From the book
The Golden Chain of Homer
Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Anton Joseph Kirchweger) · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordCentral heat is the interior or subterranean heat that drives terrestrial vapours and contributes to mineral formation.
- In the Golden ChainIt complements solar warmth, but the author also attributes an implanted warmth to all elements independently of either external assistance.
- Translation“Central” belongs to the book’s account of earth’s interior; it should not be reduced to a claim about the modern planetary core.
- A place to readB1C09S003 distinguishes implanted warmth from the added action of the sun or subterranean central heat.
Meaning
Central heat is one of the author’s principal explanations for upward movement from earth and water. It drives vapours into the region of air, where they meet the downward heavenly influence. The term is therefore first encountered within a circuit: earth does not simply receive above, but sends material upward through heat and exhalation (B1C02S003).
The book distinguishes this subterranean contribution from the warmth implanted in the elements themselves. In its account, every small body contains heaven and therefore movement; such movement may work imperceptibly even when neither sun nor subterranean central heat is added. “Central heat” is an important agency, but not the sole source of every form of natural activity (B1C09S003).
Use in the book
The cosmological chapters use central heat to explain the restitution of losses. Earth, filled with incoming water, expels surplus moisture as vapour into air. This completes an exchange in which heaven and air descend, while earth and water ascend. The lower heat thus serves the regeneration of Chaos and the continuing nourishment of the four elements, rather than an independent process unrelated to the universal seed (B1C06S004; B1C09S006).
In the mineral account, intensity and duration matter. The author links central heat to the progressive binding, coagulation and fixation of subterranean matter; stronger or weaker digestion gives different results. The source’s model treats ores, sulphurous materials and metals as stages of a generative process. These are historical explanations within the book, and a lexicon should preserve their sequence without converting the names into a modern account of mineral species (B1C23S012–B1C23S014).
The second book again places heat above and below: the sun acts from above and central heat from beneath, as the author illustrates by winter warmth in cellars. Later the rising mineral vapours are said to lose their strongest corrosiveness before reaching vegetable roots. Central heat thereby helps explain the transition from subterranean mineral activity toward vegetable nourishment. Its role joins cosmology, agriculture and the author’s medical preparation theory (B2C03S001; B2C10S002).
Places to read
- Book I · Ch. 2 · §3Central heat drives vapours from the earth-water sphere upward into air.
- Book I · Ch. 9 · §3Implanted warmth is distinguished from the supplementary action of sun and subterranean heat.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §12Different strengths of subterranean digestion explain stages of mineral fixation in the author’s account.
- Book II · Ch. 3 · §1Solar heat above and central heat below participate together in the destruction of a tree.
- Book II · Ch. 10 · §2Rising mineral vapours are transformed on their way toward vegetable nourishment.
Translation in this edition
The German Central-Hitze and Latin calorem centralem are forms within a mixed technical vocabulary. “Central” is spatial in the terrestrial passages, indicating an interior source whose vapours move toward higher regions. It should be distinguished from the conceptual “central point” from which the reader proceeds to a circumference in the explanation of first matter (B1C02S003; B1C02S004).
Nor is central heat the same expression as Calor nativus, the native heat said to have departed from a dead tree. Both participate in the book’s wider theory of warmth and life, but one names the subterranean contribution and the other an organism’s preserving condition. Keeping the expressions separate makes the destruction narrative clearer (B2C03S003).