Centrum Naturae Concentratum

Supplied Note on the Signs

The following note accompanied the supplied English translation. Its readings and reservations are reproduced as supplied and remain distinct from the historical author’s words. The local annotations identify tentative sign readings; this commentary does not establish modern chemical identities.

The printer uses alchemical characters with Latin case endings attached, and I have rendered them as words. The triangle is fire, the sun-sign is gold, and Mars and Venus are iron and copper. The triangle on a cross is sulphur. Its endings (-is, -e) require Sulphuris and Sulphure, so I have read it that way in the augmentation passage as well as in the recipe. The regulus itself is spelled out in the text.

The circle with a bar is nitre (Nitri). The square on a cross, with the ending -i, I take as tartar (Tartari). The dagger-like sign on p. 77 is the crucible, which fits the masculine der Tiegel. The barred sign before -irten, -to and -tus abbreviates “sublim-”. That gives “sublimed sulphur” and Mercurius sublimatus, the sublimate of mercury.

One reading needs checking against the original. In the butter-of-antimony paragraph, the sign looks like the same nitre sign used in the recipe. However, sublimate is usually made with common salt and vitriol. The sign for salt differs only in having a horizontal bar instead of a vertical one, so at this type size it is worth a closer look.

Pharmar. in the reference is probably a misprint or misreading for Pharmac.