Catholic Sea

Use in the book

Page 128 does not leave its maritime image wholly unexplained. After quoting the direction that one’s labours should be in salt, Khunrath asks which salt is meant and where to obtain it. He answers by locating the catholic salt in the Philosophers’ catholic ocean and immediately naming that ocean Magnesia. The passage converts a potentially misleading familiar substance-name into a relation between salt and its designated universal source.

The description continues on page 129 through a cited authority: the sea is a compounded, congealed water that withstands fire, broad, great and good. Its apparently contradictory character as a congealed yet aquatic source belongs to the philosophical terminology. The adjacent margin places permanent water at the beginning and end of the work.

The earlier catalogue is a useful control. Page 68 names sea-salt alongside common salt, nitre and sal ammoniac as materials used in preparing metals. Khunrath later denies that the resulting preparations independently reach first matter. Replacing the philosophical ocean with the ordinary sea would disregard the explicit identification and collapse precisely the distinction he labours to maintain.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 68Sea-salt occurs as one ordinary preparation material.
2. 1599 p. 128The Philosophers’ catholic ocean is expressly identified as Magnesia.
3. 1599 p. 129The sea is described through an authority as compounded, congealed water enduring fire.
4. 1599 p. 129 · margin2Permanent water is located at the work’s beginning and end.

Translation in this edition

“Catholic” should not be omitted as ornamental: it distinguishes a universal philosophical source from the ordinary maritime material named earlier. The page 129 authority’s wording is quoted by Khunrath; the margin’s beginning-and-end formula is his own framing.