The medium that discloses the tincture concealed within the metallic tree. Salts also appear in preparation, sublimation, and the discussion of dissolving spirits. The source qualifies different salts by their material or planetary associations.

Passages: H001-S041; H001-S085; H001-S156

Seminal form

French: forme séminale

A formative principle drawn into compounds and retained there by universal spirit. The source distinguishes the receiving subject’s disposition from the spirit’s office of attracting and retaining the form, and describes degrees of mixture governed by that spirit’s heat.

Passages: H001-S255

Sensible species

French: espèce sensible

A representation apprehended by the senses. The author explains the knowledge of celestial things through sensible species, phantasms, shadows, and figures. Here species names an apprehensible form or appearance rather than a biological classification.

Passages: H001-S233

Septenary

French: septenaire

A sevenfold grouping. The manuscript describes gatherings of seven leaves and interprets their numbers through durations of preparation and repeated sublimation. It expressly distinguishes the diversity of operations shown by the figures from a simple disclosure of their operative order.

Passages: H001-S031b; H001-S041; H001-S050; H001-S068; H001-S109a

Shadow

French: ombre

A likeness of bodily form distinguished from corpse, spirit, manes, and rational soul. In the graveyard account, tenuous vapors coagulated by cold air resemble the body. Their appearance is expressly distinguished from the return of its rational soul.

Passages: H001-S261; H001-S266

Solution

French: solution

The dissolving or resolution of a subject within the work. A section bearing this heading follows the initial emblem exposition. Rivers, wounds, weapons, and the action of mercury provide images for the power that breaks down or opens bodies.

Passages: H001-S038; H001-S049; H001-S116; H001-S244; H001-S287

Soul

French: âme

An animating or formative principle, and the spiritual subject of the theological discussion. Bodies desire reunion with their souls after separation. Purification prepares that reunion, which the source describes through conjunction, marriage, and lasting alliance.

Passages: H001-S177; H001-S261; H001-S268

Spirit

French: esprit

A term for a spiritual being, a subtle active agency, or the understanding and disposition of a person. The natural discussion distinguishes favorable and adverse spirits associated with substances and planets. The theological argument identifies light as the essence of spirit and examines its relation to bodies.

Passages: H001-S129b; H001-S138; H001-S159; H001-S170; H001-S255

Spiritualization of waters

French: spirituation des eaux

The operation named in the garden emblem’s heading. The explanation connects water, mercury, metallic growth, and the emergence of a spiritual condition. English spiritualization preserves the connection between material change and the vocabulary of spirit.

Passages: H001-S083

Stone of the philosophers

French: pierre philosophale

The perfected subject and goal of the work. Its descriptions unite material preparation with claims about purity, permanence, and an encompassing power. The final pages insist on a unity that can be named through many different natural forms.

Passages: H001-S187; H001-S195

Sublimation

French: sublimation

An operation repeated during preparation and the extraction of spirit or quintessence. The text relates its duration to the sevenfold arrangement of the book and uses winged figures to express the resulting subtlety and upward movement.

Passages: H001-S041; H001-S065; H001-S075; H001-S120b; H001-S203

Subtlety

French: subtilité

A refined or penetrating quality. Wings and Mercury’s equipment signify it in the emblem commentary. It also becomes one of the gifts of the perfected body, linking the earlier operative account to the theological discussion.

Passages: H001-S032; H001-S166; H001-S265; H001-S298; H001-S313

Sulfur

French: soufre

A principal subject of the operative vocabulary, associated with fixity, tincture, and the King. Sulfur arrests the spirit of quicksilver, while mercury separates sulfur from its body. The source also distinguishes volatile sulfur before maturation from a later fixed condition.

Passages: H001-S038; H001-S041; H001-S074; H001-S085; H001-S249

Sun

French: Soleil

The celestial Sun and an operative figure associated with brightness, gold, and solar bodies. The source discusses its relation with the Moon and mercury and places Sun and Moon together within an emblematic vessel. Each comparison retains its named celestial subject.

Passages: H001-S041

Tacamaque

French: tacamaque

A historical name for aromatic resins and the trees producing them. It appears unexpectedly in the opening curse concerning what a transgressor has planted. The translation retains the source’s name and records the unusual wording locally.

Passages: H001-S017

Tincture

French: teinture

The coloring or perfecting power held within a subject and drawn out or carried by the work. The garden exposition says salt reveals the tincture concealed in the metallic tree; other passages assign mercury the power of extracting and carrying tinctures.

Passages: H001-S038; H001-S065; H001-S085; H001-S103

Universal conflagration

French: embrasement universel

The final universal purification. It separates good, pure, and incorruptible from bad, impure, and corruptible, and renews created species in luminous, fixed, spiritual bodies. Laboratory purification supplies a comparison for this promised transformation.

Passages: H001-S258; H001-S274; H001-S280

Universal spirit

French: esprit universel

Father, fashioner, and guardian of compounds: a magnetic intermediary that attracts and retains seminal forms and governs degrees of mixture. Metals are called its central center because of their asserted homogeneity and concentrated germinative power.

Passages: H001-S254

Vessel

French: vaisseau

A container for the work and a role assigned to pictured objects. The cross can signify a vessel, while the great receptacle in the massacre figure receives what the work draws from bodies. The manuscript also describes vessels directly among the teachings of the art.

Passages: H001-S020; H001-S054; H001-S068; H001-S125; H001-S286

Virgin

French: vierge

A figure or qualification used in the mythological and Christian comparisons. Its particular subject determines the relation: an account of classical fable and a discussion of the Incarnation can each use virginal imagery within a distinct argument.

Passages: H001-S023; H001-S196; H001-S203; H001-S207; H001-S287

Vitriol

French: vitriol

A historical name for metallic sulfates and related preparations. The work joins vitriol with mercury and salt in repeated sublimation and discusses vitriolic marcasites among adverse spirits. The particular preparation is determined by the source’s qualifications.

Passages: H001-S038; H001-S085; H001-S104; H001-S120b; H001-S155

Water

French: eau

A fluid subject, dissolving agency, or pictured stream in the work. Water can be described as dry and non-wetting, and the spiritualization of waters explains its role in growth and the making of spirit. The source’s qualifying phrases give each water its local character.

Passages: H001-S083; H001-S086; H001-S093; H001-S109a

Work

French: œuvre

The undertaking that joins preparation, successive operations, and perfection of the subject. Œuvre also retains its ordinary sense of a made work or achievement. The fuller phrase Great Work is used where the French supplies it.

Passages: H001-S031b; H001-S058