Seminal reasons

Use in the book

At p. 21 the special sparks of the universal fiery Spirit or Soul specify first matter in each particular material thing. Their properties and kinds determine the resulting being. Magnesia is distinguished by receiving a synoptically catholic spark instead: it has nature and animation without being confined to a vegetable, animal or mineral kind. The contrast is between different determinations of power, not between animated natural things and wholly inert matter.

The mineral and metallic account on p. 48 makes the same relation unusually explicit. Special reasons of the catholic World-Soul specify universal first matter thus or thus, in determinate weights and measures known to Nature alone. The reasons are neither a list of ingredients nor numerical instructions available to the reader. They explain how Nature's ordered activity can produce diversity out of one material ground while preserving the uniqueness of that ground.

Silver-making and gold-making reasons recur in the account of embryonic metals. Their action has already directed matter toward silverness or goldness, even when the result remains imperfect and volatile. This is why incomplete metals are not automatically first matter. The passage also prevents identifying a metal's seed with a detachable kernel or with sulphur alone. Later, Khunrath says that the formative identity is present throughout the metal's essential parts; the purest whole must be considered in the work.

The positive account uses the same vocabulary rather than abandoning it. In the earth, universal mother-matter seeded with special sparks becomes the fruit; in the art, first matter may be specified toward silver or gold. After universal preparation, the perfected Stone may likewise unite with the special sparks of metallic or other prepared materials. Seminal reasons thus connect natural generation to the distinction between universal and special alchemical outcomes.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 21Particular sparks are the cause of particular specification.
2. 1599 p. 48Mineral and metallic seed-bearing powers operate according to Nature’s determinate measures.
3. 1599 p. 77Silver- and gold-making reasons have already specified embryonic metallic bodies.
4. 1599 p. 95The universal mother becomes the fruit when seeded with the appropriate special sparks.
5. 1599 p. 100Special sparks specify the perfected universal matter in its later applications.
6. 1599 p. 120Silverness or goldness is not confined to sulphur but belongs to the whole.

Translation in this edition

“Seminal reasons” preserves a technical phrase for which Khunrath supplies his own explanatory German. The apparatus associates it with Stoic and Augustinian traditions; that genealogy is editorial context, not a source attribution made by these printed passages.