Purity, penetration and duration

Use in the book

I.3 derives differing durations from differing receptivity to celestial power: a purer disposition admits influence more deeply. II.2 distinguishes penetration and remaining from merely touching the surface, as water passing over a field may fail to nourish its depths. II.3 accordingly demands two powers together. A substance too gross cannot reach the centre; one subtle but fugitive cannot stay there. The sought remedy is therefore both penetrating and sufficiently fixed. II.3.26 further insists that nothing can be brought to purity or fixation without the operations of fire; this is the author’s asserted condition, not a modern treatment recommendation.

II.4 extends this conjunction to body and spirit. Preservation is not achieved by discarding one to save the other. The proper fire and earth must be retained, and the spirit's useful volatility is not identical with the separable corrupting sulphur. The initially mobile subject must acquire a more lasting union, while the body participates in the spirit's powers. Gold's natural durability is an example, not proof that ordinary gold supplies every promised virtue. The tincture, rather than the empty carcass remaining after its loss, carries the argument for vivification.

The degrees are explicit. II.4.10 distinguishes a principal from its accessories and a head from its members: an accessory receives 'quelque duree', while the principal approaches perpetuity. II.4.13 still says born things must end. Later ascent and descent describe purification, altered consistency and intimate conjunction, not necessarily movement to the top and bottom of a vessel. Even apparently contrary actions must conserve the sought substance rather than consume it. The account of Stygian water and Aeson's renewal intensifies this rhetoric but does not erase Book III's limit on bodily immortality.

III.11 gives the negative test: the life in ordinary food is not perfectly fixed and cannot resist the destructive fire indefinitely. Fixity here means effective persistence of nutritive life. The common language of duration is thus distributed unequally among ordinary food, natural durable bodies, the prepared subject and the human life it allegedly assists.

Places to read

1. Book One · Chapter 3 · Unit 2Multiform Mercury distributes life according to material predisposition; purer receivers admit celestial heat more deeply and last longer.
2. Book One · Chapter 3 · Unit 3Gold’s own mercury/sulphur are purified seed-fluid slowly coagulated under heat, which mothers tinctures and supports solar fatherhood.
3. Book Two · Chapter 2 · Unit 12Subtle action must penetrate and remain, not merely touch the surface.
4. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 26Life's nourishment must both enter fine passages and remain stable rather than flee. Fire is asserted indispensable to both desired medicinal qualities.
5. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 13Nature preserves toward perpetuity but all things beginning must end. Relative fixation and integrated digestion explain stag/raven/oak/gold durability; death divides what union resists.
6. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 18Dragon’s restless motion illustrates spirit. Fixation gives tincture, claimed as life; blood redness, plant green, and metal colour reveal perfection or disorder.
7. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 20Tincture is pure substance and deprived body residue; patient gradual calcination retains spirit. Haste loses tinting spirituality, requiring renewed spirit; spirit colours by fire as means.
8. Book Three · Unit 11Insufficient fixity makes food-borne life vulnerable, connecting bodily sustenance to the book’s retention vocabulary.
9. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 1God foresees corruption and establishes remedies; spirit/body compounds share damage, with spiritual loss glossed as lost life-giving powers. Human beings are recipients and instruments of divine glory.
10. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 6Creator produces and conserves; creation is hidden, preservation accessible at least to illuminated recipients. Christ is pattern; heaven/stars cause influences through which spirit embodies in earth and distributes virtues.
11. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 7Christ’s ocean and Nature’s universal source exceed derivative powers; specific medicines remain commendable. Earth is matrix and treasury; God transcends natural laws; Trismegistus is first after Flood according to some.
12. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 10A hidden qualitative reading replaces moist coldness with warm dryness; death/blackness precedes impassible renewal, as seeds and Christ’s grain analogy illustrate.
13. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 11Morien’s fixed grain must blacken/putrefy. Reasoning should seek creator through excellent creatures; mortification preserves the subject and Christ’s body/natures. Elevation first predominates, then fixed retains volatile with assisting heat.
14. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 12Birds/dragons picture fixation and volatility; plants rise yet are restrained by own earth. Desired spirituality is not corrupting volatile sulphur; subliming means perfecting; fixability is potential until art helps.
15. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 14Art surpasses Nature only under her guidance, separating foreign parts and digesting homogeneous union. Already specified bodies cannot yield the original virtue, so source must be sought in earth.
16. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 19Art raises gold’s natural colour to dark red tincture for limited projection; ordinary gold cannot alone perfect metals or preserve humans. Heat consumes impurity not substance; author distinguishes sages’ mercury.
17. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 21Vessel-burial and resurrection mean putrefaction/purification/fixation. Fixation perpetuates tincture and drives out combustible sulphur; regulated external heat assists internal sulphur without prematurely expelling pure spirit.
18. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 22Objector asks how fixed subject can sublime again. Wax wings, Daedalus/Icarus, and Phaethon’s course warn against extremes and presumptuous haste; author promises a plain explanation.
19. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 23Ascent does not mean vessel-top rise: reserved spirit dissolves fixed matter into airy consistency, then decoction/congelation returns it to earth. Repetition unites smallest parts while spirit remains volatile and body fixed.
20. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 24French quatrain explains unprinted Latin verses; perfected body penetrates and purges. Hermaphrodite/Salmacis embrace figures conjunction; immovable Delos and offspring figure fixation of Sun/Moon-containing matter.
21. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 30Saturn represents universal renewal; genealogy and attributes are decoded. Opponent proposes lead, salt, cupels; author allows some fit but claims his own reading fits all.
22. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 33Bulls are vented furnaces; author reports eight of nine vessels lost. Cadmus killing dragon means fixing mercury; field of Mars is specified vessel, not glass alembic, with unnamed spear-like growth.
23. Book Two · Chapter 4 · Unit 34Dragon sleep means renewed solution/fixation. Prepared mercury alone lacks double efficacy until final fermentation with solar butter. Burning water is life not vine; apparent inflammability/venom conceals fixed power.
24. Book Three · Unit 18Ordinary medicine’s learned practitioners are faulted for surface action. The oat-root example leads to salt against salt-caused calculus, differentiated by effect; a corrosive objection receives a conditional concession.
25. Book Three · Unit 12The claim of preservation is expressly not bodily immortality.

Translation

The English 'fixed' has to be read with its grammatical subject. III.11's 'n'est parfaitement fixe' concerns life in food, whereas III.18's 'maladies fixes & rebelles' describes persistent, recalcitrant diseases, not diseases that have undergone an alchemical fixation. Likewise, 'approaches perpetuity' in II.4.10 is stronger than some duration but weaker than a categorical statement of endless life. The translation's comparative and limiting words are essential evidence, not expendable rhetoric.

Word family

Pureté, penetration, fixation, conservation, duree and perpetuation: related but distinct powers. Exact historical spellings are listed separately.

Attested forms

plus nette & pure predisposition; plus durable & incorruptible; plus profondement; le plus net & depuré; penetrer; moindres parties; quelque pose; penetration; fixation; stable & non fuyante; pureté, ny fixation; operations du feu; conservation, aspirante à une perpetuité; quelque fixation & consistance durable; Le but de la fixation; la teinture est le but de la fixation; n'est parfaitement fixe; resister aux assauts; conservation; duree; perpetuation; quelque duree; s'approchera de la perpetuité; maladies fixes & rebelles; fixe; pureté; perpetuité