Sap and venom, sweet and bitter salt · Lexicon

From the book

Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordSap and venom name opposed nourishing and destructive powers in Sonnet V.
In Sal LumenThe first quatrain places seeds of death as well as life in the general spirit, calling for double attention and double admiration.
In this editionThe new English preserves “having the same effects” after emergence and “has received” in the final condition.
A place to readRead the two tercets consecutively: emergence preserves the opposed effects, while received preparation conditions the wholly-good claim.

Meaning

Sap and venom name opposed nourishing and destructive powers in Sonnet V. The double sap sustains; the double venom consumes. Sweet and bitter salt, kindly virtue and harsh vehemence carry the contrast into another set of terms. These repeated doubles are not an instruction to reduce the poem to two ordinary ingredients or to assign one modern chemical identity to each side. In les fait tous consommer, venom is the cause and bodies are what waste away; consommer does not here mean that bodies consume or ingest the venom.

Use in the book

The first quatrain places seeds of death as well as life in the general spirit, calling for double attention and double admiration. The second specifies the opposed effects upon bodies. The poem does not reserve harm for an entirely unrelated adversary outside the subject: its unprepared condition includes both capacities.

The first tercet makes the chronology explicit. These faculties exist before the spirit emerges from its limbus and chaos, and the same effects persist when it is drawn out upon the earth. Mere emergence or extraction is therefore not identical with purification. This is the crucial transition which a simple “hidden good released from earth” summary would miss.

Only the final tercet introduces the change: but when the spirit has received the separation of sap and venom through preparation, then it is wholly good and wages war on every ill. The spirit receives the separation; it is not independently named as the agent performing it. “When” and “then” make the universal-good claim conditional on preparation. That is the author’s philosophical-medical assertion, not a present guarantee of efficacy or a sufficient account of safe preparation.

The poem belongs with the book’s other distinctions between like names and unlike effects. In III.18, salt against a disease caused by salt is defended through differing faculties, not by denying the shared name. The sonnet’s sweetness likewise concerns a proposed native quality, not added sugar masking a dangerous substance.

Places to read

Sonnet 5 · Unit 1Read the two tercets consecutively: emergence preserves the opposed effects, while received preparation conditions the wholly-good claim.
Book Three · Unit 18Like salts are distinguished through contrary effects in the closing medical argument.
Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 27The earlier sweetness discussion concerns a native quality, not added sweetener.

Translation

The new English preserves “having the same effects” after emergence and “has received” in the final condition. Those choices retain both chronology and agency. It also leaves the twofold terminology repeated rather than replacing sap, venom, sweet salt and bitter salt with a single abstract good/bad pair. The supplied annotation identifies limbus as an enclosing matrix, not the theological limbo of souls.

Attested forms

Double force; suc ou par venin; Le suc double; Le venin double; sel doux & amer; vertu benigne; aspre vehemence; Mais quand il a receu; separation; par preparation; Lors tout bon; à tous maux; suc; venin; Le venin double aussi les fait tous consommer; consommer