Sulfur and mercury are the two main elements of alchemical theory. Used as medicine in ancient civilizations such as Greece, they take a central place in Alexandrian, Islamic, Chinese and European alchemy. United they form mercuric (II) sulfide, or cinnabar.
From its metallurgic forerunner, alchemy takes its own direction and develops as the craft of coloring metals, and coloring minerals such as quartz to look like precious metals or gemstones. Early alchemy is also applied to dyeing methods, especially those of purple.
The link of lead to gold comes from a "gold multiplying" system using lead as a core covered with gold, or even melting lead and gold into an alloy. For example, a ring is made of lead and coated with real gold. A popular testing method of metals is melting point.
Lead has a low melting point at 327.5 °C (621.5 °F) compared to the precious metals silver at 961.8 °C (1763.24 °F) and gold. 1,064 °C (1947.2 °F). Testing for gold purity is often done with a melting point test.
A gold alloy or gold-colored lead will melt before the heating point of true gold is reached. In the lead-core objects, the lead might melt inside the object but the gold outer layers remain solid. The same is true of silver. This is a primary reason lead is associated with gold.
Malleable mercury and can dissolve many metals to merge with them, forming amalgams. Mercury amalgamates by preference with gold, then silver, tin, and lead. It's doesn't bind well with copper.
Mercury or quicksilver is the only metal to be liquid at room temperature and also to evaporate at room temperature. Its melting point is far below freezing at -38.83 °C (-37.9 °F). Mercury vapors are highly toxic.
It won't bind with iron, thus early mercury shippers use iron containers, later glass. Mercury also won't amalgamate with platinum, tungsten and tantalum. The advent of glass is a boon to alchemists and physicians, who can see their substances at work or rest in glass vessels.
Glass can hold mercury without dissolving, as in old thermometers, because the force of cohesion between mercury molecules is stronger than the force of adhesion between molecules of glass and mercury.
The earliest known gold plating technique comes from the Romans. They mix molten gold and mercury and brush the alloy on a substrate. Then they heat the object, speeding the evaporation of mercury in the form of invisible toxic fumes.
Mercury is often used in silver-making and many alchemists of the past extoll the virtues of this element for its use in brightening, lightening and otherwise coloring metals. Adding mercury to silver is one way to increase the quantity of silver.
Cinnabar, or mercury sulfide (HgS), is the primary ore mineral of mercury. This vivid red mineral is often found with other minerals such as pyrite, marcasite, and stibnite. It typically occurs in veins close to recent volcanic activity and in deposits formed by sulfur hot springs.
The distinctive color and properties of cinnabar have long attracted interest. One of the most infamous cinnabar deposits can be traced back to Almadén, Spain, an ancient Roman site of mining and mercury processing.
Due to the effects of devastating effects of mercury on the body, brain and nervous system, the early mines and production centers are worked by slaves, convicts and prisoners of war. A sentence to the Almadén mines is a slow painful death. Authorities consider it divine justice.
One of the goals of alchemy is to transmute base metals to valuable ones like silver and gold. The balance between Mercury and Sulfur is paramount in this pursuit of transmutation. The ideal ratio of the two elements is believed to create gold.
In Islamic medieval alchemy, Jabir ibn Hayyan furthers the theory with the concept of mercury and sulfur as vapors permeating the earth. Where they mingle, they form certain ores or metals.
Based on the male (sulfur) and female (mercury) pairing within the alchemical framework, theorists mull over chrysopoeia, or gold-making, in earnest. Each metal, according to Jabir, represents a combination of Mercury and Sulfur in imperfect proportions.
Thus one must experiment until the right proportion is reached, and the metal transforms to gold or silver. A mercury / silver amalgam is made by mixing silver or a silver-based alloy, as small particles, with mercury into a paste. When the paste sets, it is hard.
In the most extended processes, mercury reacts with powdered sulfur and/or liquid sulfur to form mercuric sulfide. Mercuric sulfide or cinnabar is prized as vermillion pigment in paintings and cosmetics due to its vibrant scarlet red color.
The pigment is vermillion. European artists clamor for it and Mesoamericans use it to paint the dead. Getting vermillion can be a lethal process. It needs to be ground down from cinnabar, or mercuric sulfide, a mercury sulfur compound ore.
Mercury, according to several leading alchemists through history, can make silver. Mercury or quicksilver is used to fake silver by adding it to melted lead, zinc or copper. It can be poured into blocks or other molds.
Transmutation of metals is often not the alchemist's goal. In places such as Egypt and China, eternal life takes precedence in the ancient world. Alchemy has strong connections to ancient medicine, and a branch of alchemy, Spagyria, deals exclusively with plants.
Sulfur (Brimstone)
According to physician and alchemist Paracelsus, who pioneers Spagyria, sulfur is "the fluid" connecting High and Low. Sulfur denotes the expansive force, evaporation, and dissolution.
Sulfur corresponds to the soul or animus as mercury corresponds to spiritus, the spirit. During the Renaissance Paracelsus adds salt as a stabilizing factor, the body or corpus. The combination of sulfur and mercury create the soft stone cinnabar, also called red sulfur.
Sulfur turns red on melting, and burns with a blue flame. Comparatively sulfur has a low (115.21 °C, 239.38 °F) melting point. White sulfur is considered a purified form of red sulfur. Red represents the Red King. White sulfur, mercury or silver correspond to the White Queen.
Medieval Islamic alchemists admire the work of Alexandrian alchemist Mary the Jewess (c. 100 AD), which comes their way after the c. 642 AD Islamic conquest of Egypt. They call her Daughter of Plato, another name for white sulfur. White and red are highly significant colors.
The seventeenth dictum of the Turba Philosophorum (c. 900 AD), one of the earliest European alchemy texts, speaks in metaphor:
O Turba of Philosophers and disciples, now hast thou spoken about making into white, but it yet remains to treat concerning the reddening! Know, all ye seekers after this Art, that unless ye whiten, ye cannot make red, because the two natures are nothing other than red and white. Whiten, therefore, the red, and redden the white!
Sulfur is used medicinally for treatment of skin ailments such as eczema and acne. It has a sublimation point of 20 °C (68 °F) - 50 °C (122 °F), meaning transformation to a gas without going through a liquid state first. Sublimation is one of the core processes of alchemy.
Mercury
Mercury (Quicksilver) is the omnipresent spirit of life. In alchemy this element transcends liquid and solid states to spiritus.
Mercury is stable below 0 °C or in suitable environments, but unstable at room temperature, decomposing into metallic mercury and mercury(II) sulfide (mercuric sulfide, cinnabar). The compound is insoluble in water, making it valuable to industrial applications.
Mercuric sulfide has been used in traditional medicine and alchemy for its spiritual and mystical properties. Formation of mercuric sulfide is a crucial aspect of mercury-sulfur chemistry.
Some Arabo-Latin and Latin alchemical texts circulating before the end of the13th century show most alchemists of the period consider mercury and sulfur to be subject to purification techniques in the same way naturally occurring salts and minerals are freed of impurities.
From humble beginnings in early philosophy and medicine, the mercury sulfur pairing grows stronger though the years. During the Renaissance they are the White Queen (mercury) and the Red King (sulfur) who come together in a union of opposites.
The spirit of mercury or Mercurius figures prominently in Renaissance alchemical lore. He is the moon glow in the phase of nigredo, a welcome light, just as God Mercury himself and ancient Greek Hermes are both psychopomps, guiding the soul in the afterlife.
Mercurius is closely associated with unification of the King and Queen and birth of the divine hermaphrodite or the Rebis, child of Hermes (King) and Aphrodite (Queen). Mercurius, like the prima materia, can have various roles.
He can be the Divine Hermaphrodite himself; assist in birth (infuse the spirit); or transform and be "born again" into Mercurius or the Rebis, like so:
During the Renaissance mercury emerges as a prime element. Over a thousand years before, Greek philosophers name mercury as potentially the prima materia, the stuff making up all matter. Beginning in the last centuries BCE, it's an ingredient in many Chinese Elixirs of Life.
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