The Secret Work of the Hermetic Philosophy

The distinction should not be resolved by deleting either side of the author’s statement. The word can carry a material history and a philosophical function together. Ask which preparation, relation or stage the passage specifies before deciding what a particular occurrence denotes.

Passage Canon 44: “Whoever says that the philosophers' moon, or their mercury, is common mercury either knowingly deceives or is himself deceived.”

Source forms: Mercurium vulgarem, Argentum vivum.

Read in context: canon 44.

See also: Sun and Moon, Elixir, Fixed and Volatile.

Multiplication

Multiplication extends a prepared power or product through a renewed relation to its matter. The author describes propagation from an initial sulphur and later sets out several ways of multiplying the elixir. The continuity of the matter and the observance of proportion are central to his account.

The historical claim is more precise than a general image of endless increase. It distinguishes stages, contributing principles and kinds of efficacy. A contemporary philosophical reading can examine how a formed capacity becomes communicable, while keeping the author’s claims of indefinite increase identifiable as claims.

Passage Canon 123: “Sulphur is multiplied from the same matter from which it is generated, with a small portion of the first added, but everything according to the balance.”

Source forms: multiplicatur, sulfure.

Read in context: canon 123.

See also: Sulphur, Elixir, Seed.

Putrefaction and Burial

Putrefaction names a breaking down that prepares a further generation or assimilation. In the account of digestion, received nourishment is altered so that it may be fixed and become homogeneous with the body. Burial describes spirit brought into earth as though dead.

The death image is therefore placed within a sequence rather than offered as an isolated celebration of destruction. An inward reading can explore the loss of an established form and its integration into another. The passage’s historical concern with nourishment, heat and fixation remains part of what gives that interpretation its shape.

Passage Canon 90: “It is also called burial, because through it the spirit is buried and interred in the earth as though dead.”

Source forms: putrefactio, inhumatio.

Read in context: canon 90.

See also: Digestion, Fixed and Volatile, Creation and Chaos.

Quintessence

Quintessence is a subtle or heavenly source of power within the author’s explanation. It assists the life-giving union of soul and body and supplies the elixir’s multiplying efficacy. It is not simply another name for one of the four elements considered separately.

The term makes the work depend upon a power that exceeds its merely passive composition. That relation can be explored philosophically as the difference between a collection of parts and a living or efficacious whole. Such a reading is an interpretation of the historical account, not a modern measurement of an identified fifth substance.

Passage Canon 125: “Its multiplying power, however, it borrows as an infusion from the spirit of the quintessence.”

Source forms: quintæ essentiæ.

Read in context: canon 125.

See also: Soul, Spirit, and Body, Elixir, Multiplication.

Rebis

Rebis names the matter at a particular point in its preparation, together with Chaos and the whole world. The author says that this matter contains what the work needs. The name points towards a doubled or joined condition, but it does not by itself explain the preparation through which that condition has been reached.

The entry is therefore a reminder to read a name within the sequence that gives it force. Historical note 29 of 1893 explains Rebis as the double or joined thing. That comparison can be illuminating if it does not flatten this passage’s relation between preparation, sufficient matter and the further completion of the Stone.

Passage Canon 39: “The matter is then called Rebis, Chaos, and the whole world.”

Source forms: Rebis, Chaos.

Read in context: canon 39.

See also: Conjunction, Creation and Chaos, Fixed and Volatile.

Rotation of the Elements

Rotation describes an ordered succession in which each element takes its turn in ruling. The matter passes from nature to nature through circles of wet and dry until the elements are brought downwards and rest. The word concerns transformation as well as motion.

The subsequent canons describe water, air and fire in relation to this succession and distinguish greater and lesser wheels. A philosophical reading can follow how one power becomes dominant and then yields, while the whole process retains continuity. It should not turn every circle into an identical repetition with no change of condition.

Passage Canon 75: “For the matter of the Stone passes from nature to nature; the elements are extracted in succession and each takes its turn in ruling.”

Source forms: rotationem elementorum, de natura in naturam.

Read in context: canon 75.

See also: Creation and Chaos, Fixed and Volatile, Measure and Proportion.

Saturn

In this passage Saturn is an examiner that tests whether a tincture has achieved durable fixation. The surrounding argument criticizes attempts to transfer a separated tincture to a foreign body without the necessary natural relation. The test exposes a merely apparent success.