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 wordFirst being is an origin-state recovered by reducing a formed body, with the relevant origin specified by the context.
- In the Golden ChainAnimals return toward a saline-nitrous chaotic source; minerals may first return to a vitriolic or vaporous mineral state before further transformation.
- TranslationThe expression is relational: the first being of a mineral need not be the absolute first created state of the entire world.
- A place to readB2C09S012 distinguishes the mineral’s remote first matter from a further return that changes its kingdom or specification.
Meaning
“First being” names a beginning regarded as recoverable by return or resolution. In the account of animals, the first being of the universal limbus is glossed as saline-nitrous or chaotic nature, followed by water and vapour and renewed dew and rain. The phrase thus belongs to the argument that formed things can return toward the shared origin from which their matter came (B2C02S001).
Not every origin in the book is equally remote. A mineral can return to a salt, vitriol or vaporous liquor that is first with respect to its mineral formation. Continuing backward may turn it into vegetable, animal or universal matter and thereby change what it is. The reference-point must therefore be stated, not assumed (B2C09S012).
Use in the book
The first book establishes the broad rule: what is born from one source can dissolve toward that source again. Its description of chaotic water makes differences accidental conditions of digestion, volatility and fixation. Later mineral discussions apply the rule to a chain of saline and sulphurous transformations. Such passages supply a genealogy of material conditions; they do not require a hidden, unchanged object lying inside every body waiting to be mechanically extracted (B1C02S004; B1C15S004).
The second book presents destruction as backward passage through the same nature that generated a thing. Animals, putrefying plants and broken trees lose their particular coherence and re-enter a more general circulation. The author regards nitre and salt as especially important recovered forms of their beginning. These reported processes explain why origin-language occurs in accounts of rotting and dissolution as well as in the opening cosmogony (B2C02S001; B2C03S004).
The mineral example gives the sharpest limit to the phrase. A dissolved ore crystallizes as vitriol, called its remote first matter; further treatment yields a primordial vaporous liquor. Beyond that point the text says alteration and specification into something else must occur. This is a useful guard against claiming that “reduction to first being” always erases every particular identity in a single step. The book tracks stages, and one may remain mineral even when greatly subtilized (B2C09S012; B2C06S007).
Places to read
- Book I · Ch. 2 · §4Return to a common root underlies the reversibility of outwardly different natural conditions.
- Book I · Ch. 15 · §4The mineral discussion refers transformations back toward a very first being.
- Book II · Ch. 2 · §1The animal account explicitly glosses the first being as saline-nitrous or chaotic nature.
- Book II · Ch. 3 · §4The decaying tree returns toward nitre and salt within the author’s account of natural recycling.
- Book II · Ch. 9 · §12The mineral’s remote first matter and vaporous origin have a stated boundary before further specification.
Translation in this edition
Primum Ens is Latin for a first being; the full phrase primum Ens limbi universalis supplies its universal reference in the animal chapter. The gloss that immediately follows is more reliable than a free-standing metaphysical definition imported from another author (B2C02S001).
Liquor vaporosus primordialis is a description of the later mineral return, not an invitation to make all primordial terms interchangeable. “First being,” “first matter” and “primordial liquor” overlap in the backward argument while emphasizing being, material and condition respectively. Their neighbouring clauses decide their precise scope (B2C09S012).