Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Key Words of the Treatise

A dozen words carry most of Khunrath’s argument, and several of them do not mean what a modern reader will assume. They are set out here with what each meant in 1599, what he does with it across the book, and what he is claiming by using it. The Glossary at the end of the volume is an alphabetical reference list; this is an orientation, and a reader who has it will not be ambushed. Page numbers are those of the 1599 printing.

Catholisch, Catholicè, Catholicon

The word to get right first, because the wrong reading is the obvious one. Khunrath is not writing about the Roman Church. He is using catholicus in its root sense — universal, entire, pertaining to the whole — against specialis and particularis, and the whole argument of the book is the distinction between them. A Catholicon is a universal thing and, in the medical register he keeps in play, a universal remedy. He can put the word in Antiqua beside a Fraktur German one to mark the difference: at p. 57 he writes CATHOLISCHEN GLAVBENS with the adjective in roman and the noun in blackletter, so that the faith in question is the universal one and not the confessional party. Nor is the usage anti-Roman. At p. 22 he confesses one universal Christian Church with one universal Head, ihsvh christvs, and names no pope — which in 1599 is a Protestant confession, but a quiet one; at p. 141 he addresses Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists with even hands and offers to prove his method out of the divines of each. And in the margin of p. 176 he 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 affirmed there, and made the model for a claim about a substance. That is the audacity of the book in one sentence, and it is not anticlericalism. (Readers of the earlier states of this edition should note that an Introduction written before p. 176 was translated said the opposite — that the word was turned against the Church at that page. The gloss says the reverse; the claim is withdrawn.)

Magnesia

Not the modern mineral, and not magnesia alba; the word had no settled chemical sense in 1599. It is a Philosophical Name, as the margin of p. 9 says flatly — MAGNESIA ist der Name sein — for the one universal first matter, and Khunrath takes it over from the alchemical corpus and makes it his. He divides it once, at p. 52, as MAGNES-IAH, to disclose the divine name iah inside it. It is also called Chaos, the Minera Artis, the Saturnus sapientum, the Catholic and Crude Mercurius of the Philosophers, and by countless names besides — which the Philosophers use, he says, the better to hide it from the unworthy (p. 64). The reader should not try to solve it. The book is written so that it cannot be solved from the book.

Materia Prima / pri-materialisch

The first matter: what God created out of nothing at the beginning of the world and out of which all material things were made (pp. 47–49). Khunrath’s claim is that a portion of it still stands, above the earth, uncommitted — never narrowed to plant, animal, mineral or metal — and that this is Magnesia. Everything else in the world is downstream of the first matter; this alone still is it. The adjective pri-materialisch is his, and this edition keeps it as pri-material rather than smoothing it to primordial, because he distinguishes it from erst-materialisch, first-material, and the two are not interchangeable in his hands.

Specificatio, specificirt

The hinge of the whole negative argument, and the term a reader must hold steady. To be specified is to have been narrowed to a species — fixed as this kind of thing and no longer any kind. Silver is specified; gold is specified; vitriol, antimony, every metal and every mineral is specified. The catholic matter is defined by not having been specified: Nature hat sie nicht auff ein Vegetabilisch, Animalisch oder Mineralisch specificiret (p. 21). Hence the denial that runs from p. 60 to p. 128: no art can unspecify a specified thing. Die SPECIFICATIO lesset sich … nicht abscheiden — the specification does not let itself be separated off (pp. 60–61) — and therefore no preparation of silver or gold, however subtle, can be the first catholic matter of metals. The corollary is the proverb Khunrath quotes at p. 19: QVOT RES, TOT Philosophorum LAPIDES. Every thing yields its own Stone. Only the unspecified thing yields a universal one.

Arg-Chymist

His name for the enemy, and it is a pun that has to be heard. Arg is wicked, base, arrant — not Erz-, arch-, as the word is sometimes read. So Alchymist against Argchymist, and at p. 108 he sets the two halves side by side and makes the reader choose between den Al- vnd Arg-Chymischen Processen, the al- and the arg-chymical processes, the good to be kept and the bad thrown away. The Arg-Chymist is not the honest practitioner who fails. He is the one who works on a false matter and knows, or should know, better: he appears first at p. 10 with his poisonous slander-arrows and is still there at pp. 176–177 with his Pseudo-Magnesijs. Around him stand the other names: the Sophist, who reasons from the letter instead of from Nature; the Schulfuchs or school-fox, the disputatious pedant; the Schwärmer, the fanatic — the confessional insult of the age, and Khunrath turns it on his rivals with the coinage Schwermament at p. 85; and, in the margin of p. 168, the Loß-sophi, the loose-sophers, empty where the Philo-sophi are loving. Against all of them stands the one reader Khunrath wants, the Doctrinæ filius, the son of the Doctrine, who lets himself be Philosophically instructed and thinks better of it (p. 29).

erkennen / Erkentnis / Agnitio

The most important distinction in the book, and the easiest to miss in English. Kennen and wissen are to know: to be acquainted with a thing, to be able to name it. Erkennen is to recognize: to know it for what it is. The matter, Khunrath says, is jederman bekand / von sehr wenigen aber erkand — known to everybody, recognized by very few (p. 45) — and the distinction is the whole difference between a man who can point at the thing and a man who has the Art. At p. 32 he sets the two verbs in one clause, letting God make the matter not only known but also wonderfully and well recognized. This edition holds recognize and recognition for erkennen and Erkentnis throughout and never lets them slide into know. The Latin noun is Agnitio, and it is what the treatise is finally for: the Conclusion opens at p. 165 under the marginal heading Fructus & vtilitates Agnitionis MAGNESIAE CATHOLICAE, the fruits and uses of the Recognition of the Catholic Magnesia. Khunrath’s own claim, at p. 162, is recognition and not achievement: he has erkannt the matter; he has not made the Stone.

Naturgemeß

His standing adjective, kept in this edition as the one word Nature-conforming. It means conformed to Nature, agreeing with her course and her possibility, and it is the standard against which everything in the book is measured — a matter, a process, an argument, a book, a Philosopher. Its force is normative, not descriptive: to be un-Naturgemeß is not merely to be unusual but to be wrong. The margin of p. 109 makes it the Artist’s rule: Naturæ possibilitas sey des Künstners norma oder Richtscheid, let the possibility of Nature be the Artist’s rule or straight-edge, by which he shall study and laborate. And the margin of p. 110 puts it at full strength, in a formula built on the theological one: Extra Naturam, in Physico Artificialibus, nulla est Salus — outside Nature, in the physical arts, there is no salvation. The companion word is Kunst, which is ars, the Art, and is never weakened in this edition to skill: Nature and Art are partners, and the tag Khunrath quotes at p. 44 sets the boundary between them — vbi Natura desinit, ibi Ars incipit.

Regeneration and Plusquamperfection

The metals that are already perfect — silver and gold — are not the end of the work but its starting material, and to improve them they must first be destroyed. The figure throughout is agricultural and obstetric at once. There is a same, a seed; there is an acker, a field or ploughland; the seed is sown into the field, rots there, and is born again. The mother’s body into which silver and gold must go back is the first matter (p. 92), and the putrefying medium is named without softening — the Fimus Philosophorum, the Philosophers’ dung (p. 83), which the margin of p. 120 calls der geheime fimus equinus der Weisen, the secret horse-dung of the Wise. What comes out is plusquamperfect, more-than-perfect: a state above the perfection the metal already had, from which it can then multiply its own kind in the Proiectio. Khunrath insists that Proiectio and Transmutatio are two things and never lets them collapse (p. 160). And he sets the whole beside 1 Corinthians xv: the transformation of the dead at the last trumpet is the same figure, and he says so in the body of p. 101.

Harmonia analogica and Contrafactur

The correspondence between Magnesia and Christ, announced at p. 30 and set out at p. 56. It is not decoration and it is not merely devotional: Khunrath uses it as proof. At p. 138 it is the argument that settles which matter is the true one, since in no other does the correspondence so properly agree. A reader should also keep two things apart that look alike. The analogia harmonica of p. 40 is a different test — between the reader’s candidate matter and Khunrath’s Magnesia, checked against the list of properties and conditions this treatise sets out; the margin of p. 43 calls it Basanus huius litis, the touchstone of this dispute, and the body calls it ewern Probstein. The Christological Harmonia is not brought to bear as a test of matter until pp. 138–139. The word Contrafect or Contrafactur, which stands under it, is the period word for a portrait — a true likeness. It is rendered Likeness throughout this edition and never counterfeit, because the modern English word inverts the charge at precisely the point where Khunrath is asserting authenticity.

Oratorium and Laboratorium

The pair the Amphitheatrum made famous by engraving it, and readers come to this book expecting to find it everywhere. It occurs once. At pp. 173–174 the Artist is to call upon the Father of Lights in spirit and in truth in ORATORIO, to be enlightened by Sophia Enthusiastica; and then, governed by the Good Spirit, to handle Magnesia rightly in LABORATORIO, Physico-chymicè. The two marginal headings, oratorivm with Mens, Deo cōiuncta, quod cupit assequitur and laboratorivm with Theoricè & Practicè, stand on the recto and the verso of one leaf — back to back, not on facing pages. The doctrine is everywhere in the book; the famous pairing of the words is at this one place, and at the close.

Theosophia, Enthusiasticè, Cabala

Three words that have since acquired meanings Khunrath did not intend. Theosophia is divine wisdom and has nothing to do with the nineteenth-century movement of that name. Enthusiasticè means by the god entering, by direct inspiration; in the confessional writing of the 1590s the word was already turning pejorative, and in Khunrath’s mouth it is not — the margin of p. 135 glosses the first of his three sources of knowledge as Cabalâ Enthusiasticâ without a hint of warning. Cabala there names the mode of receiving, not the Jewish discipline. Against them stands the thing he does reject: not inspiration but the dead letter. Litera occidit, Spiritus viuificat (p. 110), and the Philosophers’ books are to be read according to the possibility of Nature, and not according to the bare sound of the words (p. 109).

Servator and Salvator

Kept distinct in this edition as Preserver and Saviour, because Khunrath keeps them distinct and the distinction is load-bearing. He applies both to the Stone and both to Christ; at p. 56 he hedges Salvator with suo modo when he applies it to the Stone, and does not hedge it when he applies it to Christ. But the hedge is used once, and pp. 57, 165 and 168 drop it. This is the place where a translator’s smoothing would do the most damage, and where a reader should be most careful to see what is actually on the page.