Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Basanus / Lydius Lapis

touchstone, from Greek basanos, the Lydian stone on which gold is assayed. Khunrath’s figure for Nature as the stone against which a candidate matter, and a reading of the Philosophers, is rubbed. He sets the Latin beside the German Probstein at p. 43 and returns to it at p. 157 as ad Lydium Naturæ Lapidem, where the assaying is laid over 1 John iv. 1, prove the spirits. pp. 43 (and m), 112, 157.

Cabala Enthusiastica / Enthusiasticè

Retained. Khunrath’s marginal name for knowledge had by direct divine inspiration, the first of the three ways in which he says the Philosophers came to know. Neither word is pejorative in his mouth, though both were becoming so in the confessional writing of the decade, and neither is a warning against the thing named. Cabala here is the mode of receiving, not the Jewish discipline. What is received is Sophia Enthusiastica, which see. p. 135 m.

Calumniant

calumniator, retained. Khunrath’s name for the opponent who asks how near to the Stone another man may be, instead of minding his own furnace. p. 149.

Catholisch / Catholicè / Catholicon

catholic, in the sense universal, against specialis and particularis. Never denominational and never so translated; a Catholicon is a universal thing and, in the medical register, a universal remedy. Nor is the usage anti-Roman: at p. 57 the Antiqua CATHOLISCHEN beside the Fraktur GLAVBENS marks the technical sense and not the confessional party, and at p. 176 the margin leans on the Roman formula rather than against it — Extra Magnesiam Philosophorum Catholicam … nulla salus. Sicuti nec, in pertinentibus ad salutem æternam, extra Ecclesiam est salus: outside the Catholic Magnesia there is no salvation, just as there is none outside the Church. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus is there affirmed and made the model for a claim about a substance. (An earlier state of this edition said that Khunrath turned the word against the Church at this page. The gloss says the reverse; the claim is withdrawn, 15 Sept 2026.) pp. 6, 17, 22, 57, 176 m.

Chaos

Retained, never resolved. The undifferentiated matter in which the metals are generated; the subject of Khunrath’s separate Confessio. pp. 32, 52, 64, 107, 184.

Confessio

Khunrath’s own Confessio de Chao Physico-Chemicorum Catholico (Vom hylealischen Chaos), Magdeburg 1597, to which he sends the reader by chapter and page for the doctrine of the Chaos this treatise assumes: chapter 6 with pages at p. 77, chapter 2 with a page at pp. 88–89, chapter 1 at pp. 145–146, chapter 8 at pp. 150 and 167, and the warning printed at the end of it at p. 161. At p. 146 the phrase vom Hylealischen CHAO belongs to the book’s title and not to what is set forth in it. pp. 77 m, 88–89 m, 145–146, 150 m, 161, 167 m.

Contrafect / contrafectisch / Contrafactur

likeness, likeness-wise, from Konterfei, contrafactum, a portrait. Emphatically not ‘counterfeit’, which in modern English inverts the charge at exactly the point where Khunrath is asserting authenticity. pp. 33, 56, 165, 181, 184.

debita materia / subiectum debitum

the due matter, the due subject; retained. What is owed to the Work — the criterion by which a candidate is admitted or refused. Whoever fails in it is a traveller on the wrong road. pp. 8, 11–12, 63, 93, 124 m, 177.

Denarius

denarius, the ten. Sums the series of p. 54; Khunrath sends the reader to Philo, De Decalogo. p. 55.