Calcination

Meaning

Calcination appears here chiefly as a contested operation-name. In the dialogue, the alchemist recalls false calcinations which drive spirits away in smoke instead of genuinely separating and recombining the elements. The Way of Truth attacks a supposed sequence of operations and says that such names have been imposed on a single natural coction. Its satire gives calcination a literal but useless result: the workers' fuel has become ashes while their resources disappear. Later it explicitly rejects an interpretation that calcines matter through black, white, and red stages. These are particular criticisms of alleged practice, not a universal historical definition of calcination, and they cannot silently be reconciled with other parts of the volume which use transformation language positively.