Magical Materials: Tria Prima - Mercury

 Mercury - An Introduction

    Philosophical Mercury, the Mercurius, the dew, the fountain, the water of life.

    Despite our best efforts to simplify matters, 2000 years of abuse has muddied the waters (pun intended) on this touchstone of alchemical understanding. To navigate the confusing web of contradictory associations that this liquid metal has been saddled with, a few points must be understood:

1. Ancient and alchemical reasoning is based on naked-eye observation of phenomena;
2. Sense was made of naked-eye phenomena by analogy;
3. These analogies were communicated through a game of cross-cultural telephone;
4. The analogies were contorted to fit the results of centuries of alchemical experimentation when they didn't fit the narrative; and,
5. Return to point 3.

    The alchemists were fundamentally wrong on chemistry, so their tria prima formulas failed to demonstrate their enlightened patterns (or bring them vulgar riches). To make the results of their operations fit their models, the alchemists tortured the notion of the Mercurius past its breaking point. Between their bad science, the jealous guarding of findings, the secret codes, and the admixture of deep reference and surface-level visual analogy (not to mention widespread mercury poisoning), it’s no wonder that the matter of mercury is as confused as it is. 

"It collects here in this bottle and becomes a woman, or some kind of goose."

     Our goal here is not to rehabilitate Alchemy as a science or to convince the reader of the merits of more modern philosophical Alchemical practice, but to take advantage of the archaic observation of mercury and the conclusions that were drawn.

    In other words, we’re mining the there there.

Physical Mercury - Element Hydragyrum (80HG), “Silver Water,” ☿

    Mercury is a toxic, dense metal named for its curious liquid state at room temperature. It has a freezing point of −38.83 °C and a boiling point of 356.73 °C at one standard pressure atmosphere. In liquid form it has a high surface tension. Mercury consistently expands in response to heat and pressure, making it an ideal measurement medium for thermometers and barometers. It conducts heat poorly but electricity reasonably well, making it useful for switches and relays.

Elemental Mercury

     Mercury does not react with most acids, though oxidizing acids such as concentrated sulfuric acid, nitric acid, or aqua regia dissolve mercury into the associated sulfate, nitrate, and chloride. Mercury spills can be cleaned with sulfur flakes, powdered zinc, or activated carbon.

    Mercury is also the only classical metal to retain the name of its planetary association, as “mercury” was regarded as a preferable chemical name to “quicksilver.”

Amalgam

    Mercury readily dissolves other metals, forming an alloy known as an amalgam. The production of amalgams dates back to at least 500 BC. Only a few metals are resistant to amalgamation, most in the first row of transitional metals: scandium, titanium, vanadium, chromium, iron, cobalt, nickel, and platinum. For this reason, Mercury has traditionally been stored and traded in iron flasks.

    Amalgamation dissolves the structure of the solute metal. For this reason, mercury is not permitted on aircraft without special security considerations, as it eats through the protective oxide layer of the aluminum and corrodes it rapidly. Supposedly, allied spies used a mercury paste to sabotage Luftwaffe planes during WWII.

    Mercury’s ability to amalgamate with other metals was first used for industrial-scale silver extraction in 1554. Bartolome de Medina employed it to amalgamate silver out of ore in Pachuca, Mexico, and after that, it was essential in the industrial processing of New World silver. Later, it was used in hydraulic gold mining, though this practice was discontinued in the 1960s.

    Today, mercury amalgams are still used in dentistry for fillings.

    The creative possibilities of amalgam are better understood in combination with the properties of the solute metals, so we explore them in our article on classical metals [article pending].

Mercury Ore and Extraction

    Mercury’s most common natural ore is cinnabar (mercury sulfide, HgS), the source of the pigment vermillion.  The primary sources of cinnabar for Europe during the past 2500 years have been the mines in Almaden in Spain, Monte Amiata in Italy, and Idrija in what is now Slovenia. More on cinnabar in our article on mercury/sulfur compounds [article pending].

Raw Cinnabar Ore

    To extract the mercury, the cinnabar is heated in a current of air, and the vapor is condensed:

HgS + O2 → Hg + SO2

    Mercury vapor is highly toxic and one of the more common forms of historic mercury poisoning.

Toxicity

    Liquid-state mercury can be absorbed through the skin and mucous membranes or ingested. It also reacts with hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere, becoming an airborne pollutant.

    The minor symptoms of mercury poisoning include sweating, tachycardia, increased saliva production, and hypertension. More intense symptoms include reddening or pinking of the nose, cheeks, lips, fingers, and toes, transient rashes, muscle weakness, kidney dysfunction, sensory impairment, and increased photosensitivity.

    More alarming (at least to this compiler) are the neuropsychiatric symptoms: insomnia, memory impairment, and emotional lability (emotional incontinence). These are frightening when paired with peripheral neuropathy, which can come in paraesthesia (abnormal skin sensation), itching, burning, pain, or even formication (the feeling of bugs crawling under the skin). The other symptoms can also be hair loss, teeth, nails, and desquamation (shedding or peeling skin).

    The phrase “mad as a hatter” comes from mercury poisoning. 18th- and 19th-century hat makers separated fur from animal pelts and matted them together into felt for hats using an orange solution of mercuric nitrate (Hg(NO3)2·2H2O) in a process called “carroting.” 

The Mad Hatter, engraving by Dalziel (1865)

    Lewis Carroll’s “Mad Hatter” character is a play on the phrase rather than a depiction of mercury poisoning. Make no mistake, though, nearly an entire profession was plagued with this horrific condition. And it is far from unique to hat-makers! Alchemists were known to suffer the same for obvious reasons. It also applied to lighthouse keepers, who had to contend with social isolation and mercury exposure from the pool the Fresnel lenses rested on. The first emperor of China, Qín Shǐ Huáng Di, was similarly driven insane by the mercury-based immortality elixirs his alchemists fed him.

Medicine

    In both China and Tibet, mercury was believed to be an essential ingredient in the elixir of immortality and could, therefore, prolong life more generally. They also held that it could maintain general health and even heal fractures. Mercury found historical use in medicine, some of which has been carried (dubiously) into the modern day.

    Mercury(I) chloride, called mercurous chloride or calomel, has been traditionally employed as a diuretic, topical disinfectant, and laxative. Mercury(II) chloride, also called mercuric chloride or corrosive sublimate, was used as a treatment for syphilis. However, it was so toxic that the symptoms of syphilis and mercury poison were often conflated.

    In the 19th century, a mercury-derived medication called blue mass was prescribed in pill and syrup forms for constipation, depression, toothache, and to ease childbirth. In the 20th century, mercury was prescribed as a laxative and dewormer for children before being banned. It is still occasionally prescribed in diuretics.

Culture

Cosmetics

    Mercury has a long history in the production of cosmetics. The Egyptians and Romans used it in their makeup, and today, it’s used as a depigmenting agent in modern bleaching creams.

Landscaping and Conspicuous Wealth

Mercury has a long history with displays of wealth. The tomb of Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì was allegedly crafted as a map of his domain, with the rivers of his unified China flowing with mercury. 

    The second Tulunid ruler of Egypt, Khumarawayh ibn Ahmad ibn Tulun (r. 884-896), is reported to have built a basin filled with mercury, where he would be rocked to sleep on a bed of air-filled cushions. Across the Mediterranean in Islamic Spain, it was used to fill decorative pools.

    Mercury was also found in elite tombs and ritual caches dating to the Classical Maya period (100-700AD) and earlier. This was in quantities of 3.2-21.2 oz (90-600 grams), though the purpose may have had a cross-divinatory purpose in addition to wealth display.

Leveling

    Liquid mercury seeks equilibrium, which has made it an essential component in leveling tools of all sorts. It is instrumental in transit telescopes, which need an absolute vertical and perpendicular reference.

Mirrors

    Mercury amalgam was used in silvering mirrors (which is also why old mirrors don’t reflect the images of vampires). Mercury can also create a cheap parabolic mirror by holding the mercury on a disc and rotating it. This mirror cannot, unfortunately, be tilted, so it is restricted to a perfectly vertical orientation.

Lighthouses

    The Fresnel lenses of old lighthouses floated and rotated in a mercury bath, which acted as a bearing.

Firearms and Explosives

    Mercury(II) fulminate is an explosive agent commonly used as the primer in firearm cartridges.

Other Uses

    Mercury was employed in developing daguerreotype film and as a wood preservative.

Magic

Immortality

    The immortality elixirs fed to Chinese emperor Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì were made from mercury and powdered jade.

Divination

    Maya-region archeological finds of liquid mercury, such as those in elite tombs, under ballcourts, and the massive 2014 find under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan, are often interpreted as having a divinatory function. This stems from Mercury’s reflective properties and the region's long-standing history of hydromancy and cataptromancy. Given that the Classical Maya did not have metallurgy, the reflective properties of mercury alone would have been novel and mysterious. 

Temple of the Feathered Serpent, Teotihuacan.
Photo by Diego Delso.

Animation

    According to Aristotle, the mythical engineer/inventor Daedalus made a wooden statue of Aphrodite move by pouring mercury into the statue’s hollow interior.

Philosophical Mercury - The Impressionability of Matter

    Philosophical mercury, the Mercurius, is the impressionability or feminine animation of matter. It is fluidity and transformation, volatility, the Aristotelian "cold," the intellect, the yogic flow of internal energies, and the liaison between the spirit and the material. These mixed material/spiritual properties were understood as analogous to mercury, but they were abused through numerous other devices considered synonymous despite the disparity of their features.

Material Analogies

Water

    The Mercurius had many names related to its first analog, mercury, hydrargyrum, quicksilver, argent vive, or “living-silver,” and mercurial water. The relationship was expanded to aqua pontica and aqua permanens, the divine water, the water of life, the dew, the fountain, the white elixir, and the white mercury. As bodily fluid, it is called phlegma, which incorporates it into the theory of humors. 

    Despite being traditionally sexed female, it is identified by the dual-sex devices of the sperm and the menstruum. The former is derived from its visual/matter-state analogy and as a “messenger” or delivery mechanism for alchemical “seed.” The latter is from its more heavily explored feminine qualities. 

    This dual-sex nature was reinforced by its role as an emblem of productive chaos. As primal chaos it was held that the Mercurius contained both male and female “seeds” of matter, requiring the mediation of sulfur in the chemical wedding.

    This ambiguity is paralleled in the East. In China, it was associated with water, lifeblood, blood of the womb, and semen. In India, it was the semen of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

Earth

    The Mercurius is also identified as the white stone from which the red stone of the philosopher emerges.

Air

    It is identified with the direction west and the wind from that direction, the zephyr, and the deity of the same name.

Planet

    Mercury was identified with and named for the planet closest to the sun, whose rapid orbit around it made it astrologically challenging to predict. This speed across the sky was associated with the metal’s liquid flow.

Anthropomorphic

Male

    Mercury was associated with the deity for which the planet was named, Hermes/Mercury. Hermes was a messenger god associated with intellect and later occult matters under the partially Christianized figure Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes syncretizes with the Egyptian god of scribes, Thoth. This anthropomorphization of mercury was occasionally glossed to the less flattering “flying slave,” which may have been in reference to Zephyr, the god of the west wind.

Hermes Ingenui, 2nd Century, BC Copy

    It was also associated with the lesser sea god, Proteus, one of Homer’s “old men of the sea.” He was a god of prophecy, the personification of the changeability of the world’s waterways, and came to be associated with mutability, versatility, and the assumption of many forms.

Illustration of Proteus by Andrea Alciato,
from The Book of Emblems (1532).

Female

    The Mercurius assumed an identity unique to alchemical practice in the guise of Albedo, the White Queen. Also identified as Queen Luna to sulfur’s King Sol, she was the female half of the Alchemical Wedding, the framing device of alchemical operation. In imagery more familiar to the Christian, philosophical mercury was identified with Eve and the holy virgin and more universally with the roles of sister and mother.

    Queen Albedo is the most definitive person of the Mercurius, the face of the alchemical stage leading up to enlightenment. She is a gatekeeper to be negotiated with, cajoled into unity with her counterpart, King Rubedo, and, in gratitude, births the gift of understanding.

Here we see Albedo lasciviously touching hands in public with her husband, Rubedo.
From Philosophia reformata (1622), emblem 2, by Johann Daniel Mylius

Phytomorphic

    Appropriate to the female anthropomorphization, the plant analogs of the Mercurius are the white lily and the white rose.

From Pixabay, on pexels.com.

Zoomorphic

Feminine

    Mercury is identified with the hen, which, being an egg-layer, also lays the egg of the universe, the all-thing that is the Philosopher’s Stone.

Masculine

    Mercury is identified as the gander, the male goose, inverse to the hen. This is both a phallic symbol and one of the emblems of Hermes. 

From Getty Images.

    More interesting, though, is the association between the Mercurius and the white hart. The stag is an unmistakable masculine emblem but also feminine relative to the hunter, as the spear penetrates prey. This animal is significant in pagan mythology and folklore.

The White Hart badge of Richard II. 

    One folk belief may bring the alchemical association into greater focus. One of the permutations of the Great Work of Alchemy is the pursuit of the panacea, the universal medicine (itself a synonym for the Philosopher’s Stone). The folk belief holds that stags seek out and consume snakes and other venomous reptiles to initiate terrible sweating, purging their bodies of toxins. Once in this state, the stag enters a river or other body of water to wash the toxic sweat from its body and emerge clean and pure. This belief mirrors the language of alchemists’ treatment of various materials in the operation.

    Further, this may reference the myth of Cyparissus, whose mourning over slaying his best friend, the stag, was immortalized by his transformation into a cypress tree (a convenient parallel to immortality bestowed by the Philosopher’s Stone). 

Androgynous

    Mercury is identified with the serpent, an emblem of feminine chaos and a phallic symbol. It was heavily associated with the dragon, a masculine emblem in China.

Ouroboros from the manuscript Codex Parisinus graecus 2327 (1478).

Using Mercury Safely - Suggestions for Writers

INSPIRATIONAL HOLY GRAIL - Holistic Wizardry

    The emblem of the white hart bridges the gap between classical mythology, local folklore, and the pseudoscience of alchemy. We have yet to see a better model for holistic magical influence on magical practitioners. The ability to connect the mechanisms of their magic with the ancient stories and local flavor is an invaluable tool for making your spell-casting characters feel like living members of your fantasy world.

Holistic Magical Action —> Material or Action x (Old Myth + Local Flavor) =  Worldbuilding and Character and Plot Progression

    Materials like mercury have a veritable library of analogous emblems like those previously discussed, but the same goes for gestures in imitation of myth, legend, and folklore. The extension of the right hand may imitate the dominance of the conquering Pharaoh or the striking of the smith’s hammer Thor’s slaying of a Jotun. Because of the universal patterns (and often shared heritage) of myths, we often find the same actions and emblems appearing in folk tales and fairy stories, subject to more pronounced regional variation. The appeal to setting mythology establishes or reinforces broader currents in worldbuilding, with the folkloric connections being more particular and framing your character as somewhere rather than anywhere. Further, the material is set up as something to be used, facilitating plot progression, and the action is a doing, which is plot progression. While one could hypothetically spin their wheels in the exposition of actions, there is no way to justify the explanation of an action without moving forward; it demands immediate follow-up.

    Use this as a template for other materials or actions. Reverse-engineer setting folklore and mythology or devise your own mechanisms from the old stories. It also frees storytellers from binding themselves too closely to a single source of inspiration. Exploit the hell out of this!

Mercury Toxicity and Madness

    Mercury poisoning is an excellent template for the onset of “madness” for a wizard or other caster in your story or anyone else over-exposed to mercury. When you join the neuropsychiatric symptoms and the feedback loop of the body falling apart with magical knowledge or executive state action (in the case of a ruler like Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì), an unpredictable, irrational, and devastating danger is introduced to the story. 

    Further, philosophical mercury is mercury by analogy. If the analogy is extended, a magician could have philosophical mercury poisoning, pairing the neuropsychiatric and physical symptoms with impressionable animation. What that means will, naturally, be dictated by how the magical system of your setting functions, but some ideas come to mind:

• The magician’s formication manifests as actual bugs under the skin, with the bugs in question being thematically relevant to the magician’s research or as communication vectors for malicious intelligences (demons).
• The photosensitivity and desquamation pair together, making the magician susceptible to sunlight as a vampire.
• The operational failure is impressed upon the magician’s soul, compelling him to repeat the procedural step of the error, feeding back into the problem until there is no longer a man there but a meat automaton performing the same lab experiment over and over until death.

Contradictory Images

    The numerous contradictory emblems of the Mercurius can be converted from a problem to the basis of a character set. This can be played subtly, involving emblems of noble houses, physiognomy, and more oblique characterizations. It could also be played on the nose, like this season’s antagonistic faction in a bad-guy-of-the-week show.

    These emblems can also be romantic manifestations of character growth in the narrative environment, parallel to traditional alchemical practice.

Iron and Platinum

    Mercury is traditionally held in iron, but if the philosophical mercury can be separated into a distinct substance, it may require a more exotic metal closer to the state of material enlightenment: platinum. Because platinum was understood as a higher-order alloying (or possibly a hypostasis) of gold and silver, and therefore just short of the Philosopher’s Stone, that makes platinum objects ideal tools for alchemy-inspired spellcasters, being resistant to warping by the Mercurius.

    In either case, the resistance of iron and platinum to amalgamation in Mercury raises exciting prospects for how the material interacts with magic. Perhaps iron is a bane to fae creatures because of its resistance to their mercurial nature, and platinum can produce the same effects.

The Lighthouse as Temple

The lighthouse is a location that has been successfully exploited in horror fiction. It is a place of isolation, surrounded by the chaos of the sea. Lighthouse workers must thanklessly battle the elements to keep the light going and prevent disaster, an essential service that thrusts them into the liminal zone between civilization and the void.

Lighthouses already have the obvious feature of the titular light, a conceptual flame of guidance and comfort in the storm, and of enlightenment in the dark. Leaning into the early Fresnel lens technology, the mercury bath that acted as its bearing also reinforces the lighthouse's liminal qualities, marking it as a place of transformation.

*    *    *    *    *

See Also:

Clear Cosmology

Introduction to the Elements

Chaos and Order

Tria Prima (and Chaos)

The Elements - Quintessence

The Elements - Water [Pending]

The Elements - Air [Pending]

Man

Man [Pending]

Head - Brain/Mind [Pending]

Head - Insanity [Pending]

Fluids and Effluvia [Pending]

Animals

Birds [Pending]

Hooved Mammals [Pending]

Reptiles/Amphibians [Pending]

Monsters, Dragons, and Cryptids [Pending]

Magical Practice

Alchemy - The Chemical Wedding [Pending]

Magical Materials

Tria Prima - Salt

Tria Prima - Sulfur

Tria Prima - Addendum: Mercury and Sulfur Compounds[Pending]

Metals [Pending]

Gemstones - Jade [Pending]

Plants - Cypress [Pending]

Plants - Lily [Pending]

Plants - Rose [Pending]

*    *    *    *    *

Bibliography

-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins. 

( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/liquid-mercury-mexican-pyramid-teotihuacan )

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element) )

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning )

Magical Materials: Tria Prima - Salt

Salt - An Introduction

     Philosophical salt is the body of matter, its concrete or permanent qualities. While today we know that all salts are compounds of a metallic cation and a nonmetallic anion, such chemical knowledge was beyond ancient peoples' perception and experimental toolsets. Salt was the result of processes intended to remove unwanted impurities from a material, and at the human scale, very much appears to be a singular, uniform substance.

    Stone from seawater, the solid from the fluid, the end product of dissolution and crystallization, salt is distilled substance. In the eyes of the ancients, salt was the condensation of base matter, leading purified chemical salts to be interpreted as the isolated qualities of materials wholly divorced from their animating principles. 

    Salt was identified closely with the fundamental goal of philosophical alchemy, which was the self-knowledge that expunged impurity from the practitioner and consequently strengthened the alchemist’s knowledge of and relationship with God.

    Salt was regarded as feminine as the earthiest substance of elemental earth, and when personified, it is female. In the Western alchemist’s attempts to syncretize the Tria Prima with the Trinity, they identified salt with Christ. 

Ash

    Ash is a close analog to salt symbolically and as a technical term in alchemy. Both salt and ash were purified contractions of material exhausted and rendered inert by heat, salt being processed by boiling and ash by burning. Other than as a dietary preservative, they are synonymous.

Salt the Preservative

    Salt was also an excellent preservative, staving off corruption by drawing the water out of preserved foods and providing a chemically hostile environment for microbes. Before germ theory, it was not understood why biological matter decomposed, so natural biological and chemical processes were regarded with some degree of supernatural mystery. Rot and disease were synonymous, and disease was regularly anthropomorphized in the form of demons. This is one of many reasons salt was regarded as an effective ward against evil spirits: it kept evil spirits away from the preserved food.

    Because of this preservative quality and salt as a dietary necessity, it is also a key symbol of friendship, concord, and hospitality, especially in the ancient Near East—the Hebrews salt is a covenant offering in sacrifices in recognition of this common meaning.

Contractive Force

    Salt was the product of condensation, a manner of contraction, and it drew water out of other materials, another form of contraction. Salt was then synonymous with the more abstract contractive force, or like-attracts-like, the predecessor of Newton’s formulation of the Universal Law of Gravitation.

Spiritual Elevation and Enlightenment

    Salt symbolizes spiritual purification, a path with an upward trajectory. This derives not just from removing the impure during the processing of salt but also because salt not only adds flavor to food but also brings out the qualities of other ingredients. This is another layer to Christ’s description of the faithful in Matthew 5:13. The faithful are the distilled, noblest essence of Man, free of impurities, and bring out the best in those around them.

    This line of thought is not wholly unique to Abrahamic religions, as salt was an emblem of purification, spiritual improvement, and incorruptibility employed from Greece to Japan.

Wit and Wisdom

    Salt is necessary, but one can easily have too much of it. It brings out the best of other flavors but can quickly become unpalatable or even dangerous. This quality is analogous to sharp wit and wisdom. Both are necessary and can elevate, but they can also be bitter and unwelcome. A bright intellect can dispel closely held illusions, and wisdom can unpleasantly call out invested waywardness. 

Abjuration

    The preservative qualities of salt and the belief it warded off evil spirits are accompanied by a host of superstitions. In Voodoo, giving salt to zombies awakens them to their state of death and compels them to return to the grave. The Greeks and Romans regarded salt spilling from a salt cellar or other vessel as bad luck and responded by grabbing a pinch of the salt and throwing it over their left shoulder.

    This is because the left-hand (sinister) side is weaker in a right-hand-dominant culture, and therefore, the direction evil spirits will attack from/the shoulder the spirit will latch onto. Consequently, spilled salt in iconography indicates ill-omen, as when Judas Iscariot spilled the salt in Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (c. 1495).

Essential Salts

"The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated." 

-Borellus

Pierre Borel, or Borellus, French physician and alchemist, (1620-1671)

    H. P. Lovecraft’s short horror novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward opens with this quote, laying out the inspirational germ of the story’s central premise: necromancy by essential salts. However, this is not a quote. Or, at least, it’s not a quote from Borellus; it’s a paraphrasing of Borellus by Cotton Mather.

    Yes, of the Salem Witch Trials. That Cotton Mather.

Cotton Mather, Puritan minister and theologian (1663-1728)

    This paraphrase is worth examining in its larger context, as it covers the notion of essential salts rather well:

“§ 1. If such a renowned chymist, as Quercetanus, with a whole tribe of labourers in the fire, since that learned man, find it no easie thing to make the common part of mankind believe, that they can take a plant in its more vigorous consistence, and after a due maceration, fermentation and separation, extract the salt of that plant, which, as it were, in a chaos, invisibly reserves the form of the whole, with its vital principle ; and, that keeping the salt in a glass hermetically sealed, they can, by applying a soft fire to the glass, make the vegetable rise by little and little out of its ashes, to surprise the spectators with a notable illustration of that resurrection, in the faith whereof the Jews returning from the graves of their friends, pluck up the grass from the earth, using those words of the scripture thereupon, Your bones shall flourish like an herb : 'tis likely, that all the observations of such writers, as the incomparable Borellus, will find it hard enough to produce our belief, that the essential salts of animals may be so prepared and preserved, than an ingenious man may have the whole ark of Noah in his own study, and raise the fine shape of an animal out of its ashes at his pleasure : and, that by the like method from the essential salts of human dust, a philosopher may, without any criminal necromancy, call up the shape of any dead ancestor from the dust whereinto his body has just been incinerated. The resurrection of the dead, will be as just, as great an article of our creed, although the relations of these learned men should pass for incredible romances : but yet there is an anticipation of that blessed resurrection, carrying in it some resemblance of these curiosities, which is performed, when we do in a book, as in a glass, reserve the history of our departed friends ; and by bringing our warm affections unto such an history, we revive, as it were, out of their ashes, the true shape of those friends, and bring to a fresh view, what was memorable and imitable in them.”

-Magnalia Christi Americana, Book II, “The Life of his Excellency, Sir William Phips, KNT”

    We apologize; the grammar may be difficult to interpret. This particular section of the book is the opening of a 56-page biography of Sir William Phips. The introduction reads as an extended joke made of the wild promises of future medical technology from the pens of alchemists, before segueing into proper eulogy by stating that the remembrance of friends resurrects the shape of the dead as surely as the processes and preparations of fringe medicine and magic.

    Understanding the framing, we can parse this quote and discern the information that draws our genuine interest: the claimed properties of essential salts.

Chemical Extraction

    Mather references the student of Paracelsus, Joseph Quercetanus, on the extraction of essential features of plants (framed as the “vital principle”). Under this formulation, so much of what makes the plant that plant is retained in the salt that the reintroduction of animation via gentle flame reinvigorates inert matter with the original plant’s life and shape. 

    The core idea of essential salts is that the whole being of a living thing can be rendered inert while that essence is still accessible through a reanimating reaction. 

    The same ideas that apply to vegetable matter under these lines of reasoning apply to animal matter, including human beings. Mather observed that resurrection would be achieved by chemical process rather than devilry or other criminal magic under such a formulation.

    As with many alchemical presuppositions, the chemical resurrection of whole beings from salt is pure fantasy. However, pursuing this impossible end goal led to the development of many chemical extraction and isolation methods that formed the foundation of chemistry as a genuine scientific discipline.

Creative Musings

    With knowledge and account of the history of salt, practically, culturally, and magically, we turn our attention to salt’s creative value to storytellers.

Salt Abjuration as Dysjunction

    Preservative practices might not be the only dimension for a writer to consider when examining salt as an abjuring reagent. There is another way to look at the relationship between salt and the evil spirit grounded in its role in the Tria Prima: the concrete.

    Spirits, be they ghosts, demons, or what have you, are typically thought of as not having solid bodies of their own or only the semblance of. Animated corpses like the upvakningr or various interpretations of the vampire notwithstanding, evil spirits/demons/what-have-you are thought of as immaterial anima, or particular animation without a physical body.

    Salt, being a non-particular physical body without animation, is the relevant opposite of the evil spirit and, therefore, suggests the negation of the spirit. A writer who wishes to go in this direction could use the salt to lend the spirit physicality in the form of an ectoplasm or something similar, making the incorporeal vulnerable to physical action. They could also have the salt and the spirit negate each other in a literal sense, destroying both the spirit and the physical matter of the salt!

Essential Salts, Again

    H. P. Lovecraft recognized and exploited the essential salts of Borellus, but his story pertains to necromancers seeking a kind of depraved immortality. The necromancer is already material. What about salts of more exotic provenance?

    The Elder Scrolls video game franchise implements spirit-sourced essential salts through the elemental spirits known as atronachs. 

A flame atronach, is they appear in TES V: Skyrim.

    Atronachs are extra-dimensional elemental beings made of fire, ice, and lightning. On being defeated or killed, atronachs collapse into a residue that can be harvested as an appropriate essential salt. Flame atronachs drop fire salts, frost atronachs drop frost salts, and storm atronachs drop void salts.

    These essential spirit salts are used in alchemical concoctions (potions) and in improving commodities and tools. Food may be made both dry and cool for long periods without refrigeration by preserving it in frost salts, and furnaces might be made to burn hotter, longer, and with less fuel by introducing fire salts, and so on.

    The essential qualities of the atronach’s element is made readily available for exploitation in novel forms!

    While essential salts have been exploited, from the pulps to Bethesda’s flagship video game franchise, this compiler feels that the subject is still under-explored in popular fantasy media, both in itself and in combination with other materials.

Chemical or Spiritual?

    For those considering using essential salt in their writing, there are two (non-exclusive) vectors for the reaction of essential salt: chemical and spiritual.

    To explain, we propose a salt of tiger blood.

    A concoction of salt of tiger blood is prescribed to improve the strength and stamina of a patient. What is its mechanism of action?

    In the case of chemical action, the essential salt may have extracted nutrients from the blood necessary for building muscle or may have been deficient in the patient’s diet. The salt may even contain hormones that further promote muscle mass development and stamina. 

    In the case of spiritual action, the essential salt may have extracted the strength and ferocity of the tiger from its blood. This action is conceptual: tigers are strong; therefore, consuming the tiger’s vital essence will make the patient like the tiger. 

    Which vector do you, as a storyteller, choose?

Making the Choice

    We apologize, as the question we just asked was based on two false premises: 

    1) that you have to choose one; and 

    2) that you have to choose one.

    The first of these is the easiest to address: as the storyteller, you can choose not to explore your story's causal mechanism. This may be because the narrative point of view doesn’t leave room for teasing out the two for character or pacing reasons, or you simply don’t care to explore that side of the subject.

    The second premise is more complicated by the wealth of options available. You might choose one mechanism of action over the other because it makes sense for your story, your magic system, or any other considerations.

    You can also choose both. This is the most challenging path to take and potentially the most creatively rewarding because there’s more than one “both.”

    You may be writing a story where the narrative considers both the chemical and spiritual action of salts valid. This might play out with different characters prioritizing one action over the other, providing two methods of material interpretation that the character must choose. This provides the characters with a material grounding and creative freedom in their problem-solving.

    The characters might also prioritize one method of interpretation over the other, while their biases have no meaningful impact on the salt reaction. Their ignorance of one or the other could lead to unforeseen complications.

    What writer doesn’t love unforeseen complications? 

Binding via Spirit Salts

    The Elder Scrolls video games source exotic salts from spirits, and the same salts are used to summon those spirits. Fire salts are necessary to create a Scroll of Summon Flame Atronach. This poses an ambiguity relevant: is a second flame atronach drawn into the world by the salts via sympathy, or is the first atronach resurrected?

Imagine freeze-drying a ghost so you can bring it back to death later.

    For our purposes, we shall explore the possibilities of the latter: capturing spirits whole for later reanimation.

    We are not wholly informed by the contrivances of a 20th-century pulp author and a 21st-century video game studio. We have found similar ideas that are much older on both sides of the Atlantic.

    In the Maya epic the Popol Vuh, the hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque tricked the earthquake giant Cabracan by feeding him a bird sprinkled with magical earth or chalk. The enchanted bird weakened Cabracan, and the hero twins buried him alive.

The Death of Cabracan by Diego Rivera

    While this story does not speak of salt, the logic is that Cabracan’s weakened state was likely the result of terrible thirst, which makes for a perfect analogy. If a mountain-splitting ogre like Cabracan can be brought low by thirst and rendered inert, why not other monsters?

    In The Testament of Solomon, the King of Israel had the demon Kunopaston sealed in a “phial” or jar.  Kunopaston’s escape following his sacrifices to Moloch tells us such monsters can also be released.

The brass vessel from the Ars Goetia.

    A spirit or monster might be bound to salt, rendered salt, or immersed in salt. They might be placed in the vessel as a salt, ground up with the salt, or as a shriveled mummy. In any case, they are rendered inert for later use, awaiting some form of activation. Quercetanus speaks of reanimation via soft flame, and both The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Elder Scrolls bring about reanimation by breath or word (an uttered spell). 

    For simplicity, our sample premises are predicated exclusively on liquid reagents of reanimation: water, wine, oil, blood, etc.

The Process of Reconstitution

    Reconstituting a whole being from salt might involve multiple treatments of aqua regia and ethanol, etc., and you might make a scene or multiple scenes of it. It might take months. Depending on circumstances, it places the reconstituted being in a position of considerable vulnerability and may give the story a ticking clock.

    Reconstitution could also be relatively quick, occurring in a flash of powder or a gust of wind. Maybe they reform their body from grains of salt. Perhaps they rise from a salt slurry like Frank Cotton from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser:

    How they reconstitute might reveal something of the way the world of your story works. If they pull themselves up or crawl out of the salt, they may drag themselves out of hell and back into the corporeal world. If they simply materialize, perhaps their spirit was trapped in a salt prison, and they never actually went to the other side.

    The performance of reconstitution could also reveal something about the materialized being. It may reveal the creature’s true nature if it normally wears a deceptive skin or mask, like the vampires in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels or the plaster-covered angels in the Bayonetta video games. A spirit or monster rising from the salt headfirst, standing erect as though being pushed up on an elevator platform, implies that the creature is perfectly aware when it begins reconstitution. It may have been conscious the entire duration it was salt-bound. 

    The process could also reveal a change in the essence of the reanimated thing, as in the case of the Sand Man, Flint Marko, in Spider-Man 3:

Utility

    Essential salts are convenient as a delivery vehicle for preserved alchemical reagents. Being a powder, they readily dissolve in liquid media and mix with other powders. Salt can be thrown or scattered quickly, but it is solid enough that if a spill occurs, it’s much easier to recover than an aqueous solution (a potion). This makes them a valid substitute for liquid potions and spell scrolls, whether for your fantasy novel or your Dungeons and Dragons game.

    Small jars of exotic essential salts and other powdered reagents might be available at a regional shop to convey something about the local culture, or the characters might encounter this as archaic magic in some remote crypt. Your heroes may have developed the method themselves to smuggle dangerous magic into a city with prohibitions on scrolls and the like.

    One could quickly build a magical system predicated entirely on essential salts.

Complicating Spell Salts

    Working from our list of liquid reagents, what if a spell salt requires a specific fluid to activate? Does using the wrong fluid interfere with the spell salt? Does it spoil the salt’s essence? Does it fundamentally change the salt’s reactivity?

    Let’s explore a few sample premises:

Premise 1: Something in the Water

    A magician, while fleeing from a gang of thugs, attempted to reanimate the salt of a demon he had bound. In haste, he poured water into the demon jar instead of wine, ruining the salt. He tossed the salt, which leeched into the ground after the next rain. 

    What might the demon do in the soil, plants, or drinking water?

Premise 2: Monsters on the Dock

    When an adventuring party enters the dock, an over-enthusiastic customs official orders his underlings to thoroughly search the party’s cargo. The customs official’s goons fumble and drop a crate full of jars into the water.

    What spells go off? What monsters rise from the foam? How much damage do they cause? How inconvenient is the mess for your heroes?

Premise 3: A Novel Explosive

    A military engineer too clever for anyone’s good has made a terrible discovery: if he renders an entire wasp nest into a salt and blends it in with the gunpowder in the explosive cannonballs, the shrapnel homes in on anyone in the blast radius with the malice of a swarm of hornets.

Premise 4: A Radical Procedure

    A terminal illness afflicts a wealthy prince. The court doctor/magician suggests a radical procedure to rid the prince of his affliction: complete calcination. The court doctor insists that once the prince has been burned to ashes, his ashes can be sifted for the impurity of the disease by various processes and that he might be reconstituted over a year from his purified essential salt.

Premise 5: Father of Chimeras

    A mad alchemist renders animals to salt and blends their powders to reconstitute them into chimeric monsters.

And you wondered where the hell owlbears came from.

Premise 6: No Blood, No Problem

    The ambitious court wizard of a decadent and declining empire wishes to seize the throne from his master. Unfortunately for him, he is not of royal or even noble blood, being the son of a foreign land. The wizard resolves this by stealing the previous emperor's bones and, with his underlings' aid, renders both the old emperor and himself to salt. When he returns, he appears as brother to the sitting emperor, and his regicide goes unopposed.

Premise 7: An Ancient Evil Returns

    A grave robber in the sandy wastes of the east burgles his way into a tomb whose name is lost to history. He eagerly tears the tomb apart, looking for gold and jewels. He finds a handful before his eyes fall on the prize: a great burial cask. He pries the lid off but finds only dust. He runs his fingers through the dust to the bottom and finds nothing. He curses and spits into the cask before searching the rest of the tomb for enough to break even on his journey. 

    Before he stoops to smash another pot, a mewling noise stops him. He returns to the cask, finding a shriveled, fetal form with a wizened face glaring at him with eyes as black as the void. He watches as it grows, hearing its voice deepen and its words become speech.

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See Also:

Clear Cosmology

Chaos and Order

Tria Prima (and Chaos)

Magical Materials

Tria Prima - Mercury

Tria Prima - Sulfur

*    *    *    *    *

Bibliography

-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Chabbert, Pierre. Pierre Borel (1620?-1671). Presses Universitaires de France, 1968.
( https://www.persee.fr/doc/rhs_0048-7996_1968_num_21_4_2567 )

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Mather, Cotton. “Book II, The Life of His Excellency, Sir William Phips, KNT”.” Magnalia Christi Americana, or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England: From Its First Planting in the Year 1620, unto the Year of Our Lord, 1698: In Seven Books, Published by Silas Andrus. Roberts & Burr, Printers, Hartford, 1820, p. 151.
( https://archive.org/details/magnaliachris01math/page/150/mode/2up )

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins. 

Clear Cosmology: Prima Materia - Salt, Mercury, and Sulfur (and Chaos)

    Alchemical terminology is a problem. 

    Its meaning can vary between texts or hold several meanings in the same document. Alchemical jargon is murky at the best of times because it rests on the spectrum from a hyper-technical term of art to a secret code to out-and-out sacred babble. For this and other reasons, we will exercise some editorial authority to present what we think is the most coherent interpretation of the relevant ideas.

    For this article, the offending term is Prima Materia, or “First Matter.”

What is Prima Materia?

    Answering categorically, Prima Materia refers to one of two things:

    1) Singular: undifferentiated source matter, Chaos.

    2) Plural: the constituent parts of matter, salt, mercury, and sulfur. 

    The latter category is called the Tria Prima, or sometimes the “prime elements.” These are distinct from the four elements previously explored in that the Tria Prima describes the constituency of matter rather than the behavior of matter.

First Matter - Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury

    Matter displays three qualities that operate along two axes of consideration. 

    The first two qualities are Philosophical Sulfur and Philosophical Mercury, which correspond to the matter’s animate qualities, the Masculine/Feminine axis. Paracelsus referred to these as their combustibility and changeability, respectively. In this context, combustibility refers to a material’s reactivity of form and its chemical action. Changeability is a material’s impressionability or its receptivity to change of form.

    The third quality is Philosophical Salt, which is the physical substance or permanence of the material. Between the salt and the animating attributes, the second axis reveals itself as Abstract/Concrete. 

    Paracelsus’s model for demonstration was the burning of wood. The fire was the intrinsic sulfur of the wood revealing itself in reaction, releasing the wood’s mercury in the form of changeable smoke, leaving the salt of the wood as ash.

    To the alchemists, the admixture of these constituents explains all matter. Proportional and generational variance account for the more subtle distinctions of particular instance. This is why basalt, granite, and clay are different, though all three materials are phenomenologically earth. 

    The interaction of the Tria Prima was the framing device for the whole of the alchemical project, the “chemical wedding” of Queen Albedo (mercury) and King Rubedo (sulfur). The first generation of this wedding was supposed to be the seven classical metals, all materials composed of the Tria Prima in different proportions. These proportions could be adjusted by chemical process, such that lead (or even feces) could be brought into perfect balance and made gold.

Employing the Three

    How you implement this knowledge in your story may not be immediately apparent. We’ll attack from the distinction between philosophical and material to jump-start the reader's imagination.

    The Tria Prima are understood via analogy, meaning that the mercury of the wood that manifests in the smoke is not literal mercury. If the mercury is philosophical (read: abstract), it can be reinterpreted as a variable category. If the smoke of amber differs from that of a virgin’s hair, perhaps their mercuries are also different.

    Let’s explore that idea.

Sample Scenario - The Lair of Oroglec the Unconscionable

    Oroglec, a ruthless wizard, professional evildoer, and proud dungeon owner, has a security problem. There is a portcullis between his inner laboratory and the outer dungeon. Do-gooder heroes and rival villains drop by often enough that he needs to keep the portcullis closed to preserve his arcane secrets. Still, he passes into the outer dungeon often enough that constantly opening and closing the portcullis is a pain.

    Oroglec could hire a goblin to man the portcullis, but the goblin could be bought off, coerced, or killed. He could bind a spirit to the door mechanism, but that could be unbound or banished. Installing a more advanced automatic mechanism would require clearing out more of the earth around the portcullis, which would threaten the structural integrity of the dungeon (not to mention the hassle of managing keyfobs).

    He needs something with the qualities of a loyal sentience, with the upkeep convenience of an automatic mechanism. He requires the portcullis to be like…a guard dog.

    Oroglec removes the portcullis and subjects it to a chemical bath of mercury of puppies, infusing the iron gate with the trainability and loyalty of man’s best friend. The result is the most ferocious and disciplined guard-door an adventuring party has ever had the misfortune to step through.

And you wondered why dungeons were so weird.

The First Matter - Singular

    Despite splitting the term Prima Materia in two and dispensing with one, we still have two Prima Materias! We are burdened again with vague, interchangeable alchemist-speak because the singular form of Prima Materia can refer to both the substance of Chaos and the Philosopher’s Stone!

    This is the second time this article that the Philosopher’s Stone has come up, and it will be touched on only so far as is relevant to the matter at hand, which is its relationship to/role as “First Matter.” For a more exhaustive exploration of the Philosopher’s Stone and its properties, see our article on the subject [article forthcoming].

Chaos as Stuff

    We discussed Chaos and Order before as principles, but we should have delved into Chaos as a substance in great detail. We fill that gap here:

Chaos (Material) - that which is undifferentiated

    This Chaos goes by many names, almost all of which are interchangeable with the Philosopher’s Stone, but the most important has to be Hyle.

Robert Fludd's [1574-1637] diagram of the universe,
being the intersection of God and the Hyle.

    Hyle was the term used by Aristotle when he started examining the notion of physical matter in general. At the time, the Greek language did not have a word that meant “matter” in the abstract; it only had words referring to raw materials. Aristotle chose the word hyle, or “wood” (lat. silva), to refer to that-which-accepted-shape. 

    Aristotle conceived that all four elements comprised this hyle in proportion, using his formulation of dry/moist and hot/cold. The universal quality of Aristotle’s hyle notion readily adapted into a Platonic abstraction, which we’re sure would have annoyed him greatly. 

    Aristotle’s four-elements conception was adopted and reiterated by the early Hermeticists. The third book of the Corpus Hermetica, “The Holy Sermon,” describes the four elements* emerging from the primordial mud, which was adopted as one of the universal images of the Platonic Hyle. 

    The Hyle, containing all substances without differentiation, merely awaits a shaping will to impose itself and separate the substances from each other, establishing Order.

*This compiler has separated the four elements and the Tria Prima into the respective categories of phenomena and substance for convenience’s sake. These terms of art were used inconsistently historically, continuing the tradition. Our research indicates that the Tria Prima is an innovation that post-dates both Aristotle and the early Hermeticists by several centuries.

Chaos and the Philosopher’s Stone

    Material Chaos is all matter without differentiation. It is, as its name clearly states, Chaos. The Philosopher’s Stone, in contrast, is an ordered, purposed thing. You use it to turn lead into gold! Why, then, do the alchemists use their names interchangeably?

    This is because of an essential dogma of alchemy: the Philosopher’s Stone is a revelation of the divine through base matter, and no matter is as base as Chaos. To the alchemist, primordial Chaos is the Philosopher’s Stone, and the only thing preventing the operator from observing this is their own ignorance.

    On realizing the Philosopher’s Stone, the Chaos ceases to be undifferentiated, but instead the revealed every-thing in hypostasis! The particulars of what that hypostasis means will be discussed in our Philosopher’s Stone article [article forthcoming].

    This allows us to address why both are called the “first matter”:  perspective. One is first in sequence, the other first in hierarchy. In Christian analogy, Chaos is the first matter in the way that Adam is the first man, and the Philosopher’s Stone is the first matter in how Christ is the first man. In another frame, Chaos is Romulus as Rome’s first king, and the Philosopher’s Stone is the Emperor as the first citizen of Rome.

Material Chaos in Popular Fiction

    Taking an educated guess, this compiler is sure that most readership will find these ideas familiar in form if not frame. Notions of “material chaos” abound in fantasy fiction, sometimes as an antagonistic force or a source for magical action. It is pretty often wild, destructive, and unpredictable.

    We’re sure most of this readership is familiar with at least one derivative, but we’ll share a few of our examples:

Example 1: Brust’s Amorphia

    In his Vlad Taltos novels, author Steven Brust sources magic from a literal sea (two, actually) of physical chaos. This stuff, called amorphia, writhes about as a formless, colorless substance that contains all forms and colors within it. It reacts to contact with more stable matter by catalyzing it into more amorphia. 

    In-setting, this chaotic energy source is utilized through two forms of magic: "imperial" and "pre-imperial" sorcery. In pre-imperial sorcery, the caster draws directly from a source of material chaos and imposes their will directly and in combination with constructed will proxies (magical devices and arrangements). This is an unstable, high-risk practice. On the other hand, Imperial sorcery draws this chaotic energy through a stabilized conduit called trellanstone, a composite material of amorphia and necrophia, a crystalline analog for the will of an intelligent being. This magic is significantly lower risk, and instances of amorphia mishap don't result in continent-spanning oceans of the stuff.

Chaos Theory by Daniel "Tempest" Emmerling, (2004)

Keep it Simple

    Example 1 above might be the cleanest implementation of material chaos this compiler has encountered. Its relationship to magic is directly articulated. The danger posed by contact with amorphia is demonstrated plainly in the narrative. It’s the most straightforward implementation of material chaos I’ve seen and used effectively. 

There is nothing wrong with engaging storytelling devices simply.

Example 2: Pratchett’s Octarine

    In the Discworld novels of Sir Terry Pratchett, the world is held together by something called the Elemental Magic Force, which takes the place of the electromagnetic force and is responsible for all magical action. Powerful fields of this EMF are marked by the magical eighth color octarine, the color of imagination. Octarine contains all the other colors and is thought to be their source. It’s a sort of fluorescent greenish yellow-purple, and the only people who can see it are those insufferable wizards (and you, unless you close your eyes; it's those splotches of color).

Novelty and Sustainability

    Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a parody of fantasy fiction and many other things besides. The formulation of octarine is a novel way to bridge ancient magical thinking with the incomprehensible jargon of advanced physics, riffing on the systematization of nonsense that abounds in fantasy fiction.

    Knowledge of the primordial Chaos inspired Sir Pratchett to stretch one joke through hundreds of permutations across 41 novels. Don’t be afraid to reframe old ideas with new systems and theories, even if only for a laugh.

Example 3: Warhammer’s Warp

    The Warp, or Immaterium, of Games Workshop’s Warhammer franchise is an entire universe of psychoreactive immatter. In the Immaterium, space and time are fashions rather than constants, and its unstuff possesses no form while containing all forms. Magic, demons, and unfathomable horror roil in this realm beyond.

Machina ex Opācitās

    Often, “chaos” is interpreted as or employed as an excuse for randomness. Introducing “chaos” into the world causes havoc, mutation, disfiguration, or absurdity. This is true in Warhammer, where Chaos and the Warp are a universal justification for everything strange. Warp stuff influences ordinary matter to meta-reaction and psycho-reaction. While the resulting horror tends to be motif-bound or otherwise thematically relevant, the absurd is now on the table. 

    Suppose one reaches too profoundly into the Immaterium and loses control. In that case, they might turn into a living garden sprinkler of purple fire, become possessed by a demon, or turn everyone around them into a feral cannibal. They might also replace their vocabulary with precisely what everyone wants to hear, make time run perpendicular, or transmute their bones to children’s toys and bad ideas. 

    As explained in our Chaos and Order article, this sort of Chaos tends towards conceptual gags.

    Prima Materia-derived all-nothing like the Warp introduces a broad mechanical principle that glosses over physical, chemical, and rational concerns for cause and effect in your story. If you can sell the audience on this machine-from-opacity, you’re free to indulge the priorities of this kind of story: aesthetic and character.

*    *    *    *    *

See Also:

Clear Cosmology

Introduction to the Elements

Elements - Earth [Pending]

Elements - Water [Pending]

Elements - Air [Pending]

Elements - Fire [Pending]

Elements - Quintessence

Chaos and Order

Magical Materials

Tria Prima - Salt

Tria Prima - Mercury [Pending]

Tria Prima - Sulfur [Pending]

*    *    *    *    *

Bibliography

-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins.