The Chemistry of Alchemy Read online

  Lye from leachate was used historically to make soap, glass, and porcelain (when the porcelain process was finally sorted out).

  BATTLING CONTRARIES

  Basil Valentine noted another conflict of contraries, and this one is a heated battle.

  Put about a quarter cup (80 milliliters) of pickling lime in a beaker and the same amount of room-temperature vinegar in a glass (not that we think you keep your vinegar in the freezer, but we need to be exact). Pickling lime is calcium hydroxide, a base, and vinegar is acetic acid, which of course is an acid. Now you are going to mix these, but note: order of addition is important! Chemists have a mantra, “Add Acid,” because mixing acid and water can be an exothermic, that is, heat-producing, reaction. The small amount of heat generated by adding small amounts of acid to a solution can be absorbed—but heat can be generated quickly if a solution is added to acid, and the solution could potentially develop pockets of steam to “boil” and splash.

  Hot, flying acid is not a good thing. Wear your safety glasses and Add Acid.

  In this reaction, however, the heat generated will be only slightly above room temperature, so no worries, but follow standard procedure. Wipe the bottom of the beaker with a paper towel and set it on the inside of your wrist (as you would test a baby bottle). Set the beaker back on your work surface and pour the room-temperature acetic acid into the pickling lime and swirl the contents, holding the bottom and sides of the beaker. Set the beaker back on your wrist. You should be able to feel the new warmth generated. It should be decidedly warm.

  Valentine said the heat evolved because the contrary natures strike each other “like unto Gunpowder.”11

  He was wrong about the gunpowder analogy, but you have to admit he was right about the heat.

  LOVELY ALUM

  Valentine also had a recipe for creating very pleasing alum crystals. Plate 5 in the photo insert is a photograph of some crystals we grew, but slightly different temperatures or concentrations can produce other interesting sizes and shapes. Valentine's objective in forming the crystals was practical—by dissolving and re-crystallizing, he was purifying the alum.

  But he probably also took a moment to admire the lovely results.

  While wearing glasses and gloves, use your 250-milliliter beaker to dissolve a half to three-quarters teaspoon (about 3 to 4 milliliters) of your alum in about three-quarters cup (around 100 milliliters) of distilled water. If it does not all dissolve, don't worry. It will dissolve in the next step.

  Heat the solution gently by placing the beaker in the cast-iron skillet on a low heat until the solution is clear. Remove the beaker from the heat and allow it to cool. After the solution has cooled, add a tiny dusting of alum to the surface of the solution to aid in crystal formation. These added pinches of alum are called seed crystals, a name the alchemists would have approved of. Growing crystals from seed fit into their vision of metals and minerals living and growing.

  Let the glass sit, undisturbed, at least overnight and perhaps for several days. Alum crystals should eventually form, and, when they do, their sparkling, geometric beauty is worth the wait.

  Valentine would not be surprised. It would be as predicted.

  Predictable, too, would be the legend of Sendivogius the Pole. But though a charlatan of the old school, he knew something new was in the air.

  Who're could do under the rolling Sun

  What Sendivogius the Pole hath done?

  Plaque commemorating transmutation by

  Michael Sendivogius for Rudolf II, ca. 1600*

  At the opening of the seventeenth century, the alchemists were struggling with alchemy. Their medicines did not meet with universal acclaim, and transmutations seemed to be in the hands of the charlatans. Some, seeing the problem but unable to let go of the dream, turned to esoteric, spiritual alchemy with the goal of personal transmutation and purification. Others, like Rudolf II, Holy Roman emperor and alchemist, were die-hard believers and seekers after the stone. They must have felt there was still something out there, some secret they were meant to find, but as they grew closer, the secret bubbled away.

  RUDOLF II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR

  Rudolf was born a Habsburg in Vienna in 1552 and, having moved the capital during his reign, died in Prague, Bohemia, in 1612. In his portraits he looks a happy fellow, but this appearance may have resulted from the inherited Habsburg jutting lower jaw. In reality his forty-year reign was troubled. He dealt with Reformation struggles; threats of Turkish invasion; family that vied to replace him; and severe, recurrent depression that deepened over the years until, in the end, he descended into brutal madness.

  Yet, he found some joy in life. He loved all art, including the arts of mathematics, astrology, astronomy, and alchemy. He invited scholars like John Dee to his court and patronized practitioners like Edward Kelly. He must have had a special admiration for alchemy because he experimented with the art and kept an alchemical workroom.1 At times it seems he would have been happier as a back-alley alchemist, and his fortune was his misfortune. But perhaps he could have never been happy at all.

  Depression was not treatable by methods known at his time. As Rudolf's mental state worsened, his competence to rule came into question. He became withdrawn and suspicious. Although he never married, he fathered illegitimate children and had close relationships with men, such as his chamberlain and valets. As he became more helpless in the grip of his disability, these men commanded him and kept others away. Their power was resented and did not help his relations with his family. Eventually he was stripped of his crown by his brother and kept a virtual prisoner in his castle as well as his own mind.

  When Rudolf died, he refused last rites, as his father had before him.

  But in better times, he had welcomed to his court an alchemist with whom he shared a special love of learning and inquiry: the adept commemorated in the quotation with which this chapter begins—Sendivogius the Pole.

  MICHAEL SENDIVOGIUS

  There is a wonderful legend concerning Sendivogius that is part fact, part fiction. And, as seems with all things alchemical, sources conflict. Some say Sendivogius told the story himself, but some say bearded wanderers, in from the cold, spun the tale to earn their supper and a seat by the fire in a hearth of a great hall. The story might go like this…

  On an island near Scotland lived a man named Alexander Seton, and one stormy night he saved a shipwrecked man from drowning. A year later, on March 13, 1602 (details would be added to reinforce authenticity), as part of a continental tour, Seton accepted an invitation to visit the man he'd rescued. In the course of their reunion, they found they had a mutual interest in alchemy. Seton performed a transmutation for his friend, using melted lead, sulfur, and a bit of a mysterious powder of projection. The friend, astonished, begged him to stay and teach him, but Seton demurred with assurances he would return.

  On his travels (with his servant, Hamilton), Seton continued to perform transmutations. He encountered skeptics but convinced them by producing gold pronounced pure by the goldsmith's wife. Then, in Munich, he fell in love with a beautiful woman and eloped with her to the domain of Christian II, the Elector of Saxony.

  Figure 14.1. Michael Sendivogius. (Image used by permission of the Gdansk Library Foundation, Gdansk, Poland. Originally published in Tygodnik Ilustrowany no. 137 [1862]: 181, call number IV 0828.)

  On hearing of the alchemist, the elector commanded a performance. Seton begged off, saying he was on his honeymoon. Seton sent his servant, Hamilton, instead, equipped with some of the powder. Hamilton performed the transmutation, but afterward he felt a sense of foreboding and left Seton to go back to Scotland.

  The elector summoned Seton again, and again Seton offered excuses. The elector tried again, and Seton again postponed. The elector summoned again—but this time without right of refusal. His guards brought Seton before him. The elector demanded Seton tell him the secret of the powder, but Seton declined, so the elector put him to torture to drive home the point. Noneth
eless, Seton refused. The tortures continued until finally, at the point of death, Seton was left to languish.

  The news of Seton's ordeal filtered through alchemical circles and came to the ears of Sendivogius. Sendivogius decided to intervene.

  Sendivogius had been born to a noble Polish family, so through his influence he obtained visiting rights. Or perhaps the elector allowed the visits hoping Seton would reveal his secret to Sendivogius.

  And perhaps Sendivogius visited because he hoped Seton would reveal his secret, too.

  At any rate, Sendivogius visited so often he became a fixture at the prison. The guards relaxed their guard and enjoyed Sendivogius's gifts of money and beverage. In fact, they enjoyed them so much that one visit, they got drunk and fell asleep. (The idea of what the elector would do to them for neglecting their duties should have been enough to keep them awake, so it must have been very potent wine indeed.)

  Crippled from torture and starvation, Seton had to be carried, but Sendivogius was able to pick him up (which explains why Sendivogius always brought wine but not food). They hastened to Seton's house, where they retrieved the remaining powder and Seton's wife, and headed off to Poland.

  The dying Seton, in gratitude, gave Sendivogius the powder but not the secret of how to make it. The secret had caused him such agony, Seton explained, giving it to Sendivogius would be a sin. Then he died.

  At this point the storyteller might reach in his robes and gingerly withdraw a thin fold of paper with palsied hands, and explain that he was in possession of a sample of the powder—given to him by Sendivogius.

  Thereupon the wandering adept would no doubt perform a “transmutation” to the delight of the assembled audience.

  Humbug or not, the story contained elements that reflected the alchemist's life, and no doubt the storyteller enjoyed slipping them in as jokes at his listeners’ expense. For instance, Seton's gold was pronounced good by the goldsmith's wife, a hint of possible collusion. Seton delayed his display of transmutation, as did Kelly and other good charlatans, because such displays were expensive: real gold had to be substituted for the fake and given away as evidence. But the best thing about this story is the way the hirsute alchemist protects himself: he has a sample of the powder of projection but he wasn't given the recipe. Excellent! No reason to lock him up and torture him—he can't make more because he doesn't know the secret.

  And in truth, this threat was real. Later on we will tell of a historically certifiable case of an alchemist imprisoned and forced to work to make the gold he bragged he could.

  And it happened to Sendivogius, too.

  Michael Sendivogius was born in Poland circa 1566 and died there, too, circa 1636.2 Sendivogius studied at the University of Leipzig and later at the University of Vienna. At the age of twenty-seven he found himself in Prague serving as a courier between Emperor Rudolf II and the Polish king Sigismund III and married to a wealthy widow.

  Sendivogius had, by this time, learned some alchemy and some skill with staged transmutations. The news soon reached Rudolf II. Admitted into Rudolf's circle of alchemists, he performed transmutations for the emperor and was awarded with a title and a gold medal. Monetary recompense must have also been involved because in 1597, Sendivogius was able to purchase Edward Kelly's estate near Prague from his widow.

  Unfortunately, at the age of thirty-three he was accused of murder of another alchemist and sentenced to prison. He appealed for help to Rudolf, but the emperor, deep into his melancholia and paranoia, did not acknowledge the request. Sendivogius was, however, released by the intervention of the Polish king.

  After a wave of plague took Sendivogius's wife and two of their four children, Sendivogius sold his estate and moved to Poland, disappointed by life and his treatment by Rudolf. But for whatever reason, financial or personal, he found himself back in Prague at Rudolf's court only a few years later. It may have been for the love of the game because the next episode had to do with his practice of alchemy.

  In 1605, while on a diplomatic mission for Rudolf, Sendivogius was captured by a German duke and held prisoner, his captor demanding to know the secret of the philosophers’ stone. Immediately, Sendivogius's supporters protested. When the duke saw the hornets’ nest he'd stirred up with other powerful German leaders, he quickly blamed his own alchemist for the incident, tortured him until he confessed, hanged him, and set Sendivogius free. Seton's story may have been an invention, but capture for information was a very real threat to the alchemist.

  Sendivogius seemed to settle a bit later in life. On the death of Rudolf II, Sendivogius became an industrial metallurgist for the new Holy Roman emperor, Ferdinand II, and built foundries and metalworking facilities. The historical account does not provide us with a firm date or the circumstances of Sendivogius's death, but such limitations do not exist for the raconteur. According to legend, Sendivogius ran into financial trouble again and disappeared for some years, only to resurface in Warsaw. He survived by “the tricks of the vulgar charlatan, selling marvelous nostrums, counterfeiting silver, and borrowing money from the credulous on the strength of false promises to make the philosophers’ stone.” He died, it was said, in 1636 at eighty years of age.3

  At this point, a question arises: If all the above is true, or if half of it is true—or if some of it is true—why don't we lump Sendivogius in with the scoundrels? He obviously knew something of showmanship, shenanigans, and the old switcheroo. But an alchemist must do what an alchemist must do. Sendivogius did his share of conniving, but it was for a good cause. When it came to the search for the philosophers’ stone, he was sincerely looking.

  And he found something.

  Sendivogius found an invisible agent in the air, the spirit of the Earth, without which there would be no life or combustion—the same substance we call oxygen—and the alchemists called the vital air.

  Of course we must immediately say that Sendivogius was not alone in this conclusion.4 Moreover, it could be said that the conclusion was obvious. The only life-forms that exist without air are ones of which he had no knowledge. Yet he took the idea further by saying that this life-giving essence was a part of the air, not all of the air. He also said this component could be found in saltpeter, a mixture of the compounds we now know as potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate, KNO3 and NaNO3. Ever the showman, Sendivogius called this substance central niter, or “our salt, which rises in the sea of the world, Water Which Does Not Wet Hands, without which nothing in this world can be born or come to exist.”5

  Saltpeter is a ubiquitous compound found virtually anywhere there is natural organic decomposition, such as in stables and waste conduits. Edgar Allen Poe placed it on underground walls in “The Cask of Amontillado” as a symbol of death and decay. Saltpeter was also a source of fascination for the alchemists, among them, Sendivogius.

  Sendivogius noticed saltpeter, when heated, releases an air that supports combustion,6 as we will see in the demonstration that accompanies this chapter. In addition, saltpeter is a fertilizer, so once again a life giver. Yet the same saltpeter, which causes smoldering splints to burn, cools when dissolved. What is more, and no doubt stimulating to Sendivogius the alchemist, saltpeter is essential to aqua regia, the liquid that dissolves even gold. Sendivogius may not have been the first to make these observations,7 but his spirit of inquiry and experimental acuity show that Sendivogius, the scrabbler, schemer, and freewheeler, was a true student of alchemy all the same.

  To understand Sendivogius's method for isolating saltpeter, we must first understand what is meant by “salt.” The term salt is used to describe a host of chemical compounds that resemble and behave like regular table salt, which is sodium chloride, NaCl. A salt is usually white and crystalline, although it can be different colors, such as our friend copper(II) sulfate, which is a blue salt. Salts are often soluble in water, but some salts are more soluble than others. In Discourse of Fire and Salt, Blaise de Vigenère (1523–1596) stated that “[saltpeter] is made of…fire and Salt—the fi
rst because it burns, and the second because it dissolves in water.”8

  Sendivogius was aware of the time-honored methods for collecting saltpeter and two other salts from barnyard soil—sal ammoniac and a salt he called “fixed salt” or “solid salt.” In the demonstration that follows, we will use these known processes to help interpret some of his recipes. We admit caution is required in translating any alchemical recipe because alchemists used Decknamen, and they used different names for the same thing and the same name for different things (niter, our niter, and the niter of the philosophers could be different substances—or the same). And they were mystics. They thought in terms of spiritual essences or ideals, and spirits are hard to pin down. But we believe we have a workable interpretation.

  To collect saltpeter, Sendivogius extracted barnyard soil, which meant he ran water through the soil and collected the water washed out of the soil. The first extraction, which Sendivogius called niter, contained all three salts: saltpeter, sal ammoniac, and fixed salt.

  Our nitre is thus obtained from virgin soil. Although it appears to be one body, it actually contains within itself three different salts…valuable and philosophical salt in which the spirit of the Earth is concealed…ammonical or volatile salt…. alkaline, or solid salt. Our salt is therefore three-in-one and in this respect it resembles our Creator.9

  Sendivogius used two of the salts to make aqua regia, the combination of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid we used to dissolve gold in demonstration 7. He recombined the fixed salt (potassium carbonate) and the volatile salt (ammonium chloride), and he added spirit of niter (nitric acid). The result will indeed be aqua regia and will dissolve gold—if the proportions are right. If not, potassium carbonate, a base, will react with nitric acid, and these two contraries will form water, which is not helpful! So the recipe will work as long as there isn't too much fixed salt. Fixed salt, in this recipe, is a gratuitous ingredient. Then again, we don't believe Sendivogius added the extra ingredient to mislead; he was just going by what worked for him.