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To produce liquid mercury (quicksilver), crushed cinnabar ore is roasted in rotary furnaces. Pure mercury separates from sulfur in this process and easily evaporates.
A condensing column is used to collect the liquid metal
In both Mesoamerica and South America, cinnabar was an important trade item. The Mayan may have considered cinnabar to be sacred because of its red color. Red was considered to be the color of the east, and may also have symbolized blood as well as life, though there is no solid evidence for this.
The ancient Maya used cinnabar in their jewelry, set into incised decorations, as a paint pigment and as part of certain rituals such as funeral rituals and rituals involving fire. For rituals involving fire, Mayan priests would burn cinnabar to release the mercury.
During a blood letting ritual participants would experience visions in which they communicated with the ancestors or gods. These visions took the form of a giant serpent "which served as a gateway to the spirit realm." The ancestor or god who was being contacted was depicted as emerging from the serpent’s mouth. The vision serpent thus came to be the method in which ancestors or Gods manifested themselves to the Maya. Thus for them, the Vision Serpent was a direct link between the spirit realm of the gods and the physical world.
Quantities of liquid mercury ranging from 90 to 600 grams (3.2 to 21.2 oz) have been recovered from elite Maya tombs or ritual caches at six sites. This mercury may have been used in bowls as mirrors for divinatory purposes.
originally posted by: PorteurDeMort
I think it's possible that mercury vapor may have played some part in their interpretations. Along with certain fungi and cacti, that would have provided them with powerful visions.
originally posted by: Wifibrains
Maybe they used a breathing apparatus?
How many thread you gonna put down this week?
Hey! why dont you just go hang around in the rant forum...
Breathing apparatus" or no, if they were directly and intentionally inhaling mercury vapor, they damn sure weren't doing it long, given the incredibly detrimental effects it has on one's health, and the fact that it accumulates in the body.
Should I feel the need to rant about something, perhaps I will. Calling out ignorance and misinformation where I see it is not ranting.
a reply to: AdmireTheDistance
How many of these ridiculous mercury threads are we gonna have this week?
In keeping my eye open for some sort of scientific proof for mercury vapour being able to be charged and manipulated by spirit I found that experiments have been carried out with mercury vapour and artificial electromagnetic generation....
So it seems that it may be possible for the metallic elements to be arranged into what ever form the magnetism should dictate, but there was question as to the resistivity depends on how dense the film is which can be controlled by temperature?
Is this pretty much similar to the way a plasma tv works?
Any help putting this into leymans terms would be appreciated as parts of this pdf seems to be in another language to forbid a layman from understanding fully.
However, I was not interested in the number crunching...
Just give me the conclusion!...
Very interesting indeed...
Experiment conclusion.... (Snippets)
"The use of a magnetic field made it possible to separate the phenomena due to the presence of superconductivity in the film.
Superconductivity can apparently be ob- served in high-resistance films of metal deposited together with a dielectric, e.g., with an inert gas.
From among the pure metals, according to present- day experimental data,' only mercury becomes superconducting at a sufficiently large initial thickness.
These phenomena can be qualitatively explained by assuming a two-dimensional character of the localization in mercury films."
www.jetp.ac.ru...
Well, if possible it only leaves to speculation how the ancients would/could have controlled and adjusted the variables needed for the energies to be able to manipulate the vapours into a perceivable form, as shown in vision serpent carvings...