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Lucite.org Bismuth & Amber Angelic Iconography
Lucite.org is currently writing icons according to time-honored Orthodox tradition, yet featuring novel developments particular to the veneration of angels. Such developments include resurrecting the hitherto lost art of treating artifacts with precipitated bismuth and employing non-denominational expression.

Examples of Lucite.org icons and other works will be found in the Atelier section of the site. In addition to works available on the site, commissions for writing icons of individual Holy Guardian Angels are considered, being fascinating to create for both artist and patron.

The icons are not consecrated in any way other than the extreme care in execution and choice of materials. Most Orthodox icons are effectively mass-produced and blessed to meet demand. For angelic icons that might meet a variety of faiths, solemnities are left to the receiver, as it is nobody's bismuth but theirs.

Iconoclasm and Aniconism
Throughout history, periods of iconoclasm and aniconism have emerged in each of the patriarchal religions. Even today, disputes develop about the differences between veneration, idolatry, and simple regard.

Lucite.org takes the position of an iconodule, and sees the pigment and substrate of an icon no differently than the ink and page of a holy book. Therefore, Lucite.org icons are are said to be "written" rather than depicted, much as a calligrapher might render a florid representation of the Basmala.

The Lustre and Magic of Bismuth
Bismuth is a non-toxic silver-white crystalline heavy metal with a cold pink sheen. It is brittle and has a white crystalline fracture. Bismuth crystallizes in rhombohedra belonging to the hexagonal system, having interfacial angles of 87° 40'. The tarnish of bismuth is iridescent. It oxidizes over time to a warm grey patina according to its exposure to humidity. Varnishing, especially with a fossil or alkyd resin, mitigates oxidation. Bismuth is too brittle to be applied as leaf, so it is applied either pulverized or in solution, and then burnished with a wolf tooth or agate to its characteristic sheen.

Antique objects with bismuth grounds or chasing generally show a dull metallic surface due to the yellowing of varnish linoxyns over time. Conservators might reverse this with the removal of varnish layers and oxidation and re-varnishing, or re-application of bismuth in extreme cases. However, the appearance of bismuth under aged linoxyns is generally agreeable, and few conservators would find it necessary to modify an artifact to such extent. Bismuth, as a surface coating, has proved more durable than silver leaf. Examples of bismuth decoration we can consult today are 300 years old or older, yet they still exhibit finesse of execution and the marvel of an unusual material, though the warm silvery finish and blue-red iridescence is ablated.

Over time, the art of bismuth decoration was utterly lost, and is now found only in rare artifacts that have survived lifetimes of use or hinted at in arcane alchemical texts.

Bismuth is the most diamagnetic of all metals so it is the most suitable material for magnetic levitation experiments.

Though brittle, bismuth is super-elastic and can be stretched 300-400% in length with gradual force.

The thermal conductivity of bismuth is lower than that for any metal except mercury. When ignited in the presence of oxygen, bismuth produces blue-white fire and yellow fumes.

Bismuth is highly resistant to electricity, and has the greatest increase in electrical resistance of any element when subject to a magnetic field ("Hall effect").

Bismuth is radioactive only in theory, with a half-life a billion times the current age of the universe, which is to say that it is inert for all practical purposes.

Rarer bismuth minerals include complex sulphides, copper bismuth glance or wittichenite, silver bismuth glance, bismuth cobalt pyrites, bismuth nickel pyrites or saynite, needle ore (patrinite or aikinite), emplectite, and kobellite; the sulphotelluride tetradymite; the selenide guanajuatite, and walpurgite.

The radio talk show host Art Bell possesses bismuth-rich material (coined "Art's Parts") purported to be from the skin of a UFO that some believe crash landed at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

Bismuth is anecdotally said to neglect the laws of gravity in certain conditions that have yet to be seen in experimentation. Bismuth is related by elemental column to ununpentium, or eka-bismuth, a theoretical element (pending confirmation of its recent production at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). This element, too, has fired the imaginations of both the science fiction and UFO research communities.

Bismuth In Antiquity
If the Ancients knew of bismuth, it may have been under a different name or mistaken for a different element, such as antimony, lead, or tin. Bismuth and its oxides were probably used as beauty products during antiquity, just as antimony is in the Book of Enoch. Indeed, the antimony of the Book of Enoch probably indicates bismuth rather than toxic stibnite, which would have been recognized as a poison like arsenic prior to wide adoption as a cosmetic.

The Hebrews may have called bismuth chashmal, which is otherwise translated as a celestial sort of "amber," or "electrum." The word is repurposed to mean "electricity" in Modern Hebrew, although the term most likely denoted fossil amber originally.

Incidental bismuth is found in a number of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age alloys in the region of the Taurus Mountains in present-day Turkey. Such alloys and artifacts diffused throughout Syria and the Levant thereafter.

The earliest examples of bronze-tin alloys containing bismuth come from Tell Judeidah on an east-west trade route about 250 kilometers southeast of mines at Bolkardag. They are thought to derive from the same source of ore, namely that from Aladag (Sayre et al. 1992).

Two examples in particular are a fragment from the electrum helmet on a maquette of a nude male warrior with mace and spear (Braidwood and Braidwood 1960:315, fig. 241, pl. 58), and one from an electrum torque on a female maquette. Spectrographic analysis of the two fragments revealed incidental bismuth included as a component of silver ore alloyed with gold and copper (Braidwood and Braidwood 1960: fig. 245, 315), while the maquettes themselves were of tin bronze (Braidwood, Burke, and Nachtrieb 1951).

Other Chalcolithic lead artifacts are thought to include the same silver-tin-lead-bismuth alloys, particularly an artifact from Tarsus (ancient Tarshish) and a curious lead coil dated to the Early Bronze Age (Goldman 1959:435:no.3). Excavations at Tell Raqa'i in Syria produced a copper pin and slag dated to the third millennium BCE that are also identified with Taurus ores.
An interesting archaic knife was forged by the occupants of the temple site in Macchu Picchu, Peru and found to be a bronze alloy incorporating 18% bismuth (Gordon, R., and J. Rutledge, 1984, Bismuth Bronze from Macchu Picchu, Peru. Science, 223: 585-586).

The Modern History of Bismuth
Bismuth is among rare elements found in the cobalt and nickel mines of Saxony, England, and Bolivia, and Peru.

The technique of bismuth painting originated in southern Germany and Switzerland in the sixteenth century. The relatively few extant examples of bismuth application include heirloom beech boxes, ornamental wooden plates, and altar decor. Bismuth was also manufactured as bright metallic ink for manuscript illumination according to early alchemical recipes.

In alchemy, the symbol for bismuth is the same as that for the zodiacal sign of Taurus. In cursive form, the symbol is like a figure eight with an open top loop.

The earliest examples of bismuth decoration date to around 1490, and by 1613 the governing council of Nuremburg had regulated the trade with the institution of a bismuth painters guild.

Basileus Valentinus (1565-1624) mentioned bismuth (wismut) as a metal in 1450 (noting a chronological discrepancy), and Agricola (1494-1555) and Paracelsus (1493-1541) mentioned it sometime afterward. Paracelsus remarked on its brittleness by terming it a "bastard" or "half-metal." In De natura fossilium Libri X (1546), Agricola marked bismuth (wissmuth, plumbum cineareum) as an "ash grey lead."

A document from a bismuth mine at Schneeburg is dated 1477, which attests not only to its identification at this early date, but also to its widespread use. Bismuth was classed with lead and tin as one of three types of lead. Since silver was often discovered beneath veins of bismuth, the folk belief arose that it was naturally transmuting into silver.

Edmund von Lippmann cited twenty-one different names for bismuth in his book on its history. Claude-François Geoffroy dit Geoffroy cadet offered the synonyms Demogorgon, Étain de Glace, Étain Gris, Glaure, and Nymphe in the Mémoires de l'académie française for 1753. His citations of Demogorgon and Nymphe are from Paracelsus' notebooks and may be epithets according to Paracelsus' view of bismuth as a bastardized compound, a chimerical metal. Geoffroy died the same year, losing all interest in research.

Johann Heinrich Pott (1692-1777) made a study of bismuth in 1769, as Exercitationes chemicae de Wismutho.

Torbern Olaf Bergman (1735-1784) recognized that bismuth was an elemental metal and noted the properties and reactions in his Opuscula.

In J. Carrington Sellars' Chemistianity, he calls bismuth Heyan, according to his own chemical nomenclature.