Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

One visual element requires an explicit reservation. The preliminary reader’s poem refers to a figure of the universal spirit, and the Wellcome catalogue describes an engraved plate. A separate matching plate has not been located in the BnF reproduction used for the text. The surviving poem is translated, and the gap in the image evidence is reported. No imagined reconstruction is presented as the missing original, and this edition makes no claim to supply a complete original plate suite. Source-scan reproduction is treated separately from transcription and translation; BnF images are not presented as commercially cleared.

For continuous reading, the prose of Book III follows its printed page order. In the consulted scan, four unnumbered sonnets intervene between printed pages 326 and 327, even splitting the word engloutisse, and another four intervene between pages 330 and 331. Those eight poems and the final sonnet on printed page 332 are presented together after Book III, in their preserved sequence. Their original image locations remain attached to each poem. No prose or verse is omitted by this rearrangement.

Stable passage identifiers link the translation, notes and study apparatus. FR image identifiers refer to positions in the 342-page digital PDF, including its added wrappers; they are image locators rather than historical line numbers. French and English follow one another in aligned passages. The English-only EPUB retains all translated historical sections, including preliminaries and both errata lists, while omitting the French, new notes, outlines and study apparatus.