Yesterday I went to a class that was at my occult lodge. It was about how to make alchemical tinctures, also known as spagyrics. We learned that they need to be made during a certain time of day associated with the planet. I was given a kit to make tincture of ginger, which is good for cold and flu season. It included some alcohol and dried ginger in a certain ratio.
Today since it's the day of the sun, I waited until the hour of the sun to stir them together in a jar. I put it on the radiator in my apartment so that it would be exposed to a gentle heat. I am going to wait for 2 weeks and then separate the solids from the liquids.
The alcohol is called the mercury, and the essential oil is called the sulfur. The dead part of the plant after extraction is called the salts. Now the difference between an alchemical and a regular tincture is that after you extract the sulfur from the plant with the mercury, you take the dead part of the plant and burn it to a white ash. Then you put it back into the mercury for a few days, and filter out the dregs which are called the dead head, or caput mortuum. The tincture will now have the soluble parts from the plant's ash base.
People in small apartments often have some difficulty burning things to an ash so we are going to go to the park and barbeque the dried plant matter with a few pieces of charcoal while roasting weenies.