Word To Use Today: spagyric.

No, it's all right, no one knows what spagyric means.

I'm afraid it's one the more useless words in the English language, but, hey, I expect you can find a use for it. Anyway, it's good to have a challenge from time to time.

Spagyric means to do with alchemy - but not, strictly speaking, the glitzy turning-base-metal-into-gold alchemy, or the mysterious how-to-live-for-ever sort of alchemy. No, spagyric is really the this-will-cure-anything stuff.

To make a spagyric you have to get Mercury, Salt and Suphur working for you. First of all you have to boil a herb in alcohol for a bit to make a solution. The alcohol, being a liquid, is a bit like Mercury. Then you take another bit of the herb and burn it so that any goodness that won't dissolve in alcohol ends up in the ash. That's the Salt bit.

Then, to do the thing really properly, you should take a third bit of herb, extract any smelly bits you can, and that's the Sulphur bit.

Mix them all up:



 and that's your spagyric.

Does it work?

Well, given the prospect of taking that stuff, I think that most of us would get better immediately.

Don't you?

Word To Use Today: spagyric. Utter nonsense? Well, all I can say that the word was coined by The Word Den's old enemy Paracelsus the Bighead. His idea was that nature was a bit rubbish and needed polishing up a bit, and that it was man's job to do it (I told you he was a bighead).

The word comes from the Greek spao, to tear open, and ageiro, to collect.