Have you ever wondered why we call liquor “spirits”? Recently, a friend was asking me about our spagyrics – what are they? But before you can understand what a spagyric tincture is, you’ll need a crash course in alchemy 101.
In the alchemical tradition, alchemists used distillation to purify a liquid and then collect the resulting vapor, which they considered the essence, or the “spirit,” of the original liquid. This is why distilled alcohol is referred to as “spirits” (and why beer and wine aren’t). Alchemists view distilled alcohol as the universal spirit of the plant kingdom because when submerged in water, a plant will naturally always ferment to produce ethyl alcohol (ethanol). So because ALL plants produce this volatile substance naturally, it’s considered to be the universal force within plant consciousness.
Now here’s where spagyrics come into play: When you tincture a plant and then strain the plant material out of your liquid solution, you are effectively separating the Spirit (ethyl alcohol / Mercury) and Soul (the plant’s properties, volatiles / Sulphur) from the Body (left over plant material / Mineral Salts) — and this strained liquid solution is what we refer to as tincture. So essentially, a spagyric is when you add the Body back to the solution.
To do that, you first need to purify the Body (plant material) by Fire in a process called calcination, reducing it to a fine white ash. Then the ash is combined with distilled water, heated, filtered, and then evaporated to reveal the hidden purified mineral salts, i.e. the Purified Body. Finally, these mineral salts are added back to the tincture solution — this process is called the “Chymical Wedding” — it’s a reunion of the plant medicine’s Body with its Soul and Spirit. The result of which is called a spagyric. Alchemists consider spagyrics to be the most “whole-istic” version of a tincture.
I barely scratched the surface here – this description is merely the gist of the process. Creating spagyrics is actually a pretty convoluted process that takes into account planetary days, times, etc. But hopefully this helps folks gain a better understanding about what sets a spagyric apart from a regular tincture. If you’d like to learn more about spagyrics, check out the book by Manfred M. Junius, Spagyrics: The Alchemical Preparation of Medicinal Essences, Tinctures, and Elixirs.