Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

iii. The two roads

The constructive core of the book is at pages 95–103, and it has an architecture that a reader must have in hand or the last eighty pages will not parse, because Khunrath moves between its two halves constantly and assumes the distinction is understood.

There are two ways to the Stone and no third. On the first (pp. 95–97, 100–101), silver or gold is reduced into the first matter by the first matter, sown into it, and then coagulated, fixed and incerated with it in the Athanor. What comes out is a Lapis Philosophorum Argenteus, Argentificus, siue Aureus, Aurificus, silvern and silver-making or golden and gold-making, a special or specified Stone, joined to its metal Vnione hypostatica — in a hypostatic union, and the theological word is his. On the second (pp. 98–99), the Catholic matter is taken alone, ohne einigen oder allen Silberischen oder Goldischen zusatz, without any silvern or golden addition whatever, from the first beginning to the last end, and regenerated by putrefaction, coagulation, fixation and inceration. What comes out is the LAPIS philosophorum VNIVERSalis glorificatus, the glorified Universal Stone, ELIxeir illud Magnum Philosophorum CATHOLICVM.

Hence the vocabulary the rest of the book runs on. The universal Stone is rightly called MAGNVS, the Great Stone; the specified silver- and gold-Stones are Parui, the little ones (p. 99). And hence the closure, at pp. 102–103: via physico-Chymica tertia … datur nulla — of a third physico-chymical way to the universal Stone, or to the special Stones of silver or gold, there is none. Everything Khunrath denies in the negative argument he denies because it is an attempt at a third way.

The uses of the Stone are ranked, and the ranking is not the one the reader expects. At p. 96 the three modes are given in order: Medicinaliter in human and other animal bodies; transmutatoriè upon the lower metals; and upon vegetables aut instaurativè aut conservativè. At pp. 99–100 the Great Elixir’s operations extend universally upon vegetables, animals, stones, gems and minerals, to renew them, to exalt them to the being of their virtues, to restore and conserve them — as upon metals, to more-than-perfect them. Medicine first, transmutation third. At p. 167 the ranking becomes a rebuke: transmutation is what nur allein die Geldtsüchtige Weld gaffet, what only the money-craving world gapes after, setting aside the far higher Theosophical and Medicinal uses. The metallurgy on which the argument spends most of its length is the part Khunrath himself values least.