Nine Books on the Nature of Things

The breadth of the definition makes the argument accessible, but also makes discrimination necessary. A familiar change in the appearance and use of a material does not establish every alleged change of kind. Read both the definition and the examples: the first tells the reader what range the term is given, while the examples show what support is offered.

Passage NTR-B07-P001: “Transmutation occurs when a thing loses its form and is so altered that it is wholly unlike its former substance and form, assuming another form, essence, colour, virtue, nature or property: when metal becomes glass or stone; stone becomes coal; wood becomes coal; clay becomes stone and brick; skin becomes glue; cloth becomes paper, and many similar things.”

Source forms: transmutatio.

Read in context: Book 7. Compare the related work of separation in Book 8.

See also: Art, Fire, Separation.

Fire

Fire is an operative agent in preparation, not only a symbol detached from materials. The work connects heating with changes such as ripening, calcination, flowing and transformation. Its different uses cannot be reduced to one degree of heat or one kind of apparatus.

The conditions demanded of a tincture show why fire can also serve as a test within the work’s reasoning: a product must retain the qualities claimed for it under the conditions of use. The historical assertion of successful testing is still distinct from evidence available to the modern reader. Follow what is heated and what is supposed to remain or change.

Passage NTR-B07-P014: “Fire can be graduated and intensified in many ways; every degree has its particular operation and produces a different effect, as any skilled alchemist knows through daily experience and practice.”

Source forms: ignis.

Read in context: Book 7. Compare metallic life in Book 4 and heat in Book 2.

See also: Transmutation, Life, Heat and Moisture.

Quintessence

Quintessence is associated with a specially prepared condition of a thing, often credited with concentrated powers or exceptional preservation. The phrase can carry a larger philosophical history, but its immediate meaning should be established from what this work says is done to a particular material.

In the account of bodily materials, its relation to resistance against putrefaction is especially important. The work distinguishes a body merely kept in a condition from a preparation said to be made into a quintessence. Such distinctions should survive translation even when the claimed effect is not accepted as a modern fact.

Passage NTR-B01-P013: “In truth it is nothing other than the quintessence of Sulphur, extracted from reverberated sulphur by spirit of wine, red in colour and transparent like a ruby.”

Source forms: quinta essentia.

Read in context: Book 3. Compare the preparations and divisions of natural things in Book 8.

See also: Balsam, Mummia, Separation.

Separation

Separation is developed from the cosmological distinction of elements into operations on natural materials. Its scope includes what is divided from a mixture, what is retained, and how the resulting parts can be used. It should not be understood only as the removal of something called impure.

The work’s practical examples make the condition of the material important. A named operation is not interchangeable with every other means of dividing a body. Reading separation beside transmutation clarifies the difference between distinguishing constituents and obtaining another form, while allowing that the same preparation can involve both.

Passage NTR-B08-P005: “To understand what separation is, observe that it is simply the setting of one thing apart from another, whether two, three, four or more have been mixed.”

Source forms: separatio.

Read in context: Book 8. Read transformation in Book 7 beside this account.

See also: Elements, Transmutation, Quintessence.

Elements

The four elements supply a language for the constitution and differentiation of natural things. The opening of Book VIII places separation within an account of the world emerging from chaos. This makes division an event in the ordering of nature before it becomes a task for a practitioner.

These elements are not the entries of a modern periodic table. Their importance is seen in the relations and qualities the work assigns to materials, and in its account of how different bodies become distinct. The historical model should remain recognisable while particular material observations are considered on their own terms.

Passage NTR-B08-P002: “From that chaos God established the greater world, separated into four distinct elements: fire, air, water and earth.”

Source forms: elementa.

Read in context: Book 8. Compare the three-principle account in Book 1.

See also: Separation, The Three Principles, Heat and Moisture.

Signature

A signature is an outward mark considered as evidence of something otherwise concealed, and a signator is the agent said to make it. The work begins with marks made by human beings, including practices of authentication. It then extends the account to formative and stellar agencies.