From the book
Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici
Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Meaning
Cabacet is the form retained in the supplied French account of the vessel associated with the dragon’s teeth. The English renders a cabasset helmet, preserving the fact that the passage makes a shape-comparison rather than naming a modern piece of apparatus.
The supplied note reports an enlarged-print reading and cites Richelet’s 1759 dictionary, page 371, for Cabacet/cabasset and the helmet sense. That is the apparatus’s supporting evidence; this lexicon has not independently collated the dictionary entry. The historical form remains searchable as Cabacet, with cabasset as an English/editorial access form. The gloss should not be expanded into construction instructions or a claim to have identified a standard modern vessel.
Places to read
- Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 33The bulls are interpreted as furnaces, and mastery of fire is tested by Nuysement’s reported loss of eight of nine vessels. Cadmus’s killing of the dragon signifies fixation of universal mercury. The field of Mars becomes a vessel whose helmet-like form is contrasted with Polydorus’s glass alembic; the familiar growth figured as spear-bearing soldiers is deliberately left unnamed.
Attested forms
Cabacet
Supplied apparatus
Supplied edition, notes 243