Calcinatio

Paracelsus names calcination the first of the seven degrees of transmutation: by a naked strong fire with blowing, all bodily things are made coal and ashes, and soft, fat earth is hardened into stone.

“By Calcination therefore all Metalls, Mineralls, Stones, Glasse, &c. and all corporeall things are made a Coal, and Ashes, and this is done by a naked strong Fire with blowing, by which all tenacious, soft, and fat earth is hardened into a stone”

Micheel Sandivogius; Paracelsus (Nine Books Of the Nature of Things), A New Light of Alchymie ... Also Nine Books Of the Nature of Things, Written by Paracelsus ... Also a Chymicall Dictionary, Paracelsus, Of the Nature of Things, Book VII, "Of the Transmutation of Naturall things". Faithfully translated out of the Latin into the English tongue, by J. F. M.D.; London, Printed by Richard Cotes, for Thomas Williams, at the Bible in Little-Britain, 1650. The text, read in part

Silberer, following Wirth, writes that after the water test the fire test must still be passed: the calcination, which burns everything combustible and leaves a perfectly purified salt.

“Yet we are not to be satisfied with this negative virtue; the fire test (we should remember that the four tests by the elements were to be found in the parable also) is still to be gone through, the calcination, which burns everything combustible. After the calcination there is a perfectly purified salt”

Dr. Herbert Silberer, Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts (originally published as Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism), Part III, Section III ('The Royal Art'), outlining Oswald Wirth's interpretation. Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe, M.D., Ph.D.; Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1971, an unabridged republication of the work published by Moffat, Yard and Company, New York, in 1917 (Project Gutenberg eBook #27755). The text, read in part