Distillation

Use in the book

At p. 21 rainwater is said to contain all colours despite its outwardly almost white appearance. Repeated distillation through an alembic, followed by drying the apparatus, is offered as a simple example: many colours appear within it (I.021.1). The author adds the less elaborate observation of glass that has lain in rain and then dried in the sun. Distillation here belongs to an argument about what water contains. The passage does not identify each colour with a distinct prepared tincture or insist that this demonstration completes the art.

Part One also distinguishes undistilled water’s evaporation. Rainwater left in an open vessel is said to disappear entirely, and this is offered as evidence of its spiritual nature (I.019.2). Evaporation in an open vessel is not the same operation as repeated passage through an alembic. The distinction should survive translation, even though both observations support the author’s wider claims about water.

The opening of Part Two supplies a pointed contrast. Sendivogius is quoted imagining Hermes, Geber and Raymond Lull returning to a world with innumerable distillations, circulations, calcinations and other operations. Modern practitioners might treat them as pupils, yet still lack the one thing those earlier masters accomplished: the stone or natural tincture (II.055.1). Multiplying procedures is not equivalent to understanding principles. The quotation establishes the proem’s concern with wrong theory producing wrong labours.⁷²

At p. 164 the author says even simply distilled May dew can help in feverish illnesses (II.164.2). The concession follows an explicit denial that May dew is the precise subject of the Hermetic art. A useful distillate therefore need not be the universal medicine. This is a concrete instance of the distinction between particular benefit and identity with the central subject.

Places to read

1. Part I · I.019.2; I.021.12Undistilled evaporation and the separate alembic demonstration of colours.
2. Part II · II.055.1Many operations contrasted with the absent philosophers’ stone.
3. Part II · II.164.2A particular medicinal claim for distilled dew after the subject has been distinguished.

Translation

The forms destillirt and destillirte belong to ordinary distillation vocabulary. Destillationes is the Latin plural in the quoted proem. “Distilled” is not silently added when the source merely speaks of rainwater or a spirit prepared from it. Likewise, “evaporate” is kept for the open-vessel observation instead of making every departure of moisture a distillation.

Connections

Colours explains the inference made from the dried alembic. Dew and Universal and particular clarify the limited concession concerning May dew. Knowledge and practice supplies the wider point of Sendivogius’s comparison: procedural sophistication can coexist with ignorance of the proper subject.

Cautions

The observations are not modern analytical proofs that all possible colours or medicinal powers reside in water. The medical statement is the author’s assertion. Neither the alembic example nor the dew concession supplies an adequate practical protocol for the universal work, and no hidden sequence of distillations should be invented to fill that absence.

destillirt

destillirt — distilled. I.021.1.

destillationes

destillationes — distillations. II.055.1.

destillirte Mayenthau

destillirte Mayenthau — distilled May dew; inflected phrase. II.164.2.