Emmaus

Use in the book

This is one of the book's sharpest accounts of concealment. The obstruction is not the material's total physical absence or an inability to pronounce its name. Ordinary acquaintance and profound failure of recognition can coexist. The comparison continues onto p. 45, where only the few whom God permits recognize the thing, though everyone knows it. The object appears mean and contemptible to the undiscerning.

The surrounding demonstration matters. Khunrath proposes to identify one natural thing to which human art has not yet been applied, and to show that it belongs to the universal first matter. The Emmaus parenthesis explains how such a thing could be publicly available yet remain the Art's secret. Its function is therefore epistemic and theological, not a claim that readers must travel to a secret location.

The p. 45 margin asks the observer to lay aside haughtiness before Magnesia, where true wisdom and good knowledge dwell naturally and theosophically. This adds a disposition appropriate to the encounter without cancelling the earlier claim that recognition depends upon divine mercy. It also distinguishes this blindness from the final emblem's refusal to see despite abundant aids. Both oppose mere availability to actual understanding, but they do not assign precisely the same cause of failure.

The scene should not be used to solve the hidden name. Khunrath tells the reader that an ordinary name exists while declining to give it. The passage explains why possession of that name would not itself amount to the recognition for which the treatise argues.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 44Universal visibility and ordinary naming are contrasted with divinely withheld recognition
2. 1599 p. 44 · margin23Luke 24:16 explicitly grounds the comparison with held eyes
3. 1599 p. 45The same thing is familiar to all but recognized by very few
4. 1599 p. 45 · margin2The observer is told to lay aside haughtiness before its treasure of wisdom

Translation in this edition

Maintain the distinction between “known” and “recognized” even when English repetition feels awkward. The primary passage makes that distinction the point. “Hidden” here need not mean physically concealed, and “unknown” without qualification would contradict the statement that everyone knows the public name.