Physical-artificial Wonder-working Being · Lexicon

From the book

Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordThe Ens Physico-artificiale MIRIFICVM is the Stone as a physical and artfully prepared wonder-working being.
In KhunrathThe term first appears in the defence of the Stone’s existence.
In this editionThe hyphenated “physical-artificial” reproduces the conjunction in the Latin; “artful natural being” can explain it but should not replace the indexed form.
A reading distinctionThe supplied modern note on page 26 records a conjectural reading in the German clause about whether each possessor prepared the object.

Meaning

The Ens Physico-artificiale MIRIFICVM is the Stone as a physical and artfully prepared wonder-working being. The full phrase occurs in the primary margin of page 25; the shorter Ens mirificum continues the body’s argument on page 26. “Artificial” refers to Art’s contribution, not falsity, and “being” does not mean an independently described person or spirit.

Use in the book

The term first appears in the defence of the Stone’s existence. Khunrath alleges repeated contemporary experience of a powerful high medicine used, and sometimes misused, by various people. The pages do not name the persons and places. His next inference is that even where a possessor did not prepare the wonder-working being himself, someone must previously have prepared it. The object cannot, he says, simply have sprung out of the air.

This is a claim about the relation of possession to manufacture, not documentation of either. The later argument returns to the same distinction from the other direction: a tingent can possess a tincture without knowing its matter or being able to prepare it again. The term therefore belongs to an important separation between the prepared agent, the act it is said to perform and the knowledge of its current user.

Page 55 calls the final catholic Stone wonder-working after lawful composition with Vulcan’s help. Page 160 again gives the wonder-working Stone as the end of many preparations, opposing those who claim lasting metallic transformation from raw matter. Its wonderful powers do not remove the need for work; the description presupposes a rightly prepared subject.

The phrase also helps hold natural and theological registers together without confusing them. Khunrath’s Stone is claimed as Nature’s highest good through Art and compared with sacred wonder-working elsewhere. Yet the technical adjective identifies an artful natural preparation. A historical account should preserve that ambitious claim without validating the alleged wonders or replacing the practical argument with a purely spiritual allegory.

Places to read

1599 p. 25 · margin2 3The full physical-artificial wonder-working designation is applied to the Stone.
1599 p. 25The term accompanies a claim of contemporary experience of the powerful medicine.
1599 p. 26Possession without personal preparation is used to infer an earlier preparer.
1599 p. 55The wonder-working catholic Stone is the outcome of lawful composition with Vulcan’s help.
1599 p. 156Possession of a tincture is distinguished from the ability to prepare it again.
1599 p. 160Extensive preparation is required before the wonder-working Stone can be invoked against the raw-matter boast.

Translation in this edition

The hyphenated “physical-artificial” reproduces the conjunction in the Latin; “artful natural being” can explain it but should not replace the indexed form. “Wonder-working” is an attributed capacity in the historical claim. The unnamed contemporary examples on pages 25–262 must not be converted into independently verified experiments.

Source note

The supplied modern note on page 26 records a conjectural reading in the German clause about whether each possessor prepared the object. The argument’s broad contrast remains clear, but exact quotation of that clause should retain the edition’s uncertainty.