Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Ardelio / ardelionisiren

Ardelio retained — Latin for a meddling busybody; ardelionisiren = to play the busybody, the verb Khunrath coins from it. pp. 22 m, 70 m.

Argenteitas / Aureitas

silverness / goldness. Not the metal but the quality that makes it that metal. Khunrath coins the pair at p. 89 and supplies his own German, die Silberkeit vnd Goldigkeit; the point at p. 120 is that it is not lodged in the sulphur alone but tota in toto, whole in every part. pp. 89, 120.

argChymist

arrant chymist. Formed on arg, wicked or arrant — not on Erz-, arch-. Khunrath’s standing name for the fraudulent practitioner, from his first appearance with his poisonous slander-arrows to the end of the treatise; at p. 108 the pun is pressed, and the reader must choose between the Al- and the Arg-chymical processes. pp. 10, 79 m, 108, 177, 178 m.

Artist / Artista / Künstner

artist — a practitioner of the Art. All three words are used interchangeably and all are rendered alike.

Athanor

athanor, retained: the Philosophers’ slow furnace. At p. 95 Khunrath claims one of his own, mein ATHANOR mit dem vnuorbrenlichen Tocht, with the unburnable wick, and the margin of p. 98 sends the reader to a whole tract of his upon it. It is the only vessel named in the treatise. pp. 95, 98 (and m).

Augmenta

augmentations, retained where Khunrath sets the Latin: the increase of silver or gold got by a particular working. pp. 81–82.

Aurora Philosophorum

dawn of the philosophers, retained. The first light in the glass; an alchemical commonplace, and the title of a pseudo-Paracelsian treatise. Khunrath’s use of it is twice negative — it is what one will not see rise out of the corporeal mercuries of the bodies. pp. 70 m, 120–121 m.

AZAZEL

Retained. In the Latin of p. 147 the subdelegate of Jehovah the avenger, by whom the man who slights Magnesia or breaks his oath will be devoured, secundum Hebræorum doctrinam and iuxta legem iræ & punitionis Diuinæ. The margin calls Pico, Reuchlin, Agrippa and Scalichius as witnesses — to this point of Hebrew demonology, and not, as an earlier state of this edition’s Introduction had it, to the Christology. p. 147 (and m).

Azoth / Azotisch

Retained: the Philosophers’ mercury, the universal solvent. The adjective is Englished azotic and the adverb azothically, both coined here and recorded as coinages. At p. 75 it qualifies the watery Acker; at p. 79 the watery preparation, which is not the same thing. pp. 52, 75 m, 79, 97–98, 107, 128.