Colours and peacock’s tail

Use in the book

At pages 71–722 Khunrath anticipates an appeal to blackness and various peacock's-tail colours in preparations and on the glass. They prove nothing by themselves about being on the right road to the Stone or a transmuting tincture. Experienced chymists know that many other substances display wonderfully varied colours. The repeated marginal warnings emphasize insufficiency, not a denial that the colours are visible. Another and fuller ground in Nature is required.

The next claim is marked Opinio in the margin before Khunrath reports it. Some people link the rainbow's covenant-sign to divine power descending through the air and to a seed upon water, citing the peacock's tail and the sulphur of steel. Page 73 rejects their interpretation of universal matter and the Philosophers' peacock's tail. It does not disclose an alternative modern substance. Nor should the reported theory be made into Khunrath's own explanation merely because it occupies a vivid paragraph.

Other appearances make the same distinction concrete. Page 126 allows that corrosive products stain wood and skin, then separates this colouring from the transmuting power of philosophical salts. The ruddy diadem of page 55, by contrast, is called the signature of highest perfection within the affirmative account of the Stone. The difference is contextual and causal: colour has evidential force only in a properly grounded account of the subject and its qualification.

The marginal dawn-figure adds another diagnostic image. Page 70 says the true Aurora will not be seen from the described corporeal mercuries in that manner. The gloss continuing from page 120 onto page 121 makes the rising Aurora dependent on the required treatment of corporeal mercuries. Dawn is an image of the hoped-for philosophical emergence, not a separately specified colour-stage that this companion can reconstruct.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 55The ruddy diadem is called a signature of perfection within the affirmative account of the completed Stone.
2. 1599 p. 70 · marginThe true Aurora or dawn is denied to the stated treatment of corporeal mercuries.
3. 1599 p. 72Colours alone are insufficient proofs; a fuller natural ground is required, before an opposing rainbow theory is reported.
4. 1599 p. 73Khunrath rejects the reported understanding of the universal matter and peacock's tail.
5. 1599 p. 121 · marginThe continuation of the page 120 gloss ties the rising Aurora to proper treatment of corporeal mercuries.
6. 1599 p. 126Colouring wood or skin is explicitly distinguished from transmuting lower metals.

Translation in this edition

The modern note on page 71 supplies the customary Latin label cauda pauonis and a usual position before whitening. Neither should be silently imported as a fixed stage sequence stated in this passage. Likewise the note's identification of sulphur of steel with a particular film is editorial interpretation; the primary text here names it within the opponents' reported analogy.