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 wordMercury may name running quicksilver, a traditional principle, or mercurial matter.
- In the Golden ChainThe author makes their distinction a major test of competent reading.
- Translation“Running mercury” and “universal mercury” must remain distinct.
- A place to readB1C23S041–043: the explicit rejection of literalized principles.
Meaning
Mercury is among the most deliberately unstable names in the Golden Chain. It can mean the familiar running metallic substance; it can also designate a principle or a degree of mineral matter. The author warns explicitly that the mercury sign applied across animals and plants cannot mean that liquid quicksilver is physically present in every subject. The same warning applies to sulphur and salt (B1C23S041–042).
Its exact correspondence also varies with the explanatory scheme. In one account growing alkalization produces a mercurial substance; in another the volatile principle of animals and plants receives the traditional mercury sign. The vocabulary should therefore be read relationally and locally, not reduced to one universal equivalence table that overrides the author’s own distinctions (B1C15S005; B1C17S004; B1C23S042).
Use in the book
The author acknowledges the ancient claim that mercury, sulphur, and salt are principles of metals while disputing a literal account of their immediate manufacture. Finding or artificially producing running mercury from a metal does not prove that nature first made that metal from running mercury. Otherwise every derivative product—water, precipitate, salt, oil, or spirit—could be mistaken for an original principle. The distinction between natural genealogy and accidental laboratory transformation is central to his criticism (B1C15S005; B1C23S041–043).
Mercurial names appear within the mineral sequence itself. Sulphur that loses burning combustibility may be called mercury or, more properly in that passage, arsenic. Fixed marcasitic material can likewise be described as true mercury, while a pebble is called an alkalized mercurial viscous substance. These usages concern degrees of mobility, fusibility, and fixation. They warn against translating every such phrase as a claim about quicksilver content (B1C23S012; B1C23S046; B1C23S050).
The final chapter’s alkahest discussion brings these ambiguities together. Mercurial subjects are sought because they can associate with acidic and alkaline natures, but must be made sufficiently saline, sharp, and watery to work. The author includes arsenicals, marcasites, realgars, and flowing or coagulated mercuries among the candidates, then describes divergent traditions of preparation. Mercury is therefore part of the explanation to be investigated, not a self-explanatory secret ingredient. His criticism of costly attempts to extract running mercury from every metal makes that point especially explicit (B2C10S023; B2C11S001–004).
Places to read
- Book I · Ch. 15 · §5Traditional mercury, sulphur, and salt are not simply rejected.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §12A mineral degree may be called mercury or, more properly, arsenic.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §42Universal mercury is distinguished from running quicksilver.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §43Artificial derivation does not prove natural original composition.
- Book II · Ch. 11 · §1A broad class of mercurial subjects enters the alkahest argument.
Translation in this edition
Mercurius and mercurialisch are genuinely attested technical forms. “Living” or “running” mercury narrows the reference toward quicksilver, whereas “universal” and the symbolic principle require a broader reading. The author sometimes uses several names for one operative state and sometimes one name for different relations. The edition preserves that complexity; a lexicon should explain the shifts rather than silently regularize them into modern elemental mercury everywhere (B1C22S040; B1C23S041–043).