Vinegar (Distilled & Alkalisated)

[JDP]

Once again you have derailed another thread by racing in like Crusader Rabbit and his pal Rags the Tiger to lead everyone back to your single minded argument.

I don't accept nor assume anything about Beguin. This thread is about Vinegar (Distilled and Alkalisated). One recipe was provided for discussion, Jean Beguin's Tyrocinium Chymicum, Chapt. V. I replied with specific comments about that with the focus not on the vulgar process that is on the surface of that recipe but on the Philosophical process underling that it represents as an analogy.

Since you know nothing about how to make vinegar Philosophically you derailed this thread into an argument about the intent and knowledge of the author Beguin. This is similar to your condemnation of YWorth in another thread.

Your reply here is more non sequiturs and vapid as well, full of opinions backed up with generalities like: "Pick up any serious history book dealing with alchemy, for example. Why do you think all historians of science coincide in associating alchemy with the Stone & transmutation???." History books, seriously? Historians are not alchemists nor chymists but academians and scribes. They know less than you about the Elements and Principles of Alchemy.

You are the one desperate to find the Secret Solvent not me. I've laid open the preparation of the simple vegetable menstruum and it does not fit into your preconceived vague idea of what it might be. So you go off on your single minded crusade of fanatical pontifications and theoretical judgments same as in every thread you hijack.

You know what you have to do to prove me wrong and that will take place only in the laboratory of your dreams. In your practical laboratory you will only be able to confirm what I have said as have others. Then the book of Weidenfeld will be wide open to you for a lifetime of exploration. Right now you are just wasting your time ignoring the open entrance to the palace of the king.

In that you are not alone. No one is teaching the Philosophical methods of Alchemy because the current teachers were not taught by their teachers who in their turn did not know, all of them being vulgar Spagyrists. So it seems that I am unique in my idiocy, but that is not true. Others possess the knowhow and have sworn to keep it to themselves. The ignorance continues...

Take it or leave it; it's your choice same as it is for everyone here.

If anyone is derailing the thread it is you. You are the one pretending that there is something "hidden" in an otherwise very plain and common distillation of plain and ordinary vinegar. There is no shred of evidence whatsoever that the author in question, i.e. Beguin, had any such intentions since his book is just a "manual" for chymical beginners. I pointed out that other 17th century chymists also classed Beguin among the "vulgar chymists", and for good reason. Then you tried to compare him to actual alchemical sources like Llull or Ripley, and I just pointed out that there is no comparison. Those authors were primarily concerned with making the Stone and transmutation, Beguin was not, and in fact tries to distance himself from such objective. End of story. You derailed the thread, I just responded to your comments.

Regarding your claims about laboratory achievements, which is another "derailment", and to which I will also respond: you have been distilling and "recombining" the supposed "elements" of things like wood and soot for years and years, thinking that this will answer the "one matter only" mantra that many alchemists on the surface seem to claim. We both know it has taken you nowhere. You have not achieved any transmuting "tincture" with such an approach. In other words, you have not achieved any true alchemical results (and this is the obvious reason behind why you also try to distance yourself from this subject of transmutation, so that you can make-believe that you have somehow "succeeded" in cracking the secrets of alchemy but without actually having done so.) I have been able to "predict" this over and over. How did I do it? Simple: common sense, critical thinking and both personal as well as the collective empirical experience of mankind. All I have to do is point out that for centuries multitudes of seekers after the Stone, as well as chymists (including Beguin himself, the main subject of this thread), have been probing every single naturally-occurring matter that they could lay their hands on, submitting them to all manner of operations, and none of them could observe all of what the alchemists were describing. What makes you think that your case will be any different??? Such an approach has already been tried to death. There is no such "matter" already made anywhere in nature that can perform all of what the alchemists describe. That only leaves one other possible choice: the alchemists must have worked with some types of mixtures. And lo and behold, this is in fact what many other alchemists actually explain is the dirty little "secret" behind the whole "one matter only" ruse! This supposed "one matter" has to be made first, you won't find it anywhere already made, conveniently waiting for you to just pick it up and use it. And how is this supposed "one matter" made? Well, as they (including Ripley himself in Liber Secretisimus) pretty clearly explain: by mixing certain matters together and making them react with one another until they appear to "join" and become "one thing". It is from this artificial composite matter (called by a multitude of code-words, many of them misleading: "Magnesia", "Antimony", "Saturn", "Red Lead", "Sericon", "Green Lion", "Azoquean Vitriol", etc.) that you can then obtain all those products/byproducts that the alchemists describe, and which are then used to compose the Stone itself.

[Auroboros]

Wow, what did I start... I go away for a couple of days and the whole thread blows up into a battle royale. How did a simple topic on vinegar turn into all this? Can't we all play nice here? We are working towards the same goal (σοφῐ́ᾱ), which is also the goal of the Sages.

JDP,

Please feel free to give your comments on the Philosophical Vinegar if that is a more appropriate topic for you to discuss. I would love to hear your comments on why the Philosophers call Vinegar, 'our Vinegar'? What is the correlation between common Vinegar and philosophical Vinegar? Please share.

~ Auroboros

[JDP]

Wow, what did I start... I go away for a couple of days and the whole thread blows up into a battle royale. How did a simple topic on vinegar turn into all this? Can't we all play nice here? We are working towards the same goal (σοφῐ́ᾱ), which is also the goal of the Sages.

JDP,

Please feel free to give your comments on the Philosophical Vinegar if that is a more appropriate topic for you to discuss. I would love to hear your comments on why the Philosophers call Vinegar, 'our Vinegar'? What is the correlation between common Vinegar and philosophical Vinegar? Please share.

~ Auroboros

The reason why "vinegar" became a favorite "deckname" for the secret solvent among alchemists is easy to figure out: for centuries vinegars were the only acids known to most people. So, some of the commonly known actions of vinegar upon metallic substances became a favorite comparison for that of the secret solvent. Later on, when mineral acids became well-known during the Middle Ages, we see that these "aqua fortises" also become the object of comparison with the secret solvent, and in their turn are also sometimes used as "decknamen" for the secret solvent. The fact that acids can dissolve and (apparently) alter metals was too obvious a property for easy comparison with the secret solvent. Of course, that's where the similarities end. The secret solvent performs things that ordinary acids simply cannot. This has been dealt with by many alchemists (some Lullian alchemical texts, Ripley, Thomas Norton, Bernard Trevisan, Antonio de Abbatia, Lucas Rodargirus, etc.)