The Golden Chain of Homer

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.

Related passages: I.3, I.4.

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.

Related passages: II.7, II.8.

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.

Related passages: I.2, I.23.

Fixation

Fixatio Figiren. Making a volatile principle remain with a bodily or earthy subject. Fixity has degrees and is tested through the operations described.

Related passages: I.19, II.5.

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.

Related passages: I.23, II.7.

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.

Related passages: I.4, I.6.

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.

Related passages: I.3, I.6.

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.