A New Light of Alchemy

Note on the Text and Translation

The Governing Texts

For the twelve treatises and their conclusions the copytext is the 1606 Ruland compilation, printed pages 86–165, Herzog August Bibliothek 385.2.1 Quod., digitisation images 00500–00579. The compilation’s incidental heading calls this a second treatise. Second describes its position among works in that collection, not a second treatise within Sendivogius’s numbered sequence. That heading is retained and explained at the opening.

The author’s preface and Alsted epigram use the 1611 Frankfurt printing, British Library copy digitised as Google Books XJVmAAAAcAAJ, printed pages 3–8. The Dialogue uses the 1607 Cologne printing, Austrian National Library copy digitised as wVVWAAAAcAAJ. Its scan identifiers PA1, PA3–PA4 and PA5–PA28 distinguish the title, address and dialogue; these identifiers also locate leaves whose printed pagination is irregular. Source locators never silently infer an absent printed number from a modern scan number.

Sulphur uses the 1616 Cologne printing in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek copy bsb10191243, with the ending supplied from the Rome copy digitised as 6_qSMmO2Kh4C. The source record distinguishes physical body sequence, printed page label and digital image. The composite supplies the complete authorial preface and body; it does not turn incomplete scans into evidence that the historical work itself ended early.

Source Presentation and English

The Latin is a readable, normalised transcription rather than a photographic facsimile. Long s becomes s; ligatures are expanded; u and v, and i and j, are regularised. Roman numerals are regularised where their value is clear; for example, printed IIX is rendered VIII. Printer line divisions, catchwords, running heads and signatures are omitted from the reading text. Abbreviations are expanded when their meaning is secure, and punctuation and paragraph divisions are lightly clarified. Uncertain readings, consequential variants and interpretive emendations are disclosed in notes. The aim is to preserve words and arguments while allowing the two languages to be read together.

The English translation was made from the Latin, not by updating John French’s English. French is consulted as a historical comparison where useful. The 1614 Latin transcription available through the EMLAP research corpus assisted the decipherment of the 1606 core, but the 1606 scans govern. Differences encountered between those witnesses are recorded locally. This edition does not claim an exhaustive collation of every early printing or a reconstruction of the entire textual tradition.

Nature remains personified where the text gives her action and speech. Chymistry and chymical usually render chymia and related forms; alchemy and alchemist render alchymia and alchymista. The familiar English title is retained. Seed and sperm follow the Latin’s distinctions where those distinctions are expressed; the words do not always have a single rigid technical relation throughout the corpus. Technical names such as Archaeus and Iliadum are explained rather than replaced by an unverified modern equivalent.

Sol, Luna and the other planetary names remain visible when the author’s wording depends on their imagery. Where a passage plainly identifies a named metal, the English may use gold or silver; local notes and the lexicon make the relation clear. Nitre, sulphur, Mercury, salt, spirit and water must still be understood in their particular arguments. The book does not provide one universal modern substance for every historical use of those words.

English additions inside an explanatory note are editorial. A note describing a possible reading does not give that reading the authority of the printed Latin. Biblical passages are newly rendered from the Latin actually quoted here; the closing excerpt headed Job 28 is the excerpt the witness prints, not a claim to reproduce an entire modern chapter. Medical statements and promises of metallic transformation belong to the historical works. Their inclusion records the texts’ claims and does not establish present-day efficacy.

References and Supporting Material

Printed source pages and digitisation identifiers accompany the primary passages. An annotation explains a word or local difficulty; the contextual lexicon develops a term through several passages. These serve different purposes. The expanded dictionary already issued as a separate Diotimos volume remains a historical reference work in its own right; this book’s glossary and lexicon are new guides to this particular Sendivogian corpus.

John French’s appendix presents historical English above a modernisation. Its language labels identify that difference explicitly. References in his address to a second treatise and a dictionary describe the contents of the 1650 compilation. The appendix’s notes explain them so that they are not mistaken for the arrangement of this new volume.