Key Words

Figure and emblem

A figure is both an image and something through which another thing can be understood. In this book, describing a figure is a distinct activity from explaining it. The edition retains that distinction: visible details belong to description, while the manuscript's account of their significance belongs to explanation. Emblem is retained where the French uses emblême or emblème.

The work

Œuvre names the undertaking to which the operations belong and can also mean a made work or achievement. Work preserves this breadth. In the later theological comparisons, operative birth, death, resurrection, and multiplication provide an order through which the manuscript approaches Christian mysteries.

Spirit

Esprit can concern a person’s understanding or disposition, a spiritual being, or a subtle agency in nature. The manuscript distinguishes immaterial angels from natural spirits and distinguishes favorable from adverse powers. In the account of perfected bodies, light is called the essence of spirit. The local subject gives each use its force.

Corruption and fixation

Corruption breaks down an earlier condition and can prepare a new generation. Fixation gives a volatile subject stability. The source makes the difference between regenerative and merely destructive corruption consequential, while its images of attachment and arrest explain how fixity is acquired.

Mercury and sulfur

Mercury and sulfur receive different roles in the same work: mercury can separate sulfur from its body, while sulfur arrests the mercurial spirit. The garden explanation assigns fixity to sulfur and growth to quicksilver. Qualifications such as volatile, fixed, immature, or perfected remain essential to these material names.

Mystery

Mystère belongs both to the opening account of guarded knowledge and to the later discussion of Christian faith. The book presents visible nature as a way of approaching divine wonders, using language that ranges from figure and allegory to sensible proof. Those differences remain part of its argument.