Mines and mineral vapours

Use in the book

The author’s own synthesis on pp. 113–114 puts local conditions at the centre of specification. Veins and shafts can be pure or impure, warm or cold. After thickening, matter encounters a predisposed receiving material. One metal rather than another results according to these circumstances. The mine is not simply a container filled with finished metals; it is imagined as a differentiated environment within which the shared mineral basis acquires a particular condition.

At II.138.1 the vocabulary is gathered into a higher-level account. Mercury, Sulphur, Salt, Colostrum, Bergschwaden, Metallferck, Gur, and other names designate, in their respective cases, elements specified towards minerals and metals: mineral water and unripe metal or mineral. This passage supplies an interpretive principle for the earlier mining descriptions. The many names do not require many unrelated ultimate matters.

The reduction does not erase differences among stages. A vapour, an unctuous material, and a thickened mineral water have different roles in the narrated process. Their common grounding explains why the philosopher traces them back through the elements to God’s universal and substantial Word. The author is moving between local description and a general causal account, not claiming that each observed mine substance is physically identical in every respect.

Basilius Valentinus receives praise for writing plausibly about mines and metallic generation, especially through miners’ language. That praise concerns usefulness to the investigator. It does not revoke the narrator’s admission that even a celebrated mining master cannot give secure knowledge of the entire hidden process. Specialist language and conjectural restraint are allowed to coexist.

These passages also prevent a common mistake about the universal subject. A mine substance already specified towards a particular mineral is not, simply because it is called Mercury or a vapour, automatically the universal matter required for the highest work. The book’s larger distinction between universal and particular remains operative. Names must be interpreted by the state and role of the material they describe.⁹⁰

Places to read

1. Part II · II.109.2; II.110.12The proposed passage from vapour to sulphurous unctuosity and a metallic body.
2. Part II · II.110.2; II.113.12Thick mineral water and the role of local conditions and matrix.
3. Part II · II.114.1The value attributed to Basilius’s miners’ terminology.
4. Part II · II.138.1The gathering of named precursors into specified elements and unripe mineral matter.

Translation

Bergschwaden is rendered “mine vapours.” Metallferch and the variant Metallferck are retained as historical terms, with the functional gloss of an unctuous precursor. Gur is likewise retained rather than assigned a modern chemical formula.

Colostrum is a received name in the list. The lexicon does not infer that the mine material is literal milk or identify it solely through the modern medical sense of that word.

Connections

Mother and matrix concerns the receiving conditions that make particular generation possible. Generation of metals concerns the disputed models as a whole. Mercury philosophical explains why a principle-name cannot by itself identify a common terrestrial substance as the subject of the art.

The backward tracing of mineral precursors parallels the tracing of the carnation through plant, seed, earth, and water. Both are completed by reference to the universal and substantial Word; their different kinds of generation remain distinct.

Cautions

This is not a glossary of standard modern mining terminology.

The narrator marks his linkage to Artephius’s process as conjectural. The reported vapour theory should not be promoted into a documented account of Artephius’s own mining observations.

Vapor Naturæ

Vapor Naturæ — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.109.2.

Einwitterung

Einwitterung — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.109.2.

Bergschwaden

Bergschwaden — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.109.2.

Metallferch

Metallferch — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.110.1.

Gur

Gur — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.138.1.