From the book
Nine Books on the Nature of Things
Attributed to Paracelsus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Meaning
The metallic enemies are said to mortify, dissolve, calcine, corrupt and reduce metals to nothing. This series describes several aspects of destructive transformation, not five independently defined modern reactions. Mortification and death belong to the work’s broader way of describing the end of a material condition. What is harmful when preserving a metal may elsewhere be deliberately sought as part of preparing or changing it.
Places to read
- Book 3 · Preservation · Passage 4Latin“mortificent, dissolvant, calcinent, corrumpant”