With the nowadays markets and science progresses (well, this is a point of view), one can buy anything in order to practice Alchemy or Spagerics.
This morning I wrote an email to someone contacting me about a process.
The main concern was : do I buy these products or do I make them ?
Well, I had the choice to tell him "buy it" "don't bother!" or "just do it, it's cheaper".
Tartar salt : buy it = What have you learned ? How to create a buyer account on this website or use paypal on ebay ? You already know that ... You learned nothing. It's dead, so modern, so insipid, so common. It's not vibrating of the Philosophical touch. One simply do not go to the market in order to make the Stone or any product and make 1 + 1 product and wait the reaction.
Spiritus vini, Acetum (vinegar), distilled water, and so on ... you can buy everything now. Is it how one become a philosopher ? Nope. But sometime one cannot simple burn ferns and oak in his flat in the middle of the city in order to filter the ashes ... It's simply stupid and dangerous.
The "Do it yourself" takes time and efforts, also some researches in books or internet. You'll learn things in two steps : theory and practice.
Practice will show you the beauty of the crystals of tartar salt for example, and also what happens when you generate such or such product. Or maybe, you'll witness the crystalline nature of your alcohol, - alcohol that you brew yourself.
It creates a link between you and the matter, via the process. You learn it in your head, in your guts, and in your hands.
When you create your own products you tend to do less idiot tests with them.
It's very very easy to spoil alcohol that is not your. It comes from the pharmacy. It's easy to put to the trash the tartar salt you used in order to tartarize your Spiritus Vini. So easy, it's not your.
What do you do after all in your lab ? Playing with unknown protagonists ? It's a lab then, no more a theatre of Nature.
Ever heard about the fact that commercial KOH (Potassium Hydroxyde) is white, and the artisanally made is green ?
What do you think of that ?
Oh yes, it's maybe not 100 % Potassium Hydroxyde .. sure sure ... You are a scientific.
Let me smile then. Let me smile. And regret the fact that I never yet made mine artisanally !!