Spagyric/Alchemical tinctures - any experience?

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I ask because I'm starting on this route a bit - ie. looking into the creation of planetary tinctures and the like, using planetary herbs, times, prayer and meditation, etc..

Out of curiosity has anyone here tried their hand at this? If so do you remember what planet the tincture or plant stone was linked with? Did you find that your meditation with the product lent a significant 'something' in the way of an amplified feedback when you united the salt and sulfur and either drank some of the tincture with its salts or put a piece of the plant stone under your tongue?

I know this board tends a bit more chaos oriented (which is fascinating stuff) but I wouldn't doubt at least one or two have given something like this a shot.

[Haelos]

I can't even get a cheapo home made Alembic set up, so until that can happen or I get a real one I'm out of luck on any of those tinctures.
This is something I very much wish to learn though.

I know there are more experienced members in this aspect hanging around.
I can recommend this forum that another member linked me too. They have some wonderful discussions going on there.
http://forum.alchemyforums.com/forum.php

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Thanks for the site-link.

I'm starting with Mark Stavish's Path of Alchemy, seems like the apparatus is probably less of the starting concern than getting one's head and heart wrapped around it. I'm starting off shoe-string on the kind of lab one could easily find most pieces of in the kitchen section of Bed, Bath, and Beyond. For me it's engaging a new way of thinking and it seems like that sort of experimental play with the subject/object boundary seems like it could be very helpful in a lot of ways.

There's another book I just bought as well - Bartlett's Real Alchemy, still waiting for that by mail but I've heard a lot of good things about it and it also might help flesh out a few topics that Mark might have written since he seemed to have been really to just build the best Alchemy 101 that he could without the distraction of too many extras.

[corvidus]

Kool thread

You don't need anything expensive to start tinctures, I started with cheap vodka and mason jars!
After macerating the herb in spirits, just filter it out and your done.

For meditation practices, think of a spagyrics tincture like Franz Bardon's fluid condenser.
I started by chanting planetary mantras into my tinctures in order to program them. But there's quite a few ways to charge a tincture, depending on how you like to work.

For example, if you want an energetic effect without chanting, start studying astrology.
For a Saturnian herb (comfrey, Solomon's seal, etc) Saturn should be rising and in a very good relationship with the Moon, as the moon cycle effects the water in plants.
I've never tried it this way, but its classic approach.

Other good books on spagyrics are 'Spagyrics' by manfred junius,
Or 'The Alchemist's Handbook' by Albertus
They'll help you start to understand the basic vocabulary and practices.


But please note, there is a difference between Spagyrical tinctures, essences, salts, etc. and a truly 'alchemical' preparation.

Spagyrics deal with dried or naturally living plants, whereas
Alchemy deals with fixing Spirit into matter to induce a Philosophic Putrefaction.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Just in the first few chapters of Bartlett I can see that I'll be tweaking and rewriting what I was going to do with my initial tincture - first waiting till maybe a few days after the full moon and then doing the two step of calcinating and then adding the white salts back to the mixture to then distill all of that as the final tincture rather than having a separate jar for the salts and adding pinches of that to every drink.

The other thing that seems to get applied dogmitically is that one has to make all seven planetary tinctures to keep it balanced. For me this is really the test run, IMHO I added way too much alcohol to what I ground up to begin with so it's going to be rather well dilluted - should still work but I don't think it'll be enough to throw anything in me way out of whack (at the worst I might just be underwhelmed by the results).

Only thing that has me a bit nervous is the calcination process. Not impossible that I could get a white salt within a planetary hour but I have my doubts. worst comes to worst if I need to keep burning it a couple times a day for a week I can do that just that I need to be mindful that I'll be working with grain alcohol and a very hot ramekin.

Even though Bartlett's is pretty short (maybe 170 pages) I may need to read it several times to digest it and I might use my trial run up completely before making my seven planetaries. I've also heard great thing about Manfred's book and I'm sure that's going to be quite a dense read as well so I'll definitely want to pace myself with these. Nothing's more annoying than starting an experiment and on incoming information feeling like what you've done to date was a half-fast job.

[corvidus]

Only thing that has me a bit nervous is the calcination process. Not impossible that I could get a white salt within a planetary hour but I have my doubts. worst comes to worst if I need to keep burning it a couple times a day for a week I can do that just that I need to be mindful that I'll be working with grain alcohol and a very hot ramekin.

Don't worry about finishing the salts in an hour, cause that wont happen. Expect to spend a couple weeks calcining salts to crystalline whiteness. It'll take multiple calcinations and dissolutions in order for it to become crystal clear. The method is to calcine the plant to blackness to 'open' it up, then soak it in warm distilled water over night. This distilled water will dissolve out the potassium carbonate (potash). Afterwards, the water is slowly evaporated off. The first thing that precipitates out is usually a black or grey dross, and needs to be filtered out just before the potash begins to crystallize.

At least this is the process I use, and it's a lot more engaging than letting the salts sit in a furnace for a couple weeks. It takes about five or six repetitions to get a really nice white salt.

These days, following planetary hours seems to be used for harvesting plants, for imbibitions on a plant stone, and/or for the Ens process.
As soon as you set fire to the plant you drive out the Life, and begin working with the dead.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

TYVM for that advice. I just made my first round through Bartlett's Real Alchemy and looking back at his simple procedure somewhere between pp. 34 and 37 he mentions that fermentation is the death of the plant. I hadn't really considered the ramifications regarding the need to observe astrological times but that makes sense - perhaps just the separation and recombination should be waning moon, Monday, and on lunar hours but the calcination can be any hour, any time, etc..

[corvidus]

'Fermentation' is when yeast consume the plant's sugars in order to turn them into alcohol (basically).

'Philosophic Fermentation' is the death of the matter.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Got it. That step of using a plant's own alcohols will probably be a ways down the road. For right now it's 151 grain spirits (190 unfortunately not legal in my state). I'll be grabbing some cheesecloth for my first filtration, calcinating the residue, merging the products for a week, and straining again through a coffee filter for the final result.

[MAZOHIR]

Israel Regardie had an Alchemical laboratory with considerable investment into labware, etc, and when he passed away, he gave it to ART KUNKIN for some reason unbeknown to me, as Kunkin later began to claim the the "secret fire" was nothing else but RADIOACTIVITY, and that life could be prolonged indefinitely by using dangerous radiation. Needless to say, Art evidently lost his way, and is looking quite aged now.

I obtained a stone some time ago, like no other in my collection of various stones. It is the TRUE stone of Alchemical Mercury, and, is in a completely non-toxic and solidified form. It is said to vibrate at a very high rate, and be able to transfer that vibration to liquids, or if worn on a person...to affect them with its power. One time, I used a cord to place the stone, while meditating, on my forehead, and quickly went to sleep, and woke up to a definite physical sensation like my head was being bored into exactly where the stone was positioned. Another time I head a strong VISION of existing in a world of absolute scintillate white light, and realized I had fallen downwards, as the Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster say, a very long ways into this world of darkness. Normally, I use it, the Mercurius, to "charge" purified water, and then drink it to infuse my being with the Mercurial energy. As everyone knows, Mercurius rules over MONEY, on the lowest plane, movement physically and mentally, speaking and writing, reasoning and analysis on another plane, and MAGIA and WISDOM at the Highest plane. And this would be HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.

I also knew Jim Woolsey and his friend John who were direct students, along with Art Kunkin, under Frater Paracelsus, and who worked spagyrical tinctures. Jim and John also belonged to PONs, and lived above Los Angeles, geographically speaking.

Then there was a Dr Raphael Ornstein, from SanRafael, California whom I met, and he looked about mid 30's to early 40's, yet, in a very well-known used book store in San Francisco California, I found a couple issues of MERCURY, the "Official Organ of the SRIA in the USA", which had a letter in the folds of one of them, to the Publishers from DR, Raphael Ornstein that was dated 1932, which would have made the good Dr over 70 years old, when I met him. And yes, he did produce Alchemical Tinctures, and when asked directly how old he was, he replied "As old as G-d", which is what my grandmother used to tell me when I had asked her the same question.)