Creation and imitation

Use in the book

Part I explicitly calls the Hermetic art an Imitatio und Nachahmung of the great work of creation (pp. 34-35, I.034.1). The immediate example concerns separation: God distinguishes the elements by higher and lower position without severing their mutual presence. Imitation therefore begins from an interpretation of what creation actually did. It is not permission to substitute any familiar laboratory separation for the divine model, since the very passage insists on a distinction between positional ordering and complete material division.³

The immediate issue arises among objections to a medicine prepared from rainwater. One objection says that possessing remote matter would allow the practitioner to create animals, trees and plants; another argues that people unable to make even a fly or little plant are still less able to make gold (pp. 126-127, II.126.2-II.127.1). These objections make creation a test of alchemical competence. The answer refuses that test rather than claiming that such creatures can in fact be manufactured.

The first step distinguishes the potential capacities of earth and water from the actual living kinds established by a particular command (pp. 129-131, II.129.2-II.130.2). In the author’s reading, God brings plants and animals forth in perfection, gives them a particular life and establishes reproduction by their own seed. The operator encounters the resulting order; he does not possess the power by which that order was first instituted.

On p. 131 the limit is stated without ambiguity (II.131.1). Human beings cannot create these creatures from water or earth, cannot alter the Most High’s holy order, cannot impart the same agency and operation to the elements, and cannot create those elements from nothing. The series is important. The argument excludes more than the making of a particular animal. It excludes treating art as a new source of the very constitutive powers that make the creatures possible.

The next paragraph rejects the inference that this defeats metallic tincture (pp. 131-132, II.131.2). Creating, or presuming to change nature and God’s order, is one thing; preparing, tincturing and proceeding according to nature is another. The answer therefore does not concede the opposition between art and nature assumed by the objection. It places a rightly conducted art within nature and distinguishes it from the mistaken activity of ordinary alchemists and sophists.

Mineral generation supplies the necessary difference between the cases (pp. 132-133, II.132.1). The author says that Scripture does not assign minerals a separate creative word, a particular life or a seed like those of animals and plants. Water and the elements consequently possess mineral nature actually as well as potentially. This is his explanation of why inability to originate a living kind does not prevent preparing a tincture that improves metals. The conclusion depends on his particular theory of minerals, not simply on the general possibility of human craftsmanship.

A corresponding restraint appears when the author discusses metal generation in mines. He calls its exact manner conjectural and distinguishes it from the operation of the art (pp. 107-114, II.107.1, II.112.2). Laboratory changes can suggest an account of generation, yet he refuses to turn colour sequences into a literal succession of natural metals. Imitating or assisting nature does not entitle the observer to treat every resemblance between vessel and mine as identity.

The closing warning against uninformed practice sharpens the point (pp. 234-235, II.234.1). Those who lack knowledge of nature, the philosophical principles, the origin and root of metals, and the matter of the Stone cannot reach the right process. Following nature is therefore a demanding intellectual condition, not a consoling phrase added after an arbitrary manipulation. The practitioner must know what he is acting upon and what sort of perfection that subject admits.

Places to read

1. Part II · II.126.2; II.127.12The objections that make animal creation a test of the art.
2. Part II · II.129.2; II.130.2; II.131.1; II.131.2; II.132.12345The full distinction between creation and preparation.
3. Part II · II.107.1; II.112.2; II.234.123Limits on analogy and the knowledge required for practice.

Translation

The edition uses create for creiren and erschaffen in this contrast, and prepare and tincture for præpariren and tingiren. Replacing all four with make would remove the author’s answer. In other contexts make may be perfectly idiomatic, but here the difference among the verbs is the point being argued.

Art follows nature is a useful summary when its qualifications remain in view. The source does not offer a freestanding definition of imitation at this point. The headword names the relationship developed through these passages, while the source terms above give the actual attested forms.

Connections

This distinction helps keep the book’s theological and practical claims connected. The universal Word supplies the beginning of natures; particular commands establish the order of living kinds; art works within that created field. The language of Nature and Efficient cause shows why the author can give God the primary agency without treating all created capacities as inert or irrelevant.

The headword also belongs beside Homunculus, but the argument here should be read before using the later rejection of artificial human generation as a general key. The present passage gives its own reasons concerning particular life and seed. A lexicon should allow those reasons to remain visible instead of replacing them with a broad claim that the book is either wholly hostile to experiment or wholly committed to unlimited human transformation.

Cautions

The book’s assertion that tincturing is natural remains a historical claim within its account of matter and generation. Explaining its logical role does not certify the reported production of gold or medicine.

Nor should the operator’s inability to create living kinds be softened into a temporary technical difficulty. The author places it within the enduring boundary between human preparation and divine establishment of nature. Conversely, that boundary should not be expanded into a rejection of every laboratory operation, which the same answer expressly defends.

creiren / und erschaffen

creiren / und erschaffen — Attested source wording; spelling retained. II.131.2.

præpariren / und tingiren

præpariren / und tingiren — Attested source wording; spelling retained. II.131.2.

agens und operari

agens und operari — Attested source wording; spelling retained. II.131.1.

der Natur gemäß

der Natur gemäß — Attested source wording; spelling retained. II.131.2.

Imitatio und Nachahmung

Imitatio und Nachahmung — The source itself pairs the Latin and German terms. I.034.1.