DiotimosReading Desk

Highest stage and first beginning

supremus gradus; primum initium; primus gradus; initium; supremus; primum

Putrefaction is first called the highest stage and first beginning of generation, and the next paragraph calls it the first stage and beginning.

From the book

Nine Books on the Nature of Things

Attributed to Paracelsus · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Browse this book’s lexicon →

Meaning

Putrefaction is first called the highest stage and first beginning of generation, and the next paragraph calls it the first stage and beginning. The juxtaposition of height and beginning belongs to the source’s emphatic valuation of a generative threshold. It should not be silently repaired into a tidy sequential scale. The passage is explaining putrefaction’s importance, not giving an independently complete numbered hierarchy of operations.

Places to read

  1. Book 1 · Generation · Passage 1Latin“supremus gradus & primum initium”