Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

triunius

Retained — Khunrath’s own coinage, and genitive with DEI: the gift of the triune catholic God, as his own German restatement confirms. p. 6.

Tubae Veritatis

trumpets of truth. Khunrath’s own figure for his three proofs, named in the margin of p. 25 and then numbered in the margins of pp. 25, 27 and 30: Experientia, the consensus of the Philosophers, and the Harmonia analogica. pp. 25–30 m.

veneranda Antiquitas

venerable antiquity, retained. The Fathers, as Khunrath’s own margin glosses it (PATRES). The appeal of p. 140 turns on it: antiquity explained the articles of the faith by similitudes drawn from natural things, the Theologians praise antiquity for it and do the same themselves, and he asks not to be called a blasphemer for doing it too. p. 140 (and m).

Vicaria / Laborantin

deputy; woman-labourer. Both feminine and both said of natvr, with bestalte gescheide — appointed and shrewd — between them. The gender is kept in English, since the passage turns on Nature working while the Artist does not. p. 62.

VOARCH BETH ADAMOTH

Retained and unexplained, as Khunrath leaves it. A Hebrew-derived name for the Art and its matter, which reached the German chymists through Giovanni Agostino Panteo’s Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Venice, 1530). At p. 92 it is what proceeds from this ground and no other; at p. 184, what the Philosopher who enters by the right door will find. pp. 92 m, 184.

Vniuersal-Stein / Stein

universal stone, stone; the capitals follow Khunrath’s. The Stone in its catholic form, set against the Special silver and gold Stones on one side and against Lapis Philosophorum as a title on the other; the margin of p. 98 calls it simply Der simpele Vniuersal STEIN der Weisen. p. 81 holds the two apart in a single clause. pp. 11, 13, 52, 81, 98 m, 101.

Vniuersitas Mundana

the university of the world, retained. Khunrath’s figure for the book of nature as a place of formal instruction, in which fire holds the ordinary chair of Physics and expounds the book right surely. p. 154 m.

Vorarbeit / Nacharbeit

fore-work / after-work. The two halves of the operation: dissolving, cleansing and separating, then composing, reuniting, coagulating, fixing and incerating. Of the Fore-work, Khunrath says, the Philosophers have left almost nothing clear and plain. p. 46.

Vulcanus

vulcan, retained. Fire as the chymist’s working agent, not the god. p. 55.