Sea and terrestrial waters

Use in the book

The question at p. 156 states the difficulty plainly (II.156.1). Rainwater is an all-embracing subject from which medicine and tincture may be prepared; could the same be done with other waters upon and within the earth? The answer does not deny the earlier thesis that the waters remain unchanged in themselves. It adds that one is clearer, thinner, subtler or more powerful than another, and that different waters were assigned different places (pp. 156-157, II.156.2).

The same answer distinguishes water above heaven, rainwater, and sea and terrestrial waters. Animal, vegetable or mineral nature may predominate in different waters. These are not merely locations on a map. Place and predominant power are correlated within the author’s account, so a common name water cannot establish identical practical function.⁴⁶

The Bier narrative supplies an example with two uses. A court physician reports a transparent emerald-like mass from a special water, and later reports a grain of gold at the vessel’s bottom (pp. 157-158, II.157.1). The author takes the grain as bodily gold. The observation is made to support mineral nature in water, yet it also marks this water as unsuitable for the art’s living and spiritual metals. Evidence for mineral generation is not automatically evidence for a philosophical tincture.

At p. 158 the author explains the restriction through specification of the world-spirit (II.158.1). The deep earth is mineral, and the universal spirit immediately specifies itself there. Such waters contain dead and bodily metals rather than the living philosophical metals required by the art. The spirit’s universal receptivity is therefore compatible with a presently restricted mineral condition.

The particular blessing and command supplies another reason (pp. 158-159, II.158.2). The art requires elements that have not received it. Waters associated with the generative charge may remain universal in themselves but are particular in property within the relevant order. Their density is an additional impediment. No single ground replaces all the others.

The earth above our heads sharpens the location criterion (p. 159, II.159.1). Water upon or within the ground cannot, on this account, supply that philosophical earth. The chapter’s conclusion therefore excludes sea and terrestrial waters, as well as anything that has touched ordinary earth, from the universal medicine and effective tincture (p. 161, II.161.1). The exclusion concerns this proposed universal work, not a blanket denial of every medicinal use of every terrestrial substance.

Places to read

1. Part II · II.156.1; II.156.22The objection and distinction among waters.
2. Part II · II.157.1; II.158.12Bodily gold and the specified mineral world-spirit.
3. Part II · II.158.2; II.159.1; II.161.123Blessing, density, location and the final exclusion.

Translation

The source distinguishes bodily from spiritual and living metals. Those expressions are retained rather than modernized into impure and pure gold. The author’s issue is generative and operative nature, not merely an assay percentage.

Terrestrial waters covers the source’s upon and within the earth. It does not imply that every water now classified as groundwater has been analyzed or individually tested by the author.

Connections

Bier and Generation of precious stones develop the reported preparation; Gold living and Gold ordinary develop the decisive difference between kinds of gold. Rainwater and Heavenly water follow the alternative waters whose positions and properties are contrasted here. The entries preserve the double use of the report instead of forcing it into a single proof of successful alchemy.

Cautions

The reported identification of a grain or stone is not independent modern mineralogical verification. Its role in the argument is narrower: it marks what the author believes that water produces.

The common nature of waters and their unequal suitability are simultaneous claims. Dropping either one makes the chapter’s question and answer harder to understand.

Meer

Meer — Attested expression; the headword groups the local uses described here. II.156.2.

auff- und in dem Erdboden

auff- und in dem Erdboden — Attested expression; the headword groups the local uses described here. II.156.1.

WeltGeist

WeltGeist — Attested expression; the headword groups the local uses described here. II.158.1.

corporalisch Gold

corporalisch Gold — Attested expression; the headword groups the local uses described here. II.157.1.