Pots, chimney, clothes, and ashes

Meaning

The Via’s pots and kettles fly up the chimney, clothes rot off bodies, and wood and charcoal become ashes. These are the alleged fruits of misguided work. The satire makes the language of sublimation, putrefaction and calcination operate upon the worker’s possessions rather than upon a successful stone.

The English keeps each comic reversal distinct. Money dissolves, apparatus sublimes, clothing putrefies and fuel calcines. The point is ruin disguised as productive labour, not an endorsed account of matter moving through those stages. The paragraph nevertheless concedes that such preparations may serve barbers and bathkeepers, maintaining its distinction between limited practical use and true transmutation.