The “Clavicula, or Little Key” of Raymond Lully is generally considered to contain the arch secrets of alchemical adeptship; it elucidates the other treatises of its author, and undertakes to declare the whole art without any fiction. The transmutation of metals depends upon their previous reduction into volatile sophic argent vive, and the only metals worth reducing, for the attainment of this prima materia, are silver and gold. This argent vive is said to be dryer, hotter, and more digested than the common substance, but its extraction is enveloped in mystery and symbolism, and the recipes are impossible to follow for want of the materials so evasively and deceptively described. At the same time, it is clear that the operations are physical, and that the materials and objects are also physical, which points are sufficient for our purpose, and may be easily verified by research.
Moreover, the alchemist who calls himself Raymond Lully was acquainted with nitric acid and with its uses as a dissolvent of metals. He could form aqua regia by adding sal ammoniac, or common salt, to nitric acid, and he was aware of its property of dissolving gold. Spirit of wine was well known to him, says Gruelin; he strengthened it with dry carbonate of potash, and prepared vegetable tinctures by its means. He mentions alum from Rocca, marcasite, white and red mercurial precipitate. He knew the volatile alkali and its coagulations by means of alcohol. He was acquainted with cupellated silver, and first obtained rosemary oil by distilling the plant with water.[P]
FOOTNOTES:
[K] This illness is referred to by another writer, with details of a miraculous kind. “About 1275 (the chronology of all the biographers is a chaos of confusion) he fell ill a second time, and was reduced to such an extremity that he could take neither rest nor nourishment. On the feast of the Conversion of St Paul, the crucified Saviour again appeared to him, glorified, and surrounded by a most exquisite odour, which surpassed musk, amber, and all other scents. In remembrance of this miracle, on the same day, in the same bed and place where he lived and slept, the same supernal odour is diffused.”
[L] The following variation is also related:—“Finding him still alive when they bore him to the ship, the merchants put back towards Genoa to get help, but they were carried miraculously to Majorca, where the martyr expired in sight of his native island. The merchants resolved to say nothing of their precious burden, which they embalmed and preserved religiously, being determined to transport it to Genoa. Three times they put to sea with a wind that seemed favourable, but as often they were forced to return into port, which proved plainly the will of God, and obliged them to make known the martyrdom of the man whom they revered, who was stoned for the glory of God in the town of Bugia (?) in the year of grace 1318.” From this account it will be seen that the place of Lully’s violent death, as well as the date on which it occurred, are both involved in doubt. He was born under the pontificate of Honorius IV., and died, according to Genebrand, about 1304; but the author of the preface to the meditations of the Hermit Blaquerne positively fixes his decease on the feast of the martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul, June 29, 1315, and declares that he was eighty-six years old.
[M] E.g., Jean-Marie de Vernon, who extends the lists to about three thousand, and, following the Père Pacifique de Provence, prolongs his life by the discovery of the universal medicine.
[N] “Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers,” ed. 1815.
[O] Kenyon, “Gold Coins of England,” pp. 57, 58.
[P] Gruelin, Geschichte der Chemie, i. 74.