azure

Ingredients

azure, quickesiluer, sulphur, brymston

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

The recipe 'For to make alle men in a howse to havee too heddes' (p. 202) instructs the user to take a quantity of azure pigment and combine it with equal parts quicksilver (mercury) and sulphur (also termed brimstone). These three substances are to be placed together in a 'brynnyng lampe' (burning lamp) situated in a house (p. 202). The combustion or evaporation of this mixture is intended to produce an optical illusion where every person in the house appears to have two heads. The recipe is found in the manuscript BodL, MS Ashmole 1389, on pages 39-40 (p. 202).

Evidence

"Take a quantyte of azure and as moche of quickesiluer and as moche of sulphur ^brymston^ and put these iij together in a brynnyng lampe and euery man shall seme þat he hathe too heddes"

Remarks

MS Ashmole 1389 is characterized as a 'scruffy, early Tudor collection of recipes' that intermingles medical cures with practical jokes and household instructions (p. 200). The author notes that such recipes for illusions, like those using azure or brimstone in lamps, provide 'carnivalesque energy' by complicating the practical nature of medical manuscripts (p. 202). The use of the verb 'seme' highlights that these pigments and minerals were utilized to create visual delusions rather than actual physiological transformations (p. 202). These materials are situated within 'tightly bounded, interior spaces' like a 'howse' or 'dore', reminiscent of the settings in medieval fabliaux (p. 202).