Ritual

matter or the remaining sediment of liquid - and could be made
manifest by burning or heating the element so that extraneous
additions could be dispersed. This reduction of substance into
ashes, therefore, was regarded as a form of purification, and ash is
the basic cohesive element for the preparation of elixir vitae. For
further purification, ash has to be dissolved in a still more elemental
substance called rasa, or liquid. The primeval form of all things was
linked up with the cosmic sea, or the wet element, and almost all
forms of fluid - sap, juice, water, blood - were used as medicine.
The chemical theory of organic and inorganic compounds of
the prevalent medical schools, particularly of Charaka (AD
80-180), provided useful knowledge about the combination of
properties of substances. The physical characteristics of the five
subtle elements and their isomeric modes were classified as
follows:
Earth-substances: heavy, rough, hard, inert, dense, opaque;
exciting the sense of smell.
Water-substances: liquid, viscous, cold, soft, slippery, fluid;
exciting the sense of taste.
Fire-substances: hot, penetrative, subtile, light, dry, clear;
rarefied and luminous.
Air substances: light, cold, dry, transparent, rarefied; impingent.
Ether-substances: imponderable (or light), rarefied, elastic;
capable of sound (vibrations).
Each of the substances, it was believed, is a fivefold ultracompound,
and in this sense is penta-bhautic, or a combination of
the five original subtle elements, each of which can be found in a
lesser or greater proportion in a particular substance. Thus ether is
the vehicle of air, heat, light and water; air, the combination of
water vapour, light and heat, and even five particles of earth, held
in an indeterminate state. The colour and sensible qualities of a
substance result from its structure, the arrangement of its atoms
and its physico-chemical properties resulting from the relative
preponderance of a specific substance in its composition.
The most fundamental, and indeed the quintessence, of all
substances was mercury. In all tantric alchemical treatises the term
rasa means mercury; their medicinal preparations consist mainly of
mercury. Although it was considered that mercurial compounds
should, in theory, be prepared by amalgamating mercury and air,
mercury and blood, mercury and semen or mercury and various
ashes, several other ingredients, such as mica, sulphur, orpiament,
pyrites, cinnabar, calamine, various alkalies, bitumen, and metals
The five elements, in ascending
order.
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