Aphorismi Urbigerani

Earth

A gross or fixed bodily principle contrasted with celestial water or heaven, and later purified and prepared to receive nourishment. The word can name a role in the philosophical microcosm. It does not always mean ordinary garden soil, and its local condition must be tracked. See main 46, main 81.

Elements and Principles

Constituent powers or parts of the author’s subject. The text invokes four elements when defining the fifth essence and three principles in its later separations and reunions. Those two frameworks should be retained in their contexts rather than flattened into a modern list of chemical elements. See main 7, main 69.

Elixir

The perfected preparation credited with medicinal or transformative power. The book differentiates white, great, universal and specified vegetable elixirs, as well as stages of fermentation. Each designation carries claims about maturity and scope; the label alone does not establish efficacy. See main 89, main 96, vegetable 1.

Essence

The concentrated or essential nature said to contain a subject’s virtue, quality and property. It can be associated with metallic sulphur or with an extracted plant oil. These uses connect identity and efficacy without making “essence” a stable synonym for one modern purified chemical. See main 63, vegetable 1.

Fermentation

A determination or union associated with adding common silver or gold at a later stage. The author links it with a marriage bond and a medicine directed towards metals. Its historical meaning here should not be automatically replaced with the modern microbiological sense of fermentation. See main 89, main 97, main 98.

Fixed and Volatile

Contrasted tendencies to remain under heat or to pass over and depart. Their conflict and final union organise several descriptions of the vessel. Urbigerus claims that his mercury can fix the volatile and volatilise the fixed; the terms are relational qualities within that account. See main 40, main 92, vegetable 13.

Green Dragon

An emblematic name for the author’s mineral subject. The opening sequence distinguishes undetermined and determined conditions; the postscript gives the dragon lunar, solar and cross signs and explains its power in relation to the serpent. A complete account must preserve those changes and relations. See main 11, main 14, the postscript.

Hermes

The ancient authority invoked as master of the art. Urbigerus repeatedly attributes doctrines to Hermes without supplying modern bibliographical citations for every statement. The edition preserves those attributions as part of his historical argument while avoiding the claim that each is an independently verified ancient quotation. See main 3, main 70, vegetable 30.

Herculean Works

The difficult preparations by which the three principles are separated, purified and perfected. The author contrasts them with the supposedly easy remainder called children’s play. The emblem’s emergence from the river is also explained through these labours; the designation therefore works across prose and image. See main 69, main 71, the postscript.

Imbibition

Soaking or feeding one subject with another, repeated according to the author’s indications of dryness, absorption and saturation. The word is especially prominent in the infant imagery and the vegetable salt’s preparation. Its definition does not settle the disputed identity of the substances involved. See main 83, vegetable 8.

Magnet

An attracting subject or capacity. Urbigerus distinguishes a true magnet surviving in the prepared residue from rival artificial magnets he rejects. The term should be read through the specified attraction and stage, rather than assumed to mean an ordinary lodestone or a modern electromagnetic device. See main 36, main 42, main 66.

Menstruum

A solvent or working medium in the historical chymical vocabulary. The universal and vegetable menstruums are credited with different powers, and not every dissolution counts as philosophical improvement. The edition retains the term when translating it simply as solvent would obscure those distinctions. See main 25, vegetable 24, vegetable 29.

Mercury

A name with several stated senses: common mercury and the philosophers’ specially prepared simple, double and triple mercuries. The latter are distinguished by separation, impregnation and union. No single modern identity is imposed on every occurrence; explicit mentions of common mercury remain clear. See main 47, main 63, main 78, main 100.

Microcosm

The little world formed through the philosophical work, understood by analogy with the creation of the great world or macrocosm. Heaven, earth, waters and generative spirit provide its vocabulary. The analogy carries cosmological and theological claims, rather than being merely an editorial comparison. See main 45, main 46.

Regeneration and Retrogradation

Regeneration is renewed birth or capacity; retrogradation is a return towards an earlier condition. The work does not treat every reversal of an ordinary metal as a return to first matter. Repeated regenerations in the vegetable sequence are also credited with successive, differentiated powers. See main 8, main 58, vegetable 26, vegetable 27.

Reverberation

Treatment by furnace heat reflected or acting around the material. The earth is described as reverberated before later moistening and extraction. The term names a historical operation, while its exact execution in the author’s special practice cannot be inferred solely from the ordinary word. See main 53, main 67.