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First of all know antimony2 to be a crude and immature mineral having in itself materially what is uniquely metallic, even though otherwise it is a crude and indigested mineral. Moreover, it is truly digested by the sulfur that is found in iron and never elsewhere.
Two parts of antimony [combined] with iron give a regulus3 which in its fourth fusion exhibits a star; by this sign you may know that the soul of the iron has been made totally volatile by the virtue of the antimony. If this stellate regulus is melted with gold or silver by an ash heat in an earthen pot, the whole regulus is evaporated, which is a mystery. Also, if this regulus is amalgamated with common mercury and is digested in a sealed vessel on a slow fire for a short time—two or three hours—and then ground for 1/8 of an hour in a mortar without moisture while being warmed moderately, until it spits out its blackness, then it may be washed to deposit the greatest part of its blackness, until the water, which in the beginning becomes quite black, is scarcely more tinged by the blackness. This can be done by flushing it with water many times. Let the amalgam be dried, again placed near the fire, and kept in the above-mentioned heat for three hours. Afterwards let it be ground again as before in a dry and warm mortar. It pushes out new blackness, which must be washed away again; this must be repeated continually until the whole amalgam becomes like shining and cupellated silver,4 whereas at first it had a dark leaden color.
Then distill this mercury which has been so washed and amalgamate over again seven or nine times, and in each amalgamation see to the heating, grinding, and washing as many times as before. Distill the whole as before. On the seventh time you will have a mercury dissolving all metals, particularly gold.”5 I know whereof I write, for I have in the fire manifold glasses with gold and this mercury. They grow in these glasses in the form of a tree,6 and by a continued circulation the trees are dissolved again with the work into new mercury. I have such a vessel in the fire with gold thus dissolved, where the gold was visibly not dissolved by a corrosive into atoms, but extrinsically and intrinsically into a mercury as living and mobile as any mercury found in the world. For it makes gold begin to swell, to be swollen, and to putrefy, and to spring forth into sprouts and branches, changing colors daily, the appearances of which fascinate me every day. I reckon this a great secret in Alchemy, and I judge it is not rightly to be sought from artists who have too much wisdom to decide that common mercury ought to be attacked through reiterated cohobation7 by the regulus of leo [that is, of iron or antimony]. That unique body, that regulus, however, is familial with mercury seeing that it is closest to that mercury you have known and recognized in the whole mineral kingdom, and hence most closely related to gold. And this is the philosophical method of meliorating nature in nature, consanguinity in consanguinity.
With regard to this operation, look at the Letter responding to Thomas of Bologna,8 and you will find this question fully solved.
Another secret is that you need the mediation of the virgin Diana [quintessence, most pure silver]; otherwise the mercury and the regulus are not united.
The regulus is made from antimony four ounces /nine parts/, iron two ounces /four parts/; this is a good proportion. Do not neglect to have a mass of antimony greater than that of iron, for if an error is made here you will be disappointed. Make the regulus by casting in nitre bit by bit; cast in between three and four ounces of nitre so that the matter may flow.
It is not a good idea to prepare in one crucible a greater quantity than the above measure of antimony. The antimony is ground, then cupelled together with iron, whatever others may say or write.
Little nails may be used and especially the ends of those broken from horn shoes. Let the fire be strong so that the matter may flow [like water], which is easily done. When it flows, cast in a spoonful of nitre; and when that nitre has been destroyed by the fire, cast in another. Continue that process until you have cast in three or four ounces. Then pile up the charcoals about the crucible, taking care that they do not fall into it. Increase the fire as much as the fusion of common silver requires, and keep it in that state for 1/8 of an hour. [The matter ought to be like a subtle water if you have labored correctly] Then pour the matter out into a cone. The regulus wll subside. Separate the ashy scoria from it. Keep the cooled material in a dry vessel.
It is a sign of a good fusion if the iron is completely fused and if the scoriae break up by themselves into powder.
Beat the regulus and add to it two, or at most 2.5, ounces of nitre. Grind the regulus and the nitre together completely and again melt. Throw away the arsenical and useless scoriae.
Grind the regulus a third and fourth time with at most one ounce of nitre and melt in a new crucible, and on the fourth time you will have scoriae tinged with a golden color and a stellate regulus.
NB In the last three times the scoriae must be thrown away because they are arsenical; however, they are useful in surgery.
NB In the last three fusions the regulus must be beaten, and ground and mixed with nitre. Some cast the nitre into the crucible, but this is not recommended, for, firstly, the fusion is as a result prolonged and the regulus is not without some loss of itself by exhalation. Secondly, nitre thrown in in this way stays on the surface and in time it cools the regulus. And since nitre flows easily, it may flow at first and encrust so that it will not flow again without a large fire. If that happens, the best part of the regulus perishes in the conflagration, whence it is that sometimes a star perishes because it is falsely ascribed to a constellation.
You will see that the regulus mixed with nitre in this way flows easily with it; and you will not see it become hard in any manner, except for the difference in the depuration, which is far greater if it is mixed than if the nitre is just tossed in.
Take of this regulus one part, of silver two parts, and melt them together until they are like fused metal. Pour out, and you will have a friable mass of the color of lead.
NB If the regulus is joined with the silver, they flow more easily than either one separately and they remain fused as long as lead even though there are thus two parts of silver, which is then changed into the nature of antimony, friable and leaden.
Beat this friable mass, this lead, and cast it together with the mercury of the vulgar into a marble mortar. The mercury should be washed (say ten times) with nitre and distilled vinegar and likewise dried (twice), and the mortar should be constantly heated just so much as you are able to bear the heat of with your fingers. Grind the mercury 1/4 of an hour with an iron pestle and thus join the mercury, the doves of Diana mediating,9 with its brother, philosophical gold, from which it will receive spiritual semen. The spiritual semen is a fire which will purge all the superfluities of the mercury, the fermental virtue intervening. Then take a little beaten sal ammoniac and grind with the mercury. When it is fully amalgamated, add just enough humidity to moisten it, and this one philosophical sign will appear to you: that in the very making of the mercury there is a great stink. Finally, wash your mercury by pouring on water, grinding, decanting, and again pouring on fresh water, until few feces appear.
Translated by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs
Reading and Discussion Questions
1.What instructions does Newton (Starkey) give for repeating this experiment?
2.What barriers would there be to repeating the experiment?
1Authorship of The Key (Clavis) was traditionally attributed to Newton (including by distinguished Newton scholars such as Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Richard Westfall), with an estimated composition date of 1675 to 1680. Newton was indeed deeply engaged in the practice of alchemy, however, other science historians have challenged this particular attribution. William Newman, for example, argues that The Key was composed by George Starkey probably sometime around 1651. See: Newman, W., & Newton, I. (1987). Newton’s Clavis as Starkey’s Key. Isis, 78(4), 564–574. Acknowledging the force of this criticism in a more recent book, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (1991), Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs writes “even though one now knows for certain that Newton did not compose the document, the basic alchemical process it describes continues to appear in Newton’s later papers, and so the ‘Key’ continues to provide a useful point of rerefence” (Dobbs 1991, 15).
2The OED’s definition coincides with Newton’s statement as to antimony’s “crude and immature” original nature and its “digested” potential: “One of the elementary bodies, a brittle metallic substance, of bright bluish white colour and flaky crystalline texture. Its metallic characteristics are less pronounced than those of the metals generally.”
3A regulus is “the metallic form of antimony, so called by early chemists, apparently on account of its ready combination with gold” (OED), when brought to a state of liquidity or fusion through the application of heat. But Newton also draws upon its astronomical sense (the bright star in the constellation Leo), in that a star pattern is revealed in the amalgam when it undergoes multiple fusion.
4I.e., silver that has been purified in a cupel.
5Thus the object of the process is production of “philosophical mercury” from common mercury. Dobbs notes that the alchemists’ “attempts to dissolve gold seem to have been made with the same notion a modern chemist employs when he analyzes a compound before he attempts to synthesize it: if one knows what a substance is made of, then it is easy enough to make it” (Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy, 184–5).
6The interactive phenomenon Newton describes closely resembles—perhaps is—the alchemists’ well known “philosophical tree” or “tree of Hermes,” previously noted in Ripley and Philalethes.
7Repeated distillation.
8A reference to The Answer of Bernardus Trevisanus, to the Epistle of Thomas of Bononia, Physician to King Charles the Eighth [sic], which exists in many manuscript copies and had been printed recently in Aurifontina Chymica: or, A Collection of Fourteen Small Treatises Concerning the First Matter of Philosophers, trans. John Frederick Houprcght (London, 1680). Thomas of Bologna was a physician, alchemist, and astrologer in the courts of Charles V (1364–80) and Charles VI (1380–1422) of France and father of Christine de Pisan.
9The “doves of Diana” are silver or the female principle that serves to mediate or join mercury with the regulus. Dobbs notes that “the common mercury is receiving ‘spiritual semen’ from the ‘philosophical gold’ or star regulus of antimony. Presumably, the ‘spiritual semen’ has been drawn into the regulus from the ‘universal spirit’ in the surrounding Neoplatonic ‘aire’ ” (Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy, 184).