I came across this page, which is apparently describing making some sort of alchemical preparation from rosemary. At the end of a long and convoluted process, the alchemist winds up with some sort of clear crystalline matter. What exactly is this stuff? I know it’s not “spiritualized matter” or whatever he’s saying it is, but he obviously got something out of the process.
It looks to me like he is extracting the various salts that you would find in a rosemary leaf. There is probably at least some electrolytes in there, but not being a biologist or botanist I can’t say for sure what all would be in there. I’d expect to have at least Na and K present, with a counterion (most likely Cl), plus some other things, probably taken up from the soil. So, yeah, that’s my guess. Predominately NaCl and KCl with some traces of other salts. I have no idea why he’s doing it or where he found the retort or, for that matter, why he’s using a retort instead of a condenser.
It looks organic. I suspect it’s saponified rosemary oil; a soap. Soap used to be made by treating oils with sodium and potassium hydroxide derived from wood ash.
That makes sense too. Yeah, it’s hard to say. I’ve seen plenty of organic compounds that coat a flask like that, but then again, I’ve also seen salts look like that. Hard to say what exactly the chemistry is if everything has been saponified–lots of carboxylic acids, of course, but I’m sure someone’s used an LCMS or something to get the breakdown of the compounds in rosemary oil, even if I can’t find anything. There is info out there, but I don’t have access to the right journals.
I still can’t figure out why the heck he’s doing it.
Ah! That part, at least, I can answer. He’s refining the rosemary from a lower, baser state to a higher and purer state, whether to use as a medicine, or in another alchemical preparation, or just to raise the existence of the universe a tiny little bit. Alchemy is all about purifying and raising matter to a higher level, whether that means turning lead into gold, rosemary into little crystals, or the alchemist himself drawing closer to God. I was just curious as to what was actually in the stuff he produced.
He’s probably using a retort because that’s what whatever alchemical grimoire he’s reading from said to use.