Tag: practical alchemy
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Ora et Labora: Invocation in Alchemy
Because of their obscure imagery, alchemical texts have come to mean a great many different things to a great many different people. Amidst all these interpretations, there are two specific (opposing) schools of thought that are worth talking about. They are worth talking about because both are incorrect. The first view is that alchemy is…
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Making Venus Talismanic Ink
I’ve done some experimentation in the past with making carbon-based inks. Recently I’ve kicked off a new project to make talismanic planetary inks. Inks where the pigment used is an oxide of the planetary metal itself. I was inspired by a recipe for copper oxide ink found in Jason Logan’s excellent book Make Ink. The…
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Ink Making III: India Ink
This week I continued my experiments in ink making with India ink. India ink is an extension of the carbon black inks that I have made in previous experiments. It is traditionally made using soot or lampblack as a pigment and shellac as a binder. Because shellac is more challenging to work with than gum…
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Building an Alchemical Incubator: Modern Heat for Ancient Work
In our series on spagyric alchemy, we mentioned the benefits of letting an alchemical preparation extract or mature at a consistent temperature. In herbal spagyrics, and doubly so for more advanced types of alchemy, there is a distinct benefit to being able to hold the work at some prescribed temperature for a long period of…