Key alchemical terms

Universal, particular and catholic

Universal names a scope or capacity extending across the relevant orders of nature. Particular names a specified creature, power, material or limited work. Catholic has the sense all-embracing. These words do not guarantee that every material described as universal is identical with the precise Hermetic subject, nor that a collection of particulars becomes universal by addition.

Matter and subject

Matter is the material considered in relation to origin, composition or transformation. Subject is what bears a property or undergoes an operation. In the alchemical argument, “our subject” is the matter upon which the work proceeds. In the letters on light, a subject may instead be the body in which an accident inheres. The same English word therefore requires attention to its immediate argument.

Water and rainwater

Water may name ordinary visible water, primordial universal water, an operative preparation or the philosophical water under discussion. Rainwater is a more specific natural material. The author argues that it may yield a universal medicine while distinguishing it from the precise Hermetic subject. The translation keeps the named material visible and leaves consequential ambiguity intact.

Nature and the Word

Nature is defined as a creature’s substance and essence, and is also described as capacity through which God acts. God’s universal, substantial or subsistent Word has primary causal standing. Particular uttered commands assign particular activities. The substantial Logos and uttered Logos remain related; the distinction is one of causal function, not a division into independent gods or agencies.

Spirit and the Holy Spirit

Spirit can mean air, wind, the world-spirit, a subtle operative preparation or an animating principle. Those senses are distinguished from God the Holy Spirit. Part I expressly argues that the spirit hovering over the waters is created. A description such as “holy air” does not annul that distinction. Spiritual therefore need not mean immaterial in the modern philosophical sense.

Mercury, Sulphur and Salt

The author’s explicit elemental equations govern his account of the three principles: Mercury is air; Sulphur is fire; Salt is water and earth, providing body. They are drawn from one subject and should not automatically be identified with ordinary metallic mercury, common sulphur or a particular modern salt. The glossary records the local uses rather than imposing one substance behind every occurrence.

Living and dead gold

Living, spiritual or philosophical gold is distinguished from finished bodily gold. The former can serve in the generative work; ordinary completed gold has reached its natural limit and cannot simply be made into something nobler by being dissolved. These expressions belong to the book’s theory of perfection and capacity, not to a modern biological classification of metals.

Substance, accident and residues

The letters debate substance and accident before the reply defines substance in natural philosophy as pure and simple being admitting no contrariety. Lower bodies contain substance and residues: the essential and accidental portions. Residues translates excrementa in this broader operative sense of removable impurities or non-essential material, rather than restricting it to bodily waste. Corruption can expose the possibility of separation and renewal.

Separation and reunion

Separation may remove contrary superfluities, or distinguish related principles without severing their essential bond. Opening, resolving, putrefying, purifying, coagulating and fixing describe different moments or aspects of the work. Anatisiren and related forms are rendered contextually as equal balancing or bringing into equal proportion. Their relation to summum temperamentum should be read as a historical theory of qualities.

Stone, tincture, elixir and magistery

The Stone, tincture and perfected elixir name the sought work or its perfected powers in overlapping contexts. A tincture acts upon other material; the elixir’s effects include medicine and the perfection of metals and stones. Magistery can name the accomplished work or its product. The text also distinguishes medicines of different orders, whose powers should not be silently treated as identical.