Spagyrics: The Alchemical Preparation of Medicinal Essences, Tinctures, and Elixirs

A comprehensive alchemical guide to plant extractions and their health benefits * Shows how spagyric methods "open" medicinal plants completely to release powerful healing properties * Provides a history and philosophy of spagyrics that reveal why Western medicine fails to recognize the full benefit to health offered by plants * Connects spagyrics to classical alchemical, hermetic, and ayurvedic traditions The practice of spagyrics is the application of ancient alchemical working methods to the preparation of tinctures, essences, and other products from medicinal plants. While ordinary tinctures and infusions use only a part of the great curative potential of plants, spagyric methods "open" medicinal plants completely to reveal their more powerful healing properties. Drawing on the rich imagery and symbolism of ancient source materials, Manfred M. Junius describes these methods in great detail, showing readers how to prepare plant remedies alchemically for their own use as well as imparting a knowledge of the ideological world in which alchemistic and hermetic thought flowered. Spagyrics includes the Plant Magistery of Paracelsus and the Life Elixir recipe of Andreas Libavius among its historic techniques as well as a wealth of scientific information that demonstrates the greater efficacy of alchemical methods of plant essence extraction. This classic source text preserves the nearly forgotten but highly valuable methods of this true hermetic art for preparing natural remedies.