PREPARATION Of PHILOSHOPHICAL MERCURY

By

Eirenaeus Philalethes

When I translated this small treatise from English to Portuguese, I came across a Chapter that I had read already but not gave at that time the due attention.

I saw this when I checked the text in the Word corrector.

´Take the mixed corporal and spiritual compound, the body of which is coagulated of the volatile by digestion, and separate the Mercury from its Sulphur by a glass still, and thou shalt have a white Luna fixed and resisting Aqua fortis, and more ponderous than common silver".

Probably you read the text and, like me, did not observe a chemical and spagyrical meaning that is of an extraordinary importance.

Pay attention: "separate the Mercury from its Sulphur by a glass still and thou shalt be have a white Luna fixed and resisting Aqua fortis (nitric acid), and more ponderous than common silver."

For those who do not have laboratory experience and never had prepared the Moon and the Sun's calx or Mercury nitrate, the text will tell nothing. But for an experienced alchemist the text is clear and it reveals an extraordinary thing that comes to prove the Albert Cau' statement, that I read in your Web.

All the alchemists with laboratory experience know that the Moon solvent for excellence is the spirit of nitre. The one for the Sun is the royal water and the one for the Mercury can be the two spirits.

Philalethes tells us that: "resisting to the nitric acid, and more ponderous than common silver".

It means that the white Moon, fixed, and resistant to the Aqua Fortis (does not dissolve it), that is the spirit of nitre or nitric acid, and it is ponderous (heavier) than the vulgar silver (Moon).

With these characteristics certainly that is not silver because it, as we saw, is dissolved in the spirit of nitre or nitric acid. Therefore, it can only be the other white noble metal like the silver but with great density: the Platinum that anciently would not yet be known!

Rubellus Petrinus