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Ascent, descent and sublimation

montee; descente; sublimation; secrete sublimation

Ascent and descent connect spatial movement, changes of consistency, increasing purity and the acquisition of heavenly and earthly powers.

From the book

Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordAscent and descent connect spatial movement, changes of consistency, increasing purity and the acquisition of heavenly and earthly powers.
  • In Sal LumenIn the cosmological hierarchy pure substance rises towards its origin while excrement sinks.
  • In this editionThe English “secret sublimation” preserves the source’s intentionally nonstandard classification.
  • A place to readPure substance’s ascent toward origin and excrement’s descent.

Meaning

Ascent and descent connect spatial movement, changes of consistency, increasing purity and the acquisition of heavenly and earthly powers. Sublimer can mean to perfect, not merely to send a vapour upward. The author uses both senses and explicitly classifies operations by their action, so no single modern laboratory definition can govern every occurrence.

Use in the book

In the cosmological hierarchy pure substance rises towards its origin while excrement sinks. This explains the upward striving of animals and plants and the contrast between higher and lower dwellings. Yet art’s digestions and sublimations also lead a material toward greater purity. Within the discussion of operations, sublimation is distinguished from violent calcination; its need for force is conditional upon particular attachment to fixed dregs, with exceptions where impurities remain behind by themselves.

An especially important extension is “secret sublimation.” The author calls purification through water and filtering a sublimation because it elevates the material toward perfection, although it is a washing rather than a vaporous ascent. Conversely, he places alembic distillation among sublimations because it proceeds by elevation. His terminology therefore depends upon both movement and purifying purpose.

The Emerald Table’s ascent is interpreted still more pointedly in Book II’s fourth chapter. The writer denies that this local ascent means rising to the vessel’s summit. A fixed subject is renewed in dissolution through its own spiritual portion; its airy condition is called heaven, and subsequent congelation its descent into earth. The final conjunction must retain spiritual volatility and bodily fixation, not simply abandon one for the other. This local explanation does not cancel the genuinely upward operations elsewhere called sublimation.

Sonnet III repeats the passage from earth to heaven and back, receiving the powers of both little by little. Sonnet VIII transfers corresponding movement to two purifiers, divine and natural. The analogy of two restorations is not a claim that both are one material operation.

Places to read

  1. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 9Pure substance’s ascent toward origin and excrement’s descent.
  2. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 13Digestions and sublimations as Nature’s paths to renewed purity.
  3. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 32Conditional force and exceptions within operational sublimation.
  4. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 33Water-mediated secret sublimation and alembic reclassification.
  5. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 12Subliming expressly understood as perfecting.
  6. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 21The ascending subject within the regeneration argument.
  7. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 23The local denial of vessel-top ascent and explanation through consistency.
  8. Sonnet 3 · Unit 1Heavenly and earthly powers gathered through ascent and descent.
  9. Sonnet 8 · Unit 1Corresponding movement of two distinct restorers.

Translation

The English “secret sublimation” preserves the source’s intentionally nonstandard classification. Its note on distillation clarifies the difference between washing and alembic ascent. The phrase “au sommet du vaisseau” must remain attached to the particular interpretation that denies it, rather than becoming a universal prohibition on spatial ascent.

Attested forms

s’eslever; s’affaisser; digestions & sublimations; sublimation; secrete sublimation; sublimer proprement; montee au Ciel; au sommet du vaisseau; par les congelations qu’elle redescend en terre; De la terre elle monte au Ciel; Du Ciel elle descend; au Ciel derechef revolé