Solar and lunar parents

Use in the book

The tides passage gives the most explicit distinction. The narrator acknowledges that, to his knowledge, ebb and flow in most places follow lunar changes. He nevertheless distinguishes cause from concordance and traces both the sea’s motion and the heavenly signs to God’s commands. The observation of correspondence does not, in his account, authorize the inference that the moon is the true cause of the sea’s motion.

Chapter Eight supplies a different positive role for celestial action. The subject is said to participate in astral, animal, vegetable, and mineral nature, with mineral nature predominating. The author rejects an opponent’s proposed distinction between unspecified universal matter and nature-prepared metallic matter as irrelevant in this case. Preparation and specification are described as the stars’ action, especially the sun’s, upon the water from which concentrated Mercury arises. This is a local affirmative account, not a return to the rejected dew-parentage formula.

The sun also appears in ordinary examples of maturation. Fruit and grapes ripen earlier or later depending on how much it shines. The analogy helps explain why the philosophical work cannot be assigned an exact universal duration independent of diligence and fire management. Solar activity here illustrates variable timing within an ordered process rather than a universal parental identity.

These passages invite a disciplined reading of celestial terms. Their presence is real and consequential, but their roles differ from passage to passage. The narrator is willing to deny a traditional-sounding phrase, accept observed concordance, and affirm a specified astral operation. A lexicon must keep those judgments separate rather than replacing them with a single doctrine of the sun as father and moon as mother.⁹⁴

Places to read

1. Part II · II.076.2Sun, moon, and stars as examples of nature’s ordered regularity.
2. Part II · II.103.1; II.103.22Allowed influence and the explicit denial of dew’s solar-lunar parentage.
3. Part II · II.105.1Lunar changes distinguished from the efficient cause of tides.
4. Part II · II.169.1; II.177.12Solar maturation and the claimed action producing concentrated Mercury.

Translation

Vatter in II.103.2 is singular. The English should preserve the statement as written rather than silently substitute the more familiar pair of a solar father and lunar mother.

Concordantia is “concordance,” retaining the distinction from causa. “Action of the stars” translates Würckung der Astrorum without importing a modern account of radiation or gravity.

Connections

Dew, Efficient cause, and Air and wind provide the immediate causal setting. Mercury philosophical explains why concentrated Mercury is not simply ordinary quicksilver.

Saturn and planetary names concerns another use of celestial language: names for the universal matter and its operations. It should not be merged automatically with actual celestial influence or the rejected account of dew.

Cautions

The text’s narrow rejection should not be generalized into a denial of all celestial action.

This entry does not claim a direct quotation of a particular Hermetic tablet at the dew passage; no such exact attribution is established there.

Sonnen und Mond

Sonnen und Mond — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.103.2.

als dessen Vatter

als dessen Vatter — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.103.2.

Veränderung des Monds

Veränderung des Monds — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.105.1.

Würckung der Astrorum

Würckung der Astrorum — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.177.1.