Destillatio

"This figure from Bibliothèque des Sages (1761) is a schematic of the currents of Distillation. It envisions the Red and White circuits as the two serpents of the caduceus or staff of Hermes. The triple crown is also a reference to the thrice-greatest Hermes. The cross of the elements is below at the beginning of the work."

“In destillatio, the material is heated in the alchemical swan until it becomes steam, as when wine is distilled into pure alcohol. The alcohol vapour is then cooled and condensed into liquid in a collecting beaker for the subsequent heating. Distillation, with its ascending and descending, has come to constitute the very image of alchemy itself. When one considers how the more subtle, lofty and translucent mercury leaves the dark and now brownish wine, one sees how the process may simultaneously be experienced in the human interior. In the human laboratory, the operation is often performed by visualising the mercurial fountain and employing focused breathing techniques to circulate the material through perpetual ascents and descents in a solve & coagula. The material, which here is the alchemist, is gradually purified and refined. Destillatio means that the lower life forces in a human ascend due to the various alchemical fires and are thus exalted and purified, after which they descend to vivify the lower regions. The operation thereby unites above and below in a transformative and transmutative circular process.”

• Alchemy – the divine work