It only took a full week of grinding :D

TW: Mention of child death, self-harm

Ouro had been sitting alone in his apartment, when a memory surfaced. It was an ordinary one, one he had many a time. He’s sitting with his son on the porch with a pumpkin between his knees, asking questions about Hallow's End while making a complete mess of the carving. Ouro could picture every detail of it with perfect clarity. The porch, the pumpkins, the grin on the kid's face whenever he said something clever, and the laughter that followed…

…The laughter. He tried to remember what the voice behind that laughter sounded like. Nothing came.

At first, he wasn't concerned. Memories faded, that was a normal part of life. After all, he had survived a bullet to the head and there were entire chunks of his life that existed only as fragments now. Surely the voice would come back if he focused hard enough. He closed his eyes and tried again, replaying the scene over and over.

Still nothing.

The smile and the expressions were all still there, even the words themselves were there. He knew exactly what his son had said that evening. He remembered every joke and every eye roll. Yet the sound of his voice had vanished completely, as though someone had reached into his skull and plucked it out.

By the time the sun had begun to set, Ouro found himself standing at the gun range. He hadn't consciously decided to come here, his body had simply brought him. The range had always been one of the few places where his mind quieted down. Shooting required focus and control. It demanded enough attention from him that there was little room left for anything else.

But today, the memory followed him. The range was nearly empty, aside from a handful of distant shooters. Ouro barely noticed them. He loaded a magazine, inserted it into the pistol, and stepped up to the firing line. The target hung motionless in the distance. 

He fired. The crack of the gun echoed through the range. Then he fired again. And again. And again.

Years of experience ensured that the bullets struck center mass with consistency. But Ouro wasn't paying attention to the target itself, his thoughts kept drifting back to the same realization. Every few moments he would try once more to remember.

What did his son sound like when he laughed? Nothing. The pistol fired again. What did his voice sound like when he was excited? Nothing. Another shot. What did he sound like when he called him "Dad"? Nothing.

The magazine emptied and Ouro reloaded without looking. The motions were automatic as muscle memory took over while his mind remained trapped elsewhere. Soon brass casings littered the ground around his boots, and the center of the target had become little more than a ragged hole.

He knew that the frustration should have become sadness. A normal person would have been devastated. They would have broken down at the realization that one of the last pieces of their dead child had slipped away forever. Ouro understood this, the same way he understood how grief was supposed to work.

The problem was that he couldn't feel it. The bullet that had nearly killed him all those years ago had taken more than flesh and bone, it had also hollowed something out inside him. The emotions were still there, but they felt distant and unreachable. He knew he loved his son, and he knew losing him had destroyed him.

Yet now, standing there with a pistol in his hand, all he felt was…nothing. He hated that. He hated that the voice was gone, he hated that he couldn't seem to mourn it properly. Most of all, he hated that he was aware of exactly how wrong that was and still couldn't change it.

The gunfire grew faster and the target disappeared beneath another barrage of rounds. Each trigger pull sent a sharp recoil into his palms. The slide cycled back and forth relentlessly while the smell of burnt powder thickened the air around him.

Still, it wasn't enough. The frustration and the emptiness remained, but the voice remained absent. Hours passed and people came and went. Targets were replaced and the pile of spent brass around Ouro's feet continued to grow. At some point his wrists began to ache from the repetition, but he ignored it. The physical discomfort was preferable to sitting alone with his thoughts.

Eventually the slide locked back once more and silence settled over the lane. Ouro stood motionless, staring downrange. The target was ruined beyond recognition. He couldn't remember how many magazines he had gone through. His gaze lowered to the pistol in his hand. The barrel shimmered faintly from repeated use. Even from where he stood, he could see the distortion of the air around the metal.

For several seconds he simply stared at it, then he turned the weapon sideways and touched the barrel to the inside of his wrist. The burn was immediate. The sharp pain shot through his arm and his muscles tightened instinctively, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he held the metal there and watched as the skin reddened beneath it.

At last, there was a reaction. Not grief, not sorrow. Not the devastation he should have felt after losing another piece of his son. Just pain.

The heat sunk deeper into his skin, and for a brief moment it cut through the numbness that had followed him for years. Pain was simple. Unlike memory, loss, and all the things broken inside him, pain was something he could still understand.

When he finally lowered the pistol, an angry burn marked his wrist. Ouro stared at it for a long time before letting out a short, humorless laugh. The sound carried no amusement whatsoever. It was simply the only response he had left.

His son's voice was gone. The range couldn't bring it back. The hundreds of rounds he had fired couldn't bring it back. And standing there beneath the fluorescent lights, surrounded by empty casings and shredded paper, Ouro found himself wondering if there would eventually come a day when even his son's face disappeared too.

Este artigo foi publicado originalmente por Rubellus Petrinus. Como qualquer material do meu arquivo pessoal, ele está disponível para ser enviado na íntegra por e-mail. 

O mercúrio filosófico dissolve prata e ouro | Leonard Smethley (1624)

Na simbologia alquímica o Nosso Ouro é sinônimo de Enxofre alquímico. Quem referiu isto foi Filaleto na Entrada Aberta ao Palácio Fechado do Rei.

Mas antes de prosseguirmos, vamos explicar o que em alquimia significa o termo Enxofre.

A base da teoria hermética é a unidade da matéria. Ela é una mas pode tomar diversas formas e, nestas novas formas, combinar-se e produzir novos corpos. A matéria é composta de dois princípios, Enxofre e Mercúrio, que podem ser combinados em diversas proporções formando novos corpos. Basílio Valentim junta-lhe um terceiro princípio, que é o Sal. Assim, o Enxofre, num metal, significa a cor e a combustibilidade. —In Théories & Symboles Des Alchimistes, Albert Poisson, Éditions Traditionnelles, Paris, 1981.

Ireneu Filaleto no Capítulo XI, Da Invenção do Perfeito Magistério, XII, diz:

Por fim, esses sábios, para si mesmos, observaram que o Mercúrio assim purificado e ainda não coagulado não era mais metal, mas era bastante volátil para não deixar nenhum depósito no fundo do vaso na sua destilação. Por isso chamaram-no seu Sol ainda não amadurecido e a sua Lua.

Quer isto significar, no nosso modesto entendimento, que o mercúrio filosófico per se coagula-se em Enxofre alquímico do Sol ou da Lua conforme foi preparado pelo régulo Solar ou Lunar.

No Capítulo XIII, Do emprego de um Enxofre Maduro Na Obra do Elixir, XIV, diz:

O Enxofre, nesta obra, faz o papel de macho, e quem quer que aborde sem ele a arte transmutatória, nunca terá sucesso, afirmando todos os Sábios que não se pode fazer nenhuma tintura sem o seu latão ou o seu bronze, sendo este, sem dúvida, o Ouro, a que assim chamam.

No Capítulo XV, Da Purgação Acidental do Mercúrio e do Ouro, III, diz:

O Mercúrio, este, necessita uma purgação interna e essencial, que consiste na adição gradual de um verdadeiro enxofre, conforme o número das Águias; é então radicalmente purgado; este enxofre nada mais é senão o nosso Ouro…

Sabemos que na via dos amálgamas o Enxofre é extraído do Sol ou da Prata fundidos com o régulo marcial que, na destilação do amálgama, é incorporado pouco a pouco no mercúrio filosófico.

Na versão úmida, o mercúrio filosófico, como contém no seu seio o enxofre Solar ou Lunar, pela coagulação per se transforma-se em Enxofre filosófico Solar ou Lunar.

Na via seca do antemônio, o enxofre Alquímico é extraído do Caput depois de lixiviado, calcinado e sublimado.

Nesta obra, o Enxofre alquímico é introduzido por Marte, que foi utilizado na preparação do régulo marcial. É uma operação delicada que exige do operador o exato conhecimento do modus operandi.

Também na via de Flamel que, como a de Filaleto, é uma via dos amálgamas, o cozimento do amálgama produz o Enxofre filosófico que é retirado do matraz à medida que é produzido.

Nas Doze Chaves de Basílio Valentim, o Enxofre é extraído do ouro como explica na Terceira Chave e no Último Testamento. Além disso, na via do Vitríolo também descrita pelo Mestre no Último Testamento, o Enxofre alquímico pode ser extraído do Vitríolo na forma de um óleo vermelho muito pesado.

Na via úmida de Kamala Jnana o Enxofre alquímico é obtido logo de início na Separação por meio do fogo secreto a partir do sujeito mineral.

Poderíamos referir outros casos que definem claramente a necessidade de um Enxofre alquímico que, conjuntamente com o Mercúrio filosófico, formam a chamada Rebis ou Hermafrodita, isto é, uma matéria filosófica simultaneamente macho e fêmea.

Por isso achamos estranho que na descrição de uma obra alquímica de um autor ibérico moderno, depois da preparação do Azoth (mercúrio filosófico), se refira à conjugação do indispensável Enxofre alquímico com o designado Azoth para formação do Rebis, com um dos elementos que formam o Fogo Secreto ao qual designa, por "analogia" com Filaleto, de "Nosso Ouro" ou seja, na terminologia do grande Adepto, Enxofre filosófico.

No nosso modesto entendimento, esta matéria muito comum bem conhecida porque é usada diariamente, não tem nada a ver com o Enxofre alquímico designado pelos Mestres e, por isso, este procedimento não se coaduna com nenhuma obra alquímica conhecida e, por isso, alquimicamente, não nos parece fazer qualquer sentido.

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