Medieval Alchemy Explained Through the Book Albertus Magnus Probably Never Wrote

The clearest alchemy manual of the Middle Ages carries the name of Albertus Magnus — a saint who probably never wrote it. Here is what it says. The Libellus de Alchimia, the Little Book of Alchemy, also called the Semita Recta or Straight Path, is fifty-seven short chapters of medieval alchemy explained without green lions or red kings. This video reads it in order. It opens with failure. The author says he travelled through many lands and watched abbots, bishops, canons and natural philosophers spend fortunes on the art and lose. Then it gives eight rules for the worker: keep silent, keep a hidden house with two or three rooms, mind the season, finish what you start, follow the operations in order, use only glass or glazed vessels, stay away from princes, and have two years of money before you light the fire. Then the theory. Every metal is sulphur and quicksilver, in six combinations — a doctrine that reached Latin Europe from the Arabic writings under the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan. Base metals are sick gold. The cure is a medicine made from four volatile "spirits": quicksilver, sulphur, orpiment and sal ammoniac, fixed through sublimation, calcination, solution, distillation, coagulation, fixation and ceration. Two things most summaries leave out: The attribution to Albertus Magnus has never been established. The standard English translation (Sister Virginia Heines, University of California Press, 1958) says "ascribed to". A fifteenth-century Dominican, Reynaldus de Novimagio, already denied it, the Cologne critical edition classes the work among the doubtful and spurious, and historians call its author Pseudo-Albert. And the real Albert tested the claim. In De Mineralibus, a work nobody disputes, he writes that alchemy is the art that most closely imitates nature — and that the alchemical gold he had tested stood six or seven firings and then burned away to dross. The little book itself admits, in chapter ten, that the alchemist's gold does not gladden the heart or cure leprosy. The story that Albert found the philosopher's stone and gave it to Thomas Aquinas is legend, and is treated here as legend. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Saint Who Probably Never Wrote It 0:55 The Straight Path, in Fifty-Seven Chapters 1:47 Abbots, Bishops, and How They Failed 2:47 The First Four Rules 3:39 Stay Away from Princes 4:38 Sulphur and Quicksilver 5:37 The Theory Came from Arabic 6:37 Lead Is Gold That Fell Ill 7:35 The Four Spirits 8:34 Furnaces, Glass, and Two Careful Words 9:20 Seven Operations to Cure a Metal 10:21 What Chapter Ten Admits 11:19 Who Albertus Magnus Really Was 12:31 Why Scholars Call Him Pseudo-Albert 13:51 The Book Albert Did Write 14:55 Six or Seven Firings 15:58 The Name Was Wrong, the Bench Was Real ───────────────────────────── More in this series: What the Sun Means in Alchemy and Why It Is Not the Sun →    • What the Sun Means in Alchemy and Why It I...   What the Four Elements Really Mean in Occult Philosophy →    • What the Four Elements Really Mean in Occu...   What As Above So Below Really Means in Hermetic Philosophy →    • What As Above So Below Really Means in Her...   The Real Meaning of the Logos in Hermetic Philosophy →    • The Real Meaning of the Logos in Hermetic ...   The Bruce Codex and the Books of Jeu Explained →    • The Bruce Codex and the Books of Jeu Expla...   The Terrifying Entities of the Bible and Why Most Are Not Demons →    • The Terrifying Entities of the Bible and W...   Subscribe if you would rather be told what a text says than what it can do for you. ───────────────────────────── #Alchemy #AlbertusMagnus #MedievalAlchemy