A New Light of Alchemy

The practical importance of the distinction appears when the author tells readers to seek the second matter rather than attempt to return metals to a universal beginning. A translation that uses first matter as one fixed ingredient everywhere would make the argument seem easier while changing it. The text itself sometimes pauses to explain what it means by a matter, and those local explanations should take priority over a glossary’s shortest formula.

Passage NL-C12-P002: “When nature creates things from the elements, she generates them through God’s will from the first matter, which God alone knows.”

Source forms: materia prima; materia secunda.

Places to read: NL-C12-P002.

See also: Body and seed, Nature, Seed and sperm.

Fixed and Volatile

Fixed and volatile describe related conditions or powers of remaining and moving. Mercury can flee under fire, return in a changed form, be spoken of through a stable centre and still be the subject of operations called fixation. Each predicate belongs to its particular account; the word fixed does not automatically mean the whole subject has become inert.

The Dialogue places the material pair beside the investigator’s disposition. Mercury says he is constant to a constant practitioner and fixed to a fixed mind; the alchemist is the one who wanders from one matter to another. The comparison depends upon the technical meaning and adds an ethical test. It invites a reader to ask whether apparent material inconstancy has become a pretext for the operator’s own lack of judgment.

Passage NL-DIALOGUE-009: “I am constant to a constant practitioner, fixed to a steadfast mind.”

Source forms: fixus; volatilis; constans.

Places to read: NL-DIALOGUE-009.

See also: Mercury, Art, Spirit.

Iliadum

Iliadum names a final boundary or utmost term in the opening treatise. The Latin immediately supplies terminum ultimum as an explanation. The unusual word is retained because it is part of the argument’s vocabulary and because silently substituting an unrelated familiar term would make the author’s comparison harder to trace.

Nature works towards her term and rests; human ingenuity is then compared with an art that has accumulated innumerable subtleties while lacking the one result attributed to the ancient philosophers. The comparison questions whether increasing technical complication is the same as reaching the desired end. Iliadum should be read in that movement of the opening argument. The dictionary’s similarly shaped Iliaster entries belong to a separate historical text and do not cancel this work’s own explicit gloss.

Passage NL-C01-P002: “Noble nature likewise works continually until she reaches the Iliadum itself, that is, the final limit; then she rests.”

Source forms: Iliadum; terminus ultimus.

Places to read: NL-C01-P002.

See also: Nature, Art, First and second matter.

Magnet

The language of a magnet emphasises attraction. In the account of conception at the earth’s centre, the magnetic power of a place draws what is suitable for generation while the remainder is expelled. Elsewhere a chalybs is said to draw from the sun’s rays. The common feature is a relation between an attractive power and what it receives.

Sulphur supplies further comparisons involving the lodestone, waters, seed and nourishment. An explicit comparison with a lodestone does not by itself prove that every philosophical magnet is a piece of ordinary lodestone. Conversely, calling the passage figurative should not remove its concern with material action. A useful reading asks what attracts, what is attracted, by what likeness or need, and where the resulting product is said to grow.

Passage NL-C02-P002: “Something similar occurs at the earth’s centre: the magnetic power of some part of a place attracts to itself what is suitable for bringing something forth, while the remainder is expelled into stones and other waste products.”

Source forms: magnes; vis magnetica; attrahere.

Places to read: NL-C02-P002.

See also: Chalybs, Centre, Seed and sperm.

Mercury

Mercury has several related roles: a named material, a principle in the account of metals, a planetary name and the Dialogue’s speaking figure. The author repeatedly distinguishes common Mercury from what philosophers mean by their Mercury. The repeated possessive our is part of that problem of interpretation, not an automatic identification of a substance.

The Dialogue allows Mercury to submit, mock, disappear and describe his centre through a sequence of riddles. The alchemist wants a single affirmative answer that will justify continuing the same procedure. Mercury instead demands that he know the relations by which a philosophical subject is recognised. The proper distinction cannot be secured merely by finding an impressive name in a book. Compare the core’s elemental account with the comic exchanges before treating any one sentence as a complete definition.

Passage NL-C03-P001: “The philosophers called this Mercury; in the philosophical sea it is governed by the rays of the sun and moon.”

Source forms: Mercurius; Mercurius noster; Mercurius Philosophorum.

Places to read: NL-C03-P001.

See also: Sulphur, Fixed and volatile, Centre.

Nature

Nature is the divinely created order and active power through which the author explains production. She is said to be one, true, simple and whole, invisible in herself while acting visibly in bodies. Her place is in the divine will. These claims set the framework for the work rather than supplying the name of one ingredient.