Fixed Elixir

Medicinally, the volatile or unfixed elixirs are warming, energizing and toning in their effects, while the fixed elixirs are cooling and contracting. Unfixed tinctures are said to be more effective in acute illnesses while fixed tinctures are more useful for chronic diseases. 

Eighth Elixir Fixed Elixir (fudan). The Eighth Elixir is obtained from... 

If you walk keeping in your hand one pill [of the Fixed Elixir] of the size of a date stone, the hundred demons will be exterminated.. . . This elixir will also keep off thieves and robbers, and even tigers and wolves will run away. If a woman who lives alone keeps one pill the size of a large bean in her hand, the hundred demons, thieves, and robbers will flee and dare not come near her. Jiudan jingjue, 1.13b)... 

Marking the doors with the Fixed Elixir, the hundred calamities (baixie), the myriad sprites (zbongjing), and the cbimei and wangliang demons will dare not come before you. Jiudan jingjue, 1.13 b)... 

Fixed Elixir is also the name of the Eighth Elixir, but the method for its compounding has no correspondance to the one described above. 

The great secret of the Work, therefore, is to whiten the Latten and to leave all books alone, so as not to be embarrassed by reading them, for this reading could give rise to ideas of useless and expensive work. This whiteness is the Perfect White Stone it is a precious body, which when it has been fermented and has become white Elixir, is full of an exuberant Tincture which it has the property of communicating to all the other metals. The Spirits, at first volatile, become fixed. The next body is resuscitated beautiful, white, immortal, victorious. This is why it has been called Resurrection, Light, Day, and all other names which can indicate whiteness, fixity, and incorruptibility. 

This high White, our fixed Luna, which looks like a subtile Diamond-Dust in the Sun, is now ten times stronger in power and virtue than it was after the first whitening. The white Stone could be multiplied to such a degree, that finally, the white stone would become like a white oil, which would glow at night like the moon. Due to its magic attributes, the Philosophers call this the Elixir spiritum. 

However, Mitchell has a series of chapters about Old Mr. Hood, who was 93 years and intended to live to 115. Mr. Hood s diet was composed of finfish and shellfish, which was not only good to eat, but an elixir. Mr. Hood hung aroimd the Fulton Street fish market, a whiff of which he said would knock a cold in its tracks. He also told about an old dray horse that was surreptitiously fed oysters and became uncontrollable. In fact, for the few in the know, horse racing was occasionally fixed, reportedly by feeding one of the horses a batch of oysters ahead of time. 

It further is the true fixation, of which GEBER says What becomes Fixed becomes Illnmined, and is changed into a beautiful transparent substance. For out of it arises the SULFUR PHILOSOPHORUM, or the ash extracted from ash, without which the whole mastery is in vain. For it is a metallic Water, generated in the body, making it alive. It is an Elixir of the red and white Tincture, and a tingeing volatile spirit. 

While the scarcity and ambiguity of the available data suggest caution, the attempt to fix dates, identify beginners, and distinguish evolutionary stages has often resulted in the blurring of distinctions between the compounding of the elixirs and other ideas or techniques. Two examples are particularly relevant in this concern. 

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