DiotimosReading Desk

Main articles

Blackening, whitening, and reddening

schwärtzen; weissen; Rothmachung

These verbs mean blacken, whiten and redden, but the Way of Truth makes their interpretation a central dispute.

From the book

The Sophic Hydrolith, Water Stone of the Wise

Anonymous and companion authors · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Browse this book’s lexicon →

Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordThese verbs mean blacken, whiten and redden, but the Way of Truth makes their interpretation a central dispute.
  • In the Sophic HydrolithWay of Truth · unit 18 attacks seekers who have exhausted themselves in familiar operations and heterogeneous materials.
  • In this editionThe aligned English distinguishes ‘Reddening is to be understood as making complete and perfect’ from the literal ‘matter becomes red’ in the condemned interpretation.
  • A place to readThe narrator interprets blackness and whiteness through smoke, liquor and elemental fire, while rejecting literal smoke as matter.

Meaning

These verbs mean blacken, whiten and redden, but the Way of Truth makes their interpretation a central dispute. They are sayings whose sense must be learned from metallic Nature, not self-sufficient instructions to manufacture a sequence of visible colours. Rothmachung receives an explicit local explanation: making complete and perfect.

The inclusion of both Sun and Moon as examples of perfected things is particularly important. ‘Reddening’ in this explanation cannot simply mean that every successful substance must look red. Likewise, a reader cannot take the black smoke mentioned in the account as the starting material: the narrator immediately denies that interpretation.

Use in the book

Way of Truth · unit 18 attacks seekers who have exhausted themselves in familiar operations and heterogeneous materials. It interprets the imperfection of metals as insufficient union of elemental fire with its protective liquor. When ordinary fire separates them, the protector escapes as white smoke and the elemental fire remains vulnerable. The sayings about blackening and whitening are placed within this explanatory account; they are not validated merely by reproducing smoke or altering a surface colour.

Way of Truth · unit 30 enlarges the argument through vegetable, animal and mineral natures. Different degrees of natural coction account for different strengths of union and endurance. Black and white smoke mark contrasts in the account, while the perfection called reddening is the complete union of essence and liquor. These are the Via narrator’s theoretical claims. They should not be silently harmonized with the Nature dialogue’s visible three colours or the main treatise’s ordered signs.

Way of Truth · unit 31 states the rejected reading in unusually explicit terms. The narrator condemns interpreting the old sayings as a succession of operations designed to make matter black, then white, then red. Washing, calcining and increased fire belong to the account of what he calls sophistical misunderstanding. Repeating that rejected sequence as the book’s recommended procedure would reverse the passage’s force. The final accusation is also uncomfortable: ancient authors themselves are said to have concealed their meaning and encouraged misleading readings.

Places to read

  1. Way of Truth · unit 18The narrator interprets blackness and whiteness through smoke, liquor and elemental fire, while rejecting literal smoke as matter.
  2. Way of Truth · unit 30Reddening is defined as perfection through complete union, with both Sun and Moon as examples.
  3. Way of Truth · unit 31A literal colour-producing order of laboratory operations is explicitly condemned.
  4. Part II: matter and the work · unit 22Compare the main treatise’s ordered visible signs with the Via’s rejection of a literal colour-making sequence.
  5. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 15Compare the responding alchemist’s visible three colours and elemental associations with the Via’s argument.

Translation

The aligned English distinguishes ‘Reddening is to be understood as making complete and perfect’ from the literal ‘matter becomes red’ in the condemned interpretation. It also preserves the negation that black smoke should not be taken as matter. This entry therefore treats colour words as contested technical language, while retaining the ordinary operations waschen, calciniren and augiren as vocabulary of the rejected reading, not endorsed directions.

Attested forms

schwärtzen; weissest; weissen; roth machest; Rothmachung; waschen; calciniren; augiren