Hermaphrodite

Use in the book

The phrase at p. 6 refuses a choice between one, two and three. The one catholic subject is hermaphroditic and triune because these words describe different relations within its unity. The triune universal gift derives from this Son under a triune regimen, for a triune use and end. The opening does not yet unpack all those correspondences, but it establishes that unity must not be mistaken for featureless singleness.

The numbered account at pp. 53–542 makes the dual relation explicit. The Philosophers' one is their catholic crude Mercury; their two are man and wife, active and passive, Rebis and twofold Mercury, further explained as Mercury with the Philosophers' sulphur. These are not two foreign substances which the Artist may choose independently. They are naturally comprehended and catholicly hidden in the one subject already supplied by Nature. The following triad and four elements extend that analysis without cancelling the pair.

The hermaphroditic designation also belongs to the Son whose relation to the greater world is later defined through seed and substance. It sits at the meeting point of generation, composition and theological analogy. The text does not, however, offer a separate anatomical description or a social theory of gender. Its local work is to name complementary generative principles and their conjunction in the subject.

The later distinction between true Rebis and a supposed double Mercury extracted from metals guards this account against an easy material shortcut. A thing is not the required pair simply because two constituents can be named or combined. The proper duality belongs to the pri-material field itself. The article therefore reads “Hermaphrodite” through the book's internal explanations, while leaving the larger history of alchemical hermaphroditic figures outside the evidence provided here.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 6Hermaphroditic qualifies the triune catholic Son of the greater World.
2. 1599 p. 50The Son is generated from the world’s seed and substance.
3. 1599 p. 53The one crude Mercury introduces the numerical unfolding continued on p. 54.
4. 1599 p. 54Man and wife, working and suffering, explain the pair within the one subject.
5. 1599 p. 121The true Rebis is distinguished from double Mercury sought in corporeal metals.

Translation in this edition

The supplied English retains “Hermaphroditic” rather than converting it into a modern identity label. Its note treats the term as cosmological, chymical and Christological together; the primary wording securely establishes the first two relations and places the title within the book's wider theological analogy.