Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

250 Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

But the most ingenious and convincing way to

demonstrate transmutation into gold was by heating a

small amount of mercury in a crucible, along with a

pinch of red powder claimed to be the fabled Philoso-

pher’s Stone. The alchemist would stir the mixture with

a long metal rod, and slowly it would change color,

from silver to gold. Removed from the heat, it cooled

into a solid nugget of genuine gold. The secret was

that the metal rod was actually a hollow tube filled

with gold dust and stoppered with a wax plug that

would melt in the hot mercury, allowing the gold dust

to trickle into the mixture. As the heat increased, the

mercury gradually boiled away, leaving behind only

the molten gold.

Unfortunately, there was a really nasty side effect

to this trick. Mercury fumes are highly toxic, destroy-

ing brain cells and causing insanity—which might ex-

plain some of the stranger alchemical art and writings!

(Don’t try this yourself!)

Changing Silver into Copper

You can do your own little transmutation of met-

als by chemically plating silver with copper. Now, I’ll

admit there’s not much of a demand for that, but it’s

still fun to do. Dissolve ½ tsp. of azurite and 1¼ tsp.

of sodium bisulfate in 1 Tbls. of water. Place a silver

dime or other silver coin into the solution, along with

a small iron nail. In a few minutes the coin will be

covered with a coating of copper and will look just like

a penny.

Lesson 7:

Alchemical Symbols

To keep their secrets out of the hands of

the incompetent and unworthy, alche-

mists hid their instructions and lab notes

within a tangled code of symbols. Some

of these were allegorical names repre-

senting materials and processes: black

crow, dragon, grey wolf, king, king’s son,

leper, lion, peacock, phoenix, tree, uni-

corn, etc. Others symbols were glyphs,

such as this table from Basile Valentin’s

The Last Will & Testament (1413).

As already noted , the seven primary

metals were identified with the seven

planets, and symbolized by their glyphs:

Gold 
 Silver =

Iron  Mercury 

Tin  Copper 

Lead 

The processes of Alchemy were symbol-

ized by glyphs of the signs of the Zodiac:

Calcination 
 Congelation 

Fixation  Dissolution 

Digestion  Distillation 

Sublimation  Separation 

Incineration Fermentation

Multiplication Projection

Lesson 8: Resources

A number of different Chemistry sets

are listed at Discover This:

http://www.discoverthis.com/chemistry.html.

An excellent distiller by Gary Stadler

is at: http://www.HeartMagic.com/

EssentialDistiller.html.

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