From the book
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe Spirit's “lodging” is the material dwelling God and Nature have already provided.
- In KhunrathThe figure's premise is not that the Spirit is absent from Nature.
- In this editionRender Losament as lodging and einzulosiren as quartering or billeting to preserve the practical social figure.
- A reading distinctionThe p. 86 citation is explicitly to Wisdom 12:1 and calls its speaker the Wise Man.
Meaning
The Spirit's “lodging” is the material dwelling God and Nature have already provided. Khunrath's opponent imagines catching the most secret Spirit of the World from air or firmament and attracting it into a matter arranged for the purpose. The reply on pp. 84–8623 calls the imagined fugitive a flutter-spirit and mocks the proposed operation as needless quartering.
Use in the book
The figure's premise is not that the Spirit is absent from Nature. On the contrary, Khunrath repeats Wisdom's assertion that the imperishable Spirit is in all things. The distinction is between its particular and its universal dwelling. To find it fit for the universal work, one must recognize the catholic lodging, which the author names Magnesia. Mere omnipresence gives no right to choose an arbitrary container and call the result universal.
The opponent's demand is dramatized: Doctor Khunrath is asked to catch it, and answers with nonsense syllables and the question whether it has rained fools. The continuation denies that one can attract, conjure or fetch the Spirit afresh in the proposed way. It has already chosen and prepared a material lodging under divine ordinance. The vocabulary of quartering thus sets the Artist's presumption against an arrangement already made.
The “flutter” and “swarm” images make the argument sound deliberately undignified. The Spirit being proposed by the opponent resembles that opponent's own hornet-fancies, and the firmament becomes his Swarmament. Khunrath does not thereby withdraw his positive claims about the Spirit of the World or inspired wisdom. He denies this proposed account of where and how the required agent is to be obtained.
The passage returns to action at p. 86: recognize the natural catholic dwelling, take it in hand and treat it chymically with divine grace. The alternative to fantasy is thus a rightly located subject and appropriate work, not the abandonment of material practice for purely inward devotion. Nothing in the paragraph identifies a modern substance to collect from the atmosphere or provides a working method for doing so.
Places to read
- 1599 p. 20The Spirit is granted to be in all things but catholic only in the one proper subject
- 1599 p. 84The proposal to catch it from air or firmament is reported and mocked
- 1599 p. 85The Spirit’s prepared lodging is opposed to the imagined flutter-spirit and arbitrary new matter
- 1599 p. 86The scriptural presence in all things leads to the command to recognize the catholic dwelling
Translation in this edition
Render Losament as lodging and einzulosiren as quartering or billeting to preserve the practical social figure. “Flutter-spirit” is a deliberately awkward equivalent for Fladdergeist. The doubtful word before “after his own kind” on p. 86 should not be used to establish a more precise technical relation.
Source note
The p. 86 citation is explicitly to Wisdom 12:1 and calls its speaker the Wise Man. Identifying that speaker as Solomon would be a traditional or editorial attribution, not a name supplied in the passage. The unresolved printed form TSEIN at p. 84 remains unresolved in the edition. Its uncertainty does not affect the clear reported proposal or the lodging argument that follows.