Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

Course Five: Spectrum, Part 1 249

Pour Ink and Milk from the Same Pitcher

Get two plastic wineglasses. In one, put 1/4 tsp.

of tannic acid, and put ½ tsp. of strontium chloride in

the other. Add about a tsp. of water to each and stir

until the chemicals are dissolved. Now, take a large

glass of water, and dissolve 1¼ tsp. of ferric ammo-

nium sulfate in it. Pour the water from the large glass,

half into each wineglass—the liquid in the first will

become black like ink, and the other will turn milky

white. NOTE: Do not drink!

Chemical Light

Here’s how to make luciferin, the same glowing

liquid you find in glowsticks. As you know, glowsticks

glow as the result of mixing two chemical solutions,

A+B. So mix up both of these batches of solutions

separately, and only combine as much as you need at

any one time, in equal amounts of each.

Solution A:

4 grams sodium carbonate

0.5 grams ammonium carbonate

0.4 grams cupric sulfate

1 liter of distilled water

and the magic ingredient—0.2 grams luminol

Mix together.

Solution B:

50 ml. distilled hydrogen peroxide

another liter of distilled water.

Once again, mix together.

Pour ½ cup of Solution A into a plastic wineglass, and

then add ½ cup of Solution B. When you swirl them

together, the mixture will glow eerily.

Pyrotechnics

The following salts, if finely powdered and

sprinkled on a campfire, will impart their colors to the

flames. You can also buy prepackaged colored flame

chemicals at any place that sells fireplace supplies.

Red: Strontium nitrate

Orange: Calcium chloride

Yellow: Potassium nitrate or sodium chlorate

Apple Green: Barium nitrate

Emerald Green: Copper nitrate

Green: Borax

Blue: Copper sulfate

Purple: Lithium chloride

Violet: Potassium chlorate

White: Antimony sulfide

Colored Quarter Flames

These are great for Quarters in a Magick Circle!

Get four little iron cauldrons (or other small fireproof

containers). Mix the following non-toxic chemicals with

methyl (wood) alcohol to make the flames burn in dif-

ferent colors. NOTE: Use no more than a tablespoon

of the alcohol mix in each cauldron!

Blue: All this requires is pure methyl alcohol, but make

sure your cauldron is completely clean, as any-

thing else will color the flame differently.

Green: Add one tsp. of boric acid—no more!—to a

pint of methyl alcohol. Keep it sealed until ready

to use.

Yellow: Put a tsp. of ordinary table salt (sodium chlo-

ride) into the alcohol in the cauldron, and add a

tuft of new steel wool for a wick. Soak the wool

with the mixture before lighting.

Red: Make sure your cauldron is completely clean,

both before and after this mixture is used. Use

new steel wool for a wick, as above. Add ½ tsp.

of lithium chloride to a pint of alcohol, soak the

wool in it, and light it.

Colored Smoke

Heat a spoonful of ammonium chloride over a

flame, and it will give off thick clouds of white smoke.

If you sprinkle some of the following powders onto a

fire, they will create a dense colored smoke. (Use these

only out-of-doors!)

Red: Paranitraniline red

Yellow: Magnesium powder, bismuth tetroxide,

or potassium bichromate

Red to Green: Iodine

Blue: Indigo dye

White: Zinc dust

Transmutation of Metals

Now, after all this, I’ll bet you’re wondering if

any of those old alchemists actually did manage to turn

base metals into gold! Well, I’ve studied their reports

and reviewed their experiments, and I have found two

ways they were able to manage this trick. The first and

most obvious is by electroplating, which deposits a

metallic coating onto an object by putting a negative

electrical charge on it, and then immersing it into a

solution containing a salt of the metal to be deposited.

The positive ions of the salt are attracted to the object.

Changing Lead into Gold

Suppose we have a metal object that we want to

plate with gold. We attach a wire to the object, run-

ning from the negative pole of a battery. To a wire

from the positive pole of the battery we connect a piece

of gold. Keeping them separated, both the object to

be plated and the gold piece are then immersed in a

glass jar containing a solution of gold salt, and the

electric current deposits a layer of gold atoms onto

the surface of the object. You can’t plate a metal out of

a solution until you can dissolve that metal into the solu-

tion, but dissolving gold for plating requires a very strong

acid, so it can’t be done safely in your home lab.

5. Spectrum 1.p65 249 1/15/2004, 9:15 AM