Alchemical Symbols (30)

Air (Aer), or Aer Spiritus, is the hot-moist classical element of breath and wind, marked by the glyph 🜁.

Antimony (Stibium) is the metalloid Sb, chiefly stibnite, hailed as Lupus metallorum for devouring and purifying metals.

Royal water: a 1:3 nitric–hydrochloric menstruum that dissolves gold and platinum, marked by the glyph 🜆.

Aqua vitae, or spirit of wine, is the medieval and Renaissance name for distilled aqueous ethanol, the volatile quintessence of wine.

Orpiment (arsenicum) is the golden arsenic sulfide and metalloid tied to Mercurius Duplex and the albedo.

Bismuth (Wismut; Bi) is the brittle fusible metal whose sign 🜾 named Tectum Argenti, the mineral roof over silver.

Black Sulfur (Sulphur Nigrum) is the Saturnine black sulfur of chymistry, glyph 🜏, proper to the Nigredo.

Calcination and sublimation are paired dry-heat operations that expel volatiles from a solid and refine its fixed residue.

Scarlet mercury(II) sulfide (HgS), ore of quicksilver and the historic vermilion of chymical Rubedo.

Copper, or Cuprum, is Venus's metal: the soft red conductor Cu, signed ♀, whose salts green the viriditas of the opus.

An alembic still of cucurbit and headed beak separates volatile spirit from fixed residue by vapor and condensation.

Earth (Terra) is the cold, dry classical element of fixity, glyph 🜃, linked to Saturn and the opus stage of coagulatio.

Chymical fire (Ignis), glyph 🜂, the hot-dry agent of calcination, solar-martial heat, and laboratory combustion.

Gold (Sol), or Aurum, is the solar noble metal Au whose chymical glyph is the circled point and whose opus stage is Rubedo.

The Hexagram of the Four Elements is the six-pointed Seal of Solomon marking the tempered union of fire and water.

Iron (Mars), Latin Ferrum, is the martial metal of Renaissance chymistry, written ♂ and later identified as Fe.

Lead (Saturn), plumbum, is the heavy fusible metal whose glyph ♄ marks both common Pb and the black nigredo of the Magnum Opus.

Mercury, or quicksilver (Argentum vivum, Hg, ☿), is the liquid metal and volatile spirit of chymistry, planet of Mercurius and agent of Albedo.

John Dee's 1564 Antwerp book expounding a hieroglyph that unites the seven planetary metals in a single chymical sign.

Self-devouring serpent of chrysopoeia, the ouroboros figures the closed circuit of matter from prima materia to the red stone.

Mythic chymical agent, the Lapis Philosophorum, held to transmute base metals into gold or silver and to yield an elixir of life.

Platinum, or white gold, is the silver-white metal Pt, represented here by a conjunctive solar-lunar glyph and chymical symbolism.

Quintessence (quinta essentia) is Aristotle's celestial fifth element and the chymists' fully rectified spirit of wine.

The Rebis is the hermaphroditic res bina of Sol and Luna, the coincidentia oppositorum marking coniunctio in the magnum opus.

Paracelsian Sal Principium: the fixed bodily principle, glyph 🜔, answering to terra and, in the jar, to common salt.

Silver (Argentum, Luna) is chymistry's white lunar metal, marked ☽, allied to albedo, and identical with Ag.

Sulfur, or brimstone (Sulphur Philosophorum), is the solar chymical soul of combustibility, signed by the glyph 🜍 (S8).

Tin (Jupiter) is stannum (Sn), the soft planetary metal of Jupiter (♃), assigned in the Magnum Opus to the whitening work of Albedo.

Vitriol denotes the metal sulfates, chiefly green iron vitriol, and the acid oil linked to the Green Lion.

Aqua (🜄) is the cold-moist classical element and the lunar solvent that begins Solutio in chymistry.