Mutus Liber

Wonderful Mutus Liber (Silent Book! Book without Words) Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes. "Alchemy was transmitted in a mute way, by gestures, in the West; Mutus Liber is the title of one of the richest texts, in which he and his companion are represented with their hands arranged in eloquent poses. (Elémire Zolla, An Introduction to Alchemy, p.389) It is evident that the Mutus Liber (Book without Words) is one of the most important and significant works of the iconographic and symbolic tradition and alchemical history. In it we have, without a doubt, the phases and stages of the operations of the work. It was published in La Rochelle in 1677 thanks to the management of Pierre Savouret, who added it to the first volume of Manget's Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa (1702). It consists of 15 plates (engraved) in folio that gradually transmit various stages of the operation of the Magnum opus. In fact, the work expresses itself between images and symbols and its illustrations 'speak for themselves'. ''... the Mutus Liber, consist entirely of pictures- in the transmission of the theoretical principles of the science by encapsulating them in vivid, striking and therefore memorable images which would ensure the reader's attention and consequent instruction.'' (P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Chemical Choir, p.75) First, the Book begins with a Prayer and the proper way to collect the spirit of the 'May Dew' between clothes and fabric filters=''has been deposited on cloths suspended from pegs on the ground and spread out as though on an invisible table.'' (Maxwell-Stuart) As we have seen, the Dew is identified by some alchemists with the Spiritus mundi, to which the alchemists confer wonderful and spectacular properties. It must be prepared and collected according to strict exact astrological specifications. Armand Barbault (1906-82) who was an excellent astrologer comments: ''Astrology is only one step from alchemy, alchemy only one step from medicine''. "Take a sufficient quantity of Dew or May Rain, or similarly of snow that you have gathered from March or the beginning of April, and distill its spirit by the ordinary way." (Altus) In the same way, it is a distillation process associated with the changing and powerful astrological influences and planetary configurations. Altus= ''There is little doub that the pseudonym 'ALTUS' may be identified with the 'Elder', 'Senior', or 'Vieillard', of alchemical literarure.'' (John Read, Prelude to Chemistry an Outline of Alchemy, p.156) It can also be glimpsed, in the fourth Plate we will see the scene in the field in which the Adept and his wife collect the Dew on a cloth; by means of the exact astrological influence of the Sun in Aries and the Moon in Taurus. ''Gather Dew in the Month of May, with a clean white Linnen Cloth spread upon Grass.'' ( W. Salmon, Polygraphice, London, 1701) It is, of course, Manget=Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa (1702) who adds the work Mutus liber{in which, however, all the operations of the Hermetic Philosophy are described} and names it=Mutus Liber, in quo tamen tota Pholosophia hermetica, figuris hieroglyphicis depingitur, ter optimo maximo Deo misericordi consecratus, solisque filiis artis dedicatus, authore cuius nomen est ALTUS=''The Wordlees Book, in which nevertheless the whole of Hermetic Philosophy is set forth in hieroglyphic figures sacred to God the merciful, thrice best and greatest, and dedicated to the sons of art only, the name of the author being Altus.'' Many authors claim the work = Saulet, Sieur des Marez, another named Tollé, who was a graphic artist. "Philosophers express themselves more freely and more clearly, by enigmatic characters and figures, as by mute language, than by words; examples of this are the Senior Panel, the allegorical paintings of the Rosarium, of Abraham the Jew in Flamel, and of this same Flamel, also the figures. Among the moderns, the remarkable Emblems of the most learned Michael Maier.'' (The Secret Work of Hermetic Philosophy, Canon XII) The first figure is representative of a ''young man' sleeping on a ''stone'' and is possibly identified with the ''Jacob's stone''. One of the best researchers at the Mutus Liber was the famous contemporary French alchemist Armand Barbault (1906-82), an engineer by profession and an accomplished and expert astrologer who developed the creation of elixirs and medicinal substances from healing plants; process by which he used the 'astrological schedule' to know from there the day, hour, season and planetary configuration in the alchemical processes. Both, following the images of the Book, prepare and mix substances and watch the slow cooking in the athanor=Labora et Ora. However, Barbault studied and searched in a practical and scientific way for 'Prime Matter'=(prime substance) since 1948. He subjects the Mutus liber to modern scientific analysis and applies medieval "recipes" to his procedures - "vegetable juice and dew" - successfully = follows alchemical-astrological methods. For this reason, the work is carried out in common agreement with his wife, since it can be observed in the Mutus liber that the Adept is working together with his female alchemist companion = Sun-Moon; demonstrating the necessary balance in the Magnum opus between dualities. ''The generation of the Son of the Moon exceeds all his ancestry.'' (Stolcius) ''His choice of menstruum was inspired by an illustration in the Mutus Liber depicting two alchemists wringing out cloths that had been stretched between poles overnight to gather the DEW.'' ... ''For nearly twenty-five years, my wife and I have been on the path of investigating the alchemical elixirs and tinctures...'' (Armand Barbault) There is a lot to decipher in the work, just a little Light helps to understand... And about what has been said about the Mutus liber=''I will content myself with deciphering some of them, leaving the author the freedom to give them such another meaning... as he pleases" (Adeptus) Wonderful Mutus Liber (Silent Book! Book without Words) Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes.