The Secret Work of the Hermetic Philosophy

Short Glossary

These are contextual orientations to this book. A definition describes a use or relation in the historical text; it does not supply a modern laboratory identification or a universal meaning across all alchemical authors.

Analysis

Separation through which the principles of a body become knowable and available for a different conjunction. It belongs to the author’s definition of the art, rather than to the whole modern meaning of analytical chemistry.

Archeus

An inward governing or formative power. In canon 80 the implanted fire is called Nature’s archeus and the deputy of the Sun.

Art

The practitioner’s informed work upon natural matter and its powers. It assists and directs a process whose capacities it does not create from nothing.

Athanor

The furnace described as preserving an enduring fire in canon 116. Its etymology and significance are historical; the name alone does not specify a modern apparatus.

Body

A formed, comparatively stable thing or principle. Its relation to spirit can change through dissolution, mediation and renewed fixation.

Chaos

A confused first condition in which the elements have not yet been ordered. Canon 73 makes the generation of the Stone follow the pattern of the world’s creation.

Charity

Love directed towards the good of others. The first canon makes it the end of the work and gives concrete examples of the uses of its anticipated abundance.

Circulation

Repeated passage through related states or movements. In the discussion of elements, ascent and descent are bound to the alternation of wet and dry.

Cohobation

A term of repeated return in operative language, also explained in historical note 55 of 1893. That later definition remains identifiable as a later gloss.

Congealing

The consolidation or fixing of what has been fluid or volatile. It is paired with dissolution; the word need not mean ordinary freezing by cold.

Conjunction

A joining of prepared principles. The meaning depends on the state and relationship of the things joined, not merely on their being placed together.

Digestion

A sustained process of ripening, assimilation or maturation under regulated conditions. The author compares it with the body’s transformation of nourishment.

Dissolution

The loosening of bodily stability and passage into a more fluid or volatile condition. It prepares the possibility of a further union and fixation.

Earth

An element, the lower or heavier aspect of matter, and a receiving or fixing ground. The philosophical earth is also described as womb, tomb and final resting place.

Elements

The fourfold scheme of earth, water, air and fire through which the author explains qualities and changes. These are not identical to the entries in a modern periodic table.

Elixir

The product of the further work after sulphur has been prepared. Its composition and required qualities are distinguished explicitly in canons 124–125.

Ferment

A prepared principle that communicates a specified tincture and fixation. Its use in the elixir should be read within the book’s account of the two perfect metals.

Fire

A family of meanings including heat, an internal power and an external mover. Canons 92–107 distinguish its functions and degrees.

Fixed

Comparatively stable, enduring or brought to rest. The fixed and volatile are relational conditions that the work seeks to convert and unite.

Gold

The perfect metal associated with the Sun. Solar language can also describe a power, principle or stage; the local sentence determines the emphasis.

Magistery

The accomplished work or mastery of the art. The word can refer to a process and its result rather than to an academic office.

Matter

That upon which the work proceeds. ‘First matter’ is a relational expression in this text and should not be assumed to name a modern chemical element.

Mercury

A central and deliberately variable name in the art. It can denote a metallic or mediating water and a volatile principle; a local use should not automatically be reduced to ordinary quicksilver.

Moisture

The fluid or wet aspect of the work, with watery, airy and radical forms distinguished in canon 129. Its regulation belongs to the relation of nourishment and fixation.

Multiplication

The increase of the prepared work’s power or stock through a renewed process. The author distinguishes the propagation of sulphur and the further work of the elixir.

Putrefaction

A corruption or breaking down that prepares generation and assimilation. Its relationship to digestion, burial and renewed formation is explained in the canons.

Quintessence

A subtle or heavenly power beyond the ordinary fourfold elemental account. It mediates life and efficacy in the author’s explanation.

Rebis

In canon 39, a name for the prepared matter that contains everything required for the work. Historical note 29 explains it as a double or joined thing; that explanation is identified as a later gloss.

Regimen

The governance and ordered conditions of the work, especially its heat, sequence and duration. Knowing a material name does not amount to knowing its regimen.

Seed

A generative principle through which a kind reproduces or develops. The text uses generation to explain both the limits and the possibilities of art.

Soul

A life-giving or informing principle, distinguished from body and related to it through spirit. The term belongs to the work’s natural and theological vocabulary.