RETROGRADATION

The word retrogradation means to return behind or to the origin. In the alchemy terminology, it means to return to the primordial state.

It is this symbology type that hinders the neophytes in the understanding of the texts as it also complicated our own research in the past.

There are at the least two great classic alchemists that used in their texts the term "to retrograde". It is Eirenaeus Philalethes and Basil Valentine.

Let us see where Eirenaeus Philalethes uses this term and, therefore, where it confuses many students that ignore the "modus operandi" of the path that he refers to.

Eirenaeus Philalethes in the Marrow of the Alchemy, referring to the power of the Subject of the Art on its metallic acolyte (Mars) in the antimony dry way he says the following:

«It seemed strange indeed, that a metal so stout and fixed as to withstand the thundering blast of Vulcan, which will not relent in any heat, nor mix in flux with any metal, yet by our Art it will in this piercing Mineral Liquor be retrograde.»

For whom doesn't know something about metallurgy, it will seem strange that this metal "so stout and fixed" that is Mars with all the referred characteristics, can be retrograded, that is to return to its primitive form of mineral.

Effectively it is like this. The metallic acolyte or Mars in the antimony dry way, melted together with our subject and the flux, takes possession of the chemical antimony sulphur being transformed later in an iron sulphide which is one of the minerals from where the metallic iron is extracted that is to say the pyrite. As it is known, the pyrite is an iron sulphide.

Only that in this case, the Kaput being an iron sulphide made artificially it has the flux together in the form of a potassium carbonate. Summarising so that no doubts remain, as to the understanding of the time, Mars was retrograded artificially to its primordial state that is to say to an iron sulphide.

But we did not find it only here. Basil Valentine in the Le Dernier Testament also in relation to Vitriol, tells us the following:

«For now at this time, it is necessary that learn that such soul or golden sulphur, such salt and spirit meets stronger and virtuous in Mars and Venus and, well like this, in the vitriol, as well as Mars and Venus if can reconduct for retrogradation in very virtuous and effective vitriol, in which metallic vitriol meets now under a sky all the three beginnings, to know, mercury, sulphur and salt and, each one of them particularly it can extract and to obtain with little work and time, as you will understand, when he does you, presently, a brief narration of a mineral vitriol that meets in Hungary, beautiful and of high degree.»

«However, a such great dignity didn't never go granted to any other metal or mineral as advantageously as to the vitriol that is the philosophers' stone of which were made so much mentions…And for that the old ones had this mineral hidden to the last point and they hid it to its own children, what did with much precaution.»

This text will be very confusing for an alchemist non-expert. Because it is that Mars and Venus that is to say, the iron and the copper, that can be conducted by retrogradation to a Vitriol that in those days was considered a mineral as the Master refers?

Effectively, in the pyrite or calcopirite mines exists a natural vitriol that by the action of the pluvial waters infiltrated in the soil, dissolves the sulphated pyrites and forms great crystals that hang off the mines nipple as stalactites.

We have some kilograms of that wonderful and rare vitriol. In those days, the vitriol was also considered a mineral.

We know today that it is not like this. The vitriol is an iron or copper sulphate or naturally made of both as in the case of Hungary Vitriol.

But as the vitriol was considered a mineral, it is from there that the Masters said that of Mars and Venus one can obtain by retrogradation a vitriol dissolving the iron or the copper or both in vitriol oil (sulphuric acid).

It is this that hinders the understanding of the texts by the less-experts and for that they will have only one alternative. The study of the old chemistry treatises like Traité de Chymie of Glaser, Paris, 1663.

Basil Valentine in the Paradigm of its Work says: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invernies Occultum Lapidem.

That is just a paradigm that gave place to many groundless speculations, because what he really wants to transmit to us, as he made it in Le Dernier Testanment, it is that the first matter to make his work and described in this treatise is the VITRIOL. And, as we said, the vitriol does not only appear in the mines inside the earth under the rare conditions that we referred to, but also in very larger amounts outside the mines, in small lakes formed by the rainwater that drags the accumulated pyrites sulphate in dissolution outside of the mines and leaves it exposed to the weather.