This document provides an alternative version of the Actum Leyden letter with additional details from someone who claims to have performed the process. Key differences include only filling the phial half-full with salt water, using a glass stopper sealed with plaster, seeing black matter and colors during digestion, being able to ingest the elixir at the third order with effects like regenerating nails and hair, and performing multiplications without the alkahest water. This version provides instructions left out of previous letters on using the elixir and multiplying it to transmute metals like lead to gold.
This document provides an alternative version of the Actum Leyden letter with additional details from someone who claims to have performed the process. Key differences include only filling the phial half-full with salt water, using a glass stopper sealed with plaster, seeing black matter and colors during digestion, being able to ingest the elixir at the third order with effects like regenerating nails and hair, and performing multiplications without the alkahest water. This version provides instructions left out of previous letters on using the elixir and multiplying it to transmute metals like lead to gold.
This document provides an alternative version of the Actum Leyden letter with additional details from someone who claims to have performed the process. Key differences include only filling the phial half-full with salt water, using a glass stopper sealed with plaster, seeing black matter and colors during digestion, being able to ingest the elixir at the third order with effects like regenerating nails and hair, and performing multiplications without the alkahest water. This version provides instructions left out of previous letters on using the elixir and multiplying it to transmute metals like lead to gold.
This seems to be a translation by a man who actually did the process himself, and it has some incredible details added.
The title says "A dying Cappucine monk left this tract to his beloved brother and signed it with his blood. Prague 3-29-1672"
And since the letter doesn't include the introduction by the monk and the whole letter is written in a summarized straight forward way, without the elegant wording used in the monks original letter from an earlier date, I think it's obvious this is re-write and also includes things not in the original letter which must have come from experience from actually doing the process himself and using the elixir. Here are some key differences:
1. He says to fill the phial only half-way with dew salt water at the start of the process.
2. A glass stopper is used and then sealed with lutem (plaster mixed with egg whites)
3. He says the water itself will turn black, then deposit a gray salt on the sides on the phial when you put it over a low flame in Balneum Siccum instead of using a sand bath. (Balneo Siccum = sand bath). Then when you put it back in Balneum Mary, the gray salt is supposed to dissolve back into the water. Eventually by the 5th coagulation and dissolution, the salt will be white and the water will be clear. The salt is to be tested by putting it on a hot silver plate and seeing if it flows like wax. If it does, then it's to be placed back in the phial and the process continued.
4. Instead of the dosage of only 5 drops, he says to administer 25 drops to completely cure a person of even the worst illness.
5. Now he says to add a little gold oxide powder or fine gold leaf to the water little by little until it can't absorb anymore. Then carefully decant the solution from the undissolved gold into another phial which you fill only 1/4 full instead of 2/3.
6. He says during the first 40 days of digestion you will see a lot of black matter. Then you put it over the low flame of the Balneum Siccum and you will see a beautiful display of colors, and you will hear a noise like water and ice, and you will observe the creation of the whole world. Then after 13 or 14 days it will change into a brownish red powder like red cinnabar. But if silver was used it will become like a clear crystalline matter.
7. He says to take one part of this cinnabar powder and encase it in wax, and place it with 5 parts of gold in a closed container which you then heat over fire for one hour. After that hour, the gold will be brittle and will become the projection powder. You encase one part of this in wax, then mix it with 10 parts inferior metal like lead, and heat it to molten state but not in a closed vessel, and after one hour it will be changed to gold. 2 8. He says you can take this red powder of the 1st order, put it in a phial and heat it gently in Balneum Mary waterbath for 35 days, and it will change into a beautiful red oil. The silver stone will become a blue oil (which makes sense because silver dissolved in acid becomes blue so maybe there is a chemical explanation for this Alkahest). He says 3 drop of this oil will heal all wounds, and cure all illness, and will keep a human healthy by making them loose all their hair and nails and they will grow back agian, new and youthful. (Just like the description of the Premum Ens of Melissa) He says it will also cure everything by raising your temperature and lost strength will be renewed shortly.
9. Now the multiplication is different than the original letter -- he says to put the oil back into the Balneum Siccum digestion over the flame, and in 10 days it will transform itself back into a powder with the most beautiful colors, only much redder and prettier than before, glowing like a ruby or carbuncle. The blue oil from silver will become like snow. (At this point when he says glowing, I think he only means reflecting light brilliantly the way a ruby does, because this is not yet multiplied far enough to literally glow)
10. Now he affirms that at this stage it's only at the 2nd multiplication because he says you use one part on 50 parts gold, and then 1 part of the projection powder on 100 parts inferior metal to transmute it to gold.
11. To bring it to the 3rd order, you heat it again in the phial in the water bath Balneum Mary for 30 days this time instead of 35 and it becomes an oil. This time the oil from gold is dark red, and the one from silver is white instead of blue. Now what is remarkable is he actually say you can ingest this oil of the 3rd order as only 1 drop in wine, and it will cure all disease and make your nails and hair fall out then regrow and regenerate your whole body, but you must only take it twice in one year, or only once every 6 months, because it is so fiery it can kill you. He says you must be careful because both body and soul are affected.
12. He says to bring it to the 4th multiplication, put it into the Balneum Siccum sand bath like before, and you will observe all sorts of color and living things moving up and down, and you will have a deep red powder at the end. Now 1 part is used on 500 parts gold to make the projection powder. And 1 part of the powder is used on 1000 parts inferior metal to transmute it to gold, still waiting an entire hour before letting it cool.
13. He keeps going describing the multiplications, and eventually says he brought it all the way to the 5th and one part of the projection powder transmutes 100,000 parts lead to gold. He says he didn't go any further because it will penetrate the glass causing a "delicious" smell. He doesn't mention it glowing. Maybe it has to be brought to the 6th order to glow, and the only alchemists to achieve that are the ones who knew you needed quartz.
14. He warns that during your work, many Fratres Rosea Crucis (Rosicrucians) will come to you because "you have caused them to see it". Apparently by psychic visions?
Then he ends the letter as if the Actum Leyden was signing it with his own blood. So maybe this was the original version, and the other more vague letter with less details was the re-written version?
I think this answers a lot of questions that we may have had because it tells us how to use the elixir 3 and lets us know we can indeed ingest it in the 3rd order if we are careful to wait for 6 months first. And the multiplication are to be done without the alkahest water, which is a very important detail. That explains why my multiplications of gold weren't working! ha! I'm so glad I read this, because when I saw it, I just assumed it was the same letter and would be a waste of time to get out the CD and look it up, but boy am I glad I did! I would have been waiting forever for my gold to become a stone, and it never would have by sitting in the salt water like he original letter said!