ABSTRACT
THE FINAL GOAL of alchemy, the Stone, is one of a family of transcendentally difficult compounds with different properties. The alkahest is the universal dissolvent, capable of reducing any solid to a fluid. The elixir is the universal medicine, curing any disease and prolonging life. Rectified or philosopher’s gold is the perfected form of ordinary gold, and there is also fixed mercury that cannot be boiled away. Precious oil (pretiosissimum oleum) and fixed water (aqua permanens) are also goals. Lower down in the family hierarchy are various tinctures, seeds, and essences of mercury, sulfur, silver, and gold. Many people counted themselves lucky to have succeeded in creating exotic products like the Animated Spirit of Mercury or the Stellated Regulus of Antimony , an otherworldly poisonous black star, fixed in the bottom of a beaker.1 That, at least, is as far as I have ever gotten.
