Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

geseihet / seihen

sown, not strained. Khunrath’s regular word for sowing the seed into the Acker, and p. 123 settles it: one does not seihen apple pips back into the apple. The spelling rests on the Early New High German seien for säen; the homograph seihen, to strain, is a trap, and an earlier state of this edition fell into it at pp. 75, 79, 82 and 95. pp. 75, 79, 82, 95, 114, 120–124.

Harmonia analogica

Retained. The correspondence between Magnesia and the Stone on one side and ihsvh christvs on the other, announced at p. 30, set out in full at p. 56, and pressed as proof at p. 138. The & contra that accompanies it — and conversely — is always translated and never dropped. Distinguish the analogia harmonica of p. 40, which is a different test: between the reader’s candidate matter and Khunrath’s Magnesia, checked against the Requisita, Conditiones, Qualitates and Proprietates this treatise sets out (p. 55) and called Basanus huius litis in the margin of p. 43. pp. 30, 40, 56, 138–139.

Inceriren

to incerate, retained. Khunrath defines it himself in the margin of p. 160 — Inceriren ist wachs flüssig machen, to make wax-fluid — that is, to bring a body to the consistency of melted wax. It is the ninth of the ten operations listed there, and the only one he thinks needs explaining. pp. 46, 95, 98, 160 (and m).

Kunst

art, in the sense of ars. Never ‘skill’. Its boundary with Nature is the tag of p. 44, vbi Natura desinit, ibi Ars incipit.

Labyrinthus errantium

the labyrinth of the erring, retained. Not the title of a book but Khunrath’s name for the condition: the state a man is in who has taken up a Pseudo-Magnesia and cannot now find his way out of the consequences. Anticipated in German at p. 96. pp. 96 m, 108, 178.

laboriren

to laborate. The technical oddity of the German is kept in English.

Lapis Philosophorum

Retained. Defined at the outset as NATVRAE BONVM, per artem, SVMMVM, the highest good of Nature through Art (p. 5), and distinguished throughout from the Vniuersal Stein on one side and the Special silver or gold Stones on the other (p. 81). pp. 5 (and m), 25 m, 81, 99.

Litera / Spiritus

letter / spirit, in the sense of 2 Corinthians iii. 6, which Khunrath quotes and then renders into German himself. The pair governs the hermeneutic chapter: the Philosophers’ books are not rejected, they are refused a literal reading. Not to be confused with Spiritus Mundi. p. 110.

Losament / einlosiren

lodging; to quarter. A military figure and kept as one: the Spirit of the World has taken up quarters already and will not be billeted elsewhere. p. 85.