Artemesia Family/Samael/Alchemical Compendium

(As a disclaimer, the following potions are only loosely based on real things, and one should never, ever, attempt to do these experiments at home, although that goes for every organic experiment. Furthermore, those procedures that are accurate and reliable in the real world have no effect beyond those which one can be concerned with in a research environment. These do not work in real-life, as far as I know, and I do not recommend finding out. Either way, they're made with normal food ingredients, except maybe the ether, which you DO NOT want to play around with anyway. Don't play around with alcohol either.)

The Body of Practical Alchemy as Applied to Herblore

I have decided to finally write down my experiments in applying the principles of alchemy to produce more pure mixtures and solutions of herbal potions. As part of the entries, I will include the method of preparation, the effects, the reasoning behind the effects, any other observations, the time and place where it was first tested, and any test subjects.

Brown Purger

At least three seasonal fruits of a certain anana tree must be used for the medicine to take proper effect, which is to make someone spill the latest meal. This has many practical uses, most notably as a preventive measure against extensive poisoning. A purgative medicine has been used to make someone who has consumed poison expel the poison before the body has been affected too much. However, there are some toxins which can actually do more harm when purging is practiced, and therefore, it is up to the pharmacist to determine for which cases such a potion is appropriate.

The way to prepare this "Brown Purger" is to skin three fruits of the anana tree, and to boil only the skin in one standard unit of water (standard unit as proposed by the Artemis/Wormwood project of standardizing measures in alchemical, physical, and herblore protocols). The skin peels should be cut into uniform square pieces of one square length unit in area. Once the water reaches boiling, add the pieces into the water. Boil this mixture for one hour before removing the boiling vessel from the fire. The liquid can be transferred through filtration with a thin fibrous sheet, or through decantation, although the latter method will lead to a larger amount of product wasted.

Once the liquid-only portion is extracted, cool the mixture. Add one-one hundredth of a standard liquid volume unit of pure consumable alcohol to the remaining skin peels. Do not allow this mixture to boil! The alcohol will evaporate very very quickly, so it is best to place the remaining skin peels in a bottle with the alcohol, and cork the bottle and shake it vigorously. Add the liquid portion that is dissolved in alcohol to the portion dissolved in water, and shake that corked vessel vigorously to ensure proper mixing of the two layers.

The effects of this mixture are, as the name implies, vomitting. As far as I know, that is the only effect it has, but its practicality is valuable as a crude antitoxin. The smell of the potion is deceptively sweet, no doubt by virtue of the alcohol and the natural sweet fragrance of the fruit, whether it be its skin or its flesh. The flesh, by the way, is quite tasty and has no adverse effects when consumed. I have tested this potion on myself, and found that it works as expected. It is a simple recipe, anyway. First date of self-testing: August 28, 2008.

Orange Tea

This particular concoction turned up by accident in one of my childhood experiments with Lawrence. We thought it to be rather stupid and pointless when we first discovered it, but recently I have discovered some interesting effects that it has.

The orange color comes from carrots, which, when extracted, aggregate and do not mix in water, much like an oil. This forms a orange layer separate from the water, which I am keen to call "carrotin" because it comes from within a carrot. As the name implies, this is also a tea, and it is true that tea leaves are also used in the making of this potion. The tea leaves contain certain things which tan a sheet of paper, and so I have called those things "tanins". The tanins taste bitter, by the way.

So the way I prepared it when I was an apprentice alchemist is somewhat similar to my current method. I will provide my current method because I think it to be more refined in procedure.

First, chop two carrots into small pieces and put them into a quarter of a standard liquid volume unit of sunflower seed oil. Boil this for at least one hour, until the carrot begins to pale. The oil should begin to turn orange.

In another vessel, boil about 5 grams of tea leaves in one-tenth of a standard liquid volume unit of water for ten minutes. Stir the leaves occasionally to ensure proper boiling.

Extract the liquid oil of the carrot mixture and allow it to cool. Add half the amount of water to the oil solution, cork the vessel, and shake vigorously. Remove the water, which should take with it some things that dissolve in water. Repeat this procedure twice more using pure water and transfer it into another boiling vessel.

Retrieve the liquid in the tea, and allow the mixture to cool. Add one-one hundredth of a standard liquid volume unit (I will now call them LVU) of sunflower seed oil to the mixture, cork the vessel, and shake vigorously. Remove the oil portion and add to the same vessel as the carrotin extract. Repeat this step two times.

The final boiling vessel now has carrotin and tanin dissolved in sunflower seed oil. Add an ether, which I do not mean the magical ether or whatever the superstitious are apt to call it, but rather the highly volatile substance formed by pressure-heating consumable alcohol and a normally gaseous smelly substance (In modern terms this would be an alkene, but in this case, as the consumable alcohol refers to ethanol, it would probably be that the smelly gaseous substance is ethene.) in an acidic environment.

Cork the vessel and mix the carrotin, tanin, sunflower seed oil, and ether. Remove the cork and boil the mixture for half and hour, while slowly adding water. By the end, the ether should have evaporated completely, and a few solid particles should have settled into the water layer. Remove the water and extract the orange oil into another vessel.

The final product is a thick, oily, bitter orange liquid. Effects of this orange oil are namely a disgusted face. However, from years of consuming this, I have discovered that either the carrotins, or the tanins, or a combination of both, has an accumulative effect of preserving eyesight, making the eyes less prone to be permanently damaged from sunlight, as well as reducing the duration of eye infections. A side effect by virtue of having tea leaves also extracted and mixed with the carrotin is the normally increased heart rate, due to a substance in tea leaves that is not a tanin, but also oil-soluble. That substance might have other uses, but I will not examine them here.

I have tested this on myself, with a little sugar added, which to my knowledge does not change its effects, as well as Antonyuz Nehcreti, to whom I mistakenly gave the unsweetened version. The effects were consistent with those that I observed among my Wormwood family when they first encountered my unsweetened orange tea. I suppose I should tell him sometime that the sweetened version tastes much better. First date of self-testing: A long time ago. First date of Antonyuz's testing: November 18, 2008.