt is almost fixed after the detonation, and it gets a somewhat bluish-green color. This happens when the charcoal no longer puffs up as it did before. There after, pour the melted salt into a marble mortar while it still quite warm. When it has cooled, it is as white as alabaster and brittle as glass.

Now pound it small and sprinkle the powder on a glass slab or table but cover it to prevent any dust from falling on it. Hand it in the air, at a place where neither the sun nor the rain nor the white frost can touch it. Put a glass vessel underneath it, into which the oil that will drip fro it can fall, because the humidity in the air resolves this alkali within 14 days.

You will find that the oil is twice as heavy as the salt previously was, provided this process is undertaken at the right time, that is, when the weather is neither too cold nor too warm but moderately humid. Then the salt attracts the air invisibly, just as we draw the breath into us. If this oil is well rectified according to the art, it is an excellent and powerful menstruum for extracting the essence from various mixtures.

Now take 4 or 5 parts of this rectified oil and one part of the best antimony. It can be recognized by a certain redness which it has from the gold, to whose ore it is close. Pound the antimony on a marble to a very fine powder, put it into a cucurbit and pour your rectified oil on it, in such a way that two-thirds of the glass stay empty. Quickly close the glass so that no air gets into it, let it digest in gentle heat or at an oil hanging-lamp, until the oil floating on the antimony gets a golden or ruby color. Then pour the oil gently off, filter it through paper, put it into a phial, and pour on it an equal weight of the rectified spirit of wine. At least two thirds of the glass must be empty. Stopper it tightly, let it digest in small heat for several days, till the spirit of wine has attracted all the tincture of the oil.

Thus the oil will stay quite clear and white at the bottom, but above will float the spirit of wine with the golden tincture of the impregnated antimony. Separate from it the menstruum, by decanting, which can always serve for several processes and operations in order to extract the essence of antimony as often as desired.

Put your tinctured spirit of wine into a glass alembic, abstract and distill it gradually, till only about one-fifth that contains the tincture of antimony is left at the bottom. Or distill all the spirits of wine, so that nothing stays at the bottom except the essence or tincture of antimony. Thus you will have the Universal Medicine either as a powder or a liquid, with which you can cure all illnesses or preserve yourself from them.

When it is used as a liquid, 5 or 6 drops of it are taken with wine or bouillon, or in any other liquid suitable for the illness.

When it is used as a powder, 3, 4, or 5 grains more or less are taken. For even if the dose is a little stronger or weaker, it is not harmful like the medicines which all have poisonous qualities. The sick become healthy after taking it 2 or 3 times. But is the illness does not yield, the dose must each time be increased, and this has to be done three times a week.

This medicine cures all, even the oldest and most severe illnesses, such as the 4-day fever, dropsy, and the falling sickness (epilepsy). Yes, it not only cures all internal but also the external illnesses, such as wounds, ulcers, and cancer, when it is spread over them like a balm. It serves no less for deafness and eye troubles.

Finally, this medicine drives all headaches away and helps digestion. It is a true Aurum Potabile (potable gold). It generally works quite invisibly through the perspiration; more frequently through vomiting. Consequently, its effect is quite natural and without force so that the patient does not become weak, exhausted, or debilitated, as usually happens with other medicines. It can therefore be used at any age, at any time, and irrespective of the constitution. Use it and make it known, but especially let the poor benefit from it, and praise God Almighty Who has created the medicine.

TO MAKE THE LIKENESS OF A VEGETABLE
Lully


S I o a n e MSS 633, page 166

4 v


Rx. May Dew, and set it to putrefy in a close glass; then distill it, and out of the feces extract a Salt according to Art. Take of this Salt 1 ounce and of the distilled water 2 pints.

What herbs you would see, take a handful or two of their Seed and powder it; And pour on it the Water so much as the water may remain three fingers higher than the Seed that lies in it, and put that Salt and distilled water of Dew and the Seeds together, into a strong glass and lute it or seal it hermetically; (N.B. The glass must be high enough to take the representation of the plant). Then set the glass two feet in horsedung for 14 days, and the matter shall become thick; And then set it in your Chamber where is clear light. And in the night when the moon clearly shines in, when it is bad weather. Secure your bottle and so keep it thus till it is dry.

And when you please to see the flowers and plant you must set the glass in a little warm sand and so in a moment; as it were comes the plant and flowers up. And when you take the heat away the Flower and plant goes.


Finis.

The above 2 posts are processes which are similar to our dew distillation.

Statement:
"Secondly, dew is the carrier of Nitre, the life force of the air, which Sendivogius was describing when he wrote that “there is in the Aire a secret food of life”. Paracelsus called this life spirit the Azoth, the aerial Nitre that the Sun transmits to Earth through the waters of the sky. Paracelsus and other alchemists also connected this Nitre with more literal physical Niter, more commonly called Saltpeter, or Potassium Nitrate, which is present in dew."


-----

Potassium Nitrate is supposed to look white ,when highly purified even transparent. So this is our air salt?! If so not much was in my 500ml of dew which I distilled several times see picture above.

Why does the chemical wisdom document state to throw lindenwood characoal into the molten salt? Maybe to give the dew more potassium in form of potassium carbonate which then reacts into potassium nitrate due to the excessive amount of nitrate in dew. This is said to happen from some kind of bacterials ... that is why we have to putrefy in a open bucket ?!?!... moreover instead of the characoal ruesenstein simply put it in an oak bucket therefor somehow releasing potassium carbonate from the wooden bucket ???....


The alcohol is needed to purify according to the chemical wisdom document and I have found this statement:

"..... I will use cold crystallization or alcohol crystallization as the
KNO3 needs to be purified from a variety of ions including sodium,
ammonium, sulfate, chloride, nitrite, phosphate, carbonate, and trace
elements."



There is also another hint in regards to the leyden process involving sea salt and dew:

A fully saturated solution of sodium chloride at cold temperatures will let potassium nitrate fall out more easily while if you heat it up the potassium nitrate will dissolve again because the sodium chloride has the same soluabilty at different temperatures while the potassium, nitrate is highly soluable in hot water (2470g/1l, 100°C) while hardly ever soluable in cold water (133g/1l, 0°C), that is why it is important to fully saturate our dew with sea salt in the leyden process. However I belive for the leyden process to work we need putrified dew = way more KNO3

however KNO3 is supposed to be white - transparent and has probably nothing to do with the brwon stuff we are getting while digesting our saltwater.



At last why not simply buy KNO3...
although the secret fire is said to be KOH

in order to get a dissolvent agent for gold:

KOH and HNO3 in water could work
but this would react into KNO3 + H2O which we would start with

so maybe during digestion with heat in a luted flask (pressure) this would decompose into a
KOH and HNO3 solution.



Wilfried

Here is a link to a pyrotechnic discussion to purify KNO3,

LINK

Quote :

however KNO3 is supposed to be white - transparent and has probably nothing to do with the brown stuff we are getting while digesting our saltwater.

Wilfried, I have a similar questioning on the nature of this salt. Some tests I ran on it hint that it is not KNO3 (or not pure).

- It does not melt at glowing hot fire (my fire can melt sea salt, K2CO3 and cooper but not this salt).
- It is soluble in HCl 13% but insoluble in water.
- It is magnetic (attracts to a Nd magnet).
- When "washed" with water and dried it changes color to white (or very light brown).

According to wikipedia, KNO3 should melt at 334 °C.

It seems to me that the "air niter" is not KNO3. However, the brown salt I talk about, comes from digestionof dew with sea salt; I don't know if this is the same with the one coming from dew putrefaction alone.

A quick fire test on a small quantity of it, could tell a lot of its nature. If you have KNO3 it should melt.

Dear Bros.,
I don't think I'm impertinent if I tell you that in the italian version (Gualdi-Provost of Ternan-Guaber) of the text that Wilfried cited the materia prima of tha Opus is Salnitre.
If I understood well that's the meaning of this discussion, isn't it?
May be Bacstrom, or whoever commented or changed this chapter, pretended to underline the need of integrity of this materia prima... That you should prepair it.
I'll work soon on this subject, and I'll post some advices from some books of my library that give suggestion concerning a "structural purification" of this materia prima.

Zosimo

This is a way to make a purification of salniter, forming the crystals again in a better shape and transparence. I think he’s talking about the salniter you can buy in grocery.
I’ve to say honestly that these info came from my books, not from my direct experience…
If I remember well Bartlett gave some advices about the matter, and the way to reform the crystals using dew and urine.
Here’s to you the one I found, in Lefevre, please tell me what you think.

- 10 lb. of common salniter of “first baking (or cooking)” – may be an ancient commercial name - in a oven to melt it
- When is molten put very slowly 2 ounces of allume powder and sal ammoniac
- You clean away the effervescence who’s ejecting all the grease and impurity from the salniter. With a little spoon you take away everything emerges
- In a warm mortar grind it
- In spring water you boil the matter with a strong fire
- You decant it and put in it almost 1 lt. of a strong distilled vinagre
- 24 hours in a fresh place and you’ll see well crystallized: this is the “optimus” kind of salniter, the one you can eat.
- Take the liquid in excess and make the “comunis salniter”, that you can use for chemical operations (e.g. aqua fortis) but not to eat: let it evaporate with no strong temp the middle quantity of liquid and then let it crystallize in the cold temp.

Zosimo