Second Treatise
On
The Tincture and Oil of Vitriol
of Roger Bacon, Englishman.
Which he, as a noble, delicious, and most certain arcanum and medicine of men and metals, communicates and sends over to his beloved brother Wilhelmus.
Now given into print for lovers and disciples of the Art,
By
Joachimum Tanckium D.
To the art-loving reader.
Translated to English from the book:
Medulla Alchimiae. Rogeri Baconis Angli. Das ist: Vom Stein der Weisen/ und von den vornembsten Tincturen des Goldes/ Vitriols und Antimonii ... 1608
Gracious reader, this precious tincture of vitriol, how from it through art and particular handling one may prepare and produce a glorious and useful oil and medicine, for the healing of many grievous illnesses that befall men, and likewise how metals may thereby be brought to improvement, has come to me from a good friend, from the autograph of Doctor Ortolphi Maroldi, princely Heidelberg physician, most experienced in the chemical art.
Since this has never before been made public in print concerning vitriol, I have not wished to separate it from the other treatises of Roger Bacon, for the common benefit.
Farewell.
On the Tincture and Oil of Vitriol,
of Roger Bacon, the Englishman.
Vitriol is a noble mineral, which among the true philosophers has been held in great dignity and esteem, and not without cause. For the Most High and Great God has exalted it far above other mineral creations and creatures. And although the investigators have understood something of the true philosophy, yet they have not been able to come to the true fundamental understanding and the secret mysteries of the philosophers.
It has also been the custom and practice among the ancients that they either set down and handed over their secrets in dark speeches, histories, fables, images, or likenesses, or else in hidden philosophical and composed them in philosophical speech, sentences, and riddles, as they also dealt with and spoke of vitriol:
“Visitabis interiora terrae rectificando invenies occultum lapidem, veram medicinam.”
V.i.t.r.i.o.l.u.m.
That is to be understood thus: the words themselves indicate it, which we expound in this way. When the ancients say that one should proceed with the rectifying of the earths, this is not to be understood of the common inferior earth of mountains and valleys, but rather of the earth of vitriol.
Further they say that the inner parts of the earth are to be visited, and not the outer. For outwardly vitriol is green to the eyes because of its color, but inwardly the philosophers find it red.
The tongue tastes it outwardly as harsh and bitter, yet inwardly it is sweet and pleasant.
The hands touch it outwardly as hard, rough, coarse, sharp, and impure; yet inwardly it is delicate and lovely, and indeed a subtle noble juice and balsam, and a pure oil.
The nose perceives its odor as altogether wild and misshapen, like a sulfur; yet inwardly it is noble and delightful, for it is an amber and balsam.
Although many philosophers have at times noticed, from dreams or from other indications of nature, that great secrets lie in vitriol, and for a long time have sought after it and gladly wished to become partakers of its hidden nature and secrecy, yet they have not understood how it should be handled, namely, that by distilling or calcining, as they have practiced, anything useful could be brought forth from it though some more than others.
Now, however, its process is not that one should calcine it. For as soon as it loses its brown color, there is already lost its oil and spirit, according to the judgment of the true philosophers.
For you should know that all creatures, whether vegetable or other minerals, as they are in themselves, and also the metals, have in their inmost part the secret, and true oil, red; and therefore their arcana and secret oils are also to be taken from them, red as blood.
Therefore one goes astray in the common distilling of the apothecaries and physicians, since by that manner they cannot help nature so that they may bring the arcana in plants to such a blood-red oil.
Rather, this is to be understood of nature itself: that it is apt and prepared, when only it is helped, to transform itself in a short time into its own red juice or most secret tincture. As one sees in the distilled oils of vegetables, as in pulegium, ruta, and many others, which from years to years are always yellower, through their own proper rectification; so that at last, if they were kept for some years, they would themselves transmute into a blood-red oil. But because this does not happen quickly and proceeds slowly, that is the reason why the preparer in the distillation has too soon and too quickly taken from it its nature and its greenness, and has not left room for nature itself and its perfection, so that the pale green might of itself have changed into a very beautiful full blood-red color.
The same manner is seen in ripe, tart wines, when they are laid up, drawn off, and kept for a number of years: how they rectify and clarify themselves, and the more they do so, the more they work and strive toward the red color; and this nature does in its own time and property.
But a destruction, corruption, and putrefaction must precede nature. And when this is happily accomplished through nature, then it proceeds to its right goal, which has been given to it by God, and to which it has from God, together with all creation, been predestined.
Take here an example of this: if you set a glass or jug of water, well stopped, out into the air, and let it stand thus for a time, it will see how the elements in nature begin to rectify the mere bad water. For within several days it becomes turbid, stinking, sets down its feces that is, its coarse, earthy, and corrupt impurity to the bottom, and draws itself off pure, so that such gross uncleanness may not go along with it. Stop it up again, and let it stand thus in the air for several days more; then the water will again show many feces, more than before, and will smell foul. Do with this again as was taught before, by drawing it off from its fecibus, and stop it up again, that it may thus be kept in the air.
I tell you: when this rectification of nature has thus taken place, you will find the water purer and clearer, for its fine essence or essential spiritus will be sweet, like sugar. And if it were kept thus henceforth until the last division of the world, it could not spoil again, but would much rather continue to rectify itself and come to a supernatural nature.
For the true nature, which is good and faithful, has rectified it from all feces that might have harmed it. Mark well this example, for it will often release you from many thoughts and instruct you in the right nature and labor.
Look also upon the bones and body of poor sinners who are condemned and judged to death: as soon as nature in the elements, or the elements in nature, begin a rectification of the bones, there first arises a destruction or corruption, as others call it, a putrefaction, and the bones become black and of an evil smell. But through the course of the years they are so cleansed by the elements that they appear white like chalk, just as if they had been beautifully and white calcined with a strong burning fire. And this nature does.
Look at old roofs, which have long been covered with metallic plates, as with lead or copper, how dear Nature works in metallic bodies, through the properties of the elements, and rectifies them. For they stand beneath the open heaven of the elements and the sun, which through their bodily warmth, together with the essential and spiritual rays and influence of the other stars, work into such a metallic body. And as the clouds contribute water, and the air labors and does not cease.
For I have seen how Nature, as if by a painter, through bodily operation, drove out of the lead a great foam, and calcined the Saturn, so that it was altogether brittle, and worked half of it into silver. Let this be commended to your remembrance, and do not forget it; for great secrets are revealed to us in it by Nature.
Thus we also will proceed to the work according to all this, and follow the order of Nature. But I adjure you by Almighty God, all before whom I commend this my secret, that you reveal it to no one unless you know that he is a son of philosophy, in whom there is a mind to obey God in heaven, to flee all vices, and to cleave only to virtue and honesty, diligently to strive after them, and to incline toward them.
Herein I will before God and my fellow brethren faithfully and brotherly lay down again the pound and talent which God has richly entrusted to me, and render account again to my dear God and to the world. Therefore let each man take good heed, and thank God from the heart, in what disposition and sense the wisdom and the greatest treasure of this world, namely both of health and of riches, may come to him by means of this little book.
So now let us go to the work.
At the first: You should know why the rectification of vitriol is undertaken, and why this is done. You will find no vitriol that is truly pure in itself. For vitriol in itself is a pure sweetness, which surpasses all sweetness in the world in its powers. But since in the veins of the earth there are mixed with vitriol other kinds of minerals, alums, and salts, from this it has its sharpness and acidity, as one sees when it is merely distilled into its spirit, and into a sharp oil, which at the very last shows itself with its redness.
You should not suppose that this is the spirit of vitriol, but rather that it is of the mixed kinds of other minerals, which lie hidden under the colors of vitriol.
And the oil which the art of the fire brings forth here is not the oil of vitriol, but a spirit of salt, arising from the intimate union of the salts in them in the vitriol. For in the whole substance and nature of vitriol there is found and perceived neither sourness nor sharpness, but only a very pleasant sweetness of a red odor.
This is indeed true: one vitriol is always found purer than another, and one has more kinds of minerals than another. For one has much of alumen roche, another of entali, the third of niter, the fourth of sal gemmae, the fifth of sulphur. Some have in their mixture two, three, or four of these kinds, more or less, according to the places and mountains where they are formed and made.
Therefore it is necessary, if one wishes to make the true and fitting oil of vitriol, that from the pure substance of vitriol one separate these kinds of salts, alums, and sulphurs. And therefore such a rectification is highly necessary, as has been said above. And it is done in two ways:
I. The first way is this: take a considerable quantity of vitriol, which is already pure and clean, perhaps eleven or twelve pounds, and dissolve it together in pure filtered water, which has few feces. Set it upon warm ashes or a gentle heat, and let it evaporate until it forms a skin. Then place it in a cool place for two or three nights, and the vitriol will begin to candy and become purer than before.
Take it out and lay it in a glass dish. Set it in a dry warm chamber, and by the gentle warmth it will crumble into a white and yellow powder.
When it is all thus prepared, then take it and again dissolve it as cleanly as possible in pure water. And when it is all dissolved, let it stand day and night upon the gentle warmth of the ashes, for it will cast down a great many impure feces, which serve for nothing other than to be thrown away.
The green water of the vitriol, purified from the feces, so that no impurity may go along with it, and let the vitriol candy as was taught before. Continue this work so long until the vitriol casts down no more feces, and strongly shows and manifests its sweetness upon the tongue. Then you will find it in a heavenly green, surpassing all other colors. Keep it in a glass vessel well protected from dust and impurity, so that none of these may fall into it.
But mark this well: that you preserve for it its heavenly green. For if from here on you lose that, then I tell you, you have lost the fitting essence, the spirit, and the noble oil or balsam of all arcana. Therefore keep it well, so that you do not lose it and the whole work be utterly spoiled.
But here one might ask whether so much depends upon the green color of vitriol. To this I answer: indeed yes; for the green or blue color of vitriol shows me that the beautiful blood-red oil is still present in the vitriol.
Just as the green and blue little veins of a man show the healthy blood, which appears in such a color, and just as a change of this color indicates a change of the blood, so the change of the green indicates the destruction of the red oil, and this should be noted.
Therefore now, in God’s name, take your well-prepared vitriol, shut it up with the seal of Hermes in a glass vial, well rounded. Then hang this in the furnace of the Arcanum, and govern the fire gradually, from degree to degree, for ten days up to another ten days. Thus you will first see your vitriol transmuted into a very beautiful yellow color, which more and more inclines toward redness, until at last the whole substance of your vitriol has come perfectly into a very beautiful red ruby color.
When you have seen this, then praise God, since you have now well preserved your green and brought it into a beautiful noble red and are now secure that you will not easily lose it. For you have turned the outward into the innermost, and brought the inward outward. Therefore be assured, proceed further, and preserve it well.
You have heard above that all things in the world which God has created have within them their inmost blood. Then, as the ancient Magi have said, all created things are placed by the Most High God in three things, namely in body, soul, and spirit.
Now they say that the soul is the middle, by which the body and spirit are governed. This soul dwells in the blood of every creature, and God has chosen or predestined for souls no other dwelling-place or seat than the blood alone. Therefore also, because Christ, for the redemption of the damned souls, came and wished to reconcile them with God, he had to, upon the trunk of the holy Cross, to his heavenly Father also sacrifice the most innocent and pure holy soul of his body, and for the sake of this sacrifice shed his holy blood. And as the Godhead is and is called a Trinity, so you should know that all creatures and created things also, according to the perfect number of the Trinity, are created in a threefoldness, as we declare and show in our book de tota Creatura. And whoever desires further report of this may read it in that same place, in the 23rd tractate of the 7th chapter.
Further, you should know that the blood is not the soul, but in the blood is the soul. For the soul is invisible; no one has ever seen it. Likewise the soul is no created thing, so that it has not been created. Neither is it the soul of herbs, minerals, or metals; it is not created in any creature, nor is it itself a creature. For everything created is a coarse body, as we see before our eyes. But the soul, however, is a wholly pure being, and in it alone stand all power, virtus, potentia, arcanum, mysterium, and the great secret things, as we disclose in the book de Mysteriis.
But that the soul of creatures is not created is understood from this: that it lies invisibly only in the divine Word, which was spoken to each element: “Let this or that be.” For that Word of the divine mouth, which proceeded from the Godhead, was a word of force and virtue spoken into the creatures. Therefore such a proceeding-out from God has been in God from eternity, and was not created. And for the sake of this force and virtue which has gone out from God, all creatures are good and very lovely.
And this is what the Apostle Paul writes to the Romans in chapter 8, and, as it were, reveals to us as a mystery: that the creatures also long eagerly to be released. For since this divine power of the souls that have gone forth from God into the creatures the soul, or a particle of the divine nature, desires again to go back to God, and is ever anxious no longer to serve this unworthy and evil race of the world, to which it serves and is subjected by compulsion.
And when, on the Day of Judgment, it shall again come from God because of our sinful life, then the souls of the creatures will accuse us. For just as they have gone out from God, so they will go again to God. As God himself says: My word, which goes forth from my mouth, shall not return to me again until it has accomplished all that for which I sent it.
But what God will further do with these souls, and for what he will use them, we commit to his divine will. Yet of this we have written something further elsewhere, and whoever wishes to know it, let him seek it in the treatise de Angelis, there he will find it.
O great mysteries, salvation and consolation of our poor souls, on the day when all creatures will rejoice with God and all his angels, together with all holy redeemed human beings, and all those who have rightly served Christ in faith. But the day of darkness will overtake all impenitent sinners and damned men.
Therefore you, my children, should now know in brief what the soul of every creature is, and that it is not a created thing, but has gone out from God, and will return again to God and to his Christ. Therefore Christ also commanded that the Gospel should be preached to all creatures. Indeed he also says: if his apostles were to be silent, the stones must cry out.
O my God, how great are the mysteries of the works of thy hands, and how with such great wisdom hast thou shut up such thy wonders of thy hands, in their inmost and deepest and most hidden part. To thee alone be all praise and power and honor, above heaven and creatures.
Now we return again to our work, where we left off.
For when you see that our most secret vitriol now appears in its highest redness, then break open the glass, take it out, preserve it diligently and well; for you have one of the greatest treasures in all creation.
You also heard at the beginning of our work how two kinds of rectifications are necessary. Of the one and first rectification you are now instructed, and the work has thus far been brought to completion in regard to the second rectification. Therefore now the other will also be considered, and shown how it should be artistically and rightly completed.
First, you should have a well-prepared spiritus vini. Secondly, a very fair, clear, common spring-water, distilled several times.
Now again, in the name of the Holy Trinity, take your vitriol, put it into a glass flask according to the size of your material, pour the spiritus vini over it, but let it stand well stopped for four or five days in a gentle warmth; then pour it off gently and slowly, so that no feces go along with it, and set it carefully aside.
Then pour fresh spirit of wine again upon the feces that remained, and set it once more in gentle warmth for four or five days, so that more of the vitriol may dissolve into the spiritus vini. Continue this pouring on and pouring off so long until you have drawn the noble subtle matter of the vitriol out with the spiritus vini; for the earth is then no longer of any use throw it away.
Then take all your spiritus vini, which you have poured off from the earth of the vitriol, pour it together into a glass flask, and distill the spiritus vini from it in Balneo Mariae, until you find your matter dry at the bottom of the glass.
Then take off the head and receiver, and pour the spiritus vini back upon it again. Whatever dissolves, set aside; pour spiritus vini again upon the feces, until all is dissolved.
This do this a third time, then it is enough, and it is well cleansed.
When you have again drawn off the spiritus vini, and the matter is dry, then take off the receiver together with the head again, and pour upon the matter of your well-prepared vitriol some common distilled water. Stir and mix it well, and set it in warm ashes for four or five days and nights, so that it may dissolve well in the distilled water.
What has then dissolved, pour it off gently without feces into a clean glass. Pour the remaining feces of the former glass over again with distilled water, and set it again for four or five days and nights to dissolve in warm ashes. And do this work a third time, so that you may be certain that no more of the good matter remains hidden in the fecibus vitrioli.
When now all this has happened and is completed, then distill the water again completely off from the matter until it is wholly dry, with a gentle fire, in Balneo Mariae. Then take out the dried matter and put it into a well-luted flask, with a fitting head and a clean receiver, not too large. Lute the head well onto it, so that nothing may evaporate; likewise lute the receiver as well as possible, so that none of the noble spiritus may escape.
Set it in the furnace of distillation, in God’s name, to distill very slowly, with a very small fire, and then ever stronger, degree by degree, as the furnace of distillation requires. Then there will ascend the blessed blood of the green lion, red as a ruby, upon which all the philosophers have long hoped, which also gives light in the dark of night like a star, and indeed something brighter than a glowing coal-fire, so that one may well recognize another by such a light and fiery splendor.
But take it off and preserve it well with great diligence. Stop the glass firmly, for the most delightful scent of this blessed oil, which surpasses all balsam, might otherwise evaporate in vain. Enclose it in an alembic, so that it may thus be safely preserved from misfortune.
Praised be God for ever, that out of his unsearchable love he has revealed and bestowed upon us poor men in this world such a great treasure. This oil, because of its very greatest virtue, is the blessed medicine of all diseases of the human body; for its power stands above the element, and a single drop is enough to take away all pains of the diseases of the human body, whatever they may be, so long as they are not by God predestined unto death.
Indeed I tell you that all sicknesses flee from the most noble odor of the blessed oil. Therefore take it rightly and well, for its virtue is excellent, and God has poured into this soul a heavenly operation, that it may not that it should neither be hot nor cold, dry nor moist, but rather like the heaven with its stars: what has need of warmth, it warms; what has need of cold, it cools; what is moist, it dries; and what is dry, it moistens; what is shut, it opens; what is open, it closes; what is too much, it strengthens. It has in it all complexiones, qualitates, confortationes, purgationes, constrictiones, opilationes, virtutes, potentias, arcana, and mysteria.
You should also know that this oil is unfixed. For if it were fixed, it could not have risen up over the head. But now we will come to the fixation, and from that part of the medicine also to make projection upon imperfect bodies, and to teach of it.
Take from the distilling furnace the flask in which you have distilled the oil into the receiver; therein you will find a shining white earth, whiter than snow or any whiteness, transparent like a crystal, firm and constant in all fires. Preserve it with all diligence, so that no impurity may come into it. Thus you now have in particular separated the body from the soul, and the soul from the body, and they are cleansed in their innermost and most hidden part.
But now something must be said of the work of the body and of the soul, since they are to be joined together again, and the shining soul is to take again to itself the glittering white body, and is henceforth to dwell with it for evermore. Just as on the Last Day each separated soul will again come together with and be united to its body yet purged and bright, so that the body becomes pure and white like snow, and shall be clothed in white garments; but the soul is washed in the blood of the Lamb so then the white shining body and the pure spirit and soul are joined together, and live in an everlasting union without end to live, and be eternally united. But we return again to the work.
Take, in the name of the holy Trinity, our very white and shining earth, put it into a clean round vial, and gradually pour our blessed oil over the earth. Yet you should note that the vial should be of such a size that the matter at first occupy the twelfth part. Seal it with the seal of Hermes, and set it in the furnace of the arcana.
Then the soul will take again to itself its own body, and the body its own soul. For the soul thirsts not after another body, but after its own; and the body thirsts not after another soul, but after its own. Therefore they long exceedingly for this copulation and sigh after it.
As then the body speaks to the soul:
“O soul, look upon my distress in this depth;
Hasten to hear me, see how I call to thee;
For formerly in my body I was imperfect,
And without adornment I was, and taken away from it.”
“O my pure body, I will not forsake thee,
For I love thee without all measure.
The ground where God and Nature will bring us
To rest with longing sighs there abide.
For I will again swing myself into thy body,
And draw it up into the height of heaven, as I was before.”
Fixation.
Now let the enclosed soul remain with the body in the heat of the furnace forty days. In these forty days the soul will ascend and descend from the body, and in its strength will get the upper hand, and suffuse the body, so that the body also becomes wholly spiritual.
But when thirty days have passed over, the soul and spirit will settle down with the body, unite themselves with it, and hasten and come to perfection, so that thereafter no fire nor elemental force will again be able to separate them, and thus they will remain together eternally.
Now when the five-and-fortieth day is past, then take the vial with our work out, break it, open it very carefully, and gather the red blessed stone into a little glass, and preserve it well. And this is one of the highest treasures in the whole world. Praise God and thank his name.
The Projection of our Medicine.
It is not the least thing to make a projection of the medicine upon the metals, as many have indeed supposed. For the metals, when they are raw and unclean, bring the workmaster great harm, because the medicine remains for the most part hanging in the slags and does not touch the pure part of the metals. Therefore I have thought it fitting to give here a short account of this, so that one may not bring the noble medicine to nothing in such a way, and uselessly cast it away with the slag.
And you should know that all bodies of the imperfect metals, being so unclean, are also sulfurous, some a third part, as Mars; some the half part, as Venus; some the third part, as Saturnus and Iupiter, contain. The rest is nothing but a foam and slag, which cast the medicine out from the metal and separate it from it.
Many have indeed pretended but falsely and upon a slight ground that one might tinge the metals through the oil and water of the tinctures in such a way that they remain wholly so. Some go even further and say they remain still malleable. As once there met me a liar who said that he had coated a silver groschen with his tincture, and that the whole groschen had been transmuted into a malleable gold without loss of its stamp. But when I told him that this could not be so, and that it was also contrary to nature and its essence, he wanted to swear and contend; but when it was to come to proof, there was nothing there at all.
Therefore, my son, you should know this: when one spreads the medicine, the oil, upon an imperfect body, it falls wholly apart and breaks asunder like glue. For the medicine passes through all the limbs, and nothing remains unbroken. Then one must let those same earths come together again in a crucible by the fire into a solid body; and that which is then struck off from the slags will be pure gold, malleable and permanent.
But the manner of projection is done in this way: if you wish to cast the medicine upon Venus, then Venus must first be cleansed and purified. Do not forget this, as indeed such a thing is set forth under the tractate on the projection of the supercelestial stone of the philosophers; there you may look for it.
If you wish to project upon Mars, then it must first be cemented for five or six times with the Rebohath, and then melted together again into a solid body. Then, when the medicine is cast upon it, the smoke will be driven off so as I tell you, you will suffer loss, because much of the medicine will remain held fast in the impure slags.
Upon Jovem it is better than upon Venerem and Martem; but better still upon Saturnum, as we teach under the tractate de Projectione. Yet better is it upon Mercurium, and best of all upon Lunam.
But that some assign a certain fixed weight to their projection is also not right, nor can it be observed. For although a master may make from one matter two works, and proceed with the one according to his opinion and thought just as with the other, still they will not make equal projection in their force and strength for the transmutation of imperfect bodies. Therefore the projection is not to be described according to its weight.
If the matter is not diligently purified, it does the less. But where it is purified with diligence, there it performs a higher projection. Yet nothing is lost by this. For if the medicine is cast on in too great a quantity, it becomes brittle; for then more is added to it of the imperfect metal. But if in the projection you cast in too little of the medicine, then observe the weight of the medicine in its increase, and test it; then you may know with certainty how much your medicine can tinge.
Likewise, one Venus is often purer than another; for that reason the projection must also fall out unequally. Yet you should note that it is best of all that Venus and the other metals be purified beforehand, and that only then you make the projection. It should also be done in the flux, because the metal drives out in the heat; then it settles the more purely.
But what more is necessary you should seek in the place where, in the tractate de Projectione, everything is explained more fully and with understanding. There instruction is also given concerning juices, oils, powders, stones, and the like, with marvelous investigation of all the greatest secrets.
Thus I conclude this chapter concerning the fifth mineral, vitriol, to the honor and praise of God, and to the service of our neighbor.
As concerns the multiplication, you should seek it in the treatise on antimony or stibium and its oil; there you will find instruction. For the time and the manner are one and the same only that you should diligently reflect upon the things and investigate nature.
End of the Treatise on Vitriol.