Spagyrics is a centuries-old way of making herb and mushroom extracts. It grew out of European alchemy and is closely associated with Paracelsus, the 16th-century Swiss physician who is credited for founding pharmacology. The word comes from Greek roots meaning "to separate" and "to recombine," and this is what the Spagyric process is all about. The plant is separated into its 3 essential parts; each part is purified and extracted separately, before it is brought back together as one complete, broad spectrum extract.

Traditionally these parts are called the Soul, the Spirit and the Body. Modern science gives us another way to understand each one, as we investigate this we can see why commercial supplements leave so much behind in their quest for quick and cheap manufacturing.

Laboratory grade vs commercial grade

Much of the most exciting research on herbs and mushrooms isn't done on the powders and capsules you find on shelves. It uses laboratory grade extracts, prepared with complicated solvents chosen to draw out the full range of a plant's compound.

Lion's mane is a good example. In one study, an ethanol extract of the mushroom promoted NGF gene expression in human astrocytoma cells, with the effect increasing as the concentration rose. the complicated and non – scalable extracts in the study produced the greatest stimulation of neurite outgrowth as opposed to the simple commercial extracts. Those difficult to extract fractions hold the mushroom's less water-soluble compounds, just like a spagyric extract. (pharmum)

The Studies on Reishi show the same thing. Its key compounds need different extraction methods, and researchers recommend pulling out the triterpenoids with ethanol first, then extracting the polysaccharides with hot water. Which is the opposite of what the commercial industry does today. (ScienceDirect)

One of the biggest issues is that commercial grade supplements take shortcuts wherever they can. a dried powder, a spray-dried water extract, or a quick tincture made from old, dried herb is faster and cheaper but each captures only part of the plant. A spagyric is made to the same quality standards as the laboratory way, and superior in that it also preserves the plants consciousness and homeopathic essence as well as it’s mineral matrix. Fresh plants are extracted in several stages to gather the aromatic oils, the alcohol-soluble compounds and the mineral salts. The result is a far broader range of constituents than any single commercial method can deliver.

Soul: the aromatic compounds most supplements lose

The first sense life on earth developed was smell. So it makes sense that the ancients saw a plant's scent as its personality, its Soul. In the spagyric tradition, the Soul is the plant's aromatic oils. Chemists call these volatile compounds, including terpenes, and they are among the most fragile molecules a plant makes, and often the most therapeutic.

Industrial processing is hard on them. Hot-air drying is now the dominant method for processing medicinal plants at industrial scale, yet drying above 60 °C has been shown to strip out most of
the volatile compounds in many herbs. High temperatures can rupture the tiny oil glands on the
plant's surface, letting volatile compounds evaporate, and can break down the heat-sensitive
components of the essential oil. (PubMed Central Taylor & Francis Online)

Further processing can make the loss worse. When studies have looked at encapsulating
essential oils via a drying processes, freeze drying retained around 85% of the material, while
spray-drying the same formulation retained only about 45%. (nih) Compared to to Spagyrics at
close to 100%

Capturing these volatile compounds is slow, careful work, and it's the challenge we've spent ten
years solving. We work with fresh, garden-grown plants so the aromatic fraction, the Soul,
makes it into the bottle and is preserved there via the Spagyric technique.

Frankincense demonstrates this well. Researchers found that incensole acetate, a compound in
frankincense resin, strongly activates a brain ion channel called TRPV3, and that it reduced
anxiety-like and depression-like behaviour in mice. The authors suggested this may offer a
biological explanation for the long ceremonial use of frankincense. Science is only beginning to
catch up with what the ancients knew. (nih) Most of the frankincense products on the market,
whether its an essential oil, a capsule or a tincture only have a fraction of the bioactive
compounds that exist in the plant itself. Spagyrics solves this.

Spirit: extraction and absorption

In Spagyrics, the Spirit is a form of alcohol. That's why alocholic beverages are still called
"spirits." But an empty spirit is just that: empty. According to spagyrics, Its purpose is to carry
the plant, and it does this in two distinct ways.

First, our alcohol extracts. Many important compounds, such as reishi's triterpenoids, dissolve in
ethanol rather than water. That's why laboratories reach for it, and why water extracts and
powders leave so much behind, once they have been captured in the alcohol via distillation, they
are locked inside this “Menstruum” and we can put them aside for later integration without
worrying about loss through further processing.

Second, it helps deliver. Where does alcohol go? To the blood stream right? When a tincture is
held under the tongue, compounds can pass through the thin, blood-rich tissue, directly into
circulation. Absorption through the lining of the mouth avoids breakdown by digestive enzymes
and bypasses the liver's first-pass effect, and ethanol alcohol massively boosts bio availability
and penetration of the bio-active compounds. In laboratory studies, the rate at which a compound
passed through mouth tissue rose as the ethanol concentration increased, and pre-treating mouth
tissue with ethanol has been shown to increase caffeine permeability. (Buccal Absorption - an
overview | ScienceDirect Topics +2)

This route suits the small, oil-soluble aromatic compounds that make up a plant's Soul, which is
exactly the fraction most commercial supplements lose.

For best results, take the tincture directly and hold it in your mouth for a few seconds before swallowing 

Body: the mineral salt

Once extraction is finished, most producers throw away the spent plant material. In spagyrics, it is burned down to ash in a process called calcination. The ash is then dissolved, filtered and crystallised into a pure white mineral salt. Around 50 kg of plant material yields less than 100 g of mineral salt.

This salt holds the plant's own minerals. It is mostly potassium carbonate, along with the rest of the mineral profile the plant drew from its soil. These minerals come from a living plant rather than being mined from rock like most mineral supplements. Returning them to the tincture is how we complete a spagyric. The finished preparation contains the aromatic Soul, the extracted Spirit and the mineral Body of the plant, as well as all the water and alcohol soluble compounds. From fresh herbs wild harvested or grown in our biodynamic garden (Evolvedalchemy)

Mushrooms: fruiting body vs mycelium on grain

Many mushroom supplements aren't made from mushrooms at all. They're made from mycelium grown on grain, and the grain is never removed. Independent analysis using the method developed by McCleary and Draga (2016) can tell the difference between the these poor quality “mycelium extracts” and extract made from the fruiting body. Industry testing with this method found that true mushrooms are rich in beta-D-glucans and very low in starch, while mycelium grown on cereal grains is the reverse: low in beta-D-glucans and high in starch. We work with the mushroom itself. (Nammex)

Not only this, but commercial mushroom extracts are almost always grown on soybean or sawdust substrates in plastic bags, indoors, away from nature tainting the product with plastics, GMO’s and other chemicals as well as severely limiting the biodiversity of the mushroom itself. ENKi’ mushrooms are wild harvested or grown on our biodynamics farm in forest simulated conditions, creating an extract that is unparalleled in purity and potency.

Spagyrics and homeopathy

If you use homeopathic remedies, you've already had a basic form of spagyrics, even if you didn't know it. The two traditions grew up side by side in Germany. The official German Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia still sets out manufacturing methods from homoeopathy, anthroposophy and spagyrics together. Paracelsus is often cited as an early voice for the principle that "like cures like," which Samuel Hahnemann later placed at the heart of homeopathy. (deutscher-apotheker-verlag)

The idea that minerals are foundational to life runs through both traditions as well. It I also spoken about in the tissue salts developed by Dr Wilhelm Schüssler, and it's why in Spagyrics we keeps the plant's own mineral salt instead of throwing it away.

Many homeopathic preparations begin with a mother tincture. At Enki, we make the complete medicine: the full-strength spagyric, with its Soul, Spirit and Body intact. Not produced from a mother, but rather the Spagyric tincture is th mother itself. Each batch crafted from a whole plant or mushroom and consuming every gram of it to be transformed into a nature perfect elixir, with no waste left at the end.

A consciousness medicine

A Spagyric is more than a thorough extract. In the Hermetic tradition, "as above, so below" links the seven classical planets to the seven energy centers the Vedic tradition calls chakras. Each plant is said to be ruled by one of these planets. A true spagyric is traditionally understood to work with that plant's affinity, helping to stabilise and support these centres and bringing body, mind and spirit into greater harmony with the world around us.

From our garden to you

At Enki, we want to bring back the whole practice. Our plants are grown in our garden and extracted fresh in our lab. We capture the Soul, Spirit and Body of each one, then send the finished spagyric out to people looking for that kind of support on their own path.