modern-day chemistry is the child of alchemy. They just removed a couple letters from the word,
you know, and a lot of people that we attribute to the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment.
Isaac Newton considered himself an alchemist. All these people, all these natural philosophers
descended from this tradition, and they were working with Syracan alchemy.
This is the True Health Report, where critical appraisal fuels true freedom.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the True Health Report. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Kaufman.
Today I have a very interesting guest, and we're going to cover a topic that is often maligned
and somewhat controversial, but really a key subject. Whenever we're talking about science,
this is really the foundational principles that are behind all of the modern materialist
scientists, and there has been an intellectual resurgence of this subject, and of course I'm
talking about alchemy. Today I have a guest, Owen Weinman, who has never before appeared in a public
forum like this, but we have had a relationship behind the scenes for quite a while now. He
is extremely impressive for a young man and has pursued a path that is certainly not a popular
path for the youth of our day, and we can call him a practicing alchemist, a spigericist, or a
spigeric chemist, but really he is a very interesting and I almost want to say enlightening,
because you will feel richer after having spent some time with him. So, Owen, let me bring you
on to the stage. Welcome. Hey, Andy. Thank you. That was one of the kindest introductions I have
ever received. Thank you. Well, let's prove to the audience that it's well characterized and
deserved by having a little chat. So, Owen, why don't you kind of give us a little bit of
your personal journey and how you came into this kind of space and maybe what were the
influences or experiences that led you on the path? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, my name is Owen.
I'm a practicing operational alchemist based out of northern Utah. I run a business and a
spiritual practice called Zeptepi Solutions focused on spigeric and alchemical medicine,
and yeah, my main path with this, I guess, began with Egypt about nine years ago. I spent a month
in Egypt as part of the larger six-month backpacking abroad trip that I did and that had quite a
substantial effect on me. I went to a lot of off the beaten path sites in Egypt, like
Hermopolis Magna and Akhadan. And I even had the middle pyramid, the Coffrey Pyramid to myself for
45 minutes, which is probably one of the few people in history that has had one of the three
great pyramids to themselves for a specific period of time. But yeah, that started a process
in me of researching alchemy more in depth. So, Owen, are you saying that,
first of all, on your trip, you were alone like there was no one else inside the pyramid but you
for nearly an hour? Yep, I was entirely alone. Wow, that's quite fascinating. I imagine this
kind of was a random occurrence. You didn't rent out the pyramid. No, not at all. I bought a basic
tourist ticket. I showed up and the guy who has the key to the pyramid, this isn't the
Great Pyramid, this is the second pyramid next to the Great Pyramid. And yeah, the guy came up with
the key. He was speaking broken English, so I didn't understand if he was saying three years or three
months, but he said it was the first day and I heard three years that it was being opened after
renovations and I was the first person there. I got there early. Wow. And yeah, he opened it up
and I was the only person inside. I can send you pictures or videos later on if you'd like
and yeah, I'd laid down in the sarcophagus at the center of the pyramid and I just felt the desire
to start singing and chanting and it was incredible. The whole pyramid was reverberating with my voice.
Wow, that's quite fascinating. Are you familiar with John Stuart Weed and his studies on the
pyramid? The name sounds familiar. Is he like with John Anthony West? No, I'm not sure about
those other people, but he's the gentleman who was kind of a pioneer of, now I'm blanking on the
name of what it's called, but you know, when you have a sound tone and it makes a pattern like in
particles, say that one more time. Symatics, is that? Yes,
simatics, right. So he actually invented the simoscope, which is a way to demonstrate
cinematic patterns in water rather than using sand or particulate material, but he started off that
he's an acoustical engineer and he was doing sound research in the pyramid and in the sarcophagus.
And so it's interesting that you guys both had kind of a similar experience. I think it'd be
of interest to you to hear that story. It's on one of my past webinars that featured him, so
we'll have to make sure that you watch that afterwards. But I'm curious because even your
story begins with kind of an Indiana Jones type of adventure, but we're in an era where most
young people don't go off backpacking for six months like they once did. Maybe still some
Europeans and Australians do that, but certainly it's not common in the United States. So
how did you become even interested in those or know of those places in Egypt and what led you to
such a sojourn? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, and it's unfortunate. I think
travel is one of the most valuable experiences a human being can have on this planet.
And yeah, I mean that desire to see the world. I've always had that since I was young.
I did some international volunteering with the organization here in Utah when I was younger.
I went to Madagascar and Guatemala with them. And that's going to most of the places like
Madagascar, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and giving them vocational and
educational lessons, building a school there, giving them supplies, allowing them to
take out small business loans from us as well. And yeah, then from there, I went to college.
I didn't like college. I found that I felt that I could get more education out in the world.
So I did that. And then on several different international trips.
But yeah, that's then as far as like the spiritual and the esoteric goes, I've also always
just been immersed in that. Mainly the new age when I was younger as well as we're into. My
mom owned an operating yoga studio here in Park City for a long time. So from a young age, I was
very immersed in all of the new age philosophies and ideas and then took it deeper without me
in Switzerland. And after Egypt, I went on to... Well, Owen, I'm curious. I'm glad,
certainly, that you took it deeper. But do you have an opinion on the new age movement
presently? Yeah. I'm personally not too impressed with it. I think it is
good at introducing people to concepts and ideas if they then choose to find something
they like and then take it deeper. I find that it has a very surface level of view of a lot of
things. But in that respect, it's also great at introducing things to people as an alternative
to what exists as a gateway. Yeah. Well, that's certainly reasonable and it definitely has some
questionable origins for anyone wanting to look into that further. But you could similarly describe
some platforms like Alex Jones, for example, as a way that when people are first started to
realize some of the lies that we face in day-to-day life that they seek and may find
a path that's not really exactly the right path, but it helps them get to the right path.
So it sounds like it had that effect on you as well. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that.
So when did you first start to explore the alchemical traditions and philosophies?
Yeah, I would say I began that process about nine years ago, just kind of practicing on my own.
I had a very small laboratory at the time in my apartment.
And was this related to your trip to Egypt or studying of Egyptology?
Yeah, it was. I mainly, I trace alchemical thought and theory back to Egypt, to the
temple and priestly practices of Egypt. So that's where I kind of began with it. And then
I kind of saw that this philosophy of Egyptian spirituality, religion, was taken
into Greece and then into the Arabic countries and then into medieval Europe
and expounded upon. And that's kind of what the lineage of alchemy is.
Yeah, absolutely. And do you think that during the time when it was in the Arab world,
but not in Europe, because there were, I believe, several centuries that occurred during,
do you think that there were documents or texts that were in Europe but purposely kept
hidden from the populations there?
Absolutely. And I, there were probably Arabic alchemical texts that were kept from the Europeans
too, because I think the Islamic alchemists had a more direct lineage to the Egyptian material,
especially because Egypt was an Islamic caliphate for a long time.
Yeah, and even in Europe, I'm sure there were, it's a secretive practice. It always has
been nowadays, it's definitely making resurgence and being more publicly available.
So what, can you tell us exactly what alchemy is and how it's distinct from the common perception?
Sure thing. And yeah, just before that, because that's definitely a good trajectory.
I just would like to add, if there are any credentials that one can have in this realm,
I studied with Robert Allen Bartlett in Washington through his three in-person courses,
his prima secundia and tertia courses, those are all in-person intensives.
And then I was the laboratory manager for Phoenix Aurelius for two years,
and he and I still have a very strong friendship, I consider him a great friend.
And during that time, I made hundreds and hundreds of spajeric items of medicine
and also worked individually with hundreds and hundreds of different herbs.
Yeah, and I originally, we met through Phoenix, who is also a friend of mine,
and he is the one that convinced me that you really knew what you were doing.
And obviously, if you were managing his laboratory, that's definitely,
he's extremely particular for you folks who may not know him.
So if he trusts someone with that level of responsibility, that definitely says a lot.
And my experience with you has validated that as well, Owen.
So clearly you have a lot of experience and practice at working with materials
through the process of alchemical transformation into medicinal substances.
And that's what you're doing now, and we're definitely going to talk about that.
But let's explore a little bit of the background of where that comes from,
because it's a lot different than how pharmaceutical companies make their concoctions.
Absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, and so there is alchemy and there is spajerics.
And they're both two sides of the same coin.
Because first we could talk about alchemy.
It's an inherently murky thing to try to pin down with one definition sentence.
But if I were to try to, I would say alchemy is a more holistic approach
to mankind's relationship to nature and material reality.
It's kind of a path of self-initiation into nature, by nature and through nature,
and taking those natural principles into the hands of human ingenuity in the laboratory
and testing things out and experimenting on these natural principles with the goal of
bringing things to a higher state of perfection and as well in the individual
practitioner as well. Because human beings are in a very unique position to be able to do this on
this planet. And compared to modern allopathic practices, it still is very much attached to
it hasn't thrown out the spiritual nature of reality, the macrocosm and the microcosm.
So I think that is a pretty good description here. Let me add a few things and kind of
punctuate some of the things that you said. So one is that it's not a materialist science.
So that it acknowledges that there is more than just the matter of the earth,
in which is really a lot more consistent with our observations. And that's really
another thing about alchemy. And you could say it's also a way of just conceptualizing
everything in nature or really everything in the world. But it relies only on our ability to
observe through the five senses. It doesn't require technology necessarily. We don't have to use
microscopes or molecular assays or magnetic resonance or any of those fancy technologies,
everything we can observe. And the alchemical process of transformation or transmutation
is, which is usually referred to as changing lead or a base metal into gold or a precious metal,
is that's really a way to turn people off to the subject, so to speak, to say,
oh, it's just some fake magic or whatnot. But in actuality, I mean, we observe things
change all the time. And a very simple example that Steve Young often uses is just making a cup
of tea. And you can start with just the dried tea leaves or you could even start with the tea plant,
that first you have to grow that and there has to be things in nature that change the seed
into the plant. Then you take the leaves, fresh off the plant, and then you put them
through a drying process, which is probably a calcination process of some kind with the sun.
Then you have the dried, then you pulverize them, then you mix them with the water or the steam,
then you separate them out, and then you mix in the sugar and the cream. So you're combining
and changing these things from one thing into the other. Eventually, you end up with a cup of
tea, but you started with a seed, soil, the sunlight, maybe a tea ball or a steel thing
just to keep the tea leaves separate, things like that. But you come out with something
totally different in the end. So it's not nothing magic. I mean, it is magical in a sense,
because if you break it down step by step, it's pretty incredible. But it's real and
we observe this every day. We put food into our body, and it changes into our body parts,
or part of it changes into feces or urine. And that's not what we didn't put those things in,
but yet our body mechanized this transformation. And we can use alchemy not only to describe that,
but we can use it to make our own creations. Absolutely, man. Yeah. And alchemy, that
that would be an extraction of the philosophical principles of that plant. In sphigerics, I'm sure
I know you're familiar with the salt, sulfur, and mercury, the three essentials that Paracelsus
created. And yeah, in something like brewing tea, it's a water-based extraction of the sulfur,
the sole principle of that plant. And when that plant's growing, it's in the alchemical
theory is everything comes from one thing. Everything is descended from oneness and out of
chaos. This multiplicity of reality arises. It's very mystical in that sense. And yeah,
so when something grows out of the ground like that, it contains the macrocosm of everything,
the environment it's growing in. I know a lot of people think it's woo, but the stars are
incorporated in that as well. And when you philosophically extract things, you are incorporating
all of these things and making them into a more humanized form that then you can partake in.
Right. That's right. Because if we started chewing tea leaves right off the plant, it would
probably irritate your gums and not taste good. It sounds like nettle. You tried to eat a bunch
of nettle? No, I haven't. They have competitions for that in England. They have nettle-eating
competitions. Real to see who's the toughest, just like with hot peppers per se. But let me
actually just take the woo-woo out of what you're talking about with respect to the stars because
a way to look at the night sky or the stars is, and it's been described this way as a sky clock
because we know that all the stars rotate around the north star in the annual solar cycle one time.
And we also know that plants have a season that they grow and when you harvest them.
And it's correlated to a certain time of the year, which can be seen by observing the position of the
star. So the position of the stars with respect to the plant is extremely important as part of
this natural cycle for it to grow. And if you don't plant it when the stars are in the right
place, then you're not going to have the same result at the end. So we don't have to
go into astrology or anything that people might consider woo-woo to actually make this
observation. And in fact, in my community, during COVID, we started having campfires and people who
were not completely buying into the operation would come. And of course, a lot of these folks
were farmers because if you're out there on the land and you're observing what's happening
in nature, you would be less likely to be fooled by the report of something fake going on in nature
like a pandemic. So one of the topics that came up was related to this had to do with the celestial
bodies and the lunar cycles. That is something that the farmers were not really paying attention
to. Like they knew they would plant at a certain time of the year. They might consult
the Farmers' Almanac, but they weren't observing the stars and the lunar cycles
in their planting. And some of them started to experiment with this. And I don't think they read
all kinds of alchemical texts to do this. It was mostly just by a few knowledgeable people with
some knowledge, but they started to notice different things about how the plants grew,
that they actually responded to being in tune with these natural cycles.
Has that also been your experience?
Yeah, that has. I don't do as much farming. My girlfriend is an organic farmer. But yeah,
I mean, things like the Farmers' Almanac and all of these folk traditions, I mean, they're not
based on frivolous things. These are based on collective centuries of human experience.
And yeah, these people found that when the moon is in certain signs,
the lunar cycle is very pertinent to the plants. I mean, that's very provable. And especially when
it's in certain signs that are more applicable to certain parts of the plant, like the flower,
the fruit, the root, you know, there are different seasons for that.
And yeah, I mean, it's becoming something. I mean, I don't know if it can be measured
scientifically, but to me, it makes a lot of sense because I mean, even the planets in our
solar system, those are absorbing electromagnetic radiation and putting it off. And we are
receiving that at all times, even just gravitational influence from other planets.
There's whole aspects of nature that can't be measured and observed scientifically that
throughout human history have just been fact for a lot of people. And I don't think that's
something to throw out. That's right. And we can actually, if you study it, you can
see that there's quite a lot of validity to many of these cycles. I mean, even in basic
astrology, so many things ring out and we can't observe them, but you're right,
it's not necessarily through what might be considered scientific observation.
But we can certainly tell about people's tendencies and such and how they could be
related to the changing of the celestial bodies when the solar and the lunar signs
and such. And I've always been impressed when I've seen this done in real life
with skills, knowledgeable people, and with a little bit of honesty from whoever is being
looked at. So when you seek out to make spigeric medicines, how do you account
for these natural cycles in your production?
Yeah, so you can get very complicated with it, or you can take a more streamlined approach. I
choose the more streamlined approach. I use a system that's called, you can find it,
it's called Vedic astrology or sidereal astrology. Tropical astrology is what most people are
probably familiar with, like in the newspaper, the sun signs and stuff. And that is,
that's valuable for a lot of people. I'm not going to talk shade on it, but it's not
based on nature. The tropical astrology takes a 360 degree circle and divides it evenly by all
the 12 constellations. And when you look up at the night sky, that's just not how it plays out.
Constellations are bigger than others. And so sidereal. And there's a guy on YouTube,
Athen Kamenti, who I highly recommend people checking out. He calls it true sidereal astrology.
And yeah, it's based on the actual size and placement of the constellations in the night
sky, based on your geographic location. And the way I use that mainly for Spajeric practice,
an example would be if the moon is ascending or descending and the elemental personality of the
astrological sign it's in, like if it is in an earth sign, that would be a time to work with
roots. And if it's in, you know, a fire or air sign, that would be a time to work with the
flower or the fruit of plants. It also has relation to different operations that you might perform
alchemically, like distillations, calcinations, fermentations, extractions, filtrations, things
like that. And all those processes you just mentioned, are those part of the alchemical
steps of transformation? Yes. Yeah. They are steps towards transformation. You'll see them
referenced a lot in texts, specifically talking about the creation of the Philosopher's Stone,
but they are also basic, everyday laboratory operations that you can perform on a number
of different materials. Right. So these are things like if you were working in a chemistry lab
or a biology lab, you would be doing many of these processes as well, but they
originally come from alchemy. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, modern day chemistry is the child of alchemy.
They just removed a couple of letters from the word, you know, and a lot of people that we
attribute to the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, Isaac Newton considered himself
an alchemist. All these people, all these natural philosophers descended from this tradition,
and they were working with special alchemy. So let's talk a little bit about
actually the difference between alchemy and chemistry because, you know, of course, when I
studied chemistry fairly extensively and did work in some chemistry labs in my undergraduate
years. And when I started learning alchemy, I was a little bit struck about, you know,
how similar certain things are. But here is what is definitely distinct is that
atomism and, you know, modern theories of physics, which play into chemistry,
create this, you know, symbolic understanding of what's going on when you try to mix substances
together or make new substances in a chemistry way. You're always going back to those atoms
and the molecular arrangements. Now, alchemy has a very different way of understanding,
you know, the elements, right? So they're the way they exist in nature and not necessarily
the way we think of them, although most of the way we think of things is more
of an extraction or separation of things in their natural form. But they're distinct.
So, and, you know, also we have things like, you know, with metals, for example, in metallurgy,
we have alloys, right, where we take pure metals and mix them together to make something
different. But in alchemy, some of the metals that we think of as pure metals actually
are looked at as combinations of certain base metals. So can you speak to kind of this,
you know, different way that the symbolic, you know, underpinning of the basic unit
of material is different in alchemy versus chemistry?
Absolutely. That's a great question. And I'm not chemically trained. I'm not a chemist.
I don't consider myself one. But I'm familiar with the basic concepts. And yeah, chemistry is more
concerned with isolating things and creating extractions and purifying things to like the
basic atomic molecules. And alchemy is more, and sphigerics especially is more
of a holistic structure where they, you know, view substances as containing different
admixtures of the four elements. And the way that we can access those and manipulate the
elements is through the three essentials, or the trioprima, as Paracelsus called them,
sulfur, mercury, and salt. And a lot of alchemical operations are different manipulations
of these three principles in different proportions, purifying them in different ways.
And sulfur would be considered the like the soul or the consciousness portion,
individuality portion, like what gives something, it's medicinal value, it's
for human to be like it's personality, your hair color, your skin color.
And in the vegetable realm, we find these as an oil that we can extract from plants.
And the mercury, and these are philosophic concepts, they're not talking about
actual metallic mercury or sulfur. But mercury would be the spirit or the vital force of a substance,
the animating principle, and that in the vegetable kingdom is extracted as a liquor or an alcohol.
And then there is the salt. Right, so that's through fermentation and distillation.
Yes, exactly. Yeah, you would ferment a plant and the mercury for a realm is going to be
the same across that realm, like in the vegetable kingdom that will manifest as a liquor
that we can ferment out and then distill and rectify.
Right. And so this is just for the audience. When you look at a bottle of liquor at the
liquor store, it'll say spirits or distilled spirits. And that is actually the alchemical
category that it is because it's right, the spirit and the mercury are interchangeable
words. And we're talking about like, think about mercury, the God, rather than mercury,
the metal when we're talking about that, although we're not referring directly to the God,
but there's a correlation there. Absolutely, yeah. Mercury, the planet, the God and
its correlation to Hermes, who was combined with the Egyptian totes all come from that,
the connection between realms, the messenger of the gods, we're, in this case, it's a spirit.
But yeah, and then there is the physical body structure that you can deal with the salt,
which is the matrix that something exists in. And in plants that exists as after calcination
and purification that exists as a potassium carbonate alkaline salt.
Right. And that when you say calcination, you're talking about applying heat to the material.
Yeah, you're basically burning a material so you can find what exists in it that is resistant
to fire. What cannot be burned away? What is the most pure in it?
And are you burning the body, I mean, the sulfur away,
the residual sulfur? You would usually extract that out first,
but there are operations, there is a volatile sulfur and there's a fixed sulfur.
And to get out of the fixed sulfur, the salt you would burn and
calcine the fixed sulfur as well. There are different preparations where
you can use the fixed sulfur as is for remedial value.
All right, so we may be getting into a little bit of complexity here,
but the idea is that there isn't just one way to do this. It allows a lot of individual expression
and intuition in the process. Yeah, it's an art in science.
So in other words, I think what you're saying is that the goal, at least with medicines, is to,
for example, take a plant or an herb that we know has medicinal properties of some sort.
And then you're going to separate out the different aspects of it, right, which in alchemy we call
philosophies. And you're going to process those in a certain way, right, to a certain purity,
that there's variability depending on the individual. And then you're going to
recombine them in ways that there is a lot of individual variability. And all along the way,
the goal might be to try and bring out or magnify the desirable properties that you want from that
plant, including palatability, like we talked about before with, if you try chewing on
nettle versus making tea from it. One is going to be a lot more pleasant
and compatible with our bodies than the other. Absolutely, that's exactly correct. I mean,
even the word spigeric itself is a combination of two Greek words, spahio and ahiros. That
means to separate and recombine. Or there's the Latin alchemical axiom, solveit, coagula,
which is to separate and recombine. Yeah, and that's the main procedure. And in that,
in between that, there is purification. So you separate out something into its base components,
then you purify those substances and perfect them, bring them into a higher state of perfection,
and then you recombine them in various ways to see, seeing fit what medicine or what
item you're trying to create, what effect you're trying to have.
So then in summary, we can say that it also differs from chemistry in the sense
that chemistry may separate things and purify them, but it doesn't ever recombine them
into something new. It looks at the reductionist approach. The smallest attainable unit
is what is considered the valuable medicine. In alchemy, it's really the whole
plant or the whole material back together, but now transformed to elevate it to a higher level.
Absolutely. That would definitely be a good way of putting it.
And I think that you can make all kinds of cultural analogies based on that that help us
understand better the world we currently live in. Yeah, it's applicable to many different
things. The more you look into alchemy and this type of philosophy, it's very holographic
and fractal in the sense that you start looking around and you'll see correlations in
everything like cultures, the way... Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting.
So Owen, you have recently started a production of a new tincture, and this is
somewhat of a collaboration between us because when I began researching about illness related to
heavy metal poisoning, I came across an amazing herb, cilantro, which has been shown in a lot of
clinical studies to be extremely beneficial. So tell us a little bit about cilantro or
coriander as the other name for it and what type of product you're making with this.
Absolutely. Yeah. So I have created a cilantro-spigeric tincture utilizing fresh plant material,
and what makes a spigeric tincture better in a lot of ways is that when you recombine those aspects
that we were just talking about, especially the alkaline plant salts, it catalyzes a reaction
which creates these molecules called ethyl esters. It's an esterification process, and what this does
is it takes the medicinal value of the plant itself and it makes it more bioavailable,
lasts longer in the body, penetrates deeper. It can cross cell membranes more easily, and
the dose for them is significantly lower than traditional over-the-counter herbal remedies,
whereas most of those, the dosage is in tablespoons or dropperful. Most spigeric
wet-path liquid remedies are going to be in the dose of drops instead of dropperfuls.
And so yeah, I took that approach and I created a spigeric fresh cilantro tincture
because the main reason that heavy metals are removed from the body with the help of
cilantro is due to its sulfur principle or its volatile essential oils and terpenes,
and those are most present in the fresh plant material. And these are, cilantro is an incredible
substance. The terpenes are what's called lipophilic, which means that they can penetrate
fatty tissue cell walls, and they can also cross the blood-brain barrier and get into the
nervous system where they can chelate and bind to heavy metals and extract them,
things like lead, aluminum, cadmium, and mercury. And this is very similar to what we see with
something like turpentine that's also highly lipophilic and also has some ability to help
remove heavy metals, but cilantro has been looked at in several animal studies with
really impressive results because what we see there is not only, like they basically poison
animals with lead, for example, there are a couple of studies using lead, and they have control
animals and some that they give cilantro tinctures to. And not only does it remove most of the
lead, it also reverses or prevents organ damage, like it's been shown to do both.
So because we know lead will do organ damage. So that's why I think we both were interested
in this material, but what you said is very interesting. So if we step back and say, well,
a regular tincture is made pretty simply by, usually people will get some moonshine or ever
clear, some grain-based alcohol or corn-based alcohol at whatever strength is available at the store
and soak fresh cilantro in there for maybe a week or two, then filter out the cilantro
fibrous material and boom, they have the tincture. And that's only the one step,
and of course it's not done the way that you would do it, Owen, but it's only one step
in the spadieric process, which would do a lot more. And I want you to describe that
in just a moment, but there's another really important consideration because cilantro,
in my opinion, has this property also in the soil that it's grown in. So if it grows in
contaminated soil, it will help remove those metals from the soil. So you have to be careful
what cilantro you use to do this process, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the cilantro that I use
is wholly organically grown. It's very high quality, I sourced it very well with that in mind. And
yeah, as compared to what you might find at an herbal apothecary, most of those places,
if they don't even really consider to use a higher-proof alcohol, sometimes they use vodka,
so there's a significant amount of water content, which drastically reduces the shelf life.
Spadieric tinctures, as I was taught to make them, have virtually no shelf life and they only get
better with age. And a preparation like that would only be containing two of the principles,
the sulfur and the mercury principle and the salt, the body aspect, like the incarnate
biologically active part of it in this physical reality that's entirely missing.
Yeah, and with my preparation, all the ingredients I use and everything I make
are either organic or wild harvested. For this process, I use an organic cane spirit
and organic cilantro. Everything is as high as quality, of course.
So the cane spirit, we're talking about fermented and distilled
sugar cane here to make the spirit. And then, do you redistill it? And if so,
how many times, generally speaking?
So the source that I get it from is very pure and very good. I've been working with them for a
long time, even since back when I worked for Phoenix. I occasionally will make and incorporate
spirit of wine into some products. That's a little cost-prohibitive, but that will
be distilled a number of times until it's pure.
Oh, so you're saying the starting material you get has already been
distilled more than one time?
It's at 95% concentration, so they have distilled it to multiple times or very efficiently.
And whereas vodka would be something like 60% or 80%?
Sometimes 40%.
Right, sorry, I'm thinking of the proof, right? So it's usually 80 proof
40% alcohol versus what you're talking about 95% alcohol to start.
So you think about the alcohol as like a solvent for the sulfur of the cilantro.
So if you have more water in there, it's going to change the solvent properties because water is
more polar than alcohol. So you're going to extract slightly different things from the plant.
Absolutely. And most commercial preparations used dried cilantro,
so there's very little sulfur principle even left in their starting material.
Right, because it's all been volatilized or evaporated out.
Yeah, it's a very sensitive sulfur. I've worked with it freeze-dried as well.
And even in like the freeze-dried supplement that comes out, I don't know if you ever
have used a freeze-dried before, but you know, when you turn it off and drain out the liquid,
that's sublimated out of the substance. When you work with cilantro, that
supplement smells heavily like cilantro. So in my mind, there is, even with the freeze-drying
process, there is still a lot lost in terms of volatile oils. So my mind-
You could probably do an alcohol extraction with that liquid.
Yeah, when I was working for Phoenix, we did a number of experiments on that.
And it was kind of shelved because we didn't really get anywhere. It's a strange substance
to work with. It's mainly like the plant vegetable juices mixed with some of the volatiles.
Yeah, it's an interesting, there's definitely more work to be done there.
Well, you bypass that work by using the fresh material though, don't you?
So you can know that whatever comes out in the spirit is the whole
sulfur component. Absolutely. The maximum amount of the medicinal quality that we're looking for.
And then once you've incubated the cilantro in the spirit to extract out the sulfur,
what's the next step?
Yeah, so then there are filtration steps. I use vacuum filtration, which is a beautiful technology.
I think if a lot of the old alchemists saw the laboratory apparatus that we have access to,
thanks to modern chemistry, they would be pretty jealous.
Right, because without the vacuum, it would take a little bit longer.
Yeah, that vacuum filtration with bucaneer funnels allows you to use
really good filters that if you normally pour something into it, it would take
forever to filter through because it's such a good filter. But you apply vacuum to pull it
through so you can affect it much more quickly. And that, I mean, filtration and separation is
its own alchemical operation. And this achieves a near perfect version of that.
So when you're filtering out the biomass from the tincture itself, from the combination of the
mercury and sulfur, that is a perfect separation of the body, the extracted body from it.
The biomass or the mark, as herbalists call it, is then incinerated to a black ash.
Now, do you have to dry it first before you incinerate it? Or is it because it's still
probably wet on the filter, right? It helps to have it still wet. And as soon as you,
the sooner the better, because it's still soaked in that high-proof alcohol.
So you just touch a match or a candle to it. Oh, I see that the liquid is alcohol. So it's
flammable. Yeah, it's a fun process. Definitely perform outdoors and away from
your neighbors because it produces a lot of smoke. How I usually do it, I ignite it in a
dish, a flame-proof dish over a camp stove. And I let it burn down to a black ash. And then
usually by that point, all the alcohol is burned off. So there's not going to be any
actual fire anymore. Some operators will pour more alcohol on. But when making
spigeric remedies as opposed to alchemical ones, efficiency is also important. And
so I use a camp stove underneath to then calcine it. I turn that black ash into a white ash or as
close as I can. And then that goes into my kiln. I grind that in between the steps of grinding
to make sure that it's- Like in a mortar and pestle? Yep. I have several. I have a collection
of mortar and pestles. And they're my friends. And yeah, then it goes into my kiln. I get
it to as white ash as possible. And then that ash, most stuff you might find online,
this is the final step. People then just add the ash back into the preparation, which I-
No, that's not correct. Yeah, I advise caution with that because that can introduce carcinogens
into the medicine. But there's some carbonaceous material from the combustion
in there. Yeah, absolutely. You're burning something extremely high temperatures. It's
carbonizing. But yeah, then that ash is extracted with either water and then vinegar sometimes.
And then that extract is then filtered again. It's evaporated. And you get a crude salt at
that point. You get crude potassium carbonate with still some-
So it basically crystallizes as it's drying out, right?
Yeah, sometimes when it gets to pure states, it will form beautiful crystalline structures.
And then the axiom-solviate coagula, the salt work as this is called, it's really just about
dissolving it and then recombining it over and over again and doing repeating this process many
times until you get like a 99.9% pure salt of salt to the vegetable kingdom. And then that
is the pure material that you use to then combine back with your tincture.
So about how many times would you have to repeat the calcination and then dissolve it in water and
dry it out process? It depends on how- I mean, just kind of ball parking what the range is to
because I want to convey the degree of labor intensity involved.
Sometimes it can take up to five or six times and then there's a final crystallization to ensure
purest property where you dissolve the final salt in water and then slowly evaporate that out. And
as the volume decreases, it crashes out of solution and crystallizes on top of the water.
And when something crystallizes, it can only do that if it is that pure substance.
It'll crystallize as pure gas and carbonate and you can scoop that off and use that.
And then you're going to add that back to the alcohol tincture?
Yeah, I get that. You heat that up to at least 500 degrees Fahrenheit because heat is important
in this esterification reaction when you put it back in. And then that reaction takes about two
weeks. I'll put that back in an incubator to circulate over gentle heat and continue the reaction.
So you heat up the salt or you heat up the liquid?
The salt.
Okay, and then you add it to the liquid and then you keep heat and keep stirring that or
recirculating it? Yeah, if you have it in a sealed vessel with a gentle heat, you can
build an incubator. It'll very gently distill it over a long period of time. It'll just distill
and then condense. So it's like a recirculating apparatus?
Yeah, absolutely.
We used to have that in one of the chemistry labs I worked at. We had that for THF.
Even reflux, like modern very chemical reflux, yeah.
Yeah, but it just kept because that just sucks water out of the air. So it's to keep it
anhydrous as much as possible.
Yeah. Yeah, there are many correlations. I think it'd be interesting for chemists,
like modern day chemists, to look into this stuff and just be like, oh, that's where this
comes from. I do this every day.
Well, even if you see just the some of the artwork from the alchemists,
like showing them in their laboratory, you can pick out the glassware, right? I mean,
even you're describing a buccanar funnel. That's something I used in a chemistry lab,
I'm sure. You have various other glassware that is the same, whether in fact, you may even buy it
from Fisher Scientific, right? But we can trace that back before modern chemistry that
it's the same, many of the same processes that we're at.
A lot of modern distillation apparatus, the alchemists invented first things like
alembic heads and retorts and denser columns and stuff like that.
That's right. Well, very, very, very fascinating. So now tell us a little bit about the final
product that you have and where it's available.
Yeah. So this product is available on my website, zeptepi solutions.com.
Right. And we'll put the link in the show notes, of course.
Sure. Sure. Yeah. And on that website, my main bread and butter are more
speedier at formulations, which are going to be what you might find as a compound medicine,
which are different herbs that I take to address a certain issue or health concern from
different aspects that these herbs can do and combine together in a compound medicine.
And I have several different things available on my website. I only make things that I want
to take myself. That's kind of how the creative process and how I come up with a lot of these
things. There's something that I have that I would like to take or maybe a health concern that
I would like to address and I create something for myself. And it's something that I can then
share with the world as a medicine for the body and the soul.
Oh, and when you're working with different types of plants, do you get a feeling from
the material that's different from species to species?
Oh, yes. Yeah. Particularly, if you work with one kind of plant over and over again, for me,
that's been Yaro. I'm working currently for my personal alchemical spiritual practice.
I'm working on a plant stone with Yaro. And that involves distilling essential oil,
steam distillation on loads of Yaro that I go out in wild harvest, fermenting the
leftover hydrocoction from that to create alcohol just like constantly working with it.
And yeah, you'll develop a friendship and a sense and a relationship with
the consciousness and the soul of these plants that exist wherever they're found.
They all share the blueprint that they came from to grow from. And yeah, I've worked with
a bunch of herbs. And so yeah, they all, I can definitely feel different intelligences from them.
Well, this is very fascinating stuff. And I think we could probably wax on and on
about that, because it is so fascinating. But oh, and it's really been an interesting journey
hearing about your background, covering some of the basics and even a little bit more
philosophical aspects of alchemy and then getting into, you know, your creative artistic and
scientific process of making these substances. So thank you so much for coming on and having
this discussion with me. Thank you, Andy. It's always a pleasure hanging out with you, man.
All right, folks, we'll see you next time.
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