Heat, moisture and tempering

Use in the book

The winds show changing qualities within one material account. Solar spirit is dry and hot, while mercurial silver-like water is hot and moist. Yet the author immediately says quicksilver is cold and dry in its first preparation and nature, then describes its progress through dry, moist and hot states (17r; scan 53). Its apparent contradiction is explained by stage rather than silently corrected.¹²⁷

The continuation makes northern cold/dry wind clear clouds, while southern moist/hot wind fills air with clouds and rain. After resolution the vessel contains vaporous spirits that rise, condense into water and become tincturing; at a prior point mercurial wind is too cold for the same vapor movement (17v; scan 54). The meteorological picture is an explanation of operations inside the vessel.

The hostile central spirits bring contrary qualities against bodies: they freeze the hottest, burn the coldest, dry the moist and condense the airy (57v; scan 142). Their harmful action demonstrates that a material power is not useful merely because it is strong. The work must choose and order qualities rather than maximize violence.

The suffering-body account extends the opposition. A passible, incorruptible subject can receive freezing and burning, water and disease throughout its parts in the same interval (71r; scan 169). This is the author's theological-material comparison, whose purpose is to imagine durable reception of contrary agents rather than prescribe their use.

The conjunction chapter turns directly to preparation. Viscous water and subtle earth join through tempered fire; moist is moderated by dry and dry by moist. Care must keep the matter from departing from the appropriate elemental complexion, while the spirit is gently drawn out of its heterogeneous entanglements (103r–103v; scans 239–240).

The correct fire is then distinguished from fire as such. Artificial or elemental, actual or potential fire does not automatically perfect the work. Too much intensity makes it a tyrant bending the subject to its will; excessive relaxation leaves it without effective dominion. The next page calls for a friendly strengthening power that coaxes incorruptible essences free while preserving harmony (104r; scan 241).¹²⁸

The corpse account gives cold a more particular formative role. Warmth helps putrefaction release humid, unctuous vapors; after their movement through earth they coagulate through surrounding cold air into a corpse-like shadow (115r–115v; scans 265–266). Here cold's action is not equivalent to the destruction of all form, and the resulting appearance is not the rational soul.

The closing explanation again requires proper union. Cold earthiness prevents fusion, volatile humidity resists permanence, and the moist/unctuous must join the pure/dry for quintessence's perfection (132v; scan 300). The source's many qualitative contrasts converge on proportion, preserved capacity and the difference between an agent's power and a successful work.

Places to read

1. Manuscript 17r · Scan 53Mercury's qualities change with the stage of preparation.
2. Manuscript 17v · Scan 54Winds, vapor and resolution inside the vessel.
3. Manuscript 57v · Scan 142Contrary qualities in the harmful central spirits' action.
4. Manuscript 71r · Scan 169Simultaneous opposed afflictions of a passible subject.
5. Manuscript 103v · Scan 240Tempering and the danger of excessive or insufficient fire.
6. Manuscript 104r · Scan 241A friendly strengthening fire preserves harmony.
7. Manuscript 115r · Scan 265Warm putrefaction and vapors later coagulated by cold.
8. Manuscript 132v · Scan 300The final proper union of moist/unctuous with pure/dry.

Translation

Chaleur is heat, froid cold, humide moist and sec dry. Tempéré and the repeated forms of tempérer are kept as tempered and tempering. The English follows the changes of state rather than forcing one permanent elemental label on mercury.

Intention and rémission in the fire passage are rendered intensification and relaxation. Analipticité remains the provisional French reading; the following complexion supplies a related clear phrase but not a secure replacement word. Borus remains the manuscript's north-wind name rather than being silently standardized.¹²⁹

chaleur

Attested: H001-S171; H001-S265. Heat whose effect depends on the subject and stage.

froid

Attested: H001-S053; H001-S142; H001-S169; H001-S265. Cold in clearing, destructive and coagulating contexts.

humide

Attested: H001-S053; H001-S240; H001-S300. Moist condition, joined or opposed to dry.

sec

Attested: H001-S053; H001-S240; H001-S300. Dry condition within the qualitative balancing.

tempéré

Attested: H001-S240. The regulated fire and reciprocal tempering.

complexion

Attested: H001-S240. The constituted elemental condition to be preserved.