Raoul Tollmann alchemianova.com articles excerpts

The above mentioned incalescent mercury is such a rare creature. Here is how it is made: Antimony as the giver of surplus energy gets alloyed with silver, and this compound can then be amalgamated with mercury. The mercury gets distilled off, is cleansed of its toxic components with ammonium chloride, gets re-amalgamated with the alloy and distilled again. This repeated distillation and amalgamation is called cohobation in alchemy. After nine cohobations, my incalescent mercury was ready for transmutation – it transforms itself into pure gold when poured into a red-hot crucible.

[...]My further investigation of the matter has revealed that today, as a secondary spin-off, there is a company in Canada that attempts to market a process to deactivate radioactive waste. They transfer the surplus energy of the radioactive material and ‘pump’ it into mercury, which takes it up, but does not become radioactive itself. Rather, this mercury can then transmute metals into gold, but it could also transform humans into super-humans, a feat that the contemporary gold-makers do either not understand or dare to consider.

 [...]Monoatomic gold, to give an example of old and new production techniques, was manufactured in the Middle Ages by amalgamating molten gold with heated mercury, then amalgamating further with sulfur and distilling the mercury sulfide off. Our method is to dissolve gold powder in molten sodium metal and then to detonate the mass with water. Precipitating monoatomic gold out of the resultant solution with nitric acid will yield purple monoatomic gold, the ‘purple coat of the king’ as it was called in the Renaissance.

[...]The manufacturing process is initiated by what is called a ‘Lunar Extraction’ for the reason that the masters of our art have developed a sleek process utilizing the polarized light of the moon to perform the feat of creating the secret solvent.[...] In traditional alchemical literature, this solvent is usually called spiritus mundi or ‘the spirit of the world’.

[...]Monoatomic Gold is the non-metallic, non-toxic zero-valence form of Gold. [...] It can be manufactured alchemically out of 24carat metallic gold. It also occurs naturally in volcanic soils, seawater and in minute amounts in the purple or violet skins of fruits and vegetables and some medicinal plants such as red grapes, eggplant and violets.

In recent years, some researchers have erroneously equated monoatomic gold with the Philosopher’s stone, which it definitely is not: Monoatomic gold was known and used in the Pharmacopoeia of Western Medieval Alchemy as ‘the retrograded calx of Gold that cannot be revivified’ [meaning it cannot be returned to the metallic state by conventional metallurgical processes]. Monoatomic Gold is known and used in Ayurveda as a bhasma of Gold that passes the test of apunarbhavatva or ‘test of non-revivability’.

[...]Alchemical literature suggests at least two possible paths towards the great Arcanum. One is long and tedious, working either on the decomposition and reassembling of the three alchemical principles of a particular sulfide ore, in Western Alchemy or, in Ayurveda, taking mercury metal as the starting material: Ayurveda recognizes eighteen stages of mercury, which gets solidified after passing through several of the prescribed processes, is made to take up gold without an increase in weight ‘swallowing it’, is then made to take up further metals, sometimes with and sometimes without an increase in weight, until the finished product, the Philosopher’s stone, Vedic style, is achieved. It should become clear from reading authentic ayurvedic texts that the final product is actually an ultra-heavy, stable and newly created element. Interestingly enough, Russian metallurgists have discussed such ultra-heavy stable elements for some time, and have named one of them preliminarily ‘eka-lead’. Some of the literature regarding this subject was available on the Internet for some time and has now completely disappeared. You tell me why!

Western alchemy has a quite similar path to offer, starting with the manufacture of the so-called incalescent mercury, which Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton are reported to have accomplished. Thanks to a group of contemporary alchemists in France, the details of the process became fully understood. Later, Lawrence Principe published the process in his book: “The Aspiring Adept – Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest”. [...] The production method is to first make a so-called stellar Regulus of antimony, an alloy of antimony with some iron. This alloy gets further alloyed with silver or copper in order to allow it to amalgamate with mercury. The mercury gets distilled off, re-amalgamated with more of the Regulus and distilled off again. This process is called cohobation in alchemy. After seven to nine cohobations, the resulting mercury amalgamates readily with gold dust in an exothermal reaction, which means it gives off heat – hence the name ‘incalescent’. Another test for this mercury at that stage, which you will not find mentioned in the literature, is to weigh out a few grams and drop them into a crucible that has been heated to red heat or orange heat. The incalescent mercury does not evaporate, but solidifies by being transmuted in the fire into pure gold.

Mature incalescent mercury solidifies at a conversion rate of 100% while an immature one loses some metal through evaporation and needs to be further cohobated. Modern treatises on the incalescent mercury do not indicate its uses, but my cross-referencing with Ayurvedic literature makes it quite apparent to me that the incalescent mercury is not a finished product per se, but only the highly reactive solvent that needs to be further processed by making it ‘swallow’ or devour other metals, to use the old term.

[...]Besides the tedious mercurial path, sometimes referred to as the ‘wet way’, there seems to be a fast and even more dangerous approach, called the ‘dry path’. In Western as well as Taoist Chinese alchemy we find the discussion of so-called fixed arsenic, fixed cinnabar and fixed antimony. The named volatile and toxic starting materials are transformed into substances that do not evaporate in the fire, hence the term ‘fixed’. Ko Hung lists the uses of the various cinnabars he discusses, and tells us: “The eighth is called Fixed. On the very day you take it you become a genie.” How this fixed cinnabar is manufactured he tells us not.

Preciously little can be found in the alchemical literature in general on how to ‘fix’ these metals, and if you find advice such as in the Tan Ching Yao Chueh to use tin for a fixation of orpiment or realgar, two ores of arsenic, you may be disappointed by the resulting material. I have found a reference to pyrotechnics in Philalaetes, though, and Rudolph Glauber tells us that the term alchemy is derived from hal-khemeia, which stands for ‘salt-fusion’ or ‘cooking with salt’, in contrast to khemeia or chemistry, which stands for cooking only. It is my opinion that this ‘cooking with salt’ refers to a pyrotechnical process of mixing a metal sulfide with a variation of black powder and igniting the substance in a metal container, thus launching an inverse space shuttle in the back yard. The oxidizers used in pyrotechnics, salts such as saltpeter as part of the traditional black powder formula, are many and the permutations that result as possible blends are endless. Fireworks pyrotechnicians and rocket scientists alike tend to keep the exact composition of their fuel powders secret, so we cannot readily expect that an alchemist will step forward and reveal the composition of his formula. But it seems to me that a pyrotechnical reaction is the key to fixing volatile metal salts by the use of the ‘secret salt fire’ or ignis gehennae. [...]