Author: B. Key

On Alchemy, Deception, and the Notes Left Behind

~ B. Key ~ Leave a comment

Happy New Year everyone! I’m B. Key. After a July 2021 guest post describing the evocation of Faust’s Mightiest Sea-Spirit, Sfinga and Salt, two of my best friends, graciously invited me to become a third author for this blog. To kick things off, I decided to develop a brief miscellany of sorcerous chemistry and external alchemy. By day I’m a biochemist, so this blend of interests never fails to stir the spirit to put pen to paper.

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For the past two millennia, alchemy, with its myriad and diverse cultural interpretations, has been practiced in an uninterrupted and ever evolving march toward inner and outer reunification with divinity. Forming medicines and other precious substances from baser materials, lengthening our lives to the point of immortality, wielding magic, commanding spirits, and deepening our connection to the Gods are not without pitfalls. In these ~2200 years, the chase continues to leave the fragmented notes and the emperors, philosophers, physicians, and chemists who penned them in behind, all reunified with the divine in death, instead of life.

To pick up the fragments of the past and piece them back together again, and to add our own scrap to the pile in hopes that one may, some day, craft from it the Philosopher’s Stone, drink from the Font of Life, see Gold in the crucible instead of Lead, is unto itself a goal both most high and tantalizingly attainable. From these records, we find a both a “science simply composed of one and by one, naturally conjoining things more precious, by knowledge and effect, and converting them by a natural commixtion into a better kind” (Roger Bacon, The Mirror of Alchemy), as well as “…the knavery and confederacy of conjurors, the impious blasphemy of enchanters, the fruitless beggerly art of alchimistry, and the horrible art of poisoning” (Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft).

For Hermes said of this Science: Alchemy is a Corporal Science simply composed of one and by one, naturally conjoining things more precious, by knowledge and effect, and converting them by a natural commixtion into a better kind.

Roger Bacon, The Mirror of Alchemy

Ahead is a small collection of personal techniques, selected to demonstrate sorcerous applications, both duplicitous and sincere, of chemical materia and the synthesis thereof. With the guidance and inspiration of spirit and deity, each of these works will take on a life of its own, as all things shall, and become a gateway to new endeavors, each as disparate and expansive as the notes left behind.

A disclaimer: The following experiments involve the use of strong acids, caustic solutions, powerful oxidizing agents, heavy metals, and their products. It is extremely dangerous to attempt any of the following, especially if you do not have formal laboratory training and an environment with the equipment and space to carry out these experiments in a contained and professional manner. Of special concern is the experiment by which one can see a serpent—if deciphered and enacted, the byproducts and waste created by this reaction are extremely dangerous, highly toxic, difficult to clean, require specialized facilities to dispose of, AND some may be regulated in your municipality.

Pieter Bruegel the Younger | The Alchemist (ca. 1600) | Artsy
Pieter Bruegel the Younger, The Alchemist (ca. 1600)

To have 30 Pieces of Silver
Take up your Copper, and wash it in a mixture of good vinegar and salt in excess until impurities have fled. In a good flask, dissolve lye, about 12 grams, into 100 ml of water that has been distilled, and heat, but do not boil. Once warm, add granules and fragments of Zinc. Dry your Copper of vinegar, and add it to the lye, atop the Zinc.

Your Copper shall be Silver, after half of an hour. On Holy Wednesday, take up this silver in your left hand, ideally during the darkness of Tenebrae, and kiss an icon of Christ. Turn, and do not look back until you arrive at a potter’s field. Bury the coins, begging the spirits of place take them, which they will refuse if all is done properly. Leave the place, and return only to unearth them at the dawn of Easter Sunday. Know that these coins are now of great use in trafficking with spirits, especially those who shun the Lord. To have Gold from this Silver, heat it upon a plate.

To Transmute Lead into Gold
Add Aqua Fortis to an equal measure of pure water, and toss in some Lead shot. Heat until the Lead is gone. Boil pure water, and add to this one gram of Potassium Iodide, a splash of good vinegar, and the humor of Lead. As this cools, it shall take on the luster of Gold, until Gold itself falls like snow out of the menstruum. It shall snow for one day and one night, until it can be recovered.

To Have Stigmata
Baptize the Salt born of Potash and Sulfur and apply him to your palm. Take up the stone Molysite, reduce him to dust, baptize him, and apply him to the other. Pray fervently, and know stigmata shall appear without damage to the hand.

To See an Evil Serpent
Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings, this secret of secrets, hidden from the eyes of all but God. Hear, O my son, the Serpent of the Garden has not strayed far from his Bride our Mother. Hear, O my son, that His sons Salt and Mercury stalk the Earth. Hear, O my son, that those same serpents conjured to thwart Moses may be called through our Art at great peril to Body and Soul!

Aqua Fortis, itself distilled, shall feast upon Mercury, and emit a miasma so potent as to ravage the lungs of beasts. From him, his brother, Salt, shall be born a Red Oroboros. Boil Him to free the White tail from a Black mouth and return him to the Water of His birth, but know that he too will bring an equally perilous miasma.

Baptize Him, and with Him cast Salt born from the marriage of Potash and Sulfur. Know, O my son, A plague of Fog shall descend upon the land, and know He is in it. Take Him into the desert, as Enoch, and exorcise him with Fire. An Evil Serpent shall appear before you, and know He will escape you by shedding His skin. Hear, O my son, that all parts of Him are corruption.

Michael Maier, Mary the Jewess, from Symbola Aurea Mensae Duodecim Nationum (1617)

To Know the Weather by means of a Wonderful Vessel
Add 900 mL of good spirits (100 proof vodka works well), three blocks of Camphor, 30 grams of Saltpeter, and 30 Grams of Sal Ammoniac to a pot and heat until all is dissolved. Decant this liquid into a clear glass vessel, leaving some air, and seal. Allow to rest outdoors for a night, and know the liquid inside now produces wonderful omens by which to know the weather, which are as follows:

  • If it is clear, the weather will be as clear
  • If it is cloudy, the weather will be as cloudy
  • If it is cloudy and there are small stars, the weather will be perilous
  • If there are stars, expect fog. If it is winter and the sun shines, expect snow
  • If there are large flakes throughout, it will be overcast, and may bring snow
  • If there are crystals at the bottom, expect frost
  • If there are threads near the top, expect wind

To refresh the vessel, heat him in a bath until the liquid within is clear of all debris, and let him rest overnight once more. Know the vessel must always rest outdoors away from sunlight, lest he cease to function.

To Harm and Bring to Obedience Those Spirits That Conjure Tempests Before The Circle (twice proven)
Mix together 6 parts saltpeter, 4 parts sugar, some Sulfur, and some Asafoetida, then cast some of this upon the fire with this exorcism:

Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord,
and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld,
and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace into the eyes and nose and mouth and lungs of NN.
And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain,
He destroyed the enchantments, beguilements, deceptions, deceits, and of NN
and filled the eyes and nose and mouth and lungs of NN with the Fire and Brimstone
which is prepared for all rebellious disobedient obstinate and pertinacious spirits.

To have a Luminous Phial
Heat almond oil in a vessel. Add to it phosphorous, 12 grains per half ounce of oil. Allow the oil to cool, then decant into phials until mostly, but not entirely filled. When uncorked, the phial shall glow.

To Have Mercury
MIx a liter of pure water with about 400 grams lye. Add Sulfur, about 50 grams. Apply heat until he is gone, then allow to cool. It will appear as Blood. Add Cinnabar and wait. Add Aluminium, pounded thin, by parts until it is in excess. Add an equal volume of pure water. Allow to rest for one night, then decant the menstruum. Wash him with water; repeat until impure mercury is seen. To purify him, wash him in a bath of Potassium Permanganate. Again with water until pure. Wash in a bath of diluted Aqua Fortis. Wash again with water until pure. Filter and recover the Mercury, now pure.

To have a Pigment favored by Venus and her Spirits
MIx 256 grams of Blue Vitriol with 700 ml pure water in a flask and heat. Mix 96 grams of Soda Ash with 300 ml of pure water in a flask and heat. Once both are liquefied, add the second to the first in many small parts. Allow to rest for one night, then recover the pigment by filtration. Boil away the fluid that passes through the filter to yield strong Natron.

To have the Oil of Vitriol
Burn Sulfur and Saltpeter together in the presence of steam.

A reading list and selection of sources:
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Joseph H. Peterson – Three Books of Occult Philosophy (2000)
Al-Razi, Gerard of Cremona – Liber Luminis luminum (1974)
Roger Bacon – The Mirror of Alchemy (1597)
Henry Beasley – The Druggist’s General Receipt Book, 9th Edition (1886)
T. L. Davis – Pyrotechnic Snakes, Journal of Chemical Education (1940)
Ekmeleddin İhsanoglu (ed.) – Cultural Contacts in Building A Universal Civilization: Islamic Contributions (2005)
Jerry Alan Johnson – Daoist Mineral Magic (2006)
Jerry Alan Johnson – Daoist Internal Alchemy: Neigong & Weigong Training (2014)
David A. Katz – An Illustrated History of Alchemy and Early Chemistry (1978)
Albertus Magnus, Joseph H. Peterson – Egyptian Secrets of Albertus Magnus (2006)
Lawrence M. Principe – Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry (2007)
Reginald Scot – The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584)
Christopher Warnock, Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold – The Book of the Treasure of Alexander: Ancient Hermetic Alchemy and Astrology (2012)
Martha Windholz (ed.) – The Merck Index: An Encyclopedia of Chemicals and Drugs, 9th Edition (1976)

The Conjuration and Call of the Sea Spirit Quirumudai

~ B. Key ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a very busy year and a half for both myself and Salt. The complexities of the pandemic aside, we’ve both been hard at work with not only our day jobs but also our efforts in the myriad traditions of sorcery and witchcraft that we both individually and collectively celebrate our pacts in. We continue to honour and give gratitude to all the incredible spirits that support and empower our efforts, as well as our incredible friends and mentors in magic and life. Not only have the skies cleared significantly, but so many of the seeds we have both planted have really grown and bore fruit, allowing us the time to update this blog more regularly and soon, offer even more services through it. We are elated to keep sharing with you all! Expect more on traditional astrology and the grimoires soon from the ever-erudite Salt, and more on folk magic, saints, and Balkan witchcraft from yours truly. For now, please enjoy this guest post from one of our best friends and brothers, the incredibly talented witch B. Key. ~ Sfinga

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Two years ago, my brother Salt wrote a review of the Enodia Press’ Doctor Johannes Faust’s Mightiest Sea Spirit by Nicolás Álvarez. His glowing review is compelling, and one should give it a brief read to see what first drew my interest to various “Faustian” grimoires.

My own knowledge of the German language and fondness for the spirits of treasure—those that guard, bestow, or otherwise patron the hunt of—naturally lead me to undertake the operation presented in Darmstadt MS 831, or the “Conjuration and Call of the Sea Spirit Quirumudai”.

A note from Alvarez in the manuscript’s introduction further piqued my interest—the only known mention of the spirit Quirumudai, apart from this text, is a brief comment on a paper-strip in possession of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek. Upon reading his transcription, I was left wondering—What is this spirit? Why are we finding his name alongside the Archangels Anael and Uriel? What is the nature of this spirit that it can co-mingle in this way?

To address all of these questions, I decided to proceed with the operation at earliest convenience and ask the enigmatic Quirumandani myself, as is befitting of any sorcerer. The operation itself is neither particularly difficult nor particularly lengthy, spanning only four pages of text and requiring, it seems, no tools beyond the circles and sigils provided.

Before proceeding, I would like to highlight two points at which I disagree with Alvarez’s translation of the original text of Darmstadt MS 831, presented in the first edition of Mightiest Sea Spirit (Enodia Press). I am normally hesitant to do this, as the translation is mostly faithful to the text, and Alvarez is performing a great service in transcribing these texts in the first place—however, these two errors genuinely affect the successful completion of the ritual prescribed. I would like to add that I have not seen subsequent editions of Mightiest Sea Spirit (as mine is a first), so I hope that this post can call attention to these errors in the event they are not corrected in subsequent editions.

Alvarez’s translation reads as follows:

During the waning moon, one should begin to perform the operation, but in the following manner: You must undertake this operation on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, close to water, then you shall proceed the citation on Saturday morning at 3 o’clock in the following manner.

Doctor Johannes Faust’s Mightiest Sea-Spirit (Enodia Press), p. 80

I find that this portion has two problematic adaptations that deviate from the text of Darmstadt MS 831: First, the German text specifies a “zunehmende Mond“, meaning waxing moon, not waning. Second, the source text specifies not that one must be in physical proximity to water those three days, but “…bei Wasser und Brodfasten…“, or, must fast by water and bread.

Because of these adjustments, I waited until the next new moon, and began my fast on bread and water alone for three days (not a particularly difficult feat, living and working near a bakery), reserving myself to study the text, consult my spirits, and fortify myself spiritually.

I set out to perform the ritual in the final nocturnal hour of Mars (I believe this to be the intended meaning of “on Saturday morning at 3 o’clock ” in the text) on Saturday, arrived at a tucked away ritual site along the bank of the Mississippi river, cleared away some debris, and drew the circle on the ground with the prescribed prayers.

I armed myself with a handful of Solomonic pentacles (namely, the 5th of Mars and the 4th of the Sun) and the black handled knife from the same tradition (a beautiful and treasured gift from Sfinga, having received her blessing under the light of a potent +11 Mars election discovered by Salt), then set foot into the circle with the prescribed prayers for this as well. I offered additional prayers for success to the Four Evangelists inscribed within, and to St. Christopher to preserve me from the dangers of the sea.

I placed the character under my left foot as dictated and began the conjuration. With each recitation of the conjuration, I felt a heavy, humid stillness press harder onto the edge of the circle, bearing down upon it with the force of the nearby rapids. Once this tension was built, I received a psychic impression to switch to the next oration: “The Call on Quirimundany”.

After a single recitation of this, the spirit appeared, pulling himself out of the water onto the bank. He appeared at first as a hazy, blue, semi-transparent mote of fog that distorted the color of the water behind it to a dark, bloody red. This mote of smoke shifted into the form of a man who had drowned, swollen and pallid in complexion, each of his four limbs broken and shattered to stand at unnatural angles from his body.

He pulled himself toward the edge of the circle a handful of times; each time he was rebuffed by the aforementioned instruments, being ultimately constrained into the “character” that is laid upon the ground before the circle. Because of this, I suspect this “character” to act analogously to the triangle of the Ars Goetia or the Crystal of Barrett’s The Magus, being an instrument in which spirits are constrained to manifest. This character began to glow blue with the same haze that the spirit first brought once he stood upon it.

I welcomed the spirit in the prescribed way, at which point he began to speak quickly and eloquently, like a mad professor who, in his age, only thinks aloud. Interestingly, the spirit spoke primarily in English, which surprised me, as the text states that the spirit will speak German (a language I am conversant in as well) in this hour.

I had written out a proposed pact on parchment before the evocation, so I now produced this, read it aloud, and held it to the edge of the circle for the spirit to either add additional clauses or sign. In response to components of this pact taken directly from from Darmstadt MS 831, among some other, more private clauses, he responded with something that continues to fascinate me at the time of writing, which is: “I have agreed to these terms before, I shall agree to them once more with the following addenda“, at which point we began negotiations.

At my request, he expounded upon how and when his results will manifest, and the nature of the seal to be engraved on the shell as described in the text. I believe that this shell would have been physically granted were I to have performed the operation at a more proper “sea” in which they are already found, however I was told to purchase a shell from a particular shop, and engrave the seal into it myself the following day. I returned the document to the edge of the circle, at which time the spirit embossed physically his seal upon the parchment, which I later traced in ink for my own reference.

The final terms seemed amicable to both the Sea Spirit and myself, as well as to the spirit allies in attendance, however, the cautionary tales of the good doctor Faust himself are not lost on me, so I remain ever vigilant.

At this point in our interaction, one such ally spirit informed me that the hour of Mars was coming to a close, and it was time to dismiss Quirumudai, so I repeated the prayer for that purpose three times, along with a litany of psalms for purification and spiritual fortification. I left the circle, inspected the area for any debris or other tokens left behind, and left without looking back.

The following day, I went forth to the shop referenced and purchased a shell that matched the image the spirit provided. I etched into the shell his revealed seal, and wrapped this tool in a cloth for safekeeping.

When the time dictated by our pact came, I produced the shell, set it upon a table, and spoke the phrase “Quirimundani Alam!” alongside another call he described for this purpose. This caused the shell to rattle back and forth physically, and a grey, astral mist to fly forth to form the spirit in the chair across from me. I had an impression that the bones in his limbs were still shattered, but set back into position, covered in the grey robes of thick morning fog that obscure the waters of the sea. We had a brief discussion, during which I delegated a handful of tasks to him, and asked for him to teach me a working or cantrip that can be performed with him. He spoke to me of a procedure reminiscent of a spell to produce rain in Joseph Peterson’s Secrets of Solomon for the same purpose, which I shall test at the next possible opportunity. Satisfied, I dismissed the spirit to set about his work.

In the final hours of the specified time frame for the first treasure-obtaining task, as I began to wonder if the spirit had been unable to fulfil his goal, I received a peculiar message from an acquaintance, offering freely to me that which I had specifically requested the sea spirit bring forth.