Sal Tartari.

From Alexander Von Bernus: Alchemy And Healing. Pp. 85-90.

...Van Helmont wrote: Try to make the Alkahest. If you cannot achieve this, then at least learn to
volatize the winestonesalt, so that you through its use can make your Solutions.

It is a very well thought and outspoken statement that Van Helmont here makes, for those who are
on the alchemical quest. The much sought after and famous Alkahest was the great Solvent of the
hermetic masters, and without it is not possible to achieve the Stone. Van Helmont, though not an
adept, but deeper involved than he admits in the Art of Alchemy, points directly from the Alkahest
(Alkali est?) to the winestonesalt, sal tartari.

If one here connects to the very essential lines from Basilius Valentinus, that have the alchemical
process as their object, one finds the lines:

TARTARUS-WINESTONE
Vegetabilic is my name
Among Strong Wines I have my fame
When to the other salts I am add
The true Key it will then be had
Through my Spirit they havoc wreak
And even all the Metals break
I take it with me out of the Urn
So that they all to Mercury turn
No common herb in all the World
Can manage what Nature for me has unfurled
Such friendship and such mighty deeds
Not a thousand people know my true creeds

And again one reads from Van Helmont: The Winestonesalt becomes wholly volatile and rises up
High. Sometimes liquid and often as a sublimate. This salt has been proven by the Test, even though
few have the skill and knowledge of making it.

And by De La Boe Sylvius, who was the Fame of the University of Leyden, we encounter:
The fixed Salt (here is meant the Sal Tartari) can be made volatile through cohobation with a
volatile spirit. Such volatile Salt rises by a not strong fire, and sublimates itself. Such volatile salt is
only achievable by those Artists, that are diligent and patient, not those who flee long and arduous
work. Such a Salt has strong Powers.

Sal tartari- Potassium Carbonicum, K2CO3-Pottash –winestonesalt, of which the modern chemist
will say, not without reason, and with doubt in his voice: Potash can be sublimated, be made
“liquid” and go over? Never!

Contemporary chemistry knows nothing of this process, and therefore denies the basic possibility of
the volatization and distillation of Potash and the soluble Salts.
This ignorance has cost the author a lost case, which a so-called competing firm took out against the
spagyric laboratory Soluna of which he was director.

In order to prevent the authors lab in bringing their distilled biochemical salts to the marketplace
under the heading Spagyric distillates, an important sub title for their successful marketing, the said
firm sought out a court order against this denomination, and also achieved a such, based on the
expert testimony at the second instance, because, according to present chemical scientific
knowledge, such salts simply cannot be distilled.

As the court only can make its decision solely based on the expert's testimony, and this could only
be negative, this was not a case of unjustice, but solely of the ignorance of present chemistry
concerning the lost knowledge of Alchemy that was known for centuries.

But precisely the methods for distilling and volatlizing the salts was kept highly secret by the
Masters, not for this itself, but because the key to the Stone of the Wise is in the salts-“But if the
Salt has lost it power, with what shall we Salt?”

Sal Metalorum est lapis philosophorum The Salt of the Metals is The Stone of the Wise, goes an old
alchemical saying of profound wisdom. But who thinks he might find something in the metallic
salts of present chemistry is gravely mistaken. It's not that simple-by far!

Indeed, by revealing the secret, the author might have won the case. But what had been kept under
wraps by the adepts for so long, could not be revealed nowadays either-and, on top of that, this
procedure takes months, one cant just go ahead and do it in a few hours, even though it is possible
with some salts, like sodium chlorate and potassium chlorate, through a certain technical
manipulation, it can be done in a short time.

But this is exactly a technical sleight of hand, and not at all what the adepts were aiming at, though
salts treated in this manner have been highly opened.

Further: the Distillation and Volatization of the Salts require that they be pretreated-Cohobated in
Alchemical Terminology-so that they are transformed by the reaction with the Solvents.

So the chemical formula would no more be NaCl or KCl for the end product, but some other Na or
K compound in the direction of the acetates.

Now the distillation of acetates (lead sugar for example) is no less unknown to modern science.

But, nevertheless, the formula is not the same, so in the modern chemical sense it is no more the
same substance. The case is lost anyhow, because the court judges formally, that is, according to
the formula. And even if the distillation could be demonstrated, the formula would not be the same.

The empirically proven immensely heightened physic dynamic Powers and applications of these
Sublime salts, is irrelevant, belongs in another chapter.

But from the point of Alchemy, this view was the measure. Its basic premise was a different one,
but they had the power to heal. Wether the formula of the result of such a Distillation would be
K2CO3 or perhaps K2H3KO2, would not interest the Alchemists, because the results are the
measure, and they would know from long tradition, that the volatized Salts are extremely
penetrating. On this Van Helmont writes: It is indeed astonishing how much the simple
winestonesalt, when volatilized, can accomplish. It clears the blood of all impurity.

On another place: When the fire resistant Salts have been volatized, they resemble the great
arcanums and magisteries in Power. They penetrate to the entrance of the fourth digestion and
dissolve all blockages. In modern terms: they dissolve uric acid salts, eliminate them. Here we are
in the middle of the true homeopathic alchemy, of which the later version, inaugurated by
Hahnemann, and influenced by the Enlightenment, is only a side stem. The great iatrochemical
doctors treated stone diseases almost exclusively with volatized Salts (Tartaric diseases was
Paracelsuses designation for such).

A prescription by Basilius Valentinus goes: Ten or twelve grains (that is about ½ grams) of this
Magisterium Tartari (Wine stone) promotes the urine, cleans the blood, drives of (“Dropsy”?
excess water in the body?), breaks up the bladder stone and helps by Podagra.-With common
potassium carbonate or potassium chloride or other so-called biochemical cells salts (the twelve cell
salts of Dr.Schuessler) such results are not achievable. So one sees how biochemistry and its
substances need the spagyric method as a basis for maximizing and perfecting its healing powers.

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