Ablutio vel Mundificatio

The story

Rain or dew descends in neat drops from clouds onto the same coffin and body seen in the two preceding plates, now shown being cleansed rather than mourned. The caption reads: "Here falls the dew from heaven, and washes the black body clean in the grave." Alchemists read this washing — often called the albedo, or whitening — as the slow purification of the blackened matter left after putrefaction, a gradual lightening they associated with dew, rain, or repeated distillation rather than any single dramatic event. In practical workshop terms it corresponded to washing or redistilling a residue again and again until its color paled. The image’s restraint is deliberate: nothing happens here but rain falling on a still body, and alchemical theory held that this purification stage demanded patience — the opposite of the violence in the putrefaction plate two pages before it.