Short Glossary

These entries orient the reader within this particular natural philosophy. They describe historical functions and relations; they do not identify timeless meanings shared by every alchemical writer or supply modern chemical and medical equivalents.

Act and Potency

Act is a power brought into operation or determination; potency is its capacity before that fulfilment. The terms help the author describe generation without making what is merely possible identical to what has already been formed.

Air

An elemental and mediating nature, also implicated in the account of spirit and the heavens. The local argument must decide whether air means a lower elemental condition, a purified medium, or a comparison; it is not automatically modern atmospheric chemistry.

Archetype

The primary exemplar from which the order and powers of created things depend. It belongs to the book’s account of divine causation and transmitted form, rather than to a modern psychological classification.

Art

An ordered human practice that follows, imitates or works with Nature. The term is broader than fine art and does not make the practitioner the creator of Nature’s first powers.

Body

A material and organised condition in which powers operate. Body is distinguished from soul and spirit, although the living compound depends on their union. A body’s destruction does not, in this account, abolish every residual natural capacity.

Cause

That by which the author explains a thing’s existence, form, activity or end. Distinguishing a divine first cause from subordinate natural causes matters more here than supplying a single modern mechanism for every term.

Chaos

The confused or undifferentiated condition associated with the beginning of material order. It belongs to a historical account of creation and formation; it need not denote random behaviour in the modern mathematical sense.

Concord

An agreement of different powers or qualities in an ordered whole. Concord does not require sameness. The musical analogy makes proportion and interval central to its meaning.

Corruption

The loss or dissolution of a compound’s prior form or organised condition. Corruption is paired with generation and can prepare another formation; the word does not by itself mean moral depravity.

Creation

The dependence of the world and its principles upon a divine maker. The creator is expressly distinguished from the parts of the world, even when those parts are joined into a single commonwealth.

Earth

An element, the terrestrial globe, or a receiving and generative ground. Its sense changes with scale. The author’s account of earth’s fertility and its place among heavenly bodies should not be made into one undifferentiated symbol.

Elements

The foundational material natures of the author’s natural philosophy. Their number, qualities and relations are contested in the work; they are not equivalent to the chemical elements of a modern periodic table.

Ether

The subtle celestial medium or nature through which higher powers communicate. It belongs to the work’s cosmology and should not be equated with a later physical ether theory without argument.

Fire

A term whose range includes destructive flame, heat, a formative natural power and celestial light. The canons distinguish these functions. A definition that identifies every fire with burning would erase part of the argument.

Form

The determining and active principle by which matter is a thing of a particular kind. Form is related to soul in living compounds, but the work also discusses a universal formative principle.

Generation

The coming-to-be of an individual compound or living thing. The author explains it through prepared matter, formative activity, seed and suitable receiving conditions; some examples rely on historical assumptions about spontaneous generation.

Harmony

The proportionate cooperation of differentiated parts or powers. It supplies the title’s governing promise and the musical analogy of the late canons. Harmony is a relation, not merely a pleasant sensation.

Heat, Innate

The internal, life-related heat distinguished from external warmth and from radical moisture. It is associated with a solar or celestial formative power. Its historical function exceeds what a thermometer measures.

Intellect

The faculty of understanding and knowledge. The closing canon distinguishes intellect from will while relating both to the divine exemplar and to the limited faculties of created intelligible natures.

Light

A principle connected with intelligibility, form, life and celestial influence. The term also structures the author’s account of inquiry. Its several functions must be identified in context rather than reduced to a single physical or symbolic equivalent.

Love

A unifying and communicating power, used to explain the joining of differentiated natures and the mutual support of the universe’s parts. The preface also makes love of knowledge and of readers a motive for writing.

Matter, First

The underlying recipient of formation in the account of Nature’s beginning. It is not an identified modern chemical substance. Its relation to universal form must be distinguished from the matter of an already formed individual.

Matrix

A receiving and nourishing condition of generation, often expressed through the image of a womb. Its meaning depends on what is received, what acts upon it, and the scale of the natural process being described.

Moisture, Radical

The rooted, sustaining moisture through which life-related activity is received and bound within a compound. It is distinguished both from ordinary removable moisture and from innate heat. The word radical refers to a root, not to a modern free radical.

Motion

Natural activity or change, including processes not visible as a journey from one place to another. The author distinguishes a remission of action from its complete cessation and extends activity to apparently resting bodies.

Nature

The ordered power and administration of created things under their first cause. Nature can be personified as a governor, artisan or mother. Those images need not imply an independent deity separate from the book’s creator.

Quality

A way in which elemental or compound matter is disposed to act and receive action. The author treats qualities as instruments rather than the underlying efficient causes of action. Heat, cold, moisture and dryness are understood through proportion and temperament rather than simply as mutual enemies.

Salt

Salt appears as a material residue and bearer of powers in discussions of ashes, fertility and a persistent generative root, and as a secondary constituent principle alongside sulphur and mercury (canons 150–152). In canon 114, “salt of Nature” is also a name for the heavenly spirit called the fifth element. The historical category is wider than one modern salt; extraction or presence alone does not prove a universal medical claim.

Seed

A concentrated generative principle that carries the capacity for a particular kind of offspring. Seed is linked with a suitable matrix and formative power, rather than with matter considered in complete isolation.

Soul

The informing and life-giving principle of an individual compound. The text distinguishes this function from spirit as mediator. A claim about the soul of a compound should not automatically be transferred to every theological claim about the human soul.

Spirit

A subtle nature whose function depends on context. In the account of individual life it mediates between soul and body as a vehicle and bond; elsewhere the word extends to fine material natures, fire, light and transmitted powers. It is not a synonym for soul, a ghost, or a modern chemical spirit in every occurrence.

Sun

A celestial source of light and life-related influence within the author’s system. The Sun’s varying relation to lower things also explains seasonal difference and changes of temperament.

Temperament

A proportionate disposition of the elements and their qualities in a compound. It belongs to the account of concord, disorder and disease; a modern reader should not confuse it with personality alone.

Water

A receiving, flowing and connecting material nature, also used in the speculative reading of the waters of Genesis. The author distinguishes familiar water from primordial moisture and from the enigmatic dry water; one definition cannot settle all three uses.

Will

The faculty of operation or willing, distinguished from intellect in the last canon. The author relates goodness, justice and mercy to divine will and gives created intelligible beings limited analogous faculties.