Ormus, short for “Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements,” is made most commonly through a process called the wet method, which extracts mineral precipitates from sea salt using a caustic solution to raise pH. The process is straightforward but requires careful attention to pH levels and safety precautions when handling sodium hydroxide, which is highly corrosive. Before walking through the steps, it’s worth understanding what you’re actually producing and the safety considerations involved.
What Ormus Actually Is
The concept originated with David Hudson, an Arizona farmer who filed a patent in the late 1980s describing what he called “non-metallic, monoatomic forms of transition elements.” Hudson claimed these materials exist naturally in mineral salts and possess unique electronic and magnetic properties due to a rearrangement of their electron orbitals. His patent described finding these substances alongside alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, silica, and alumina.
No mainstream scientific body has validated these claims. What the wet method demonstrably produces is a mineral precipitate, primarily composed of magnesium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide, along with trace amounts of whatever other minerals were present in your starting salt. The milky white substance that forms when you raise the pH of saltwater is consistent with well-understood chemistry: hydroxides of magnesium and calcium are insoluble at high pH and drop out of solution. Whether this precipitate contains anything beyond ordinary mineral hydroxides remains unproven. People who use ormus report various benefits, but these haven’t been tested in controlled studies.
Equipment and Ingredients
You’ll need two clean glass jars (avoid metal containers), a digital pH meter (not pH strips, which lack the precision needed here), coffee filters, an aquarium siphon tube, a glass stirring rod or wooden spoon, and safety gear including chemical-resistant gloves and eye protection. Sodium hydroxide causes severe chemical burns on contact with skin or eyes, so protective equipment is not optional.
For ingredients, gather:
- Salt: Dead Sea salt or food-grade sea salt. Dead Sea salt is the most popular choice because of its high mineral diversity, particularly its magnesium content. Himalayan pink salt is another common option, containing measurable levels of calcium, zinc, copper, and iron among other trace minerals.
- Sodium hydroxide (lye): Available as a liquid or solid. You’ll dilute it to a 1:4 ratio (one part sodium hydroxide to four parts distilled water).
- Distilled water: Tap water introduces chlorine and other compounds that can interfere with the process.
Step 1: Prepare the Saltwater
Heat distilled water until it’s hot but not boiling, then pour it into a clean glass jar. Add your sea salt gradually, stirring until no more salt dissolves and you can see undissolved crystals sitting at the bottom. This saturated solution ensures you’re extracting the maximum mineral content from your salt. Filter the solution through a coffee filter into your second jar to remove any undissolved salt, sand, or debris. You should have a clear, dense saltwater solution.
Step 2: Raise the pH Slowly
This is the most critical step and the one where most mistakes happen. Prepare your diluted sodium hydroxide solution (1:4 with distilled water) and add it to the filtered saltwater drop by drop. Stir gently and continuously as you add. Monitor pH after every few drops.
Your target pH depends on the salt you’re using. For regular sea salt, stop between pH 8.5 and 9.0. For Dead Sea salt, you can go higher, up to pH 10.78. This upper limit of 10.78 is treated as a hard ceiling in the ormus community, established by a practitioner known as Essene (Larry Blackman), who cautioned that exceeding this threshold risks precipitating heavy metals like lead and aluminum into your final product. Many people stop even lower, at pH 10.0 or 10.5, to build in a safety margin.
As the pH rises, you’ll see milky white clouds forming in the solution. This is the precipitate. If the pH accidentally spikes above 10.78, the general guideline is that the batch should only be used for gardening or agriculture, not consumption. A momentary spike that immediately comes back down is considered less concerning, but there’s no reliable way to test what precipitated during that spike without laboratory analysis.
Why pH Control Matters
Different minerals precipitate out of solution at different pH levels. Magnesium hydroxide forms around pH 9.0 to 10.0. But heavier and potentially toxic metals like lead and aluminum also become insoluble at higher pH levels. The 10.78 threshold is meant to capture the minerals you want while leaving heavy metals dissolved in solution, where they get discarded. Without a reliable pH meter, you’re essentially guessing, and guessing with sodium hydroxide and heavy metals is a bad combination.
Step 3: Let the Precipitate Settle
Once you’ve reached your target pH and the solution looks uniformly milky, stop adding sodium hydroxide. Cover the jar and let it sit undisturbed. The white precipitate will gradually sink to the bottom over several hours. Some people wait overnight, others wait a full day or two. You’ll know it’s ready when the liquid above the settled layer is mostly clear.
Step 4: Wash the Precipitate
Washing removes residual sodium hydroxide and excess salt from the precipitate. This is tedious but important. Using an aquarium siphon tube, carefully draw off the clear liquid sitting above the white layer at the bottom, being careful not to disturb the settled material. Discard this liquid.
Refill the jar with fresh hot distilled water, stir gently to resuspend the precipitate, then let it settle again. Repeat this process 15 to 20 times. Each wash dilutes the remaining sodium hydroxide and dissolved salts. Skipping washes or cutting the number short means your final product will be more alkaline and contain more dissolved sodium, neither of which is desirable if you plan to consume it.
After the final wash, you should have a jar of white, paste-like precipitate sitting beneath clear water. This is the finished product.
Common Problems and Fixes
If no precipitate forms, the most likely cause is a pH meter that isn’t calibrated correctly, meaning your solution isn’t actually reaching the pH you think it is. Recalibrate with fresh buffer solutions and try again. Another possibility is that your salt has very low mineral content. Table salt that’s been heavily refined and stripped of trace minerals won’t produce much precipitate compared to mineral-rich options like Dead Sea salt.
If the precipitate won’t settle, you may have added the sodium hydroxide too quickly, creating very fine particles that stay suspended. Give it more time, up to 48 hours. Agitating the jar will only make it worse.
If your precipitate has a yellowish or brownish tint rather than being white, this could indicate that heavier metals precipitated out, possibly because pH went too high. Check your pH meter’s accuracy and consider discarding the batch or reserving it for garden use only.
Safety Risks Worth Taking Seriously
Beyond the burn hazard from handling sodium hydroxide, the primary health concern with homemade ormus is heavy metal contamination. Sea salts contain trace amounts of lead, mercury, arsenic, and aluminum. A study published in the journal Toxics analyzing gourmet salts found measurable lead in most varieties, with concentrations varying significantly depending on the salt’s geographic origin and processing. Himalayan pink salt, despite its reputation for purity, contained 5.5 mg/kg of lead in the samples tested.
When you concentrate minerals from salt through precipitation, you’re also concentrating whatever toxic metals were present. Chronic exposure to heavy metals can cause high blood pressure, kidney damage, fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, and neurological symptoms including tingling in the extremities, confusion, and dizziness. Arsenic exposure over time increases cancer risk. Children are especially vulnerable to heavy metal accumulation.
There is no way to verify the safety of a homemade ormus batch without sending it to a laboratory for elemental analysis. The pH threshold approach reduces heavy metal risk but doesn’t eliminate it, and its effectiveness depends entirely on the accuracy of your pH readings and the consistency of your technique.
Storage
Store finished ormus in a sealed glass container, away from direct sunlight, and always use distilled water if you need to add liquid. Tap water introduces chlorine and mineral contaminants. Some practitioners refrigerate it, though there’s no established shelf life. The precipitate may settle over time and can be gently stirred to resuspend it.