Candida Phoenix Philosophica

The decisive contrast is between universal nature and the particular natures of animals, plants and minerals. Particular creatures have definite powers, orders and modes of generation. A remedy drawn from a particular plant remains, in the author’s account, limited by that plant’s particular nature. Combining many such particulars cannot automatically produce universality. The desired medicine instead requires an all-embracing or catholic subject. Catholic here means universal in scope, not membership of the Roman Catholic Church. The word belongs to the logical and natural-philosophical claim about what the material can do.

Rainwater’s definition in Theorem VI accordingly says that it has received no particular blessing or command. The negative is consequential. Particular creative commands assign definite activities; the absence of such a particular assignment allows the author to describe rainwater as retaining a universal capacity. Chapter Six then gives a formal argument: what contains animal, vegetable and mineral nature is a perfect subject; rainwater contains all three; therefore it is such a subject. Yet the succeeding distinctions prevent that conclusion from becoming a licence to use any water indiscriminately. Ordinary terrestrial waters may already contain specified, bodily and dead mineral products. Dew may be called universal in a qualified sense without being the precise subject of the art. Close kinship between materials does not authorize mixing them.

The created spirit and the creative Word

The language of spirit presents a second difficulty. The author identifies the world-spirit with air and wind, discusses its circulation and life-sustaining activity, and describes its relation to water and corporeal things. Spirit in these passages should not automatically be read as an immaterial mind. Air, a subtle preparation, the animating principle of a body and God the Holy Spirit are not interchangeable senses. The final inquiry in Part I is devoted precisely to preventing one especially serious confusion. A spirit called holy, or called a spirit of God, need not therefore be God himself.

The author argues that the spirit hovering over the waters is created. His profession of belief in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit accompanies, rather than reverses, that conclusion. He appeals to the distinction between Creator and creature, to the scriptural description of the spirit’s action, and to linguistic arguments concerning Ruah and Elohim. Those linguistic arguments are preserved as his arguments, not presented as the verdict of modern Hebrew scholarship. His willingness to challenge an honoured biblical gloss also shows how sharply he distinguishes reverence for an authority from agreement with every interpretation attributed to it.

Chapter One of Part II develops the corresponding account of divine agency. The substantial or subsistent Logos is God’s universal Word; the uttered Logos is the particular word or command pronounced in creation. The first has primary causal standing, while the second acts as a subordinate cause in the particular natures. This ordering allows the author both to deny that created nature acts independently and to describe the operations and capacities creatures possess. When he calls the world-spirit an efficient cause, he therefore adds qualifications. The same vocabulary may function differently when a principle is considered abstractly and when the whole material complex is considered concretely. These qualifications are part of the theory, not loose ends to be removed by a smoother translation.

Three principles, one subject

The three philosophical principles give the reader a more compact statement of the book’s matter theory. The author calls them Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, then supplies his own equations: Mercury is air; Sulphur is fire; Salt is water and also earth, the body or visible vehicle of the others. Elsewhere he explains spirit as air, soul or form as fire, and body as Salt. The threefold language does not simply replace a four-element scheme. It describes how a unity is differentiated and made perceptible and available for operations.

These definitions are essential to the translation. Philosophical Mercury cannot everywhere be rendered as the familiar liquid metal. Nor can Sulphur and Salt be assigned fixed modern chemical formulas regardless of their context. The book itself rebukes readers who mistake the philosophers’ Saturn, Jupiter, vitriol, antimony and similar names for the ordinary particulars bearing those names. Sometimes the name reflects affinity, preparation, concealment or an operational colour. The writer’s own local explanation must take precedence over a universal codebook of alchemical symbols.