One in purpose

[Dragon's Tail]

My suspicion is that the natural volatiles will fly away with faster evaporation, and even my pink salt (or part of it) has become apparent in the experiment that I'm running, so I'm sure you will see the same or better with plant salts.

Unfortunately, the faster you heat them, the more chance of busting glassware, so use chips. I need to smash up a glass bottle around here and use the chards next time. Finding that salts are volatizing will be easy, Fixing the volatiles perhaps not so much. My collection bottle tastes of water, so I plan to put it on a very slow evaporation and cover the top with a filter to let the gasses out and prevent debris from entering. This was all distilled water, so in theory, nothing should be left after evaporation, not even spots.

If the above is true, then we must use the utmost caution at recrystallizing the leeched salts, as drying them too quickly will be tossing the baby out with the bathwater. Take those leeched, purified salts (calination should be okay if they are dry) and boil of the dragons in a hot fire, and collect the steam.

However you set it up, I would love to hear your results. For me, it's not the measurement that's important of how much, but what ends up in the retort, and it's qualities. If this natural volatile is always present and interesting, then we'll know how to collect more

[elixirmixer]

If the above is true, then we must use the utmost caution at recrystallizing the leeched salts, as drying them too quickly will be tossing the baby out with the bathwater.

This is exactly my thoughts. We shall see later on today I expect.

[elixirmixer]

With all the hate and debate going on at the moment I thought it a grand idea to point out a few things...

Most organizations, whether they be pedaphilic chirch leaders, malicious greedy freemasonic dictators; lying, malicious, cream-licking politians... actually do nother to turn roughly 10% of their greedy and depravity into some type of charity event/action, if for no other reason than to seem as if they are not the spawn of some sexualized earth daemon.

What have the members of Alchemy Forums, with all of their hip, grand, Neo-Ancient Wisdom, actually (even considered) doing for the greater scheme of things.

While your all discussing semantics, the world goes on killing itself; and most people here just want to get their opinions heard, may or may not do the odd good deed here and there, and go about there day until finally herded in by martial law when its time for their country to 'be the ones'.

Arnt Alchemists, and occultists and easyern philosophical gurus and shamans and the like, suppose to be the 'holders of the keys of the decret knowledge'?

I just want to say, that being here as long as I have, and once believing there was a hope for humanity; ive come to realise that there truly is no hope; pretty much, at all.

This, i feel, has become my opinion, because the gate keepers themselves; are caught and sickened by the same diseases that they themselves have been employed to cure.

Lets go and drink and be merry; for tomorrow, unless your a rich bastard with a line up of pre-teen wives and bu ker to go home to; we die.

Its been lovely knowing you; t'would have been lovelier still to have worked with you. alas.

[Warmheart]

<snap>

I think you might be wearing rose-tinted glasses. You know there are people who condemn church leaders, presidents, oligarchs and other big persons in their troubles. While that might be partially true, but if you look around, you will see that most of the people are like that - give them power and they will become even worse than currently condemned leaders.

When you see poverty, it is not because president is guilty, it is because people are copulating like mindless animals and care little about their progeny.

If you see slavery, it isn't because of big leaders, it is because most people dream about being slavemasters and some succeed in doing so.

Most of the people are overcome by hatred and invidia but they learnt how to hide it well and look like innocent sheep. But give them opportunity and power over you, they will inflict you pain.

Mankind is getting what it is deserving. If you feel bad for it, you can always give away your belongings to the poor and go live in the caves. You can invite some African people to live in your house with your family, thus you will help them. If everyone does so, Earth would be the better place?

Not.

Admit it to yourself, you don't want to help others. If you wanted, you'd help them.

And how you'd see people with knowledge of Alchemy help people? Make it so gold transmutation would be widely known, so gold would cost as much as dirt and people who used hard labor and invested in gold would become poor? While oligarchs won't suffer because they also have lands, securities and other kinds of wealth.

Or if alchemists made immortality a widely known thing? Then, with mankind in its current state, oligarchs would quickly get control over such secret, they'd become immortal themselves and shut down all sources of information on how to achieve that, so they could become like Gods, or rather Devils on this Earth, while the rest of the people would die in their 50-ies at best while doing extremely hard labor?

What everyone can do for the better of humanity - is to start from themselves. To get rid of hypocrisy, illusions, xenophobia, ignorance, arrogance, invidia and other defects. That, in the grand scale of things, would help the whole world. No need to have some secret knowledge or some "supernatural" abilities for that.

[Andro]

gate keepers

“Before the Law stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country who begs for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later. 'It is possible,' answers the doorkeeper, 'but not at this moment.'

Since the door leading into the Law stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance. When the doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: 'If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect that even I cannot bear to look at.' These are difficulties which the man from the country has not expected to meet, the Law, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and long, thin, Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter.

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity. The doorkeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his home and about other matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes each gift: 'I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone.'

During all these long years the man watches the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and the Law. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged watch he has learned to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper's fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind.

Finally his eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the door of the Law. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to the man's disadvantage.

'What do you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper, 'you are insatiable.' 'Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it.”

― Franz Kafka, The Trial

[Awani]

...there truly is no hope... because the gate keepers themselves; are caught and sickened by the same diseases that they themselves have been employed to cure.

This is incorrect from my perspective. Also sometimes when a house has vermin you got to make traps to catch the fuckers... only so you can have peace and quiet again. After all, it is very hard to relax in your house if there are creatures running around scratching in the walls.

Hope = Desire

Something I would say we should aim to not have. We don't need hope anyway, because...

[Kibric]

Mankind is getting what it is deserving. If you feel bad for it, you can always give away your belongings to the poor and go live in the caves. You can invite some African people to live in your house with your family, thus you will help them. If everyone does so, Earth would be the better place?

This is a fundamental misunderstanding on the nature of selflessness.
You cannot truly help others unless you can help yourself first. You have to know selfishness and learn it before real selflessness.
Being selfish, knowing how much that bread means to your hungry stomach, allows you to understand how much it means to another hungry stomach.
Love yourself, take care for yourself so you'll know how to care for others, you need experience in this and being selfish is how you do it.
Giving up your home for some else is not selfless unless you have an empty house you don't use.
1st it means now you have replaced the person you helped, you are now in their previous position. The problem of homelessness is not solved.
You are the homeless now, so some will have to help you, no progress is achieved.
2nd sharing our home is something alot of us do, our friends family when they need it,
it's not a migrant family from another place who we don't have the power to really help unless we are wealthy,
but we do what we can for each other with what we have, just like you do for yourself with what you have.

Admit it to yourself, you don't want to help others. If you wanted, you'd help them.

No. Alot of people want to help others, our natural inclination is to share, that's essentially how people started living in groups.
They are unable to help others for the reasons you mention. They work so hard just to help themselves, helping in a large way is a luxury.
Whatever small act of kindness, what you have the power to actually do, is worth it. UBUNTU has shown that there are ways for change .
We can't all be saviours and change the world, we can use the power we have to help ourselves, no matter how big or small to help others.
I agree with much you have mentioned, the world is not moulded for human progress.

What everyone can do for the better of humanity - is to start from themselves. To get rid of hypocrisy, illusions, xenophobia, ignorance, arrogance, invidia and other defects. That, in the grand scale of things, would help the whole world. No need to have some secret knowledge or some "supernatural" abilities for that.

Completely. Heal yourself heal humanity, you are counted among it. Whats more is that you can show others now how to heal themselves.

I just want to say, that being here as long as I have, and once believing there was a hope for humanity; ive come to realise that there truly is no hope; pretty much, at all.

You are still writing though... can't all be lost or you wouldn't bother ?

The dichotomy in humans, we are selfish and selfless at once.

[Andro]

Hope = Desire

= Hopium

[Kibric]

The guy in the nuclear bunker who's suspiciously unfazed by the bombs, reading a magazine and humming.
We don't really trust people free from cynicism.

[Andro]

= Hopium

Translation: Hope is like an opiate. It can be paralyzing. It delays action.

I guess we all need a bit of it, but it's a fine line...

See: A Torture By Hope