The Chemistry of Alchemy Page 14

  However, according to her biographer, the word alchemy didn't appear in any of Anne's correspondence, though she clearly used alchemical methods. Her husband, the elector, maintained a workroom called his “gold house” in which he explored transmutation, but the electress limited herself to medicines. Was it from a sense of moral correctness? Or was it for the threat that loomed ever large for Renaissance women who skirted occult practice? Perhaps. This threat loomed large for our next hero, too, but Anna Maria Zieglerin did not see it coming.

  ANNA MARIA ZIEGLERIN

  Anna Maria Zieglerin (1550–1575) had an eventful life. Her parents were minor nobility in Saxony and, according to Zieglerin, she spent a good part of her childhood in the presence of our last hero, Anne of Denmark, and her husband, Augustus. If true, then Zieglerin was no doubt aware of the alchemical activities of these two—medicinal for the electress and transmutational for the elector—which could explain how she knew to resort to these conversation starters when needed. Eighteen years the junior of Anne of Denmark, Zieglerin eventually became a dealer in yellow liquids, too, but Zieglerin lacked one important commonality with Anne of Denmark—discretion—and she would pay the price. Nothing will do but to tell the story as put forth by Zieglerin's biographer, Tara Nummedal, who was able to ferret out the fateful details.10

  Though her later life would be well documented by the courts, much of what is given of her early life comes from Zieglerin's self-reporting, which could be quite creative. Zieglerin, by her own account, was born prematurely but wrapped in human skin by the elector himself and anointed with a special ointment. Anna declared her idyllic life under the elector's protection ended with rape by a wealthy landowner whom she had rejected. As a result (according to Anna), she gave birth to his child but drowned it.

  At this juncture we must add that Anna must have been a very entertaining storyteller, or a very unbelievable one, because it would seem that a self-confessed murderess would have met with a cold reception, but apparently her audience accepted her account without censure.

  She then (so she said) married a nobleman who died in a riding accident, whereupon she committed to a second marriage to Heinrich Stombach, a court jester, although she didn't like him very much.

  After this turn of events, Zieglerin and Stombach met Philipp Sommering, a preacher turned alchemist (in the manner of Paracelsus), while all three were in service to the Duke of Gotha. When Gotha was besieged in an altercation between states, Zieglerin, Stombach, and Sommering fled to the duchy Brunswick-Lüneburg, a rich mining district of latter-day Germany.

  Interested in whatever mining techniques alchemists had to offer (which we learned from Biringuccio and Agricola were not inconsiderable), the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg took on Sommering as alchemist and Stombach as Sommering's assistant. Zieglerin tried to insinuate herself as a sort of gofer in the court but ran into some resistance from the duchess.

  The duchess, who had nine children who lived to adulthood, saw the young Zieglerin as a threat to the moral compass of the court, perhaps due to her close association with two men, and perhaps because of Zieglerin's entertaining stories. With a common response of a young woman to a hierarchical dispute, Zieglerin made a play for the duke's attention. She did so by telling him that she, too, was an alchemist.

  More than just an idle announcement, she presented him with twenty handwritten pages, titled “Concerning the Noble and Precious Art of Alchamia.” The duke was impressed. Zieglerin soon talked him into providing her with workroom facilities and even an assistant.

  She wrote to the duke regularly (it must have been difficult to get personal audiences in a thriving ducal court), and told him of her progress. Suspiciously familiar with confidence techniques, she send him a small sample she said was philosophers’ stone and alluded to biblical images in her complicated and exacting instructions for producing it. In addition, Zieglerin had her own special ingredient, a yellow liquid she called lion's blood. This powerful potion could preserve fruit (which sounds like Anne of Denmark's liqueur) and, when mixed with horse manure, could encourage an excellent crop. We will make our version of lion's blood in a future demonstration, but, while it would also encourage a good crop, it won't fulfill Zieglerin's following, grander, promises.

  Anna Zieglerin went on to promise the duke she would eventually use her lion's blood to make gemstones as well as transmute metal, a common promise of wishful-thinking alchemists to their patrons. While it is tempting to assume all of these promises were deceptions, this was a time when proof by authority carried significant weight, and by now there were enough authorities in the alchemical literature to validate aspirations. Sincere adepts read, believed, and were sure if someone would equip them with a workroom, they would succeed. But in Anna's case, it may have been more complex than simply fraud or faith. Her story kept getting more elaborate—her claims more extravagant. She didn't know when to quit. Any good cozener will have an exit strategy before they go in.

  Zieglerin did not.

  She said her lion's blood would help women conceive and deliver healthy children in a fraction of the time of normal gestation. Zieglerin was astute enough to use the low-dose Paracelsian precaution (she advised only nine drops a day to conceive, cutting it to three drops during pregnancy), but then invented, with full detail, a Count Carl von Oettingen who was madly in love with her and taught her the lion's blood alchemy. Again, this tack was not uncommon in alchemists’ scenarios—the initiate claiming a learned mentor—but in Zieglerin's imagination, the tale grew until she and the count, with the help of lion's blood, would create a race of superhuman children to repopulate the world after the Antichrist! Obviously, if a swindler, she was not a seasoned one, and she would not live long enough to season.

  It is not clear why the tide turned against Zieglerin and company, but after three years of work on alchemical and mining projects, the duke had them arrested on charges of murder, attempted murder, attempted theft, and failing to live up to their contracts to perform the promised alchemy. Little faith can be put into the first charges in an era when every case of indigestion could be credited to malicious poisoning and proof could be revealed in night visions. But on the charges of failing to live up to their promised production of the philosophers’ stone and transmutation, they were, of course, guilty. There is the possibility of jealously entering in, as evidenced by charges in court of adultery and love magic leveled at Zieglerin. But these considerations would be only minor. If she had actually produced gold, any dalliance would have been forgiven.

  In the end, under torture, they admitted to everything they were told to admit. The alchemist and the jester had their skin pinched with glowing tongs and then quartered. Anna was also flayed but then burned on an iron stool. The vindictiveness of the deaths may seem puzzling until it is remembered that a powerful, intelligent, and knowledgeable duke was taken in by a clown, a sleight-of-hand man, and a girl.

  Anna Maria Zieglerin was in her twenties when she died.

  But not all alchemical hucksters were as innocent as Zieglerin, and certainly not all got caught. These lucky ones are the ones we'll never know by name. The others, well, at least their story will get told, as we will see a couple of chapters from now.

  But first, let's see what the women are cooking up!

  DEMONSTRATION 9. BOOK OF SECRETS

  Welcome to our own book of secrets: a hodgepodge of cool tricks, sparkly things, and pretty colors. Here is our first secret: safety glasses protect eyes. Shhhhhhhh…

  DISPOSAL

  The root killer can go down the sink, followed by a two- to three-minute water rinse. The gold and silver script as well as the artificial gem should go in your collection of alchemical oddities, or, if you must, in the trash.

  BLUE VERSUS WHITE

  In her tale of Zieglerin,11 Tara Nummedal told us Zieglerin used blue and white vitriol as ingredients when making her philosophers’ stone. Unfortunately, one of the recurring difficulties for students of alchemy is tha
t the actual substance named depends on who you are talking to. Vitriol can be copper or iron sulfate (and truthfully other materials as well), but we believe in this case Zieglerin was using copper(II) sulfate because only copper(II) sulfate can be either blue or white, depending on the circumstances.

  Take about a teaspoon (5 milliliters) of root killer, put it in your crucible, and then put the crucible in the cast-iron skillet. Initially the copper-sulfate crystals should be a lovely deep blue.

  Heat your crystals on about 80 percent power on a stovetop burner and put the crucible lid or a watch glass on the crucible, but set it slightly ajar. The lid is necessary because these crystals may pop during the uneven heating, but you do not want an airtight seal for two reasons. First, moisture has to be able to escape for the demonstration to work, and second, it is always a bad idea to heat an airtight container. That's called a bomb.

  After about fifteen minutes you can use your oven mitt to lift the lid and check. You should see the blue color has begun to be replaced by white, and the consistency is changing, too. You may want to stir your crystals with a screwdriver or sacrificial spoon for more even heating, but watch out for flying crystals. You may see some moisture forming on the lid of your container.

  When your sample is completely white, remove it from the heat and sprinkle it very lightly with water; it should regain its blue color. Impressive when you're an alchemist.

  The chemistry of the situation is as follows. When copper(II) sulfate, the chemical that makes up root killer, crystallizes, it attracts and holds water. There are other compounds that do this, such as the silica in the little, plastic containers you might see in a pill bottle. Their purpose, of course, is to absorb moisture and keep it away from your pills.

  This attraction for water means that the formula for copper(II) sulfate, Cu(SO4)2, more realistically could be written Cu(SO4)2·5H2O, which means that each unit of copper(II) sulfate in the crystal has five molecules of water held to it, but loosely. These waters of hydration, as they are called, can be removed by heating, just as water is removed from clothes by heating in the dryer. Copper(II) sulfate with the water is blue; copper(II) sulfate without the water is white. Not that mysterious, unless you're a Renaissance alchemist and can see enough wonder in the change from white to blue to throw it in your recipe for philosophers’ stone.

  GOLDEN AND SILVERY SCRIPT

  In Penny Bayer's essay on women and alchemy in the Renaissance, there is a rather cryptic reference to “an anonymous female Jewish expert…mentioned in manuscripts in Spain and Venice as the source for recipes for dyeing, tinting, writing in gold and work with silver.”12 We're about to blow her cover and give away her secret.

  Take a large beaker with less than a teaspoon of tin (less than 5 milliliters), place it in your cast-iron skillet and melt the tin as in demonstration 2. Using an oven mitt, swirl the beaker so you get as thin a layer as possible and stop the process when the tin has attained the gold-colored oxide. Tip the beaker gently so there is a tail of tin on the side of the beaker, let the tin cool until it ceases to flow, and then set it on a heat-resistant surface to cool. Let it cool completely (at least fifteen minutes), and it should peel away from the beaker with some encouragement from your screwdriver. Wear work gloves while using the screwdriver to peel off the tin.

  If the gold-colored layer is thin enough, you should be able to tear or cut it into little flakes, and it should stay fairly shiny. Separate an egg into yolk and white, then mix your gold flakes into the egg yolk. The yolk serves as a base for your ink and keeps the tin from oxidizing further. You should be able, with a little practice, to use your “gold ink” to make a golden line with a nice metallic sheen and texture.

  If you'd rather write in silver, melt the tin and don't allow it to go into the gold-colored oxide phase. Swirl it when it first melts into as thin a layer as possible. Again, allow the thin layer to cool, and then peel it from the beaker. Shred it as before, and this time use egg white for the base. It might take some work to get the technique perfected, but the results are pleasing and could convince someone you are spending a lot of money to write in silver—when we know you're not.

  ARTIFICIAL GEMS

  The idea of making artificial gems has been around since before Zosimos, but the original process required melting glass, which involves a much hotter fire than we are prepared to stoke. However, della Porta, one of our previous personalities, was kind enough to share a recipe that Zieglerin may have been aware of. She touted her philosophers’ stone as able to make “diamonds, rubies and sapphires,”13 and if she provided examples, she probably used something similar to della Porta's process.

  In this procedure, we will use what the alchemists called “oil of flints” but which we call sodium silicate solution, or water glass (see “Stores and Ores”). This material was, and still is, made by dissolving silica, the fundamental material of sand, rocks, and flint, in a caustic solution and is a favorite with crystal-garden growers. Fashion a mold for your gem that has a volume of about a tablespoon (15 milliliters) from aluminum foil and then lay a thin layer of flexible plastic wrap loosely into the mold. Take the verdigris you (hopefully) saved from the very first demonstration and add about a quarter teaspoon (1 milliliter) to a disposable cup. Add about a tablespoon (25 milliliters) of sodium silicate solution to the verdigris in the cup and stir the mixture with a disposable stick or straw. Pour the solution into the mold and let it sit overnight. In the morning, it should have hardened to an attractive “emerald,” which will separate easily from the plastic wrap in the mold.

  Not a perfect emerald? Not to worry. Zieglerin would have explained it is in the process of ripening. The idea that gems and metals grow in the ground from seed was pervasive in alchemy. Where did this idea come from? Proof by analogy, of course. If plants grow from seeds in the ground, and metals and gems are found in the ground, then surely metals and gems grow from seed, too.

  To perfect the process, the alchemist would explain to the patron, they just needed more time…and money…

  But the Paracelsian women were not the only ones seeking patronage. There was a complementary crop of Paracelsian men, and we are headed off to join them next.

  Go, my sons, sell your lands,…burn…your books…buy…stout shoes, get away to the mountains,…the shores of the sea, and the deepest recesses of the earth;…Be not ashamed to learn [from] peasantry…. Purchase coals, build furnaces,…and experiment without wearying. In this way, and no other, will you arrive at…knowledge of things.

  Petrus Severinus, Idea Medecinae Philosophicae, 1571*

  At the risk of acknowledging a bit of antiquity, we confess we remember a time when gender studies, African American history, and Latino studies were not standard university fare. These subjects were introduced as a result of a social revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, which, admittedly, we also remember. It turns out (though before our time), the introduction of chemistry into the western-European university curriculum was equally revolutionary. It may be difficult to think of chemistry as a radical course of study, but it was. The rebels? Young medical doctors. The cause of the rebellion? Paracelsus.

  Soon after Paracelsus's death, mineral medicines were tried in France, such as antimony as a laxative, and advertised as Paracelsian cures. Through court cases and influence, the medical establishment managed to outlaw these treatments, arguing metals as medicines could be poisonous—and they were right. Paracelsus said the dosage determined the poison, but Paracelsus was dead and it wasn't clear his followers understood the precaution.

  The medical faculty also objected to the air of the occult surrounding all things Paracelsian. In his writings, Paracelsus often called on supernatural influences, and his followers picked up these notions and extended them. Witchcraft paranoia was on the rise in the sixteenth century, accompanied by a fear of being associated with witchcraft, so the medical schools made a prudent choice when they turned away from Paracelsianism. Moreover, some of Paracelsus's writings did li
ttle to inspire confidence.

  At times his writings seemed cogent, such as this excerpt from the manuscript “The Mercuries of the Metals.”

  Mercury of the Moon

  Let silver be reduced to thin plates, in such a way that it may be easily removed, and at the same time well purified. Sprinkle one of such plates with strong vinegar, and set aside in a humid place for a short space of time, until it becomes completely blue.1

  A nice, clear recipe, but with one problem: the product of silver and vinegar isn't blue. The blue color may have been a copper impurity or it may be a mistranslation. The manuscript may be pseudo-Paracelsus, or Paracelsus may have made a copy error when he borrowed this procedure from another source. On the other hand, the following paragraph from A Book concerning Long Life is classic Paracelsus.

  There is also another way of preserving long life, which Mahomet prescribed to his disciple according to magic, and endowed him with many years; nor did he do this from God, but from the influence which is beyond Nature. Because Mahomet, as a magnus, exercised this method for the unskilled population, not for himself, he has won an immortal name. Archeus preserved his life for several years beyond a century, a thing which is laid to his discredit, and was referred to as idolatry. He was equally skilled in cabalistic art.2

  We have no interpretation, and neither did the medical faculty.