It is also to be remarked that some dregs are of a more fixed substance than their liquid, of a sharper also and more penetrating nature, as you see in the case of vinum ardens, which is made from the dregs of wine, and in the case of cerevisia ardens, which is distilled from the dregs of cerevisia; and just as vinum ardens burns, and as sulphur is kindled, so, if from the dregs of acetum another acetum should be distilled, as vinum ardens is commonly distilled, there will be produced thence an acetum of so fiery and acrid a nature, that it would consume all metals, stones, and other substances, like aquafortis.
Moreover, tincture must be of a fixed nature, fluxible, and incombustible, so that if a little of it be thrown on an ignited plate of metal it will presently float like wax, and that without any smoke, and will penetrate the metal as oil penetrates paper, or water a sponge, and tinge all metals to white and red, that is, in the case of Luna and Sol.[1] These are now the Tinctures of the metals, which must first of all be turned to alcohol by the step of Calcination. Afterwards, by the second step of Sublimation, their own easy and gentle flux must be produced; lastly, by the step of Putrefaction and Distillation the Tincture is evolved, fixed, incombustible, and of changeless colour.
But the Tinctures of human bodies—whereby those bodies may be tinged into their supreme state of health, and all diseases may be expelled, that their lost powers and colours may be restored, and they themselves invigorated and renewed—are these: Gold, pearls, antimony, sulphur, vitriol, and the like, the preparations whereof we give in many other books, so it does not seem necessary for us to repeat them here.
But concerning Tinctures nothing more need be written, seeing that every extracted colour may be called a Tincture, which, indeed, tinges with a permanent colour things which do not enter the fire, or keep their colours fixed in the fire. All these things are in the hand and power of the dyer or the painter, who prepares them according to his own pleasure.[2]
It is especially necessary, too, in this book to know the degrees of fire, which can be graduated and intensified in many ways, and each degree has its own peculiar operation, while no one gives the same result as another, as every skilful alchemist finds from his daily experience and the practice of his art. One is the live flaming fire which reverberates and calcines all bodies.
- ↑ I call the tincture of gold the colour of the body itself, which, if separated from the body, so that a white body remains, will be a perfect work. For colour and body are two different things, and for this reason admit of separation, that is to say, the pure (the colour) is separated from the impure (the body). Unless this be done, all the labour will turn out useless. When, accordingly, this separation is accomplished, we must immediately hasten to the clarification of the colour, and to the highest grade of exaltation. But the grade to which the tincture can be exalted is five times double, that is, five times into five times twenty-four, for it cannot become more sublimated—Chirurgia Magna, Part II., Tract III., c. 2.
- ↑ Tinctures operate approximately as follows: Just as you see fire completely consume firewood and similar bodies, which, as gold, etc., have no figure of man, so we must believe that tinctures operate. Thus, as antimony purges away all the dross of gold, perfects it, and raises it to the highest grade by cementation, in like manner it becomes manifest that the tinctures themselves have obtained a nature similar to cement, inasmuch as they perform operations completely similar to those of the latter and of fire. The ancient artists marvellously wearied themselves at conjoining tinctures with fire, for they anticipated a medicine in their almost sacred conjunction, but all in vain.—Ibid. c. 8.
