Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Outline of the Treatise

By the page numbers of the 1599 printing. The divisions are the argument’s own, not the ten-page blocks in which this edition was made; the outline has been rebuilt from the finished translation.

5–14

exordium. A IOVE principium: the Stone is the highest good of Nature, attainable by Art, and a gift of God (pp. 5–7). The two secrets of the Art out of the Turba — knowledge of the matter, and its due preparation — and the flat priority of the first, since nothing can be prepared until one knows what one is preparing (pp. 7–8). Whoever fails in the debita materia is a traveller on the wrong road: he will not reach Venice by way of the Brocken, nor find Rome in Muscovy (p. 11). Frustra quæritur in eo, in quo quod quæsitum est, non continetur. A right beginning is half the Art (p. 14). The abuse of the Sophists and the argChymists begins on p. 10 and does not stop.

15–24

one universal only. A single sustained argument that there can be but one Vniuersale in Alchymia, against laborants who infer from the Spirit of the World’s being in all things that the universal matter may be taken from anything. The premiss is granted at p. 20 and the inference denied in one clause: the Spirit is in all, but in each one he is not catholic. QVOT RES, TOT Philosophorum LAPIDES — as the seed, so the fruit (p. 19). At p. 22 the argument turns from logic to liturgy, in a series of ones that runs from one God and one first matter to one Church and one Head. VNIVERSALE PLVS VNO, in ALCHYMIA, NON DARI (p. 24).

25–32

that there is such a thing. The Tubae Veritatis, Khunrath’s own figure for his three trumpets of truth: Experientia, attested in his own time and in Germany, though he will not name the persons (pp. 25–26); the consensus of the Philosophers, whose unanimity in writings on the subject and its preparation ought to shame the doubter (pp. 27–29); and the Harmonia analogica with ihsvh christvs, announced at p. 30.

33–43

against the claimants, and the touchstone. Who says he knows Magnesia, and what they name when asked: bismuth, soot, pebbles, saltpetre, red earth, quicklime, brick, vitriol, arsenic, star-shot, antimony ore (p. 34). Asked for grounds they answer that they heard it so, and stand there like shorn fools. Knowledge must be made good per causas, in thesis or in refutation (pp. 35–36); Khunrath has worked in many materials and one alone is his — Tu mihi sola places! (p. 37). Then the test, and it is not the Christological one: hold your own imagined matter against this treatise and see whether you find in it ALL the properties, qualities and conditions set down here; if the harmonic analogy between your material and ours holds, you are on the road of truth (p. 40). The margin of p. 43 names it Basanus huius litis and the body ewern Probstein, your touchstone. The scales of blindness fall from Saul’s eyes at pp. 41–42.

44–56

what the subject is. The demonstration proper, in a single suspended period that runs pages: one natural thing, to which the hand of man has never come, known to everyone and recognized by very few — the Emmaus simile and Luc. 24. 16 in the margin (pp. 44–45). It contains all that is needful for the constitution of the universal Stone, and nothing enters it that did not come out of it; the Artist’s part is only to dissolve, cleanse, separate, and then compose, reunite, coagulate, fix and incerate (p. 46). It is of the same matter God built the world from, but unspecified — not narrowed at the beginning onto any one kind, as plants, beasts, minerals and metals were (pp. 47–49). It is a Microcosmus macrocosmicus, a great-worldly and not a human little world, ex spermate MVNDI maioris (p. 50). Then the numbers, signposted only in the margin: Monas, Dias, Trias, Tetractys and the Denarius with Philo’s De Decalogo (pp. 53–55); and at pp. 56–57 the Harmonia analogica set out in full, with the two books Khunrath says he has in hand and never wrote.

57–59

can it be had? Yes — GOTT sey Lob / man kans haben — and as richly as any son of the Doctrine needs (p. 59).

60–86

but not out of the metals. The long negative. Let the Artist not try to separate or make the first catholic matter out of the metals, for they are one and all Specificata and the specification will not be separated off (pp. 60–61); the metals are already perfected fruits and can be reduced only through the first matter (p. 62). Nature is God’s Vicaria and his appointed shrewd Laborantin, and she has done the work already, in the universal laboratory of God, without the Artist’s hand (pp. 62–63). Bernardus Trevisanus is answered and the Rosarium and Denis Zachaire cited with him (pp. 64–66). Then the laboratory catalogue, pp. 67–69, set out at length so that it can be denied wholesale at p. 70: excellent medicines, and not the first matter. The colours prove nothing and the peacock’s tail in the glass is not the Philosophers’ (pp. 71–73). The reduction must happen through the first matter, and a thing is dissolved by that of which it is composed (pp. 73–74). Washing-gold, red-gold, glass-ores and grey silver cobalts are embryonated metals, untimely births already gone off from the pri-material state (pp. 76–78). Arnoldus de Villanova and the Clangor Buccinae are cited for the proposition (pp. 83–84). Then the digression, and the sharpest exchange in the book: the Spirit of the World is not to be caught out of the air, for God has caught him already and lodged him where he will dwell — Doctor Khunrath, catch him for me! O you fool! (pp. 84–86, with Wisdom xii. 1).

87–95

obiectio and solvtio. The treatise’s first formal disputation, marked as such in the margin. The opponents’ case is put at its strongest — the Philosophers themselves say the Art lies in the metals — conceded entire, and then shown to cost nothing: the metals must indeed be highly regarded and employed, for silver-ness and gold-ness are nowhere else; but they must first be regenerated, and to be regenerated they must go back into their mother’s body, and that body is the first matter (pp. 87–93). Aristotle’s fourth Meteorologica by way of Avicenna, with Khunrath’s suspicion that an enemy of alchemy tampered with the passage (p. 94).

95–103

the two roads. The constructive centre, and the passage on which the rest of the book depends. First road: silver or gold, reduced into the first matter by the first matter and sown into it, coagulated, fixed and incerated in the Philosophical Athanor — mein ATHANOR mit dem vnuorbrenlichen Tocht — yielding the special or specified Stones, silvern and silver-making or golden and gold-making, joined to their metal Vnione hypostatica (pp. 95–97, 100–101). Second road: the catholic matter alone, without any silvern or golden addition from first beginning to last end, regenerated by putrefaction, coagulation, fixation and inceration, yielding the glorified LAPIS VNIVERSALIS, the great catholic Elixir (pp. 98–99). Hence MAGNVS and Parui, the Great Stone and the little ones (p. 99); hence the ordered uses, medicinal first and transmutative second (pp. 96, 99–100); hence Fermentatio distinguished from Proiectio, and the transmutation of metals set beside the resurrection of the body at 1 Corinthians xv (pp. 101–102). And then the closure: via physico-Chymica tertia … datur nulla — there is no third way (pp. 102–103).

104–112

how the authorities are to be read. Almost nothing of the first matter is written down plainly, and the silence is itself a proof; the Process-books scarcely name it mit jhrem Eigenen Nahmen (pp. 107–108). Naturæ possibilitas is the Artist’s straight-edge — Amicus Geber, amicus Ryplæus, amicus Paracelsus, magis amica NATVRæ VERItas — and Extra Naturam, in Physico Artificialibus, nulla est Salus (margins, pp. 109–110). Rhazes, the Turba, the Liber Saturni and Avicenna are all quoted, and all quoted against reading authorities literally: Litera occidit, Spiritus viuificat. The written Law has a nose of wax and so do the Philosophers’ books — and so, says the margin, does the Bible. At p. 111 the matter is named OMNIA, because all things can be predicated of it.

113–124

the seed is not the field. The second formal obiectio, put at full laboratory strength: do we not already bring silver and gold back to their first matter by separating them into their tria, sowing each sulphur into its own mercury and salt? It is answered from p. 115 in three numbered parts, the first and third granted and the second refused. What a laboratory separates out of a metal are principiata, not principia (p. 117), and a thing produced cannot be the beginning it came from; so the whole weight falls on the one Acker. The seed is not the field, and a thing cannot be sown into itself (pp. 120–121). At p. 122 the apple is turned against the man who brought it: one does not sow apple pips back into the apple, but into the common earth out of which the tree grew. The abuse is heavy — Leymstenglischer Phantast, the pert bird who must leave this nut uncracked — and the margin names where the field lies, in TERRA MAGNESIAE.

125–128

the salt. SAL METALLORVM est LAPIS philosophorum is granted as a dictum and refused as the laborants read it: their calcined, reverberated and sublimed salts stain wood and skin and are excellent medicines, and are no transmuting tincture at all (pp. 125–126). The salt they should be seeking is located, not denied: the SAL Maris Catholicon, found in that catholic sea of the Philosophers which is Magnesia — Khunrath’s answer to the adage In sale sint labores tui, which he quotes and then asks the obvious question about, in which salt? (pp. 127–128). Beside it stands the one place where the Art is set out as a gift asked for in prayer: hoc donum DEI est magnum, pro quo orabit omnis Phisico-Chymista, with Seek, and ye shall find under it (margin, p. 128).

129–137

how he can know without having made it. The qvaestiones of p. 129 and the sharpest objection in the book at p. 130: Doctor Khunrath has as yet nothing certain in the Art; let those speak who have already transmuted. The answer is a reduction, not a claim. If certainty came only after success the first Philosopher could never have begun (pp. 130–131); Bernard of Treviso, who knew the Art two years before he made the Stone, must have lied (pp. 131–133); the author of the Rosarium had seen the work no further than the Lion, and Bonus of Ferrara was seldom given to operation and labour (pp. 134–135). Then the generalization at p. 135: true Philosophers knew it — by special divine inspiration (glossed Enthusiasticè, Cabalâ Enthusiasticâ, and not in warning), or from a well-knowing human schoolmaster, or out of the Light of Nature by reading, contemplation and observation, to which the Signatura of natural things belongs (margin, p. 136). The same comedy is played today as of old, only the persons changed.

138–146

the apologia. Magnesia stands, the margin says, because it comes out of good foundations of Nature and can be proved historicè, Physicè & Theosophicè; and he closes the case on a maxim of the jurists, that one stronger reason overcomes several weaker (pp. 137–138). At p. 138 the Harmonia analogica is put at its strongest: in the whole nature of things no other matter answers to ihsvh christvs, & contra, so properly. At p. 139 John v. 39 is applied to Magnesia in symbolico intellectu. Then the appeal to the Theologians, the most disarming stretch in the book: venerable Antiquity explained the articles of the faith by similitudes from natural things; you praise them for it and do it yourselves in pulpit and print; do not damn me as a blasphemer for the same (pp. 140–141). His authority is not paper: one book, got by travel, expense and danger of his life, whose near three hundred letters Nature wrote herself (pp. 142–143). At p. 144 the abuse is at its coarsest and is followed at once by the plainest refusal in the treatise — whether anyone has made the Stone, and who, is not to be told. The block closes on an admonitio: the oath sworn to a Præceptor is no vinculum iniquitatis, and he who hangs it conscience-less on the wall will answer for it (p. 146).

147–156

what the knowledge is worth. It opens in threat: the man who slights Magnesia or breaks his oath will be devoured, according to the doctrine of the Hebrews, by azazel, the subdelegate of Jehovah the avenger — and the margin calls Pico, Reuchlin, Agrippa and Scalichius as witnesses to that doctrine, not to the Christology (p. 147). The oath is argued at law: lingua iuravi, mentem iniuratam teneo has no standing in foro conscientiae (p. 148). At p. 150 the tone changes altogether. Do you suppose that to have something certain in the Art means nothing but making silver and gold? Oho, Geitzhals! O GeldNarr! A true lover of wisdom would prefer the Recognitions Magnesia gives — of the Creator out of the creature, of the Son, of the world’s beginning, of himself, and of Nature. At p. 151 physics is called a part of theology and the two books are read together: Paulus etiam τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ ex rebus his creatis & conspicuis haberi docet. The transmutation the objector wants is bait, and Khunrath says so: such welcome bacon the Philosophers have had to bind upon the trap for the world (p. 152). At p. 153 he turns on the patrons — you are only stewards, and there will be a reckoning. At p. 154 the margin gives the sentence: fire is God’s ordinary Professor of Physics in the University of the World, and expounds the book of Nature right surely. The block closes on the mirror of p. 130 — a man may transmute and still not know the Art, for none of those tingents ever made the Stone a second time, as Bernard did four times in his old age (pp. 155–156).

157–164

the false proof. How a claim is to be tried: judge the bird from its song, and prove the spirits at Nature’s Lydian Stone; a true Philosopher shuns not the light (p. 157). Then the lie, which the margin names Eine grobe Lügen — that certain men will demonstrate the true matter by transmuting with their raw materia as it stands. Is this not a hideous shot? No Philosopher teaching Nature-conformingly ever said such a thing: how should the matter of the Stone tinge before its own regeneration and more-than-perfecting have gone before, and if it could, what need had the Philosophers of all their calcining, dissolving, depurating, putrefying, coagulating, fixing, incerating and metallic fermenting? (pp. 158–160). Watch the tinging-man’s quick hand-grips and his instruments (p. 161). To those who say he should have waited until he had made the Stone: he will not grow a grey hair over it, and it is no command of God that one man do as another does. If we all had one head we should all wear one hat (pp. 162–163).

165–176

beschlvss. The Conclusion, headed in the margin Fructus & vtilitates Agnitionis MAGNESIAE CATHOLICAE. It opens by putting the Nunc dimittis into the chymist’s mouth: Lord, now lettest thou thy servant laborate in peace, for mine eyes have beheld thy Medicinal Saviour of the great World (pp. 165–166, with Luc. 2). Simeon, who knew the child though he had seen no miracle done, is then made the type of the Philosopher who knows before he has transmuted; and the Stone is the true Medicinal Saviour of the great world, noch in statu humiliationis aut exinanitionis (pp. 166–168). Then the longest stretch of pure abuse in the treatise, aimed at the trade and not at the learned: the vagabond crowd who understand as much of God’s mysteries as the crow does of Sunday or a Swiss cow of dancing, who change their opinion of the matter several times a week and blunder after every new gold-crier like a fly into buttermilk (pp. 168–171). He breaks it off himself — a well-bred horse heeds not the barking of the puppy at his heels (p. 172). There follows the passage the Amphitheatrum would make famous: the Artist is to call upon the Father of Lights in ORATORIO, to be enlightened by Sophia Enthusiastica, and then so governed by the Good Spirit that he handle Magnesia rightly in LABORATORIO (pp. 173–174). The block closes on the consequence: how should that come out of a thing which is not in it? — and on the margin of p. 176, Extra Magnesiam Philosophorum Catholicam … nulla salus. Sicuti nec … extra Ecclesiam est salus.

177–187

the close. The Pseudo-Magnesias cannot overpower the man who has the true one; and if God joins to him a good man who has laborated in materia debita, he has what he needs — which, the margin says, is how it went with Khunrath himself (p. 177). Beware the sourdough of the pseudo-chymists, for all that a crowd big enough to beat the Turk out of Hungary cleaves to the false matter (p. 178), so that quid pro quo, merda pro balsamo be not forced upon honest seekers (p. 179). Then the last personal exchange: some Zedekiah will strike Micaiah on the cheek and ask whether D. Khunrath is to teach him what Magnesia is — as a man cries into the wood, so the echo answers (pp. 180–181). He knows what thanks his confession will earn, Veritas odium parit, and refuses to keep silence and be a dumb dog (pp. 181–182). At p. 183 the prognosticon: the time is coming when theology out of the great world-book of Nature will be alleged beside biblical theology as ocular proof, against certain quarrelsome and self-willed hard heads — and with it the last appropriation of scripture, that Magnesia is the right door, and he that climbs up some other way is a Sophist and errs. The last pages gather the whole into the identification with ihsvh of Nazareth (p. 184), a prayer that God preserve us to attain the highest good of Nature (p. 185), and a promise: hold fast, and she will not let you stick in the temptations of doubt and the tribulations of disputation (p. 186). Das ist gewißlich wahr. The treatise ends at p. 187 with the subscription — Naturgemeß-Alchymisch, and rightly Philosophically, have I said it, through the Theosophical assistance of rvach hhvchmah-el; three Hallelujahs; Phy Diabolo; Amen; and the name, henricvs khvnrath, of Leipzig, lover of Theosophy and Doctor of both Medicines, Anno Christi 1599.

after 187

Three unnumbered pages, on two leaves, not edited here. p. 187 is a recto (the book is an octavo and signs its rectos: A iij at p. 5, B ij at p. 19), and its own verso carries the errata, headed ERRATA. Sic restituantur. with the column-head Liß Pagina — twenty entries, the last for p. 160, printed entire in this volume as an appendix. One leaf then follows. Its recto bears the owl emblem: an owl wearing spectacles, perched on a stump between two crossed flaming torches and two lit candles, over the motto Was helffn Fackeln / Liecht oder Brilln / Wann die Leute nicht sehen wölln — what use are torches, light or spectacles, if people will not see — and below the block, FLOREAT, FLOREAT, FLOREAT MAGNESIA Philosophorum CATHOLICA, de qua in hoc Tractatu meo!, three Floreats answering the three Hallelujahs of p. 187. Its verso bears the colophon, Gedruckt zu Magdeburg / bey Johan. Bötcher / Im Jahr M. D. XCIX. Bey Johan Francken zu bekommen, under a woven fleuron band, with a grotesque tailpiece beneath — a bearded mask in strapwork with a pendant finial, a stock ornament carrying neither monogram nor motto, and so not a printer’s device proper.