Tell me about the transmutations, “those that take place before the alchemist’s eyes”. I assume they aren’t symbolic.
They are transmutations in the sense that they are irreversible. In alchemical processes, nothing can be undone. At most, the process can fail. And, as you might imagine, Paracelsus’s little alchemist is deeply involved in these processes.
In the previous section, we discussed vehicles and carriers. Now I am interested in their “materiality”. Tell me about the container and its interactions.
In alchemical practice, the three salts—Mercurius, Sulfur, and Salt—can certainly be regarded as containers. Symbolically, these same three “names” serve as symbols to define “that which is contained within the material vessel”. But also as symbols of the first principles, not merely of the surrounding pneumas.
Entities that we might venture to identify with the three types of pneuma described by Proclus.
Well, no. First of all, alchemists do not operate upon the hypercosmic Pneuma; in fact, they can only hope that something draws it in during the final and supreme stage of their work; Secondly, alchemists cannot work on the first principles, but only on the surrounding pneuma—hoping that it is sufficiently “thick and substantial”. Bear in mind that Proclus’s list consists of pneumata, not first principles. Indeed, everything that exists possesses a pneuma surrounding it, and it is upon this that the alchemist works.
Except for the immaterial and immutable, hypercosmic element—that is, the first vehicle of souls, what Proclus defines as the augoeides ochêma. A pneuma is required to bridge the gap between the celestial augoeides ochêma and the terrestrial ostreoides ochêma, or vehicle of souls for the terrestrial body.
We can roughly define the matter in this way.
Thus, the pneumatic vehicle—the pneumatikon ochêma—finally comes into play; it comprises what the soul carries with it on its journey from the immaterial to the material. Indeed, the alchemist is permitted only to take a small step toward the “sky” and to grasp the intermediary between the immaterial and the material.
The task of this intermediary will be to attract and be attracted. This “magnet” is called Mercurius. But beneath this nomenclature, the alchemists concealed a multitude of functions and appearances. Nevertheless, like a helmsman in a storm, we must keep the helm steady and consider it “solely” through what the alchemist sees unfolding before his eyes: namely, the white “cooking” Mercurius that emerges from the darkness of the black putrefaction, and which in turn will extract the red Sulfur that ultimately imparts a “vital” impulse to the supreme Salt—or embryo; not just any body, but the ultimate earth containing all things, which will serve as a “magnet-bait” for the unattainable celestial pneuma. Ultimately, they are called salts because they are tangible.
As I understand it, ultimately it always comes down to Mercurius, which is then transmuted into Sulfur and subsequently into Salt/body…
No, it is not as you present it. The Mercurius will be doubled, tripled; it will transmute itself. But at that point, it will be difficult to continue calling it simply Mercurius, because its appearance will differ from the initial Mercurius extracted from the first black putrefaction.
In any case, they are called “three salts” because they have three different uses.
What’s more, they are called the “three salts” because at a certain point—in the second work—they must “marry”, and the ceremony will be “officiated” by an addition.
Addition of what type?
This is a secret of the art, but it depends on the paths chosen.
And yet, it is said that there must be only one kind of matter…
Aside from the initial raw material—crushed, putrefied, magnetized, sublimated, distilled, etc.—the true material upon which the alchemist works is the Mercurius, or Spirit, extracted from that raw material. In this sense, the alchemist must work with a single substance. This represents the theory of a perfect process, though in practice such perfection can be rarely performed; indeed, little amounts of foreign substances usually need to be added to chemically facilitate the reactions. Alchemists remain silent regarding these laboratory additions. However, there is one additional substance they do not keep quiet about: metallic gold—a topic we shall explore in the relevant sections.
What can you tell me about the famous alchemical axiom: “From one to two, from two to three, from three to two, and from two to one”? Does it refer to the three salts?
Yes, the three salts are mentioned here with a very cryptic summary of the work to be done on them: the Mercurius must be doubled, then paired with the help of a third; the pair will then remain, and finally, it will become a single embryo.
And yet, they are three different names for three different salts. I still don’t understand the differences.
As I said, the differences are essentially operational. The point is that unless you see the entire process unfolding before your eyes—with all the transmutations and interactions—it is difficult to convey the reason for the three different names through theory alone. Laboratory procedures are poorly explained in alchemical treatises: they tend to be either overly focused on practical chemistry or excessively philosophical. The “chemical” aspect will be covered in the sections dedicated to that topic; for now, I can offer some guidance that is philosophical in nature without straying too far from the actual operations. For example, there is the apt metaphor of the spider and the web.
So tell me about the spider and its web, even if it involves two and not three.
The spider makes—but above all constructs—the web. It gives form; it is the formed form. The web is the material to be woven. It is the spider that gives form to Mercurius. It is the soul that confers definiteness. The spider is Sulfur. This is the difference between Mercurius and Sulfur. We now understand that heat and cold are movement and the absence of movement. The ancients said that it is fire that gives form. Therefore, Sulfur is fire. Starting from Aristotle’s assertion that natures are ultimately of two types—moist and dry—and considering that the moist lacks a defined structure while the dry possesses one, early alchemists deduced that Mercury was a moist vapor and Sulfur a dry exhalation.
You speak in riddles.
You were the one who asked me to speak in an “alchemical” way, or do you perhaps think that in classical Alchemy treatises you will find more “compassionate” language? Anyway, doing my best to keep my explanations down-to-earth, in almost all alchemical moist/humid paths, Sulfur fixes, dries, and stabilizes Mercurius—described as “moist” because it is unstable and evanescent. However, we should not expect straightforward and unambiguous processes; the alchemical paths can be many.
So, is the path defined as “moist” because the extracted Mercurius is moist?
The “moist/humid path” is so named because it relied primarily on distillation. During the Baroque era, alchemy was even defined as the “art of distillation”. Do not worry about it for now, and above all, do not overload your mind; the time will come when we explain it in detail.
Let us return, then, to the iconography of Sulfur as fire. So, if Sulfur is fire, then does Sulfur cook?
Contrary to what you think, Sulfur is cooked by Mercurius. In Alchemy, fire is cooked by water. Mind, I am speaking symbolically. Obviously, ordinary water cannot cook fire; it can only extinguish it. But if we interpret the symbol of water as the flowing Mercurius—specifically the substance originally extracted from the raw matter and subsequently added continuously to carry out all the operations and transmutations—and the symbol of fire as Sulfur (the newborn or the final transmuted product), then we see how Mercurius, acting as a nurse, it breastfeeds—or cooks—Sulfur.
So I was right: the Sulfur cooks.
Sulfur does not cook, but it can “stabilize” the highly volatile nature of Mercurius. The newborn stabilizes the mother, anchoring her to the earth.
We are talking about fire and water as alchemical elements, I hope.
No, the alchemical elements are something else entirely. Mercurius is not the element of Water, even though it shares many characteristics with it. The same applies to Sulfur and the element of Fire. But we will cover this in the dedicated sections.
Spirit of Life/Mercurius and the Soul/Sulfur—am I mistaken?
Alchemists are not hair-splitting philosophers. They devise their nomenclatures with their heads bowed, intent on observing retorts, stills, and crucibles. Yes, to be sure, one often encounters the pairing of Spirit of Life/Mercurius and Anima/Sulfur in Baroque treatises, but these seem more like the expressions of spagyricists. A philosopher would be appalled by such imprecision born of meager erudition.
You haven’t yet spoken about the third salt—Salt, indeed. I gather it must be the body, but I dare not say so. I wouldn’t want to sound like a spagyrist.
It was Paracelsus who elevated it to the rank of the third salt and called it “Salt” itself. Before him, alchemists simply called it “Body”. But when we introduce the symbol of Salt into the enigma of the three salts, we cannot simply translate it as “body” or Earth.
Why not? After all, the body-as-earth—albeit transfigured and ethereal, of course—is the result of the Work.
In the enigma of the three salts, we are not concerned with the final result, but rather with the “third between the two”. In your view, can the body serve as the intermediary between the Spirit of Life and the Soul? Of course, a spagyricist speaks of results—or final unions—never of the means of conjunction.
I’m starting to lose even the few certainties I had.
Because you had some background in philosophy, religion, and spagyrics. Try, instead, to bring alchemy into the realm of theurgy—or worse, into the magician’s lair.
If I were to bring alchemy into the wizard’s lair, what would I witness?
You would witness attempts to transport the substance—in this case, alchemical rather than raw—into an “other” world by uniting Mercurius and Sulfur, thereby invoking an invisible “third between the two”.
A union that should therefore take place by means of this so-called salt…
It is called “salt” because alchemists simply add a so-called “catalyst”—a salt that may even be unrelated to the work performed up to that point, or a salt previously extracted from the work itself and set aside—but something that initiates the famous “alchemical marriage” between Mercurius and Sulfur.
I am losing the few certainties I have gained so far…
It is no wonder; this is the enigma of the three salts. But it is merely a mental problem of overlapping symbols. Alchemists peppered their writings with riddles and puns. Assigning dozens of different meanings—sometimes even antithetical ones—to the same term was a common method of keeping secrets safe from the uninitiated.
How will I manage to identify these dozens of different—sometimes even antithetical—meanings attached to the same term?
Intuition and improvisation. Just as the alchemists devised them—of course, without their colleagues sharing a common vocabulary. Alchemy was not an academic discipline. Welcome to the world of chaos. To give just one example: consider that it was rare for a Baroque-era alchemical treatise to have strictly sequential page numbering. And that was not out of a desire to create an encryption, but precisely because the human mind, subjected to the continuous task of enumeration, tends to become delirious. Reading a Baroque treatise is a journey into the possibilities and failings of the human mind.
This brings to mind Erasmus of Rotterdam and the composition of his monumental Adagia. Indeed, in entry 12, he cites Plutarch: salt prevents putrefaction and thus resembles the soul.
The “third between the two” prevents and/or slows the dissipation of a form of the soul. But perhaps this case is better suited to the gradation of souls envisioned in ancient Egypt.
As stated in Adagia 40—regarding Minerva’s pig—to preserve it better, it is better to give it a soul than salt.
A variation of the above said.
From Adagia 280: The load of salt returned to where it had come from. What had originated in the seawater dissolved once more into that same water.
In this case, the salt is the result of many alchemical processes and tends to possess all the qualities of the four elements: fire, air, water, and earth.
Salt is like the dawn.
In alchemy, dawn is the moment of fulfillment. During the “blue hour”, the spirit emerges from the raw matter and rises to the surface. And, also at dawn, the spirit enters the new body. Indeed, a famous alchemical saying goes: “Whoever wishing to understand alchemy should go to a saltworks at dawn.”
The secret name, the sacred name, the public name. A theurgic mystery that alchemists translated into the lexical tradition of the three salts…
You didn’t quote the end of the sentence.: The concept of a “third between the two” expands the boundaries of Alchemy to the heart of Theurgy.
So… Theurgy is based on the concept of the “third between the two”. You said it yourself; I’m just repeating it. Therefore, one of the three salts must necessarily be the third between the two. Which one—Mercurius, Sulfur, or Salt?
Theurgists would answer that the third element between the two—the binding agent—is the Mercurius (or Spirit of Life), which is supposed to hold the Sulfur (Soul) and Salt (Body) together. And, from their perspective, they are right. Alchemists, on the other hand, cannot offer such an all-encompassing answer: sometimes the binding agent is Mercurius, sometimes Sulfur, and sometimes Salt. And do you know why? Because alchemists—like the iatrochemists of the Baroque era—constantly adjust their ingredients to achieve the reactions (for iatrochemists) or transmutations (for alchemists) they have envisioned and planned.
So, with what audacity do alchemists dare to offer definitions for the “Three Salts” that, at this point, are merely misleading or improvised on the fly?
These are not procedures improvised on the spot; they are laboratory techniques passed down from master to apprentice. For instance, in Alchemy, as we have said, the third Salt is meant to act as a bond between the two to form the “alchemical marriage”…
Does the alchemical marriage have anything to do with the “mystic marriage” of theurgists and magicians?
The “mystic marriage” of the theurgists has little to do with the mystic marriage of magicians. As you have likely realized, the more we lose ancient knowledge, the more we cling to symbols—to which, moreover, we moderns assign arbitrary meanings. This was not the case for the alchemists, who have always employed the symbolism of the three salts not to explain, but rather to veil laboratory procedures that were as simple as they were secret. Thus, the three alchemical salts serve to enable the “alchemical marriage” to take place.
Let us rephrase the previous question: what is the purpose of the “alchemical marriage”, given that—as I have now realized—the alchemists’ lexicon veils laboratory procedures rather than philosophical concepts?
The “alchemical marriage” is simply to keep the wheel of laboratory transmutations turning—processes that work only through the extraction of the Spirit of Life (or Mercurius) from matter that is initially raw but becomes increasingly spiritual, while still retaining a “shell” of corporeality. And all this is possible—alchemically speaking—only through the cyclical, repeated, and ritual decomposition of the matter worked upon by the alchemists.
I assume you are talking about the Nigredo, or the black phase, or putrefaction.
Exactly! The purpose of combining two salts—which the alchemist always calls Mercurius and Sulfur, Woman and Man, Moon and Sun, wingless dragon and winged dragon—is a “chemical” acceptance of amalgamation and a black putrefaction. However, achieving chemical acceptance between the two is often difficult; alternatively, it might be simple but insufficient to cause the pair to “rise” toward the upper reaches of the still or flask, or simply to provide fresh, heterogeneous substance to generate new putrefaction—or to introduce matter that is more “spiritual” because it is naturally endowed with “natural” Mercury, such as calcined gold, dew, saltpeter, or urine salts.
It makes you want to tear your hair out…
For this reason, one cannot improvise the “recipes” found in alchemical treatises; a master is needed to guide the beginner. Fortunately, pharmaceutical chemistry treatises from the Baroque era explain many laboratory tips. Even alchemists read them avidly.
I imagine this third salt bore a series of symbols to distinguish it from the alchemical pair destined to undergo the alchemical marriage.
Indeed. The third figure was the officiant of the wedding, often depicted wearing a bishop’s vestments and mitre. High-profile weddings were, in fact, officiated by the bishop himself.
We began this page by discussing the “little inner alchemist” mentioned by Paracelsus. Can we give the third salt the name “little inner alchemist”?
No, the third alchemical salt causes the putrefaction from which the inner alchemist is meant to emerge. And it will always emerge in the form of Mercurius—until the final cooking, that is, when it will clearly become Sulfur; but we shall discuss that in due course.
Why will it definitely become Sulfur?
Because it will no longer accept “nursing” from Mother/Sister Mercurialis, but will begin to feed on himself. Of course, put that way, it seems too abstract to grasp.
Previous: Paracelsus, the Tiny Alchemist
Next: Sun-Moon-Earth, from the Spark to the Body
Main Index: 6. The Enigma of the Three Salts: Ladders, Chains, Archetypes, Canons and Processions