Back in May 2018, a post on Tumblr (now deleted, I wonder what it was?) triggered me to do some lab work around the New Moon.  I was given freshly-laid eggs laid that morning and suddenly I could sense that one of those bouts of magickal formulation was about to happen.  Saffron and  chamomile (both grown by me), and a variation on Oil of Egg, all infused together.  It takes gold to make gold.  I dream in clumps, not singularly. 

The eggs came from my body worker, who lives just a dozen or so blocks away, and were hard-boiled Sunday evening (Sun day, Moon hour).  I set an alarm for early Monday morning to wake up just ahead of the actual new Moon at 4:47am.  I went from sleep to performing alchemical processes in just over 20 minutes with no shower or breakfast.  I wake up like a light switch.  

I got the saffron into the vodka and into the cordial maker and the egg yolks into the oven at the start of the new moon.   The cordial maker was set to run for 24 hours.  After just a couple hours, the saffron released all it’s color and bleached out completely.

The egg yolks spent a few planetary hours in the oven at a very low temp, drying out.  I turned and crumbled them once per planetary hour.  They released water content and got discernibly oily, which is the point.  

At the first hour of the Sun on Tuesday, the chamomile was added.  After that, the yolks went into the fridge, and I went back to sleep for a couple more hours.  The infuser runs on a timer, so it just kept infusing right along.

Just after 3:30pm, when the next hour of the Sun started, I added the cooked, dried yolks to the mix, and left the blend to complete the timer cycle.

Post-active crafting thought: Citrinitas, duh.  Yellow, yellow and more yellow occurrences and while it has been saffron for a while I didn’t really think Citrinitas until NOW.  Okay, okay, clue-by-four received.  

I filtered the blend and put it back into the cordial maker for another six hours to get sweetened and mellow a bit, and become a cordial instead of a tincture.  

The unsweetened taste has too much bite and the chamomile and saffron should reappear a bit flavor-wise with sweetening. Oil of Egg quality readily apparent in the mouth of it. That is some wildly oily fluid.  

And it’s the absolute most yellow thing I’ve ever made too.  May Moon Citrinitas Cordial.

Long time no alchemic blogging.  Really, 2017 and 2018 have been those kinds of years.  I have few things I formulated that I will have to note here, like my wild Citrinitas Cordial.

I think I finally got enough saffron in my 2018 crop to go forward with the recipe that got me started on saffron in the first place, almost eight years ago: the Elixir of Propriety.  This is a medicine crafted by Paracelsus, and one which he regarded most highly.  I'm not using his exact 16th century formula because it requires a Pelican, a type of glassware I do not have.  And it takes several months to make following his process.

But this essential formula stayed in play up until the early 20th century, with many healers compounding their own versions.  One recipe which caught my attention and seems quite replicable is from Herman Boorhaave from the 18th century.  This version also uses vinegar.  The vinegar base would be especially suited to using my radiant heat cordial infuser but it needs about three cups of liquid to operate and as near as I can calculate, I'm need to have about 5 ounces of vinegar based on the weight of my ingredients.

“Take choice aloes, saffron, and myrrh, of each half an ounce, cut and bruise them, put them into a tall bolt-head, pour twenty times their own weight of the strongest distilled vinegar thereon, let them simmer together in our little wooden furnace for twelve hours: now suffer the whole to rest, that the fæces may subside, and gently strain off the pure liquor through a thin linen; put half the quantity of distilled vinegar to the remainder, boil and proceed as before, and throw away the fæces. Mix the two tinctures together, and distil with a gentle fire till the whole is thickened to a third; keep the vinegar that comes over for the same use; and what remains behind is the Elixir Proprietatis, made with distilled vinegar.”

I still have a small amount of saffron from last year's crop, but I'd like to make a couple dishes for the impending winter solstice with saffron in them, as that's how it gets used by so many European cultures, so I don't want to put every thread I can find in the house into this.  However, as I sit here writing this, my brain is telling me I should use the ingredients I have, use the cordial infuser even if the product will be a lesser concentration than traditional, and let the 12 hours of simmering take place on the actual winter solstice.  My vigil, due to my northern latitude, is almost sixteen hours, and since I want to share my night between my options (home vigil and friends vigil) that could actually work, where I start the elixir infusing early in the vigil and that part runs overnight.  In the morning vigil hours, I can set the elixir to rest, and then after I sleep for a while, I can finish the reduction and thickening process that afternoon while still enjoying the full moon and alchemically fixative influences.

I'm liking this plan.  Time to mix up enough saffron paste to cover my cooking needs, and then I need to figure the weight of everything I have left and that will go in the elixir.

For most of the last three years, I made a weekly blog entry on the Grey School forums.  I was involved as both a student and as a faculty member.  I am no longer involved with that organization, but it's been a nice habit and a way of marking many magickal events and activities in my life.  I going to explore what it's like to make periodic entries of that sort here.    I don't yet know if I will stick with the weekly schedule or not.  

"Reason grounds the universe not only on a necrophilic intimacy but also in conformity with an undead machine imbued with the chemistry of putrefaction and nigredo."  ~ Reza Negarestani from The Corpse Bride: Thinking with Nigredo

One thing I really enjoyed about blogging about my magick and alchemy was that finding a quote each week to use as a title not only identified all manner of nuances in my own experience (there are no coincidences in alchemy) but it also kept me slowly but surely working my way through all manner of obscure and archaic texts.  I intend to continue that habit here as well.

December is shaping up interestingly.  Personally, some of the putrefactio has been expressing itself via a headcold.  Not enough to feel genuinely sick, enough to feel curtailed and forced to refocus.  That's not entirely bad as it's had me catching up on a variety of projects.  

I have my PantheaCon airline tickets all arranged for February.  The weekend after that is FaerieCon West and today I emailed them and asked about programming.  I'd like to offer a free workshop on repairing, fixing and improving fairy wings, called "A Wing and a Prayer."

I started my saffron spagyric, using the spice I grew and harvested myself in October.  It's just a few ounces in a minion bottle.  The grain alcohol turned yellow as soon as I added the ground saffron, and by day's end was already a deep orange.  

I placed a teeny order for some samples of new incenses from Mermade Magickal Arts the other night and they arrived today.  One is sandalwood and ambergris (beach-harvested in NZ), one is a complex blend described as a wet, balsamic forest and the third is named "Majoun Encens" and is an homage to the psychoactive Moroccan fruit paste.  The free sample included was a spruce-frankincense pastille.  Yummy stuff all around!

I have cordials filtering in the kitchen as I write this.  I want to add some vanilla to the blackberry, so I have fresh beans infusing in about an ounce of grain alcohol.  It's slowly turning golden from clear.  The elderberry tastes like it needs more sweetness.  Last year I made it in brandy so it had a completely different character.

Tomorrow I have my first training session to be a "minion" (aka volunteer) for the Emerald City Comic Con in March.  It's downtown in the evening.  I'm going to meet Kalla after she gets off work in the afternoon, then the two of us are going to catch a showing of FROZEN, and then some dinner.  She'll head home at that point and I'll go get trained.  I should bundle up well, as Seattle is having quite the snap freeze his week.  The ol' weather app says it's 28F outside right now.  Brrrrr.....