The Green Lion and Vitriol.

Caveat

    Please read the previous article, Ora et Labora: Introductio, before attempting to perform any of these works! 

This is the beginning of the disclaimer. 

The author assumes no personal responsibility for any accidents or harm that may come to any individual (or their property) who attempts to work with the procedures listed below. By reading past this disclaimer, you (the reader) agree that, if you in any way perform with the experiments listed below, you do so at your own risk. 

This is the end of the disclaimer.  

Introduction

     So much of the symbolism of Alchemy is lost to modern thinkers. With the rising popularity of Hermeticism came so many arguments about whether Alchemy was a chemical philosophy, or an operative process. I shall state here, for all posterity, that for most Alchemists, the distinction would have been nothing else but a doppelganger. Although certain alchemists, such as Zosimos of Panopolis, were primarily contemplative in their use of the exoteric symbols of alchemy (Linden). For most the the division between the sacred and the profane was not as clear cut as it is to us today. Metals changed color according to the power of celestial virtues, the natural putrefaction of animal and vegetable matter occurred by virtue of the ubiquitous pneuma settling upon them (Madigan, Martinko, et al). According to Avicenna, the fusion of metals was proof of the al ishaq, or divine love between them (Eliade).

     I ask you this: Why cannot we produce copper sulphate by way of reacting clean copper with conc. Sulfuric Acid with a Hydrogen Peroxide workup and call it alchemy? It is because the transformation of the metals were not only proofs, but reenactments of divine truths. Without the passion, death and resurrection of copper, we are lost. The copper needs to die by fire, be transfigured in the mercurial waters (be spiritualized), and be coagulated as the as the young green lion—solve et coagula.

      In this article, I shall reveal to you operative alchemy and how it demonstrates the efficacy of certain philosophical truths.  

The Green Lion

     The Green Lion first undergoes the process of putrefaction by way of fire in a salt bath. According to The Perfection of Metals, "The Salt takes out the excess humidities and sulphuriety of the metal"(Geber). Take your copper and bathe it in salt water until clean. Dry your copper, then place it in a crucible which has salt in its bed. When you heat it with a hot flame, a black crust will begin to form after a few hours of calcination. After this happens, carefully remove your copper pieces and place them into a small glass beaker. Shake the contents vigorously, so the the blackness sheds off of your copper. Take the solid pieces and repeat the process until all is rendered black. This is your nigredo phase; it is the death of the metal.

     Take two small beakers and place your powder into one beaker and charge the other with distilled vinegar (mercurial water). Place the black matter upon a heating mantle at 70° C. Gently drop mercurial water over the black matter until it is just wet. As it drys out, you should begin to notice a slight green film forming at the bottom—the chase begins! Let the black matter cool, then pour the entire contents of the mercurial water flask onto the black matter. Your Green Lion will dissolve in the mercurial water, while the black matter will not. Decant the mercurial water off and re-heat the wet black matter. Repeat the process until most or all of this matter has dissolved in the mercurial water.

     Allow the mercurial water to slowly evaporate and the Green Lion will emerge as bright verdigris crystals after the period of a few weeks. 

     I think the Green Lion is the subject in question for several reasons. According to George Ripley:

Take the green lion without dissolution in vinegar, (as sometimes the custom is) put it in a large earthen retort, which can endure the fire, and distil it the same way as you distil aqua fortis, putting a receiver under it, and luting the joints well, that it may not respire:—then distil first with a gentle fire, till you see white fumes appear, then change
the receiver, stopping it well, and distil with a great fire so, as aqua fortis is distilled, thus continuing twenty-four hours, and if you continue the fire the space of eight days, you will see the receiver always full of white fumes, and so you will have the blood of the green lion, which we call secret water, and acetum acerrimum, by which ail bodies are reduced to their first matter, and the body of man preserved from all infirmities. (312)

So, according to Ripley, the "acetum acerrimum" or "sharp vinegar" is obtained from our Green Lion. Also, when copper oxide is reacted with strong vinegar in the presence of heat, it turns a resplendent verdigris color. Contrary to popular thought, the Green lion is not an unintelligible ubiquitous curio lost to the ages, but something the alchemist may still work with.

      Sharp vinegar is used in the preparation of the white tincture (ibid). Evylyn Underhill in her seminal work, Mysticism, has a great many insights to add to the subject. I shall cite her at length:

     Perhaps the quaintest and most celebrated of all these allegories is that which describes the quest of the philosopher's stone as "The Hunting of the Green Lion." The Green Lion, though few would divine it, is the first matter of the Great Work: hence, in spiritual alchemy, natural man in his wholeness—Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury in their crude state. He is called green because, seen from the transcendent standpoint, he is still unripe, hid latent powers undeveloped; and a lion because of his strength, fierceness, and virility. Here the common opinion that a pious effeminacy, a diluted and amiable spirituality, is the proper raw material of the mystic life, is emphatically contradicted. It is not by education of the lamb, but by hunting and taming of the wild intractable lion, instinct with vitality, full of ardure and courage, exhibiting heroic qualities on the sensual plane, that the Great Work is achieved. The lives of the saints enforce the same law. 

"Our lyon wanting maturitie
Is called greene for its unripeness trust me:
And yet full quickly he can run,
And soon can overtake the Sun."

     The Green Lion, then, in his strength and wholeness is the only creature potentially able to attain Perfection. It needs the adoption and purification of all the wealth and resources of man's nature, not merely the encouragement of his transcendental tastes, if he is to "overtake the Sun" and achieve the Great Work. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by violence, not by amiable aspiration. "The Green Lion," says one alchemist, "is the priest by whom Sol and Luna are wed." In other words, the raw stuff of the indomitable of the alchemist, the transmuting process, is therefore described as hunting the Green Lion through the forest of the sensual world. He, like the Hound of Heaven, is on a love chase down the nights and down the days.

      When the lion is caught, when Destiny overtakes it, its head must be cut off as a preliminary to the taming process. This is what is called by the alchemists "The Head of the Raven," the crow, or the Vulture for its blackness. (104)

     Moving through the sensual world to capture the Green Lion should have obvious meaning to any magician or alchemist. Copper is the metal of Venus, who rules Taurus, whose realm is the sensual. It also refers to the physical aspect of raw and putrefied copper; The Green Lion, the spiritualized and coagulated powder. 

     It's important to note the reference to the role the Green Lion plays in the marriage of Sol and Luna. In fact, this is only half of the formula. The acetum acerrimum, as is stated by Ripley, produces the white tincture; philosophical oil (oil of vitriol) is used for the red(314ff). The decapitation of the lion is none other than its rectification. As the white spiritualized vapor of the lion is collected, the body undergoes the process of the Raven's Head. From this point, the Green Lion may be hunted yet again by adding more Mercurial Water. The addition of the mercurial water is the equivalent to re-breathing the spirit of life back into the body of death; the exhalation of the Green Lion, the liberation of that spirit.

Vitriol

   We begin with the death of Venus, or copper by fire as was performed above. Instead of imbibing it with Mercurial Waters, honer it with liquid Sulphur (dilute Sulfuric Acid). Set it on a mild heat and allow it to dissolve completely. It will be evident that this has happened when the solution becomes a dark blue color. 

     After this has been accomplished, allow your solution to slowly coagulate over the period of several weeks and large crystals will begin forming.

                                                      Vitriol coagulating in solution.

     The acrostic V.I.T.R.I.O.L., or Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, is translated roughly as "Visit the interior of the Earth and by rectification thou shalt discover the hidden stone." This is simply an admonition for how one aught use this material. By rectification, you will obtain the Mercurial Oil (conc. Sulfuric acid), which is used in the preparation of the red tincture (idem).

Conclusion

    The transfiguration of metals is not mere allegory in most cases, but an operative process that confirms certain philosophical truths. In the two procedures given above, we explored the life, death, and resurrection of Venus. The calcination lead to the death, or nigredo, phase of Venus. The dissolution of the metal was its spiritualization, and the coagulation is the resurrection. That is to say that the fist phase of the work is to make all water, as it were, then take the sudtilized copper and bring it back to the material realm, but in a new and spiritually exalted sense.

     The process I'm describing is commonly referred to with the adage, "Solve et Coagula," or dissolve and coagulate. Death is not the end of anything, but rather, it represents the death of excesses in the body, so that the seed of your being may be liberated and a new spiritual being may arise at the other end of the work. 

      

Works Cited:
Anon. The Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers: The Philosophers Mercury, by George Ripley. London: Macdonald and Son, 1815. PDF.


Eliade, Mircea. The Forge and the Crucible. Trans. Stephen Corrin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Print.

Geber.  Investigation, or Search of Perfection. Trans. Richard Russel. London, 1696. PDF.

Linden, Stanton J. The Alchemy Reader. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.

Michael T. Madigan, John M. Martinko, Paul V. Dunlap, and David P. Clark. Biology of Microorganisms, 12th ed. New York: Pearson, 2006. Print.

Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism.Stilwel, KS: Digireads, 2005. Print.