From the book
Centrum Naturae Concentratum
Attributed to Ali Puli · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDesire may be sustaining or destructive. Will is the centre from which desire proceeds and by which a life receives, redirects or refuses what sustains it.
- In the bookThe early rebuke of acquisitive desire is followed by a positive account of longing for one’s source. Freedom makes both reception and refusal possible; the fall is described through wrong appetite and a closed soul-mouth.
- In this edition“Desire” for Lust fits the local relation to nourishment. The text’s compressed account of eating and heavenly death is not translated as praise of the fall.
- A place to readThe Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34–The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 37: follow will, longing, nourishment and refusal together.
Meaning
The desire-family has no single fixed moral value. Desire can be a creature’s sustaining orientation towards its source, the sweetness of proper life, or the acquisitive and destructive movement from which the reader must withdraw. Will names the centre from which these orientations are generated or redirected.
The text explicitly pairs Sehnung oder Lust, “longing or desire” (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34). That pairing is a guide to sense: the passage concerns a life reaching towards its nourishing origin, not merely pleasure or sexual appetite. The same account then gives will, desire and spirit familial names. These names help describe a relation of coming forth, but do not establish a key by which every father, son or spirit elsewhere in the collection has the same meaning.
Use in the book
The book initially asks the reader to still the desire for the philosophers’ stone and to refuse pride and self-love. That warning does not mean that every form of desire is evil. In the creation of human life, each inbreathed power forms a will to seek what it came from, pictured as a child longing to feed from its mother. Proper desire sustains a relation of origin and continued nourishment. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 8, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 10, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34.)
The narrator elaborates this through a familial triad. Will is father; longing or desire is the son born in the centre of life; spirit proceeds from the two as the power to live through divine and aerial exhalation. The body likewise has will, desire and power to live from its maternal elements. These local correspondences explain the account’s recurring birth language, but should not be turned into a universal dictionary in which every father means will or every son means desire. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 35.)
Freedom turns the nourishing family-image into an account of responsibility. A life’s source explains what would sustain it, but the centres are not compelled to receive their food from God, air and earth. The will may draw its gentle, luminous desire back into itself, redistribute it through its properties and produce an unsuitable appetite; it may also close its mouth and stop receiving altogether. These alternatives prepare the next paragraph’s descriptions of the human fall as both wrong eating and self-suffocation. The account is not merely saying that desire became stronger, and the resulting loss of heavenly life is not a blessed attainment (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 36–The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 37).
The ethical remedy reverses the orientation without making the will sovereign over grace. God’s spirit is presented as available before the soul, like air before the bodily mouth, and willing to be gently received. The will draws it in; the divine spirit performs the warming and tincturing. The will is receptive and responsible, while the saving agency remains God’s. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 12.)
The examination of a true natural vocation therefore asks whether a person struggles against an evil will and loves God and neighbour. The test is not whether one has a strong appetite for unusual knowledge. Desire becomes legitimate through its object, manner and relation to service. This is why curiosity about the stone can be rebuked while diligent inquiry into nature is encouraged for particular readers. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 14, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 15.)
Places to read
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 8German“Hoffahrt, Eigen-Liebe, und der Welt-Liebe” Disordered desire is specified ethically, not treated as a neutral intensity.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 10German“stillet eure Begierde” The immediate object is the search for the philosophers’ stone.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 12German“von deinem Willen mit stillen und sanfften Sausen” The will receives the spirit rather than replacing its agency.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 14German“in Streit stehen mit ihrem bösen Willen” A test for the would-be investigator’s vocation.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 32German“leiblich gemachten Liebes-Begierde” The positive desire of love participates in the account of human creation.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34German“welches war ein Wille” Will constitutes each inbreathed life’s centre.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34German“die Sehnung oder Lust” The source itself pairs longing and desire.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 36German“ihr Wille war frey” Freedom is stated as the absence of compulsion to receive proper food.
- The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 37German“ihrer Seelen Mund zugethan” The fall is represented as shutting the soul’s receptive mouth.
Translation in this edition
The English translation uses “desire” for Lust in the account of the centres, where a purely sexual rendering would be misleading. “Delight” remains relevant where enjoyment is in view. The modern note on “selig gegessen und himmlisch gestorben” explains the compressed expression as loss of blessedness and heavenly life, using the sentence’s own account of suffocation. It is not evidence that the narrator praises Adam and Eve’s act.
In The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34 the explanatory “or” between longing and desire links two expressions locally. It does not make every occurrence of Lust elsewhere reducible to one English word. The translation follows the immediate object and role of the desire.
At The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 12 the will’s quiet reception and the spirit’s subsequent warming remain separate actions with different agents. Preserving that sequence prevents a paraphrase in which human willing itself supplies the grace that the source attributes to God’s spirit.
Printed forms
Wille
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34 — 1682 p. 27. “welches war ein Wille”
Will, the centre’s continuing orientation towards its source and nourishment.
Sehnung
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34 — 1682 p. 27. “die Sehnung oder Lust”
Longing, the desired movement born from will.
Lust
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34 — 1682 p. 27. “die Sehnung oder Lust”
Desire or delight, morally variable and here initially oriented to sustaining life.
frey
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 36 — 1682 pp. 27–28. “ihr Wille war frey”
Free, describing the centres’ lack of compulsion to receive their proper nourishment.
Begierde
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 10 — 1682 p. 11. “stillet eure Begierde”
Desire, here the urge to acquire the philosophers’ stone that must be stilled.
Liebes-Begierde
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 32 — 1682 p. 26. “leiblich gemachten Liebes-Begierde”
Desire of love, represented as embodied in the creation of humanity.
Eigen-Liebe
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 8 — 1682 pp. 9–10. “Hoffahrt, Eigen-Liebe, und der Welt-Liebe”
Self-love as an ethically disordered return from patience and contentment.
Krafft
Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 34 — 1682 p. 27. “das war die Krafft”
Power: the spirit proceeding from will and desire enables life through divine and aerial exhalation.