Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

100 Kerry Greenwood
Emerald Tablet, called Adam’s earth. Phryne stopped trying to
reconcile the varying accounts and continued with her list.
Adding some other liquid, variously described as ‘womanseed’
or more bluntly ‘monthly blood’, to the black mixture and heating
it again with orpiment and borax made it turn white: the
leukosis or albedo stage, the purifying or purgation of the mixture.
The picture fluttered onto the satin bedspread: a white dove.
Distilled in an alembic, the funnel-shaped vessel, the matter
was sublimated by high heat and the gas trapped in a coil of pipe.
This was conjunctio, the mystic marriage where the red king lay
with the white queen. The two entwined crowned figures joined
the other pictures and Phryne scribbled busily.
Then, if one was really lucky, xanthosis or yellowing would take
place with the addition of unslaked lime, ground bones and more
mercury. It occurred to Phryne that with the amount of mercury
vapour that these wise men were breathing, it was no wonder
that they saw visions of Hermes Thrice Great. In due course they
would also have seen rhinoceroses on scaling ladders.
Finally, after the work of years—the mixture buried in fresh
horse dung to be heated to just the right temperature—the watcher
would see the span of colours called the peacock’s tail and would
achieve rubedo and iosis, completion. The red king would be
enthroned and the lapis philosophorum would elevate the alchemist
to heights of knowledge such as other men would never share.
Thou shalt see…a shining carbuncle most temperate
splendour, whose most subtile and depurated parts are
inseparably united into one with a concordial mixture,
exceedingly equal, transparent like crystal, compact and
most ponderous, easily fusible in fire, like resin or wax yet
flowing like smoke; entering into solid bodies and penetrating
them like oil through paper; friable like glass, in powder
like saffron, but in whole Mass shining like a ruby.
His life would be crowned. He would be untouchable,
immortal. He would not seek riches, as Elias Ashmole said, ‘And
certaynly he to whom the whole of nature lies open, rejoyceth