"Introduction to the science of alchemy, the preparation of the great arcanum In alchemy, in the hermetic work, two ways of achieving the goal are known: the so-called "short, dry way" and the "long, wet way". The names wet and dry road are only very conditionally correct, since water is an essential component of what must be prepared first, the "salt fire". This very lengthy and laborious preparatory work - at least its initial stage - was compared by the alchemists to the manual operation of saltpetre makers and labeled as women's work, "women's work" due to the preparation of the lye required here. The further stages of the work can be called anything but "women's work", as it is an extremely meticulous and not at all safe procedure. In a short book by a real Freemason: The True, Ancient Natural Way of Hermes Trismegistus, Leipzig, 1782, there is the following reference to the "wet" and "dry" ways: "The philosophers mention in their writings two ways by which we obtain a tincture which some called the dry road, while others called it the wet road. We can work with any method to extract the tincture, there is no difference between them at the beginning of the procedure, since in both cases we have to operate with dryness and moisture. Yet they distinguish the two. The different names come from the fact that the tincture, the gold produced during the dry process, is sealed in a jar as a dry powder and brought to a perfect state, whereas during the wet process, the gold is reached with the help of our dissolved, sophic mercury, and the perfect state is achieved by the elements is achieved by inverting it.”

Fraternitas Mercurii Hermetis Publisher
Esoteric
90 pages
Binding: paperback
ISBN: 9789638840981
Author: Alexander von Bernus
Year of publication: 2014