From the book
The Golden Chain of Homer
Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Anton Joseph Kirchweger) · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordRemoval of moisture, whose extent and manner change a body’s receptivity, stability, or accessibility.
- In the Golden ChainDrying can prepare fixation and renewed imbibition, yet excessive or misplaced heat can destroy the intended relation.
- TranslationThe source distinguishes drying, coagulation, and fixation even when the operations are closely joined.
- A place to readB2C05S021, where sun, rain, drying, and renewed thirst provide a model for the work of art.
Meaning
Drying is a body's losing moisture. The loss can make matter more collected and enduring, prepare it to receive another portion, or remove the liquid instrument through which its implanted spirit acts. The term therefore cannot be reduced to one universally desirable endpoint. A body may need to be dry for one stage and moistened again for the next.
Drying is also distinct from complete burning. In several passages the author wants water to leave while acid, oil, and other essential portions remain. A force that carries these away or turns the subject into charcoal has altered the operation's meaning. The intended retention matters as much as the visible disappearance of liquid.
Use in the book
B1C10S005 gives an early caution. The moist earthly residue is still young and insufficiently fixed, so continuing the first distillation to complete dryness would burn it. Its subsequent preparation is described differently. The passage shows why a dry appearance cannot be separated from the means used to obtain it or the maturity of the subject. What can endure stronger treatment later may be damaged at an earlier stage.
B2C05S011–B2C05S014 makes drying part of repeated reception and consolidation. The earthly body becomes thirsty for its own moisture, and further drying accompanies coagulation and reverberation. B2C05S021 explains the model through sun and renewed rain or dew: nature alternately dries and supplies moisture while each body takes what it needs. The author argues that trying to make all accompanying water permanent is both unnecessary and wasteful. Drying here serves selective retention rather than the total abolition of moisture from matter.
B2C05S031 explains another effect: depriving a concentrated spirit of its watery workshop leaves it sleeping until a suitable moisture awakens action again. Yet B2C10S014 makes very dry mineral bodies difficult to attack unless an appropriate inner moisture can be awakened. B2C05S079 also distinguishes the sought medicinal saline stoniness from a stone deprived too far of saline radical moisture. These qualifications show that dryness, fixity, solubility, and asserted medical usefulness do not automatically increase together. The author's therapeutic ideal depends on their suitable relation, and its claimed benefits remain historical rather than clinical evidence.
Places to read
- Book I · Ch. 10 · §5An immature residue should not be burned by excessive drying.
- Book II · Ch. 5 · §11Drying prepares an earth to receive its own moisture.
- Book II · Ch. 5 · §21Solar drying alternates with natural replenishment.
- Book II · Ch. 5 · §31Loss of watery instrument suspends further activity.
- Book II · Ch. 10 · §14Extreme dryness can make mineral opening difficult.
Translation in this edition
Exsiccation and Exsicciren occur alongside ordinary German forms such as ausdörre. The latter is an inflected form, glossed here by the corresponding English action rather than reconstructed as an unattested headword. The edition’s ordinary “dry” can therefore stand for both Latin-derived and German wording.
Drying describes the loss of moisture; coagulation the gathering into a body; fixation the acquisition of comparative endurance. The source often joins the three because they cooperate, yet their distinction explains why a dry body can still be volatilized, a coagulated salt can dissolve, and a concentrated medicinal preparation can require a watery vehicle again.