A Philosophical Month

[Hephælios]

This is a Phoenix-thread from the old site.

The Fountain Allegory of Bernard Trevisan: But the King upon entering throws off his vesture of fine beaten gold, which he delivers to his first Chamber Man called Saturn, who when he has once obtained possession of it keeps it for forty days, sometimes forty two days at most.

Philalethes: For term of Eighty Days and Four he rotting stood.
This Calcination begins with these Variation in Colour about the two and fortieth day, of fiftieth at the farthest, in a good Regimen: After which comes putrefying Corruption, like to the Scum of boiling bloody Broath or melted Pitch; but Blackness in part, to wit, Superficial, begins about the fortieth day after the stirring up of the matter, in case of right Progress and Regimen of the Fire, or about the fiftieth at farthest.

Paracelsus: (concerning the Green Lion) This work, the Tincture of the Alchemists, need not be one of nine months; but quickly, and without any delay, you may go on by the Spaygric Art of the Alchemists, and, in the space of forty days, you can fix this alchemical substance, exalt it, putrefy it, ferment it, coagulate it into a stone, and produce the Alchemical Phoenix

Dionysius Andreas Freher: And all this time of forty days, no outward food was given to this new baptized humanity, but it was to live upon its own life's Mercurius, viz., the Eternal Word proceeding from the mouth of God, according to the answer the Lord Jesus gave unto the Devil.

Lully: And within the forty dayes your Medicine shall be dissolved; and if it be not dissolved in forty dayes, let it stand longer until it be dissolved: for this is the primest of all the work: for the dissolution is done by heat and moisture, and congealed by heat and drowth.

John French: Take of blood as much as you please. Let it stand in putrefaction in a glass vessel close covered the space of forty days.

The Parabola of Madathanus: Therefore for forty days I continued with the warmth I had begun, and I saw that the longer I did this, the more the water disappeared, and the dead bodies, black as coal, came to view.

Flamel: The colour which thou must have, ought to be entirely perfected in Blackness, like to that of these Dragons in the space of forty days: Let them therefore which shall not have these essential marks, retire themselves betimes from their operations, that they may redeem themselves from assured loss.

Ripley: When thy Vessel is well closed, put it in the Philosophers’ Oven, and set it in Ashes or sand, with a temperate fire under it, for the space of a Philosophers’ Month, which is six whole weeks, and in that time our grosse bodies will be dissolved and mortified and made fit to begin a more royal generation.

etcetera...

[Jimmy Rig]

I had the thought that the philosophical day probably refers to a complete cycle of day and night, or male and female, fire and water, dry and wet, etc etc
In terms of lab alchemy, 40 philosophical days could actually be 40 cycles of whatever it is that you are doing. Could be sped up or elongated depending on the cycle you set into motion.

You are creating the little world, you need some measure of what is day and what is night.
Anybody else have a similar thought or a different one?