Body, spirit and soul · Lexicon

From the book

Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordBody, spirit and soul are the three constituents from which Nature composes the chymical little world.
In KhunrathIts cosmic scale is stated before its local analysis.
In this editionThe English preserves “spiritual bodies” and “corporeal spirits” where these occur in the metallic discussion rather than regularizing them into a modern matter/spirit opposition.
A reading distinctionThe p. 54 mediator clause is primary text.

Meaning

Body, spirit and soul are the three constituents from which Nature composes the chymical little world. At p. 54 spirit is explicitly the proper vehicle and nearest dwelling of soul, and the bond joining soul with body. The triad describes an internally related constitution rather than three unrelated materials.

Use in the book

Its cosmic scale is stated before its local analysis. At p. 50 Nature separates and composes body, spirit and soul from the great world's body, spirit and soul into one proper pri-material Chaos. The corresponding terms at the two scales make Magnesia a macrocosmic microcosm: a non-human little world constituted from the greater world. No human preparer is credited with producing that original comprehensiveness.

At p. 54 the triad is one of several simultaneous accounts of the subject. It follows the duality of man and wife, Mercury and sulphur, and precedes the four elements ensouled with fifth essence. The primary margin labels it Trias, while another gloss insists that all are in one subject. The sequence is therefore not a chronological story in which body comes first, spirit second and soul third. It enumerates relations that the true subject already contains.

Spirit's mediating description is particularly precise. Soul is not simply substituted for body; a vehicle, dwelling and bond makes their relation thinkable. The following Salt, Mercury and Sulphur vocabulary supplies a corresponding chymical register. That juxtaposition supports a reading across the two triads, but the book's larger use of Spirit and World-Soul still has to be followed in context.

The later objection concerning metals shows why a triadic analysis alone cannot authenticate first matter. Opponents claim to separate silver and gold into soul or sulphur, spirit or Mercury, and salt or body, then to reunite them as their own regeneration field. Khunrath replies that even if the three could be obtained as proposed, they remain essential parts of specified fruits, not pri-material principles. The vocabulary is legitimate; the inference from a threefold separation to a universal beginning is not. The triad's significance depends upon the condition and origin of the whole to which it belongs.

Places to read

1599 p. 50Nature composes a little world from the greater world’s body, spirit and soul.
1599 p. 54Spirit is defined as soul’s vehicle, dwelling and bond with body.
1599 p. 54 · marginTrias and IN SVBIECTO VNO frame the triad within one subject.
1599 p. 65The same triad explains Nature’s composition of crude Mercury.
1599 p. 113An opponent applies soul, spirit and body to a separation of metallic constituents, continued on p. 114.
1599 p. 117Separated essential parts are distinguished from genuine pri-material principles.

Translation in this edition

The English preserves “spiritual bodies” and “corporeal spirits” where these occur in the metallic discussion rather than regularizing them into a modern matter/spirit opposition. They remain specified beings and do not automatically acquire the triad's catholic condition.

Source note

The p. 54 mediator clause is primary text. No independent medical or psychological theory of a human body–soul relation is supplied by this non-human material context.