Secundea and mediation

Use in the book

The opening universal patient provides the conceptual background. God creates a passive universal nature that bears his character, while the visible and invisible worlds correspond through their principles (p. 80 · Passage 2–p. 81). The later descriptions call the philosophical subject a mean aerial substance between thick and thin, neither wholly earthy nor wholly fiery (p. 85 · Passage 1). These accounts do not yet use Secundea, but they establish why a subject capable of receiving and communicating different orders can be called middle.

At p. 89 · Passage 1 the same broad family divides functions. Fire, air and water are intermediate distributors carrying the seed of spirit towards its material recipient. They are media because they convey, not because each is the final resting place of the influence. This occurrence warns against assuming that every middle mentioned in the book has exactly the same relation to the seed. A carrier between extremes and a containing universal matrix can both mediate while doing different work.

The creation account gives a clear three-term arrangement. Cloud or darkness is the first extreme; water into which it condenses is the middle substance; creatures made from water are the other extreme (p. 114 · Passage 1–p. 114 · Passage 2). The next qualification changes the frame: ordinary creatures are not a final endpoint, since they move towards corruption or a glorified condition. Human natural existence becomes the middle creation in that further comparison (p. 115). The word middle is therefore relational. Moving from one argument to the next changes what counts as an endpoint.

The magicians’ claimed purification of chaos culminates in the spiritual heavenly body, followed by the statement that they knew Secundea (p. 115–p. 116 · Passage 1). The passage binds knowledge of the mediating subject to the perception of life as fire embodied in moisture. It also preserves the analogy to divine containment. Knowing the second nature is presented as a privileged way of recognising the principles within generated things, not as reaching beyond God to a more original cause.

Near the close, Vaughan gives mediation an explicit elemental argument. Air is hot and moist, earth cold and dry; water’s coldness relates it to earth and its moisture to air (p. 132 · Passage 2). Yet water remains contrary to fire. Air then mediates this second opposition through its heat shared with fire and moisture shared with water (p. 133). The account makes a pattern of shared properties do explanatory work. It is more specific than saying vaguely that all contraries are secretly identical.

Vaughan immediately limits the success. The elements’ friendship is partial, weak and skittish; it needs a stronger mediator to preserve the creature’s incorruption. The next page identifies that blessed cement as the Spirit of the living God (p. 134). Spirit strengthens an existing natural disposition towards peace. A crucial hierarchy emerges: elemental mediation is real but insufficient, and divine mediation perfects rather than cancels it. Secundea, the containing second nature, must not be silently substituted for this divine agent. The body’s ordered material relation and the power that confirms its union are connected, not simply synonymous.

The soul’s role is then subordinated. It awaits its body’s perfection and is united to it by God. The cabinet-and-jewel analogy prevents a resident from being mistaken for the maker. Mediation in this book is thus both cosmological and causal: understanding where something stands is not enough without knowing what it does and upon what its action depends.

Places to read

1. p. 80 · Passage 2Original; p. 81OriginalUniversal passive nature is created in relation to the divine agent.
2. p. 85 · Passage 1OriginalThe subject is a mean nature between thick and thin.
3. p. 89 · Passage 1OriginalIntermediate natures convey spiritual influence towards its recipient.
4. p. 111OriginalVirgin water is called second nature after God.
5. p. 114 · Passage 1Original; p. 114 · Original marginal noteOriginal; p. 114 · Passage 2Original; p. 115Original; p. 116 · Passage 1OriginalWater, middle creation and Secundea occupy distinct relational frames.
6. p. 132 · Passage 2Original; p. 133Original; p. 134OriginalElemental mediation is explained and then declared dependent on a stronger divine reconciler.

In this edition

“Middle” in the modern text generally clarifies “mean,” which here does not denote moral baseness or numerical average. The edition retains Secundea and explains its sense as the second rather than replacing it with a familiar modern chemical name. At p. 116 · Passage 1 the adverbs naturally and spiritually must remain attached to their respective subjects. They carry the distinction between the second nature and God. At p. 133 “partil” becomes partial. The source’s difficult assertion that the principles agree in one quality and differ in two is preserved, not silently rewritten to fit an elementary chart. The secure local point is that natural agreement is insufficient, and the continuation names the Spirit that confirms it. A translation that smoothed away the limitation would change the argument’s reason for needing divine mediation.

Historical forms and local uses: second Nature — Virgin water or chaos as derived immediately after God in Vaughan’s order. (p. 111); Middle Nature — An intermediate substance between extremes. (p. 114 · Passage 1); Secundea — The second or mediating nature containing all things naturally. (p. 116 · Passage 1); friendly Third — Water’s partial reconciliation of contrary elements. (p. 133); Mediator — The stronger agency needed to confirm weak elemental unity. (p. 133).

Secundea

Vaughan defines this rare name by the kind of containment it performs. The magicians know a nature containing all things naturally; God contains all things spiritually. The parallel makes the second nature exalted without erasing its derivation. The term is therefore not simply a decorative synonym for God, nor a license to equate every mediating element with the entire universal subject.

Historical forms: Secundea — The second nature, comprehensive naturally rather than as God is comprehensive spiritually. (p. 116 · Passage 1).

Read: p. 116 · Passage 1 · Original.

Friendly third

Water acts as a friendly third between air and earth, but is itself contrary to fire. Vaughan therefore adds a second mediation through air and then judges the overall friendship insufficient. The image is relational and limited. A successful connection between one pair does not prove that every opposition in the compound has been permanently resolved.

Historical forms: friendly Third — An intermediary that reconciles two contraries through shared qualities. (p. 133).

Read: p. 133 · Original.

Anima Magica

The note stands beside the account of two extremes and a middle substance, which Vaughan says he has named elsewhere. The supplied annotation identifies the shortened title with his Anima Magica Abscondita. Its function is a cross-reference within his own works, not a second speaker interrupting the argument. The present entry explains only the relation supplied here and does not claim to have read the entire referenced treatise.

Historical forms: Anima Magica. — An original marginal reference to Vaughan’s earlier treatment of middle nature. (p. 114 · Original marginal note).

Read: p. 114 · Original marginal note · Original.

Countenance of the triad — Triadis Vultus ante Essentiam

Vaughan says the magicians saw the image of the face named in this phrase, not simply that they saw the unmediated divine essence itself. The distinction between image and its source matters beside the following Secundea comparison. The edition renders the phrase literally and identifies Vaughan’s received Zoroastrian oracular attribution, without making the difficult expression a transparent modern account of the Trinity.

Historical forms: Triadis Vultus ante Essentiam — The countenance of the triad before essence, whose image the magicians are said to see. (p. 116 · Passage 1).

Read: p. 116 · Passage 1 · Original.