Centrum Naturae Concentratum

Short Glossary

Alchemy

An art of investigating and transforming natural things. The main treatise judges its pursuit through motive, calling and service as well as through claims about matter.

Antimony

A historical material name and sign central to the testament. Its identification there with the sages’ lead and vitriol must be read through that work’s explanations.

Archaeus

An inward natural agent invoked in the companion extracts to explain separation and the powers of a living body.

Art

Skilled or knowledgeable work that intervenes in natural processes. The collection also applies the word to a religiously qualified knowledge of the world.

Astral salt

The upper, volatile member of the main treatise’s pair of salts. Its location in a paired argument matters as much as the adjective astral.

Body

The corporeal or comparatively fixed member of a body–spirit–soul relation. Its assignment varies with the local account.

Central salt

The concentrated or lower member of the main work’s paired account, identified there with a philosophical vitriol.

Centre

A gathering point of powers that can nourish, move, govern or illuminate its surroundings; also a term used in the work’s ethical argument.

Circumference

The surrounding circuit or field in relation to a centre. It can describe the world, a body or a movement of desire.

Coagulation

A becoming fixed or corporeal within the source’s vocabulary. The texts apply it to spirits, waters and salts under different conditions.

Dew

Water received from the air, given a particular role in the companion accounts of heavenly nourishment and natural activity.

Digestion

A sustained process of change or maturation. Bodily digestion also supplies an argument about one nourishment becoming many materials.

Element

One of the basic natural powers or states named as fire, air, water and earth. The collection’s assignments can be uneven; local wording controls the reading.

Experience

Knowledge claimed through seeing, doing or encountering. A report of another person’s action and an assertion of personal trial have different scopes.

Fire

A term for several agents, including common material heat, natural or philosophical activity, and a condition described in religious language.

Fixation

The attainment of a comparatively stable condition in material previously described as volatile or easily changed.

Hyle

First or underlying matter invoked in the Delle discourse’s account of a common root.

Imagination

An active power of forming or directing conditions within the main work’s centre–circumference account, especially in its narration of the falls.

Macrocosm

The greater world, interpreted in relation to the little world of the human being.

Matrix

A receptacle or formative setting through which one common power becomes differentiated. The main treatise joins matrices with movements in explaining variety.

Medicine

A preparation credited with correcting or renewing a condition. Claims about animals, plants and metals share vocabulary without thereby sharing proven efficacy.

Mercury

A variable historical term: common quicksilver in some passages, a philosophical or seminal agent in others. The main work distinguishes philosophers’ mercury from the finished regenerated salt.

Microcosm

The little world of the human being, receiving and concentrating powers of the greater world.

Nature

The source and order of processes that art seeks to understand or assist. The speakers also appeal to nature to restrain excessive artifice.

Putrefaction

An opening or change of an earlier condition that can prepare a further generation. It is one process within an argument, rather than a name for every transformation.

Regeneration

A renewal or rebirth through which an existing matter or condition gains a different power. The texts connect it with religious patterns of resurrection and renewal.

Salt

A central and variable term for natural power, fixed body, spirit or prepared material according to context. It cannot be reduced throughout the collection to table salt.

Seed

A generative principle or matter through which further change is possible. The main text’s love-seed and the companion extracts’ seminal matter have particular local functions.

Soul

A member of a relation among body, spirit and soul. In the testament’s explanation it names the sulphur or red tincture; elsewhere it belongs to a religious account of the person.

Spirit

An active, mobile or subtle power described as breath, water or an agent within matter. Its identity depends on the passage and its relations.

Sulphur

A historical principle and material name. The testament’s red tincture and metallic sulphurs should be understood through the operations and correspondences actually stated.

Tartar

A wine-related material, called Weinstein in the testament. Its square-and-cross sign helps identify the Bacchus correspondence.

Tessa

The main work’s special name for its matter or seed within the human being. The edition preserves the name without pretending that naming it identifies a modern substance.

Tincture

A preparation credited with penetrating and changing another body. Its relation to colour, medicine and metals varies by context.

Vitriol

A historical family and preparation name. In the main work it qualifies a central salt; in the testament it names a metallic matter through the emblem’s interpretation.