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 wordSea salt here means salt in the sea, treated as a gathering and fixing region.
- In the Golden ChainThe sea links washed terrestrial salts, central vapours, and renewed nourishment.
- TranslationThis is an English access heading, not a distinct original technical name.
- A place to readB1C12S001: rivers, sea, and the historical fixation of nitre.
Meaning
Sea salt is used here as a convenient heading for the book’s discussion of salt in marine waters. The source does not establish a distinct technical substance under that exact English phrase. Its principal claim is that rivers dissolve salt and nitre from earth and carry them to the sea, where salt predominates because continual motion and solar action make nitre more fixed and alkaline (B1C12S001).
The account belongs to the author’s universal double-seed theory, not a modern explanation of ocean salinity. In that theory common salt and nitre are related degrees of a shared matter, and fixation can transform the more volatile nitrous member into an alkaline condition. The sea supplies a large visible example of that alleged passage while remaining part of a wider cycle (B1C12S001–002).
Use in the book
The sea first appears within the elemental and symbolic setting as part of the lower watery realm. The preliminary poem makes its continual course, together with sun, moon, and earth, participate in the conversion of the masculine nitrous Adam toward the fixed salt called Eve. The gendered image dramatizes complementary action and changed condition; it should not be taken as an additional separate chemical process beyond the prose account (PRE00S002; PRE03S002).
The plant chapter explains why marine gathering matters for land vegetation. Rain washes salts from steep mountains into streams and rivers; the well-salted sea is then said to penetrate toward the earth’s centre. Central heat makes vapour, whose heavier parts settle within earth while subtler portions rise to roots and finally the atmosphere. Mountain trees that receive little retained rain are thereby nourished through subterranean mineral vapours. This hypothetical circulation makes the sea a reservoir within the Golden Chain rather than its terminal drain (B1C22S011–013).
Salted marine conditions also support the author’s claim that vegetables can pass toward mineral fixedness: trees growing in water, especially the heavily salted sea, are said to become stone. More generally, the occurrence of nitre and salt in sea, lakes, soils, plants, and animals is used to reject their confinement to a merely mineral kingdom. Location in the sea does not create a fundamentally separate first matter; the same universal powers acquire local forms and degrees. These assertions should remain distinguished from present accounts of petrification or marine chemistry (B1C22S003; B1C23S006–009).
Places to read
- Book I · Ch. 12 · §1Rivers gather salts, while the sea is said to fix nitre into alkali.
- Golden-Chain Poem · §2Marine movement participates in the poem’s Adam-to-Eve transformation.
- Book I · Ch. 22 · §11The saline sea feeds the hypothetical central-vapour circulation.
- Book I · Ch. 22 · §3Salty marine waters appear in the example of vegetable petrification.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §6Marine occurrence does not confine universal salts to one kingdom.
Translation in this edition
The attested German terms are Meer and Saltz rather than an independent sea-salt headword established by the edition. Accordingly this entry does not invent a separate Latin technical equivalent or a special recipe. It also keeps “saltwater” distinct from a prepared spirit of salt: the author expressly argues that a bodily salt dissolved in water is not equivalent in action to a saline spirit. That distinction remains necessary even where both are connected with the same universal origin (B1C23S020–022).