Another writer speaks of many would-be alchemists as "floundering about in a sea of specious book-learning."
If alchemists could speak of their own processes and materials as those authors spoke whom I have quoted, we must expect that the alchemical language would appear mere jargon to the uninitiated. In Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist, Surley, who is the sceptic of the piece, says to Subtle, who is the alchemist—
... Alchemy is a pretty kind of game, Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man With charming ... What else are all your terms, Whereon no one of your writers 'grees with other? Of your elixir, your lac virginis, Your stone, your med'cine, and your chrysosperme, Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury, Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia, Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther; Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heutarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials, Of lye and egg-shells, women's terms, man's blood, Hair o' the head, burnt clout, chalk, merds, and clay, Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass, And moulds of other strange ingredients, Would burst a man to name?
To which Subtle answers,
And all these named Intending but one thing; which art our writers Used to obscure their art. Was not all the knowledge Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols? Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables? Are not the choicest fables of the poets, That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom, Wrapp'd in perplexed allegories?
The alchemists were very fond of using the names of animals as symbols of certain mineral substances, and of representing operations in the laboratory by what may be called animal allegories. The yellow lion was the alchemical symbol of yellow sulphides, the red lion was synonymous with cinnabar, and the green lion meant salts of iron and of copper. Black sulphides were called eagles, and sometimes crows. When black sulphide of mercury is strongly heated, a red sublimate is obtained, which has the same composition as the black compound; if the temperature is not kept very high, but little of the red sulphide is produced; the alchemists directed to urge the fire, "else the black crows will go back to the nest."
The salamander was called the king of animals, because it was supposed that he lived and delighted in fire; keeping a strong fire alight under a salamander was sometimes compared to the purification of gold by heating it.
Fig. XV., reduced from The Book of Lambspring represents this process.
A salamander lives in the fire, which imparts to it a most glorious hue.
