Alchemy Mounds: Effluere, Purification, Solve et Coagula
Details
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© 2004
- Dimensions (in inches): 9 x 11 x 6 (each)
- Materials:stoneware, brass, book board, wax, papyrus, ink
- Collection of: private collection
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When I started working with glass, steel and ceramic (all materials that undergo tremendous change when exposed to heat) I began gathering bits of data from a variety of alchemical texts. These pieces present extractions from those texts, written both in arabic and in an alphabet I developed. The alphabet is a hybridization of 3 very early alchemical alphabets.
Effluere: Text on base: A tree looses its leaves during Winter and the leaves fall to the Root where they putrify and become humidity which penetrates to the root and feeds the tree again.
Text on the papyrus strips is: Water and earth belong together, as fire and air do, nay, all four stand in need of each other; the earth wants water, and fire cannot do without air; air without or deprived of fire becomes a putrid humidity, and water without animated air becomes mud and earth.
Purification: Text on base tray: Set oil of olive in the sun in summertime until there settles a good store of soul and gross lees, from the which by declination pour out the clear oil. Keep it until the next winter, and after the same has been congealed with some frosty weather the oil will be most sweet and delectable to taste. After this manner you may clarify all thick oils and all kinds of grease but, then, you must use warm water instead of cold. Strips: solution turns the Stone into its Materia prima, that is into water: Ablution into Ayre: Conjunction into Fire: Fixion into Earth Spiritual and Tingent. When the old body of the matter of the Stone has been dissolved and lies putrefying the soul is released and the spirit rises as a volatile vapour. It then condenses and descends as tears from heaven onto the dead body below.
Text on Solve et Coagula: Text on base: Our Great business is to make the body a Spirit and the Spirit a body. Text on papyrus strips: one is the above translated into alchemy alphabet, 2) Dissolve and congeal again and again, dissolve and congeal, till the tincture grows in the stone. 3) with this solution there takes place simultaneously a consolidation of the spirit
Purification: Text on base tray: Set oil of olive in the sun in summertime until there settles a good store of soul and gross lees, from the which by declination pour out the clear oil. Keep it until the next winter, and after the same has been congealed with some frosty weather the oil will be most sweet and delectable to taste. After this manner you may clarify all thick oils and all kinds of grease but, then, you must use warm water instead of cold. Strips: solution turns the Stone into its Materia prima, that is into water: Ablution into Ayre: Conjunction into Fire: Fixion into Earth Spiritual and Tingent. When the old body of the matter of the Stone has been dissolved and lies putrefying the soul is released and the spirit rises as a volatile vapour. It then condenses and descends as tears from heaven onto the dead body below.
Text on Solve et Coagula: Text on base: Our Great business is to make the body a Spirit and the Spirit a body. Text on papyrus strips: one is the above translated into alchemy alphabet, 2) Dissolve and congeal again and again, dissolve and congeal, till the tincture grows in the stone. 3) with this solution there takes place simultaneously a consolidation of the spirit
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