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Excerpts from Alchemical Texts

Ancient Greek Papyri

The Chemical Papyri of Leyden and Stockholm

Earle Radcliffe Caley published an English translation and provided additional notes of his own on the Leyden Papyrus X in the third volume of the Journal of Chemical Education in 1926. From the introduction attached to his Leyden Papyrus translation, Caley relates to us the great importance of the two papyri by the following passage:

By a fortunate chance, however, there have come to light in recent years-two original sources in the form of two remarkable Greek papyri known to students of the early history of chemistry as the Leyden Papyrus X and the Stockholm Papyrus. Theses invaluable documents are by far the most ancient that we possess dealing with alchemical arts and operations as such. The earliest authentic alchemical manuscript is that of St. Mark's at Venice which is believed to have been transcribed from earlier writings during the tenth or eleventh centuries. These two papyri have, however, upon the basis of unquestioned philological and paleographic evidence, been ascertained to have been written at about the end of the third century A. D. so that they are by far the earliest original historical evidence that we have in our possession concerning the nature and the extent of ancient chemical knowledge.

The following recipes, are a few excerpts from the ancient papyri that were used by Dr. F. Sherwood Taylor in his article "The Origins of Greek Alchemy."

On preparing (or falsification of gold):

"Asemos one stater or copper of Cyprus 3 staters; 4 staters of gold; melt them together."

"To increase the weight of gold, melt it with a fourth part of cadmia. It will become heavier and harder."

"To give objects of copper the appearance of gold so that neither the feel nor rubbing on the touchstone will discover it; particularly useful for making a fine-looking ring. This is the method. Grind gold and lead to a dust fine as flour; 2 parts of lead for one of gold, then mix them and incorporate them with gum, coat the ring with this mixture and heat. This is repeated several times until the object has taken the colour. It is difficult to discover because the rubbing gives the mark of an object of gold and the heat consumes the lead and not the gold."

Medieval and Renaissance Texts

Alchemist of the fifteenth-century had an array of topics to write upon, but their interest in the metallic elements remains unwavering over the centuries as recipes pertaining to the manipulation of metals such as lead, copper and gold still appear in alchemical writings through the medieval and renaissance periods. Being just one of many contributors to our understanding of fifteenth-century alchemy, The Catalogue of the Ripley Corpus contains a collection of alchemical writings attributed to George Ripley (d.ca. 1490) in which the following two recipes Artificial Stone and Compositio Mercurii demonstrate some of these interests:

Artificial Stone

"Recipe for 'mercury of Saturn', or Rebis mercurialis, prepared using lead, sal vitriol and borax. Unlike 'natural' mercury, this is not for use in the great work, yet may still yield 'great proffit, yf thou wilt worke artificially with it.' Found in a single, seventeenth-century copy."

"Inc.:'There is a stone which is called the artificial stone, and is artificially knytte together by manes witte. Expl.: '... therefore praye for me; that have opened to the[e], that thou mayste live by, and serve God, and help the poore. G.R.'".

Compositio Mercurii

"Short practica recorded from the late sixteenth century, probably composed in Latin and translated into English. The first recipe ('Compositio Aceti') describes the distillation of tartar and spirit of wine to yield a strong corrosive used in the medicinal elixir. The same solvent is used in the second, chrysopoetic recipe ('Compositio Mercurii'), in which copper provides the imperfect body. A third recipe ('Another Practice') uses mercury."

English: "Grind 1 oz of mercury with 3 oz of our vegetable salt expressed in the first chapter, which vegetable mercury is drawn upon a marble till they be well incorporate...Dissolve a great quantity of mercury in a strong corrosive water till all be like milk."

Latin: "Recipe tartarum fortissimi vini, et calcina in albedinem... Recipe in nomine Domini unciam unam Mercurii crudi bene purgati... Dissolve Mercuriam nostro secreto in lacteum liuorum."

Modern Alchemy

This is a description of an experiment that adds metallic mercury to a solution of silver nitrate in multiple stages to produce first a brown precipitate, next a grey mossy precipitate, which is then followed by small growths that produce more rigid structures of silver branches and silver leaf like morphologies its final stage. The article An account of an experiment to grow a tree of silver was originally published in 1980 in the Hermetic Journal.

An account of an experiment to grow a tree of silver

This experiment involves no subtle transmutation, but the chemically respectable process of the precipitation of metallic silver from a solution of silver nitrate by the chemically more electropositive metallic mercury. For the first experiment (A) a 10% solution was used - 10 grams of silver nitrate made up to 100ml solution in water. About 20 grams of metallic mercury was introduced into the solution at normal room temperature in a 100 ml round bottomed flask, in small quantities at a time. As the mercury entered the transparent solution a brown precipitate immediately formed as a kind of veil in the solution, but within a few minutes this disappeared. One observed within the space of 15 minutes, small growths forming on the surface of the bubble of mercury, and within an hour a kind of grey mossy precipitate had formed around the mercury which had been completely transformed. As the experiment reached a stasis and equilibrium, more mercury was introduced and within a further 12 hour small tree like growths began to press up out of the mossy precipitate at the bottom of the flask. These forms were very delicate and the slightest vibration disintegrated them. After a third addition of mercury, more rigid crystals of silver began to form within a further hour or so. These rigid crystals began to act as the trunks for the trees of silver which precipitated in the form of ratifying branches and fine leafy structures. These were much more stable and indeed the forms survived some few weeks. A second experiment (B) was undertaken with a more dilute solution 5% silver nitrate, though with the same experimental method, and in this case a pattern of more radiating outward crystals shaped itself.

Gallery

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