Macrocosmic microcosm

Use in the book

At p. 50 Nature's subtle catholic separation and composition brings body, spirit and soul from the great world into one proper pri-material Chaos. The resulting subject is a little world because its constitution gathers the greater world's constituents in a single being. It remains macrocosmic in origin and character: a world-derived world in miniature. The primary margin repeats the exclusion of a human interpretation, making it an emphatic authorial distinction.

This description follows the argument that the subject has its own catholic being, neither vegetable, animal, mineral nor metallic. The little world is therefore not a sample of one particular kingdom selected to represent the others by metaphor alone. Its comprehensive nature is precisely what supports its universal alchemical role. The next sentence calls it the Son of the great World, begotten from the world's seed and like its parent in first-world-beginning essence and matter. Microcosm and sonship describe related aspects of the same account: internal comprehensiveness and material derivation.

The numerical sequence then unfolds what this unity contains. One Mercury, a complementary pair, a triad of body, spirit and soul, and four ensouled elements are all in one natural subject. Although the word microcosm does not recur in that sequence, it provides a close explanation of why the subject can be described under several counts without becoming a mixture assembled by the Artist.

The larger theological comparison uses “lesser world” differently. At pp. 56–572 the lesser world is expressly the human race, whose Preserver and Saviour is Christ; the Stone's corresponding sphere is the greater world and its fruits. The reader must therefore distinguish the specifically chymical non-human microcosm from this anthropological lesser world. Their coexistence is part of Khunrath's analogical vocabulary, not a reason to cancel the explicit qualifier on p. 50.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 49The subject has its own catholic being outside the specified kingdoms.
2. 1599 p. 50Nature’s composition is named a macrocosmic, non-human microcosm.
3. 1599 p. 50 · margin2The primary gloss repeats non humanus, sed macrocosmicus.
4. 1599 p. 54Several numerical analyses are gathered within one natural subject.
5. 1599 p. 56The larger analogy uses the lesser world for the human race, distinguished from the chymical microcosm.

Translation in this edition

“Great-Worldly, not a Human, little World” preserves the deliberate compounds in the supplied English. The modern note contrasts this with customary human-microcosm language; the secure local point is Khunrath's explicit negation, which requires no wider historical generalization.