Separation and Composition

Use in the book

Page 46 gives the central artful sequence: separate superfluities, then rightly compose and reunite the pure parts. The constitutive rule keeps the work tied to one subject, while the marginal qualification distinguishes an auxiliary’s removable destructive role from a contribution to the finished composition. The pair thus defines ordered purification and reunion rather than arbitrary assembly.

The description of Magnesia on page 50 uses the same vocabulary on another level. Nature’s masterpiece is a catholic separation and composition of body, spirit and soul out of the greater world into a pri-material chaos of its own. Pages 62–632 insist that Nature has already accomplished this for the Artist. Human preparation begins from a compound supplied by Nature, although the subject is universal rather than specified as an ordinary kind.

The opponents’ analysis of metals imitates this structure without satisfying its condition. They separate sulphur, mercury and salt and propose to reunite them for regeneration. Khunrath answers that a metal’s separated essential parts remain products of a prior generation. Merely dividing them does not make them first principles. The controversy is about the status of the terms in the operation, not a flat rejection of analysis and recombination.

Finally, the initial composition of catholic matter with silver or gold on page 97 differs from the universal subject’s self-contained preparation. Here the subsequent natural mixture and union specify the field by its seed. That distinction explains how the book can insist on one constitutive subject for the universal Stone while admitting a joined metallic determination for the special Stones.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 46Separation of excess and recomposition of pure parts define the paired work.
2. 1599 p. 46 · marginThe constitutive rule is qualified for a removable destructive auxiliary.
3. 1599 p. 50Nature’s own separation and composition constitute the macrocosmic little world.
4. 1599 p. 63The natural composition is already supplied to the Artist.
5. 1599 p. 97Initial composition with metallic seed produces specification and enduring union.
6. 1599 p. 117A metal’s separated parts are denied the status of pri-material principles.

Translation in this edition

“Compose” and “reunite” should remain separate verbs where Khunrath lists both, without inventing a method that distinguishes them mechanically. The word “separation” also covers the recovery of existing precious metals on page 105; that profitable operation is expressly outside his present account of transmutation.