So my buddy on the retail side gets inundated with hippies (it’s that kind of town) and they’ve sold him on this spagyrics stuff, and now he’s paying a premium for ‘spagyrically extracted distillate.’ Google has a bunch of info on the alchemy and spirituality of spagyrics, but practical application in regards to CBD seem harder to find.
So from my reading, a spagyric extract is an ethanol extract where the spent plant material is calcined, washed, filtered, and evaporated out until you’re left with the mineral salts of the plant, which is supposed to be potassium sorbate. This salt is returned to the original tincture.
The Wikipedia on Spagyrics plainly explains the mercury, sulphur, and salt symbology of this process:
Mercury = water elements, representing the life essence of the plant, the very alcohol extract of the plant is the carrier of the life essence.
Salt = earth element, representing the vegetable salts extracted from calcined ashes of plant body.
Sulfur = fire element, virtue of plant, representing the volatile oil essence of the plant.
In this process, the mercury is ethanol, the sulfur is the concentrated oil, and the salt is the potassium sorbate we’re adding back to the tincture. Right?
But if you distill this, you’re also going to be distilling away the salt you added back, right? Making the whole process pointless? I mean, it sounds so simple when I write it down, but I thought I’d ask you alchemists for your perspective before I go cautioning my friend on his gullibility.
I was under the impression you were supposed to make ethanol from the plant, then use that ethanol to extract from the plant. Burn the extracted material down to pot ash. Do the distillation, recombine your terpenes, distillate, and pot ash into a small amount of ethanol and consume that orally.
Edit: This is also completely skipping the parts about WHEN everything should be done, which has everything to do with the planets.
Holy smokes, that would be some celestial-level CBD! I’ll have to keep this in mind when I start my hemp biofuel factory, haha. I think I can safely assume these hippies are just using everclear, with maybe some crystals and prayer thrown in.
So I got confused on when you add the salt in. So maybe there is some legitimacy behind this salted distillate, at least? Maybe not the hemp ethanol and planetary alignment thing, though.
Damn, really glad to see this here. Alchemy is a truely majestic path for those willing to wade through the fire.
short answer, spagyrics are great for medicine and ritual and study, but also aint making any special distillate. If anything, itll be a crude tincture.
If someones doing all of the rubedo four, their doing great work, but to then take that, winterize, polish, and distill that is a joke and a waste of time and efficiency.
No needed premium for spagyric distillate, waste of the process to just turn it into some commoditized product.
I suspect you’re right on your final point. The extra cost may be worth it if it increases sales. I look forward to experimenting with it one day, hopefully later this year.
Hi @spooky. I know this post is a little old, but I wanted to reach out anyway. I own Zion Medicinals, a spagyric hemp extract company. You can learn more about our process at zionmedicinals (dot) com. Let me know if you have any questions, thanks.
Everything to do with the planets.
Also, it would be great if the extractor could water the plants with his/her own urine, I mean, if we are going to be technical.
With alkaloids, spygerics can be really neat experiences. never had any from plants that didnt contain psychoactive alkaloids, would be cool to try tho, especially in a non-decarb’d spygeric of cannabis, may could create cannabinoid acid salts from native salts present in ash…dont have the time to try and make one or even look up if its viable