A New Light of Alchemy

Short Glossary

These brief explanations orient a first reading. The contextual lexicon gives fuller accounts and passages. No entry establishes one modern chemical identity for every occurrence of a historical word.

Archaeus

The agent or formative activity that gathers, distils and distributes natural powers in the author’s account of generation.

Art

Skilled human work conducted with an understanding of natural capacities; the term does not mean fine art in the present sense.

Body

A formed material subject, distinguished in several arguments from the seed or power through which it can generate.

Calcination

An operation intended to reduce a material to a calx or powderlike residue, often through heat. The text disputes whether calcination belongs in the preparation being attempted.

Centre

A generative interior or concentration of power. The earth’s centre and a material’s centre are related through the text’s analogies.

Chalybs

Steel, used as a technical and figurative name in the discussion of metallic seed and attraction; follow the local wording before identifying a specific preparation.

Chymistry

The historical art and inquiry named by chymia and related forms in this translation.

Coagulation

A coming together or congealing into a formed body; often paired with dissolution or a prior volatile condition.

Corrosive water

A historical dissolving liquid described by its corrosive action. The phrase does not identify a single composition everywhere.

Digestion

A process of preparation or maturation under suitable conditions, often involving sustained heat; also used in analogies of generation and nourishment.

Element

Earth, water, air or fire within the author’s natural philosophy; each has relations and powers beyond a modern everyday label.

Elixir

The concentrated or perfected power discussed in relation to the stone and its effects.

First matter

A beginning relative to the argument in hand. The text distinguishes matters and warns against claiming possession of the first matter known to God alone.

Fixed and volatile

Opposed but related states or powers: remaining or enduring, and moving or flying. Their meanings also support the Dialogue’s comparison with the practitioner’s mind.

Iliadum

A final boundary or limit, explicitly glossed by the opening treatise; the unusual name is retained.

Luna

The Moon; often silver in a metallic context. The figurative name and the material use must be distinguished locally.

Magnet

A name involving attraction in the text’s discussion of metallic relations; its role cannot always be settled by substituting a common lodestone.

Matrix

A womb or receptive place in which seed can operate and mature.

Menstruum

A receptive or dissolving medium, used within the work’s generative language; it should not be reduced to one universal solvent.

Mercury

A planetary name, a material name and a principle. The distinction between common Mercury and the philosophers’ Mercury is a repeated problem of the corpus.

Multiplication

Increase or propagation of power and product according to the text’s theory of seed; more than simply adding bulk.

Nature

The one divinely created natural order and its active power, personified when the text presents her as working or speaking.

Nitre

A historical salt-name within accounts of air, water, the earth’s centre and generation. The relevant passage governs the sense.

Putrefaction

A transformative breaking down associated with the emergence or preparation of further life or power in the argument.

Radical moisture

A moisture fundamental to the life or generative capacity of a body; radical here means rooted or foundational.

Salt

One of the three principles, with roles involving embodiment, fixation and mixture; also a name borne by particular historical substances.

Saturn

The planet or its personification, lead in certain metallic contexts, and the named instructor in the Parable.

Second matter

A matter accessible within the author’s account of natural production and human art, distinguished from the first beginning.

Seed and sperm

English forms used to follow semen and sperma where the Latin makes or tests a distinction; the relation is explained locally.

Sol

The Sun; often gold in a metallic context. The central sun and the sun of the heavens have their own roles in the cosmological account.

Spirit

A mobile, formative or penetrating power that can act in bodies; some passages distinguish spirit from body while others stress their conjunction.

Sulphur

A principle central to the separate 1616 treatise, also a named material; the word’s natural, metallic and operative uses require local attention.

Tincture

A colouring and transformative power claimed to affect a subject enduringly. The preface distinguishes such a result from deceptive appearance.

Vessel

The place or container in which an operation occurs, sometimes discussed through comparison with nature’s own places.

Vitriol

A historical name in the alchemist’s list of preparations; the Dialogue’s mention does not make every use of vitriol philosophically appropriate.