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← ExitThe Golden Chain of Homer

Reading language

The Original Title and Diagrams

THE GOLDEN CHAIN OF HOMER. Or a description of the origin of nature and natural things: how and out of what they are born and generated; how they are also destroyed into their original being; and what that thing is which brings forth everything and destroys it again. Shown in the simplest way according to nature’s own guidance and order, and illustrated throughout with its finest reasons and causes. If you do not understand what is earthly, how then will you understand what is heavenly? Frankfurt and Leipzig. Published by Johann Georg Böhme in the year 1723.

Volatile. Upper abyss. Animals. Confused chaos. Plants. Double abyss. Sea. Earth. Minerals. Lower abyss. Fixed.

The Golden Chain of Homer. The Platonic Ring. The Above and Below of Hermes. Confused chaos. The volatile incorporeal spirit of the world. The acid corporeal spirit of the world. The fixed alkaline corporeal spirit of the world. The first matter of all sublunary bodies. Animals. Plants or Azoth. Minerals. The concentrated fixed spirit of the world or pure extract of chaos. Consummate perfection or the universal quintessence.

24.This is a translation of the printed title page, excluding the handwritten annotations in this particular copy. Its closing question echoes John 3:12. The Latin title refers to Homer’s golden-chain image; Homer is not the author of this treatise.

25.These words translate the principal labels on the double-abyss plate. The planetary signs are retained in the reproduction. The original verse explanation follows separately. The red colouring in the chain plate belongs to the digitized witness and is reproduced as found.

26.The labels are presented in their order from the top of the chain to its conclusion. Sublunary means below the moon, the terrestrial domain of change in the inherited cosmology. Annulus Platonicus occurs on the 1723 diagram itself; this use should be distinguished from the titles and editorial contents of later printed editions.