PREFACE

On making and using Lute original: "Luto"; a specialized alchemical cement or paste used to hermetically seal laboratory vessels for the work. First, a stopper made of wood or non-porous cork should be fitted to the mouth of the "pelican" vessel a "pelican" is a circulatory distillation vessel with two side-arms that feed back into the body, resembling a bird pecking its breast or the circulatory vessel; this stopper should be carefully coated with well-beaten egg white. Then, take equal parts of quicklime, minium red lead, litharge lead monoxide, and Venetian crystal high-quality glass pulverized into a fine powder original: "alkool"; here meaning an extremely fine powder, not liquid alcohol, and a half-part of Spanish white a white pigment, often bismuth or lead-based. These should be mixed together by stirring with egg whites. After they are well united, spread a strong but not too thick linen cloth over the stopper and coat it with the aforementioned lute. Repeat the application of linen and lute several times until the vessel is sufficiently sealed.

Copper is purged in the following way. Take half an ounce original: "℥ß" each of common salt, cream of tartar original: "tartari vini", and alum. Let them be ground into a very fine powder and dissolved in six pounds original: "℔vj" of common water. Heat the copper until it is red-hot in a strong fire and quench it three times in the water impregnated with the aforementioned salts. Thus it will be purged.

Volatile and fixed salt, as well as the spirit of urine, are prepared thus. Take a sufficient quantity of the urine of boys about 12 years old who drink wine. Let it be placed in large glass vessels, filled to three-quarters capacity, sealed exactly, and placed in a warm spot for six weeks to putrefy. Afterward, let the contents be distilled in a bath of fine, sifted sand. After all the substance has risen (but not to the point of total dryness, lest the flask original: "matracium"; a long-necked glass bolt-head or flask break—two entire days are to be spent on this distillation), when, I say, everything that ought to rise has risen, take the distilled spirit and pour it back over the remaining dregs. Distill it a second and even a third time with the same labor, observing only that on the third occasion the materials are driven to absolute dryness. Pour the distilled liquid into a vessel with as long a neck as can be found, and fit upon it a still-head original: "capitellum" that is open at the top; into that opening, place another smaller and "blind" unopened still-head, sealing the joints well with lute. Then place the flask in a bath of ashes and apply fire for three hours, so that it is very gentle at first and a little stronger later, until droplets like sweat are observed everywhere inside it. This is the sign that the volatile salt is being carried up to the blind still-head. When the liquid begins to bubble, the flask should be halfway extracted from the ashes, the fire removed, and the box allowed to cool; once cooled and the vessels removed, the volatile salt adhering to the walls of the still-head can be taken out. Fixed salt of urine is prepared from the dregs of the first distillation, namely by calcining heating to a high temperature to remove volatile parts, dissolving, filtering, and evaporating them many times until you have obtained a very fixed, white salt, which is finally easily driven into crystals. Regarding the "burning" spirit of urine: Take the liquid remaining after the extraction of the volatile salt performed in the manner mentioned above; place it in a long-necked flask and by distilling it to three-quarters, you will have the burning spirit of urine.

Spirit of Human Blood is prepared thus. Take a sufficient quantity of the blood of a healthy man between 20 and 30 years of age. Let it be kept in wide, open glass vessels for 24 hours, then pour off the serum and put the coagulated part into glass vessels. Seal them well and store them in a warm place for an entire month—that is, until absolute putrefaction. Then distill it as was just described for urine.

Spirit of wine is prepared thus. Take a sufficient quantity of noble wine; let it be distilled from ashes in the ordinary way until the phlegm the watery, inactive byproduct of distillation begins to rise. Take another portion of wine and distill it in the same way; repeat the labor until you have enough spirit of wine. Put this into a long-necked flask and fit a linen cloth to the orifice of this flask; after it has been tied around, push it a little deeper into the neck, filling the cavity thus created with crusts of white bread. Cover the cavity thus filled with a white woolen cloth soaked in olive oil, and then fit the glass still-head. Let the materials be distilled with a gentle fire. The pure spirit will pass into the receiving vessel, while all the phlegm will stick to the bread crusts and the oil-soaked cloth. If you repeat this a second time, you will obtain a more noble spirit.

Spirit of May dew is prepared in the following way. Take a sufficient quantity of dew or May rain, or likewise snow collected at the end of March or the beginning of April, and distill the spirit from them in the ordinary way.

Having now set down two processes—which perhaps will not displease many, even if they do not seem to us as Great and Noble as they were reputed to be by their authors, nor indeed as countless others scattered throughout the Chemical Library original: "Bibliothecam"; likely referring to J.J. Manget’s Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, 1702—we shall close our Preface by adding something only about the arrangement and distribution of this compilation. But first, that objection must be washed away by which Chemists are accused of impiety and profanation, on the grounds that they supposedly misuse the most Holy Oracles of Divine Scripture in their work, to the great disgrace of the art. For, beyond the fact that the doctrine of the Adepts breathes nothing more than piety and holiness of character—since it teaches everywhere that no one will ever progress in Philosophical labors who does not have a heart free from the impurities of the world, and who has not made himself commended to God, the Greatest Guardian and Director of the Work, through integrity of character, charity toward neighbors, and other Christian virtues in general—who does not see that sentences taken from the Sacred Books are by no means used by them in a profane sense? Indeed, they consider themselves to stand continually in the presence of God. They believe that He presides over their furnaces no differently than He appeared to Moses in the desert in the burning bush. They approach that Father of Lights not only with a humble heart and "unshod feet," so to speak, imitating the Great Lawgiver of the ancient people Moses, but they also use every effort to [dedicate] themselves in words and works to the Great...

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