Glossary

Accident

Accidens; Zufall

A feature that inheres in a subject rather than subsisting of itself, in the first letter’s account of light. The reply also uses accidental for the removable or residual portion of lower bodies. The controversy requires these usages to be distinguished rather than flattened into “chance.”

Passages: II.203.2; II.206.1; II.218.2.

Art, Hermetic

Ars Hermetica; Hermetische Kunst

The disciplined knowledge and practice directed toward the universal medicine and philosophical tincture. The author describes it as an imitation of creation, governed by natural order and requiring theory, labour and a Christian life. Its effects are not confined in the book to making metallic gold.

Passages: I.003.1; II.131.2; II.186.2.

Anatisiren; anatisation

Equal balancing; bringing into equal proportion

Contextually, the bringing of constituents or qualities into equality or balance. The term is associated with the highest temperament and the preparation of a universal work. The rendering is interpretive and does not imply that the book supplies a modern quantitative formula.

Passages: II.074.2; II.076.1; II.134.1.

Arcanum

Secret; hidden preparation

A concealed natural or operative power, or the preparation in which such a power is realized. The author treats the attained arcanum as a divine gift carrying obligations toward its use and disclosure. “Secret” can therefore name more than information withheld from a reader.

Passages: II.242.1; II.243.2.

Azoth

An operative principle named alongside ferment. The work requires both rather than either alone, and relates them to the tinctures of water and fire. Its exact material identity should not be supplied from an external symbolic dictionary without regard to these uses.

Passages: II.163.2; II.198.1.

Catholic

Catholicus; all-embracing

Universal in scope or capacity. In the description of the required subject, catholic concerns its powers across nature. It is not a statement that the material or author belongs to the Roman Catholic confession.

Passages: I.010.1; II.126.1.

Coagulation

Coagulatio

A gathering or transition toward solidity. The book applies it to metals, the preparation of philosophical matter and the relation of spirit to earth. The context determines what is being solidified and by what means. It should not invariably be reduced to one modern laboratory process.

Passages: II.117.1; II.159.2; II.198.1.

Congelation

Congelatio

Congealing or formation into a solid body. In the precious-stone account, cold is assigned a role after condensation and sublimation of mercurial moisture. The historical term is broader than the freezing of ordinary water into ice.

Passages: II.117.1.

Corruption

Corruptio

Destruction or dissolution of an existing condition, which may make generation, separation or renewal possible. The later substance theory assigns corruption to the residual or accidental part rather than pure substance itself. The word also acquires an explicitly theological application to sin.

Passages: II.143.2; II.218.2; II.221.1; II.231.1.

Elements

Elementa

Earth, water, air and fire, understood by the author as differentiated from a common water and mutually implicated. His three principles are related to these elements. Separation need not sever their essential bond: each is described as remaining within its companions.

Passages: I.034.1; II.085.1; II.219.1.

Elementated things

Elementata

Things already constituted or specified from the elements, contrasted with elemental beginnings. The distinction helps explain why extracts of particular bodies cannot simply be substituted for a universal subject. The term’s role is relational, not a modern classification of compounds.

Passages: II.140.1.

Ferment

Fermentum

An operative principle required with Azoth for the completion of the magistery. The text connects the pair with fire and water and insists that both derive from one root. Fermentation here should not be assumed to mean only modern microbial fermentation.

Passages: II.163.2; II.171.1; II.198.1.

Fixation

Fixatio; figiren

Making a volatile or unstable material enduring under the work’s conditions, especially heat. Fixation belongs to the perfection of the tincture. The author links its possibility to homogeneity and warns that arbitrarily mixed materials cannot be fixed philosophically together.

Passages: II.077.1; II.077.2; II.091.1.

Flowers

Flores

Products or deposits of an operation, often associated with sublimation. The author reports black, whitish, yellow and other flowers in the fragments of broken vessels. These are material observations within the work, not botanical flowers.

Passages: II.112.1.

Gold, living and philosophical

Gold or gold-essence possessing the operative life and power required by the work, contrasted with finished bodily or dead gold. Ordinary gold’s natural perfection does not make it the noblest possible starting matter or allow it to generate the higher tincture.

Passages: II.143.1; II.149.1; II.150.1; II.158.1.

Golden chain

Catena aurea; güldene Kette

An image linking earth and heaven and expressing the interconnection of nature. Part I associates it with the bond among elements and cites Homer through Nuysement. Chapter Eight applies the image to the water and subject connecting the heavenly and terrestrial orders.

Passages: I.034.1; II.176.1.

Green and red lions

Alchemical figures invoked in connection with a change from green to red. At the end of Chapter Five the author speaks of making the red lion’s blood from the green lion’s blood and refers expressly to vitriol. This local explanation does not establish one material identity for every lion elsewhere.

Passages: II.120.1.

Homogeneous

Homogeneus

Of the same nature or essence. Homogeneity governs the possibility of fixation and the account of what philosophical Mercury can receive into itself. It is a qualitative relation within the author’s matter theory, not automatically the modern physical description of a uniform mixture.

Passages: II.077.1; II.219.2.

Hypostasis

A subsistent form, constituent or constituted being, according to context. Chapter Two uses the word for the distinct manifestations of the threefold spirit. The later account of human constitution uses one hypostasis for the joined bodily substance and soul.

Passages: II.086.1; II.220.2.

Inspissation

Inspissatio

Thickening or concentration toward a denser condition. It occurs in accounts of subterranean generation and the reported preparation of a transparent greenish mass from Bier’s water. The word itself does not identify the resulting substance by modern analysis.

Passages: II.113.1; II.117.2.

Logos, substantial or subsistent

λόγος ὑποστατικός; verbum Dei universale

God’s universal Word, understood as subsistent divine reality and primary creative cause. Both universal and particular natures depend upon it. The term is distinguished from the particular uttered command while the two remain inseparable in their causal relation.

Passages: I.009.2; II.063.2; II.064.1; II.066.1.

Logos, uttered

λόγος προφορικός; verbum Dei particulare

The particular word or command pronounced in creation, such as a command that the earth bring forth plants. It functions as a subordinate cause assigning particular activity. “Uttered” and “spoken” render the same technical distinction according to the passage’s syntax.

Passages: I.009.2; II.063.2; II.067.2.

Magistery

Magisterium

The philosophical work considered as an accomplishment, or its perfected product. The term can embrace a course of operations and the result they achieve. It should not be confused with an ecclesiastical teaching office in these passages.

Passages: II.057.2; II.108.1; II.198.1.

Matrix

Matrix; generative womb

A receptive generative setting or material in which development takes place. The author cites one seed and one matrix as the source of diverse legitimate tinctures, and describes a prepared matrix in the earth as conditioning the metal that results.

Passages: II.091.2; II.113.1.

Matter, first or prime

Materia prima

A starting material or originating condition whose meaning depends upon the philosophical usage at issue. The author explicitly warns that Hermetic and ordinary philosophers may call first and second matter by reversed names. Remote rainwater and a proximate deposit are also distinguished.

Passages: I.033.1; II.128.1.

Mercury, philosophical

Mercurius Philosophorum

In the author’s explicit account of the three principles, air and the spiritual principle. In operative passages it has further qualified forms and must be distinguished from ordinary metallic mercury. The book repeatedly warns against treating the common name as sufficient identification of the subject.

Passages: II.085.1; II.086.1; II.147.1; II.219.2.

Multiplication

Multiplicatio

Increase of the work’s power or quantity. The author connects capacity for multiplication with the universal origin of matter and later explains that even a perfected magistery requires a further conjunction with mercurial water. The word can also refer to the propagation of living creatures.

Passages: II.067.1; II.191.1; II.197.2; II.198.1.

Nature

Natura; Natur

Defined as the substance and essence of each visible creature, and described as capacity or subject in which God acts. The author denies created nature independent agency while acknowledging its divinely established properties and operations. Universal and particular nature must therefore be read together with his account of the Word.

Passages: II.059.1; II.063.1; II.103.1.

Particular

Particulare; particularis

Specified or limited in nature or power. The word can refer to an individual creature or material, but also to a limited alchemical preparation or work. A legitimate particular tincture may proceed from the universal source; a collection of unrelated particulars does not thereby become universal.

Passages: I.010.1; II.075.1; II.091.2.

Phoenix

Phœnix

The bird rising from flames in the author’s heraldic emblem. Its legend expressly presents the bird restored to life as a figure of Christ. The title’s candida gives whiteness or brightness; the work’s wider argument concerns purification, perfection and renewal rather than one colour alone.

Passages: PRE.EMBLEM.

Philosophical earth

The corporeal or solid vehicle appropriate to the work, distinguished from the ordinary ground trodden underfoot. Chapter Seven requires a pure earth without superfluity and calls it an earth that has hovered above human heads. Its paradoxical descriptions should be retained rather than replaced by an unverified modern ingredient.

Passages: II.159.2; II.160.1; II.176.1.

Putrefaction

Putrefactio; Fäulung