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Related passages: I.3, I.8, I.9.
Element
Element. One of the four connected conditions heaven or fire, air, water and earth. Each is also divided into finer degrees of subtlety and coarseness.
Essential Salt
Sal essentiale. A prepared salt or saline product assigned to a subject’s essential principles. Its meaning follows the kingdom and process from which it is obtained.
Excrement
Excrementum. What a body gives off or rejects. The book repeatedly asks how one body’s discarded matter becomes another body’s nourishment.
Related passages: I.6, I.22, II.5.
Ferment
Fermentum. A material or effective principle that initiates or assists fermentation and transformation. Homogeneity with the subject is a recurring condition of its effectiveness.
Related passages: I.3, II.3, II.5.
Fire
Feuer Ignis. The active elemental principle or an applied source of heat. The author’s context must decide whether a passage concerns celestial activity, internal heat or a furnace operation.
Related passages: I.4, I.6, II.5.
First Being
Primum ens. A first or proximate state from which a particular natural body can arise. It may be first relative to a kingdom or operation rather than the absolute beginning of creation.
Related passages: II.2, II.3, II.9.
First Matter
Prima materia. The material origin from which forms are generated. The work uses the term both universally and in relation to the nearest matter of a particular product.
Fixation
Fixatio Figiren. Making a volatile principle remain with a bodily or earthy subject. Fixity has degrees and is tested through the operations described.
Fixed
Fix Fixum. Relatively stable or resistant to being carried off as vapour under a given operation. Fixed does not simply mean motionless in every possible condition.
Related passages: PRE02, I.19, I.20.
Flame
Flamme. A manifestation the author characterises through sharply active or corrosive principles. Its role belongs to his theory of fire and the transformation of matter.
Related passages: II.7.
Generation
Generatio Gebährung. The coming-to-be of a natural form through principles, media and conditions. Book I traces it from cosmological origins into the three kingdoms.
Related passages: I.3, I.21, I.22, I.23.
Glass
Vitrum Glas. A highly fixed product used to discuss the durability and limits of mineral transformations. Vitrification has a particular place at the end of the mineral sequence.
Gold
Aurum Gold Sonne. The royal metal, often designated by a sun sign. The book considers its origin, resistance, dissolution and relation to other mineral preparations.
Related passages: I.23, II.9, II.10.
Golden Chain
Aurea Catena Homeri. The linked order connecting natural principles and forms. Its diagram joins transformations through successive stages and is interpreted by the original poem.
Related passages: PRE00, PRE03, I.4.
Gur
Gur. Moist, thickened or embryonic generative matter. The book applies Gur to animal, vegetable and mineral beginnings; the kingdom and the stage of development determine its local meaning. A single modern mineral equivalent would obscure that range.
Related passages: I.21, I.22, I.23, II.5.
Heaven
Himmel Cœlum. The most subtle active condition in the elemental account, associated with celestial life and influence. It communicates with earth through intervening media.
Hermaphrodite
Hermaphrodit. A figure or material occupying a middle condition and sharing properties of both neighbouring states. Plants mediate between animals and minerals; an incompletely fixed mineral that responds to both acid and alkali is also called a hermaphrodite.
Related passages: PRE03, I.22, I.23.
Homogeneity
Homogeneität homogen. A shared or compatible nature that permits nourishment, conjunction or dissolution. The author treats the choice of a suitable medium as essential.
Related passages: I.4, II.3, II.9.
Imbibition
Imbibitio Imbibiren. Feeding or moistening a fixed body with successive additions of liquid. The work stresses measured additions and intervening drying or digestion.
Related passages: II.5.
Influence
Influentia Einfluß. An incoming activity or vapour, particularly from heaven toward terrestrial things. Its action is connected with the reciprocal upward movement of effluences.
Instrument
Instrumentum Instrument. The means through which a principle works. Water is repeatedly described as the instrument or vehicle of spirit.
Related passages: I.2, II.3, II.5.
Magnet
Magnet. A relational name for a body that draws its appropriate nourishment or counterpart. The plant root and mineral salts exemplify attraction without requiring every occurrence to mean an ordinary lodestone.
Related passages: I.9, I.22, I.23.
Marcasite
Marcasita Marcasit. A mineral category in the work’s sequence of maturation. Its historical range should not be narrowed automatically to a single mineral species in current mineralogy.
Related passages: I.23.
Matrix
Matrix Mutter. A receptive place or material in which a seed can develop. The maternal imagery extends from earth and water to particular natural generations.
Related passages: I.4, I.8, I.21.
Medium
Medium Mittel Mittelding. An intervening nature or stage that allows otherwise distant conditions to unite. The book’s insistence on intermediate degrees governs both its cosmology and its procedures.
Menstruum
Menstruum. A dissolving liquid or medium. It is selected according to the nature, degree of fixation and intended treatment of its subject.
Related passages: I.23, II.9, II.11.
Mercury
Mercurius Quecksilber. Either running mercury as a particular material or a mercurial principle, depending on context. The author explicitly questions identifying the universal metallic principle with ordinary running mercury.
Related passages: I.23, II.9, II.10.
Mineral Kingdom
Regnum minerale Mineralia. The kingdom of comparatively fixed materials, including ores and metals. The work treats it through vapours, salts, matrices, maturation and degrees of dissolution.
Related passages: I.15, I.23, II.4, II.9.
Motion
Bewegung Motus. The activity through which warmth and transformation are explained. Its presence may be inferred even where a body seems outwardly at rest.
Related passages: I.9.
Native Heat
Calor nativus Eingepflantzte Wärme. The innate heat sustaining a body’s activity. Its loss helps explain the author’s account of the transition from preservation to decay.
Nature
Natur Natura. The created world and its beings, also spoken of as an operative order. The author distinguishes nature from its Creator while treating natural processes as connected.
Nitre
Nitrum Salpeter. A principal named material and active pole in the universal theory. Saltpetre in a procedure and universal nitre in an argument need to be distinguished by context.
Related passages: I.10, I.11, I.12.
Nourishment
Nutrimentum Nahrung. What a being draws in and transforms into its own condition. Nourishment connects the three kingdoms and the passage between mineral, vegetable and animal forms.
Related passages: I.6, I.21, I.22, I.23.
Oil
Oleum Oehl. A relatively concentrated principle placed in a reversible relation with acid. The name covers products from different kingdoms and operations.
Related passages: I.19, II.5, II.6.
Patient
Patiens. The receptive subject acted upon, especially water or an embodied matrix in relation to an active spirit. It is a technical role, not a medical patient.
Related passages: I.2, I.4, I.10.
Perfection
Perfectio Vollkommenheit. The attainment or completion toward which a process is directed in the author’s scheme. It must be interpreted through the particular substance and stage under discussion.
Related passages: PRE03, I.23, II.5.
Philosophers’ Stone
Lapis Philosophorum. The celebrated perfected product and universal medicine discussed in the text. The author’s promises and distinctions concerning it should be read as historical claims.
Related passages: PRE03, II.10.
Phlegm
Phlegma. The watery, relatively weak portion separated in a distillation. The work argues that water apparently deprived of power can still retain an implanted spirit.
Pores
Pori Poros. Passages through which moisture, vapours and active principles are said to enter or leave a body. Their opening and closing help explain change and decay.
Precipitation
Præcipitatio Præcipitat. A separation in which material is brought down or deposited. Its products can become subjects of further treatment and sweetening.
Putrefaction
Putrefactio Fäulniß. Decay that opens a subject and releases or redistributes its principles. The author calls it a principal key to both generation and destruction.
Related passages: I.16, I.17, I.18, II.3.
Quintessence
Quinta essentia Quint Essenz. A perfected or concentrated product reached through the treatment of a subject’s principles. The book distinguishes universal discussion from quintessences of the three kingdoms.
Related passages: II.5, II.7, II.8, II.9.
Radical Moisture
Humidum radicale. The moisture intimately associated with a body’s life and preservation. It is distinguished from superfluous moisture that can be removed or lost.
Related passages: I.22, II.3, II.5.
Rainwater
Regen Wasser. The collected atmospheric subject chosen for the long analysis in Book II. Its putrefaction, separation and reunion are intended to exemplify the universal account.
Recolaceum
Aqua recolacea Recolaceum. The watery distillate described as weak or apparently depleted. The text examines why it is separated and what relation its remaining spirit has to its use.
Rectification
Rectificatio Rectificiren. Repeated purification or further distillation that orders the products by their relative subtlety and removes an unwanted portion.
Related passages: II.5, II.10.
Regeneration
Regeneratio Wiedergebährung. A renewed coming-to-be after dissolution or separation. It can concern chaotic water, an individual form or the reunion of prepared principles.
Regulus
Regulus. A prepared metallic or mineral portion discussed in operative contexts. Its exact identity follows the named material and process, rather than one universal modern definition.
Root
Wurtzel Radix. The plant’s fixed and attracting part, also used by analogy for the first effective matter of another kingdom. Vitriol is described as a mineral root.
Salt
Sal Saltz. A central bodily and receptive principle, and a family of named materials. The book’s general account of salt must be distinguished from references to a particular salt.