From the book
A Chymical Dictionary
Gerhard Dorn and John French · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe alchemical practitioner defined through discrimination and separation.
- In the bookThe entry therefore supplies more than a label for a person who owns apparatus.
- A place to readThe historical definition below, 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 43; facsimile PDF page 371.
Historical definition
Spagirus or spagiricus is someone who knows how to distinguish good from bad and separate pure from impure: a chemist or alchemist.
Meaning
The definition gives a competence before it supplies the occupational equivalents. Knowing how to distinguish and separate identifies the practitioner. Good and bad are paired with pure and impure, connecting judgment with the handling of materials.
Use in the book
The entry therefore supplies more than a label for a person who owns apparatus. It makes the success of the art depend on recognizing what should be retained and what should be removed. This is especially useful beside Quintessentia, where purity is raised by separation, and Regulus, where the pure metallic portion remains after dregs are removed.
The parallels should preserve their subjects. Quintessence is described through living things; regulus through metals or minerals. Spagirus names the artist’s discriminating skill across such operations, without declaring all resulting products identical. Saphirea materia offers another connection: its liquid is free of corruption because the pure has been separated from the impure.
Good and bad can also describe the valuation of practitioners. Sophistæ sometimes praises a master of an art and sometimes condemns a deceiver. That neighboring distinction helps readers see why the dictionary’s occupational vocabulary needs attention to both ability and evaluation.
Places to read
- SpagirusRead the complete historical definition and its commentary.
- QuintessentiaA purified spiritual matter obtained from living things.
- RegulusThe purified metallic or mineral portion after separation.
- Saphirea materiaA liquid defined through purity achieved by separation.
In this edition
Chemist modernises Chymist in the historical definition. Its meaning is governed by the seventeenth-century gloss and should not be read as a claim that the practitioner occupies a present-day scientific profession. The article retains alchemist alongside it because the source gives both. The forms Spagirus and spagiricus remain directly findable.
Source note
Historical source. 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 43; facsimile PDF page 371 — Facsimile