From the book
Centrum Naturae Concentratum
Attributed to Ali Puli · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordBody, spirit and soul name three mutually dependent aspects of created matter. Their union produces a fourth, the love-seed or centre of powers.
- In the bookThe creation account moves from one watery chaos to three parts, from those parts to generative unity, and from living creatures back to threefold dissolution. Human life and the later matter called TESSA renew this pattern without repeating every correspondence unchanged.
- In this editionThe printed order is body–earth, spirit–water, soul–air. “Love-seed” keeps the source’s affectionate and generative compound; it is not replaced by the more familiar sulphur–mercury–salt scheme.
- A place to readThe Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18–The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19, where the inadequacy of each part alone explains why their union is needed.
Meaning
Body, spirit and soul are a threefold ordering of created matter, not merely three faculties of a person. In the creation passage the correspondences are body–earth–fixed, spirit–water–flowing and soul–air–volatile. Love-seed names the fourth born of their union, not another independently existing element.
The series in The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 is ordered: “Leib, Geist und Seele, Erde, Wasser und Lufft”. Reading the terms in their printed sequence matters more here than assigning a universal alchemical meaning to each noun. “Love-seed” then shifts the grammar from enumeration to generation. What the three bring forth together is both a seed, from which creatures arise, and a centre of powers, through which their constituents act as a unity (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19). The fourth is not introduced as a detached addition to three self-sufficient things.
Use in the book
The narrator describes God distributing a single watery chaos into three parts. None can subsist without the other two. Their interdependence is expressly compared to that of the Godhead, but the passage still describes created matter. Reading the comparison as an identity between physical components and divine persons would erase the distinction between the creator’s act and its result. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18.)
Each part is inadequate by itself to receive the luminous moving power: the fixed body is too coarse, the flowing spirit too unstable and the volatile soul too subtle. Their union produces an appropriately receptive fourth, called both love-seed and centre of the powers. Its description deliberately frustrates a simple question such as “Which element is it?” It wets and flows, contains earth and is tangible, yet combines earth, air and water rather than being a pure specimen of one. The apparently contradictory qualities explain why the unified constitution can receive the power that none of its constituents could properly receive alone. The fourth is consequently not just a fourth item in an elemental list (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19).
Creatures of all three kingdoms arise from this unified seed through the warmth of movement. At their end they return to air, water and earth. The movement from threefold differentiation into generative unity and back provides the general pattern of nature’s continuing cycle. The next paragraph extends the importance of a viscous beginning to seeds, bodily decay and material opening, although its first sentence contains a printed negation that contradicts the surrounding argument. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 20.)
The same vocabulary later organises human life, but the distinctions must be followed afresh. Two inbreathed lives receive their own centres, and the body has another appetite for its maternal sources. The human being’s threefold nourishment is an image of God. Near the conclusion, the matter called TESSA is again a son and seed of three, presented as generated within the human body. The recurrence links the larger creation account to the human site of the sought material without making every occurrence of “spirit” denote precisely the same thing. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 35, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 50.)
Places to read
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18German“Leib, Geist und Seele, Erde, Wasser und Lufft” The source supplies the ordered correspondence of its threefold scheme.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18German“keines von diesen 3. ohne die andern 2” Mutual dependence, not three self-sufficient substances.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19German“einen rechten Liebes-Saamen und Centrum der Kräffte” The fourth is the unified generative centre.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19German“aus der Einheit in die Dreyheit” The creature’s return completes the proposed cycle.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 20German“wenn sein Saame nicht ein viscosum ist oder wird” A textual difficulty: the printed negative opposes the surrounding claim.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 22German“Ausfluß der 3. principiorum” The same triadic generation appears within the sacred-history mirror.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 35German“eine Dreyfachheit in dem Menschen” The human pattern involves threefold life and nourishment.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 50German“ein Sohn und Saamen von diesen dreyen” The concluding matter is described by a renewed triadic birth image.
Translation in this edition
The modern edition specifically cautions against substituting the familiar alchemical sulphur–mercury–salt triad for the printed body–spirit–soul correspondence. “Love-seed” retains the compound’s generative and affectionate language. The supplied translation preserves the defective negative in paragraph 20; the lexicon explains the surrounding doctrine without silently repairing the historical text. This is not a general dictionary equation of Geist with water or Seele with air outside these local correspondences.
“none of the three could subsist without the other two” renders an explicit dependence, not merely a recommendation that they should cooperate (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18). The phrase should be read alongside the later “from unity into threeness”, which describes the return of creatures to their constituents (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19). One phrase explains their need of one another; the other traces the direction of a change.
The problematic negative before viscosum in The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 20 is preserved as a problem, not silently translated away. The related short record below explains what the surrounding account says about viscous seed while keeping the defective sentence distinct from a corrected conjecture.
Printed forms
Leib
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “Leib, Geist und Seele”
Body, paired in this cosmological passage with earth and fixity.
Geist
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “Leib, Geist und Seele”
Spirit, paired here with water and flowing mobility.
Seele
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “Leib, Geist und Seele”
Soul, paired here with air and volatility.
Chaos
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “aus dem einigen Chaos”
The original undivided watery matter from which the threefold order is formed.
Zusammenwürckung
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “mit ihrer Zusammenwürckung”
The coordinated action of the three mutually dependent parts.
Liebes-Saamen
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19 — 1682 p. 18. “einen rechten Liebes-Saamen”
Love-seed, a fourth born from the union of body, spirit and soul.
Dreyheit
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 19 — 1682 p. 18. “aus der Einheit in die Dreyheit”
Threeness, the differentiated state to which generated creatures return.
3. principiorum
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 22 — 1682 pp. 20–21. “Ausfluß der 3. principiorum”
The three principles as named within the mirror of creation.
wässerigen Schleime
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “Chaos, oder wässerigen Schleime”
Watery slime, the source’s gloss for the single chaos before threefold differentiation.
fix
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “fix, fliessend und flüchtigen”
Fixed, the quality aligned with body and earth in this local correspondence.
fliessend
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “fix, fliessend und flüchtigen”
Flowing, the quality aligned with spirit and water in this local correspondence.
flüchtigen
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 18 — 1682 p. 17. “fix, fliessend und flüchtigen”
Volatile, the inflected quality aligned with soul and air in this local correspondence.