A review of "Splendor Solis: AD 1582" by Salomon Trismosin
I haven't read this book, but John Michael Greer (who
has translated similar works) actually warns his readers about using it as a
practical guide to alchemy.
Here are his exact words: "There's an alchemical text called the Red Lion of Trismosin, which instructs you to take gold and process it with certain acids according to a complex recipe, producing a sediment. You then pound the sediment up in a glass mortar and voila! The philosopher's stone. There's only one problem: that sediment is a violently unstable gold fulminate, and the first time you bring down the pestle on it, BOOM -- you, your laboratory, and quite possibly a significant portion of the block you live on are going to be blown to smithereens. Whoever wrote that had a very, very nasty sense of humor."
I didn't know the philosopher's stone could be used as a WMD, but there you go...
Here are his exact words: "There's an alchemical text called the Red Lion of Trismosin, which instructs you to take gold and process it with certain acids according to a complex recipe, producing a sediment. You then pound the sediment up in a glass mortar and voila! The philosopher's stone. There's only one problem: that sediment is a violently unstable gold fulminate, and the first time you bring down the pestle on it, BOOM -- you, your laboratory, and quite possibly a significant portion of the block you live on are going to be blown to smithereens. Whoever wrote that had a very, very nasty sense of humor."
I didn't know the philosopher's stone could be used as a WMD, but there you go...
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