An Extraordinary Pharmacy - Cohobation by Dr. Ajit Singh Cohobation in alchemy is the assembling of the purified elements. It is not concerned with the act of passing again and again a solvent over a substance to open it and to dissolve it. In alchemy, cohobation is the reassembling of purified elements obtained by means of spagyrism. In principle, it occurs when reuniting the alchemical Sulfur, Mercury and Salt by following the techniques of spagyrism. Once the cohobation is done, the product undergoes a long digestion at a constant temperature or a circulation. The roots of spagyrism go back thousands of years; a founder cannot clearly be named. The word spagyrism was often used synonymously with the term “alchemie”. Spagyrism is to be understood as a special branch of alchemy in which the essence of a plant is unlocked and/or transformed in a special manufacturing process. The spagyric method includes separation, purification and reunification. It comes from the etymology of the Greek word spagiry (Spao+ Ageiro) which means to separate and to reunite. Spagyric remedies were originally created by fermenting parts of wild herbs. This process produced concentrated aromatic solutions that were extracted and separated from the bulk plant matter. After fermentation was completed: 1) Plant material was distilled in a special device; 2) The remainder was dried and burned up; 3) The ashes were extracted and purified via distillation, then recombined with the concentrated solution; 4) As a result, the finished spagyric essence contained the mineral constituent parts of the plants. A spagyric essence is clear and colourless or yellowish and smells very intensively aromatically. The nature of spagyric essences is subtler than that of spagyric tinctures. They are less “corporeal”, more “dematerialized”, and their effects are more penetrating but very subtle. Everything is subtler than with other extracts or even tinctures. Spagyric essences are therefore considered pure medicines. By the process of potentizing, the spagyric essence can also be prescribed homoeopathically as was done by count Ceasre Mattei, the inventor of electro-homoeopathy. Spagyric essences have a virtually unlimited life span. For their preparation, much experience is required in the art of distilling. Production of the Spagyric Essence All preparations contain the three philosophical principles: 1) Mercury 2) Sulfur (volatile & fixed) 3) Salt The principles are extracting (separation), purifying (distillation, incineration, calcination, evaporation) and then reassembling (reunion or cohobation). Essences contain only the volatile constituents of the plants from which they are prepared since they are always distilled. All solids or nonvolatile components stay behind except part of the water - soluble salts - which is added to the essences at a specific time. Method to be followed to Obtain Cohobation (reunification of alchemical Sulfur, Mercury and Salt): 1) First of all, put our herb through a steam distillation so we can obtain its volatile oils. Then, place a 5000 ml round bottom flask into a sand bath. Pour 3000 ml of distilled water into the flask. Take a wide mouth double-jointed flask and place a small piece of filter paper inside the flask over the bottom joint. Add enough ground herb to the flask so it is half full. Next, hook up the reduction head and the distillation adapter. Finally, use a 2000 ml flask as a receiver at the end of the apparatus. 2) Turn the heat on low. After some time, steam will cloud up the double- jointed flask as it passes through it. Our distillation adapter also will become fogged. At the end of the drip tip we will see water droplets forming. The drops will fall into the receiver. After a few milliliters have collected in the receiver, we will notice that a colored oil is collecting on top of the water. When approximately 1500 ml of the water has been distilled over, turn off the heat and let the apparatus cool. Then, transfer the water and oil in the receiver into the oil separator. 3) Take the double-jointed flask off the distillation flask. Pour 100 ml of fresh distilled water into the distillation flask and hook up the entire apparatus. This entire process should be done at least three times to ensure that the majority of the volatile oils come out of the plant body. 4) While our second separation of the volatile oils is under way, we will gather the oils obtained from the first. To do this, simply open the stopcock at the end of the drain tube. Slowly drain off the water. When only a little water is left in the separator, close the stopcock. After each subsequent extraction of the volatile oils from the plant body, take what is in the receiver and place it in the oil separator. Drain the water out of the separator leaving the oil behind. Reuse this water for all of our subsequent separations of oil from the plant body. By the time we have extracted oil from 12.5 kg of plant material, we will have a few milliliters of pure volatile oil, i.e. Alchemical Sulfur. 5) Take the essence from the depleted body of the herb and place it into the wide mouthed 5000 ml round bottom flask. The water that was left from the separation of the volatile oils is now poured over the herb. Seal up the round bottom flask with a fermentation lock and place it in an incubator at 27 degrees C. In about two weeks, our plant body will have fermented and yielded up its Spirit i.e. alchemical Mercury. Distill off the Spirit as we have done before and rectify it seven times. Save the phlegm from the Spirit for later use. 6) Empty the remaining liquid and plant body left in the 5000 ml flask into a glass pot. Take the pot outdoors and boil off all the moisture. When the moisture is gone, the herb body will begin to roast; then, incinerate it. When the body has obtained an ash gray color, turn off the heat and let the pot cool. Grind and weigh the ash, set up the soxhlet extraction and extract the water-soluble salts from the ash. Evaporate the water from the salts in the oven overnight. Grind and weigh the salts; then place them into the kiln to calcine at 600 degrees C for one week. At the end of the week, turn the kiln off and let it cool. Grind and weigh the salts. Repeat the process of extracting, drying, grinding, weighing, calcining, grinding, and weighing two more times to get the hygroscopic Salt, the third principle. 7) Once we have got our hygroscopic Salt, it is time for cohobation, so pour our rectified Spirit - i.e. Mercury (already preserved) over the Salt - then add the volatile oils - i.e. Sulfur. 8) Allow the mixture to digest in an incubator at 30 degrees C for a week. Be sure to slightly shake the container three to five times a day. 9) Decant the essence (spagyric essence) from the undissolved salts. It will be seen that the essence is now coloured yellow and smells strongly of the herb we used in the operation. 10) One drop in wine or distilled water will yield the full effects of the plant’s medicinal nature. Save the remaining sal
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:54:07 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015