Here I’m not talking about metallic gold and silver, but philosophers ( taking advantage of the Rule of three, each Alchemical symbol can stand for at least three meanings). Philosophers Gold and Silver are born by the same philosophers’ tree. A red axe is under the sun a white sword is under the moon. In a triangle, the three principles are made prominent they are in their home.

Sol et Luna, the sun, and the moon are the most important branches, the engine of the entire work. Two triangles are represented here, and the work looks pretty obscure. In the next post on Basilius Valentinus’ “Azoth”, we will go deeper into these concepts. It’s only a question of refinement or removing impurities or unwanted elements from a substance. In Alchemy, there is metallic gold and Philosophers’ gold. And another is the Mercurius Philosophorum, called after its color: Flavus or reddish-yellow. The name for the tree is “Azoth,” or Philosophers’ Gold. One is watching a tree growing nobody can make a tree. This concept is made stronger by the tree allegory. There is a kind of motion involved here, a metamorphosis. What’s the difference? “the way to” suggests an operation, not the final result. Pay attention here Basilius Valentinus did not write “Azoth is the Philosophers’Gold”, but the way to make it. That’s to say: Azoth is the way to make the hidden Philosophers’ Gold. The wording “Azoth, or the way to make the hidden Philosophers Gold”, underlines an equivalence between Azoth and the following sentence. Certainly, he didn’t mean in the royalist sense but in the metallic one. He was certainly aware of his ability since he called himself Valentinus from latin Valens, which means man of great valor in the sense of value + bravery, and Basilius from the latin “king worth”. He was the first to name some Materia Tertia materials by their common names. Talented Basilius Valentinus, operating in dry and wet ways, either a single person or a group of monks (but I doubt inside a monastery one could work in a dry way), stands out in Alchemy world for his all-around impressive laboratory activity. A Lamb (a white fluffy material like wool), a dry ground ( no liquid involved), a sword ( a piercing bright white smelted piece of alloy, an allegory for Mercurius ), an axe ( a piercing red smelted part of the alloy, a symbol for thunder or Secret Fire and sometimes Sulphur) they all seem clues for dry way, that’s to say the smelting way. Is a neologism put forward for a new third principle or Salt? In “Azoth” by Basilius Valentinus, we come up with the archaic term Azoth.

Opus magnum sword alloy