DiotimosReading Desk

Editorial terms and cautions

Annotation attachment versus actual lexical location

A modern note’s attachment point and the historical location of the word it discusses are not always identical.

From the book

Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Meaning

A modern note’s attachment point and the historical location of the word it discusses are not always identical. Note 125 is attached to II.2 S017, while refournissement occurs in S018. Note 127 is attached to S018, while the Pimandre invocation lies in S019. These are annotation-placement facts, not extra attestations of the words in the earlier units.

The same care is needed in II.3. Note 154, attached to S017, anticipates the Phoebus-and-Python interpretation in S018. Note 156, attached to S020, discusses the eighteen-line quotation in S019. Note 157 records a page-boundary condition within the aligned S020 text; it should not be used to truncate the supplied complete unit. The first-book correction note likewise follows some of the words it reports.

References in this lexicon identify the historical passage containing the term or argument; supplied note numbers identify the modern explanation. Repeated passage IDs in the later apparatus are not additional body locations. Physical source-PDF page references therefore point to the matched bilingual passage, not every occurrence of its identifier elsewhere in the volume.

Places to read

  1. Book Two · Chapter 2 · Unit 17Earth is a supporting vessel and storehouse rather than the nutritive substance retained in generation. Separation aims to vivify by freeing seeds from suffocating excrements; the death discussed is expressly natural, not violent or forced. Continuous stellar action distributes life according to each species' composition, adding life to life with powers of increase and restoration.
  2. Book Two · Chapter 2 · Unit 18Unfailing supply brings preservation and replenishment; embodied first matter renews itself like a luxuriant dragon/serpent and persists after washing/burning. A hypothetical objection about vicious qualities receives a two-influence answer.
  3. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 17Second birth frees powers formerly buried; the old-Adam prison supplies analogy. The author resumes definition: substance is essential/pure, excrement accidental/corruptive, and only excrement should be removed from passible sublunary things.
  4. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 20Fiery subtle matter rises into immortal rounded heavens; earthly mixtures retain corruption. Original first matter is argued not to be purely unmixed, since generation needs difference and a patient. Dregs are co-born sisters, not consubstantial, even when matter looks clear.
  5. Book One · Chapter 1 · Unit 5Purified minerals generate perfection in their like, not like bodies; living parts and life-giving heavens support a living whole.
  6. Book One · Chapter 1 · Unit 6Self-moving world soul guides circular heavens; individual lives participate in the complete world-animal and hidden elemental seeds.
  7. Book One · Chapter 1 · Unit 7Visible and hidden seeds, unsown growth and alleged parentless animals support shared life; plant-animals complicate categories.
  8. Book Two · Chapter 2 · Unit 19Natural stellar influence preserves universally and remains fixed; accidental influence varies with positions and aspects, touching effects and bodily surfaces rather than inward matter. First matter retains the natural celestial powers in its earthing.
  9. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 18Earth formed from central dregs contains true substance. The author explicitly decodes Phoebus killing Python as innate dryness absorbing excess moisture through natural heat. The hidden spirituous substance is properly called earth here and embodies according to individual ideas. It is never idle but ceaselessly occupied in generating and vivifying: empeschee à does not mean prevented from. Nuysement then introduces his own Alençon ode.
  10. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 19In eighteen quoted verse lines the spirit separates heavy/light and night/day, balances a colder heavy round earth with water/air, then pours in soul and world-seeds, making earth the fruitful nurse of heaven and fires.

Supplied apparatus

Supplied edition, notes 47, 125, 127, 154, 156, 157