About dew fermentation and distillation

Dear Friends,

(Fr. Nick says) The Reusenstein process does NOT say to boil the dew. It says to smoke the dew, which means to burn wood in an enclosure with the pot of dew in there to absorb the smoke until the water is black from all the smoke.

But I strongly doubt this smoking method is needed at all, since no other process with dew has ever used smoke to putrefy the dew. And Reusenstein does say that his dew process is something he made up himself.

Whenever I leave dew sitting for a month at room temperature in a bottle, it does indeed begin to putrefy on it's own and produce little spongy white globs of material. This is a good sign; it means the dew is putrefying and the spirit is either being created or is being enhanced. Once you see that these balls of white material are no longer growing any larger, then you know the putrefication has reached it's end, and you can begin distillation of the dew to separate the spirit, and get rid of the phlegm, then dry the salts. And then combine salt and spirit, digest for 24 hours, and so on...

There's something more we'd better to know ?
New suggestions Nick ?
I'm starting right now to use, in one method or the other, the dew I've collected.
First of all I start with the "Actum - salt" method with six flasks of 500 ml of various different kind of dew, But I've a Liebig distiller too.
May be the putrefaction of dew is made just to give a body to our dew, like works the salt in the Actum L. or the inbibition in the Chemical Moonlight, or smoke in Reusenstein method...

Le Fevre, in the text I already said, writes that you should filter everything after the putrefaction, before the distillation...
Any hints ?
Thank You.

Zosimo

Hello all,

Everything that Nick has said so far has been very true in my opinion, but I must point something out here because I believe he is inadvertently mistaken. According to Gualdus, a very wise contributor to the Ruesenstein doc, you are supposed to boil or simmer the dew first. The word smoke is used several times in this book to describe steaming or causing vapor to rise. Also, I have not seen mention of filtering the Dew after putrefaction in this book, though it may indeed be needed. On pg. 29 of the PDF (pg. 27 of the book), about 1/3 of the way down the page, the following is stated:

Gualdus said: I will tell you why this happens, but first I will tell you how to prepare May dew. Take as much May dew as you can get and pour it into a kettle. Boil it for a good while and pour it into a little barrel and cover it with little planks of wood. Leave it to stand under the roof (where the Suns rays never touch it) until it begins to stink and decay. Then proceed as I told you, but take care that the Water from which you wish to extract the Salt or Menstruum has been boiled or simmered before it is left to putrefy. Without boiling it you will get a Spiritum, and it will also putrefy without boiling, but it will be weak and bad. However, if it has been boiled first, it decays more easily and gives a greater volume of Spiritum.

That being said, I have a few questions for anyone who knows the answers or could point me in the right direction.

How do you tell the Phlegm from the Spirit? Does it come over before the spirit? Does it have any use in this or other processes (leeching of alkaloid salts from other paths perhaps)?

Thank you,

LightOne

Your absolutely correct Light one . I posted the same report . its looking like we can make the alchahest in 24 hrs. after it has gone thru the puterification.. auggie

Hello LightOne,

great points you make. I have only skimmed the docs you mentioned but phlegm in alchemy is the watery part that's distilled over. I think he simply means the boiled and putrfied dew from which he destills the mercury. He probably calls it Spiritum because this destilled mercury is spiritualized by the destillation process.


Frank

Thanks for your input Frank! I did a little more digging and I think I have found the answer to my question and I would like to share it with you all.

Last night, while browsing the Paracelsus College website (AMAZING SITE BTW!), I came across an article (Essentia Volume 3 Summer 1982) focusing on the Water Work from The Golden Chain of Homer (RAMS: GOLDENCHAIN). In this article, it is stated that the Rain, Dew, Snow, Hail etc. should be filtered prior to putrefaction, but it does not say to do so after. It seems that the virgin earth or volatile salt, which is brought forth by putrefaction, could possibly be filtered out at this point and the process would most likely fail.

The article also explains that you should at first apply only a gentle heat (95-98 Degrees Celsius) and gradually steam or sweat over the first 1/4 or less of your water. This water is very volatile and is said to be Water of Fire and Air or in some parts of the manuscript, it is simply called Water of Air. This is what I believe to be the Spirit that is referred to in Ruesenstein. The remaining 3/4 part (Phlegm or Water of Water) is then to be distilled over at a temperature of about 102 Degrees Celsius until there remains in the cucurbit, a brown honey like substance, but be careful not to boil this until it is dry because you would burn the Virgin Earth (Volatile Salt) which is not yet fixed.

This remaining reddish brown liquid is what they term the Universal Gur of Nature, from which the 3 kingdoms (Plant, Animal and Mineral) were generated. This Gur is what I believe to be or at least contain our much sought after Volatile Salt, the purified and perfected Body which is to receive the Spirit. This Gur is to be dried out in a porcelain container in the Sun. Although the writer of the article recommends that this be done in a sandbath at 75-80 Degrees Fahrenheit, I feel that drying it under the Sun in a more natural way to be the better choice. It may even help to charge or vivify the substance.

I kind of had the idea that this was the way to go in the first place, but I always like to have something to back up my ideas before proceeding. Well, rather than finish explaining the process, I will just share the link so you can read it for yourself. I would however like to make a suggestion. After the first imbibition, place it in a boiling flask and put it in a sand bath at 98 Degrees Celsius to circulate for a philosophical month (40 days). I'm betting this would result in an Alkahest. Essentia Volume 3 Summer 1982


LightOne

Our minds are united: in the precise moment you send your post, LightOne, I was sending this. Thank you for your very usefull inputs !

Dear Friends,

From Gualdus: "...Extract the salt (?) or menstruum..." extract salt perhaps means the same Fr. Nick is saying that we should extract from the material remains of the distillation, the phlegm, the salt we'll put togheter with the spirit we have already distilled (and digest 24 hours and so on) ?

Dear Frank I can't reach frank-vs. Check it if you can or want.

Zosimo

Some texts warn about the spirit of the dew escaping if you heat it in open air. And yet others make a point of boiling the dew first. And some sources claim that F.R.C. means Fratres Roris Cocti which they interpret as brothers of the boiled dew.

Then we have the Mutus Liber book, which seems to concentrate only on the solid remains of the dew after you distill it. And these are then digested in rainwater to make the Alkahest. It's not clear if in the pictures show the alchemists boiling the dew first before they distill it. (But when you distill the dew, you boil it anyway). Only experimentation will tell if boiling in open air makes the spirit escape.

However, I'm confident I've fully decoded the Mutus Liber and after doing the process, I will have it in the next edition of my book, and will probably remove the Cappucine monk letter completely.

It's interesting to note that the first plates of the Mutus Liber show the Neptune, the God of the Sea inside a dew drop, then also the alchemists fishing in the sea. Perhaps sea salt is also used in this work?

You are bad gfhgfh ∴N.D.C∴! Decoding old alchemy texts and now images like you do! Keep up the good work brother!

peace
Field

Dear All,
May be I'm droping other meat on the barbecue but, about salt...
Tugel. pag.38
line 6 "It is known to every Chymist..."
to the end of the chapter "...the nearest succedaneum" line 20

...I think it's important
about the magnet for Chemycal Moonshine (or the Compendium Ch. Moons.)
and, may be, for the salt in the dew.

But, anyway, Mr G. J. Tugel explains very well that everytuing we can invent is a "succedaneum" of the purest Virgin Hearth that's the salt inside the dew Itself.

Blessings

Zosimo

In the stoic tradition Neptune-Poseidon is the power that, actually, creates the world on the material plane in harmony with the mind-eye of Ianus and the will-thunder of Zeus.
The higher waters ? The primordial water ? The terra vergine ? The sea salt ?

Zosimo

NDC wrote:

It's interesting to note that the first plates of the Mutus Liber show the Neptune, the God of the Sea inside a dew drop, then also the alchemists fishing in the sea. Perhaps sea salt is also used in this work?

I believe this may be explained in a passage from The Six Keys of Eudoxus, describing the First Key:

"This Stone has a bright glittering: it contains a Spirit of a sublime original; it is the Sea of the Wise, in which they angle for their mysterious Fish."

The Sea of the Wise could be referring to the Heavenly Dew, which captures the Astral Seed of the Heavenly Bodies (Planets, Stars, Moons) from the Air. The mysterious Fish would then of course be referring to the elusive, Volatile Salt or Virgin Earth, which is manifested in the Dew during putrefaction.

Then again I could be wrong, but it seems to strike a chord with me.