DiotimosReading Desk

Main articles

Change and transmute

immutirt / verendert / verkehren / transmutiren

The family gathers changing, turning and transmuting without making them one historical lemma.

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 wordThe family gathers changing, turning and transmuting without making them one historical lemma.
  • In the Sophic HydrolithThe conclusion of Part II: matter and the work · unit 22 attributes changing, tinging and healing to the tincture of a newly perfected body.
  • In this editionThe English varies 'change', 'transmute' and 'turn' according to the immediate object.
  • A place to readImperfect bodies are claimed to be transformed.

Meaning

The family gathers changing, turning and transmuting without making them one historical lemma. In the main treatise, changing imperfect bodies belongs to a tincture's claimed efficacy. In Nature's dialogue, turning can describe the formation of metals from their principles or the reversal of upper and lower. A reader must therefore ask both what changes and who performs the change before treating every occurrence as the manufacture of gold.

Perfection and alteration also require distinction. The text can speak of raising defective stones to a higher degree, of tinging crystal, and of changing metals into gold. These are related benefits in its valuation of the art, but they are not identical operations or independently established material results.

Use in the book

The conclusion of Part II: matter and the work · unit 22 attributes changing, tinging and healing to the tincture of a newly perfected body. Part Three then qualifies its practical application: further fermentation and augmentation are required before that tincture can be suitably projected into other imperfect bodies. The already perfected agent and its adaptation for a particular use are different stages, not a contradiction to be concealed.

Part III: benefits and their rank · unit 12 extends the claimed benefits to imperfect metals, defective precious stones and crystal, but immediately ranks such marvels below knowledge of heavenly things. Transmutation is not the treatise's supreme end merely because it is the most economically conspicuous promise.

Nature's own account in Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 3 moves from universal elements toward proximate matter and metallic principles, losing one form and receiving another. It explicitly excludes ordinary visible sulphur and quicksilver from the required sense. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 9 makes turning lower into upper part of Nature's heaven-governed reductions and circulations; Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 12 adds the reciprocal direction from highest to lowest. The human worker assists but cannot appropriate Nature's agency as a self-sufficient craft.

The Summary begins from formation in ores and allows transmutation outside ores under its stated condition of being made spiritual. Its formulation must remain distinct from the main treatise's account. The Via's Way of Truth · unit 23, meanwhile, rejects the addressee's existing work precisely because it will not attain the genuine metallic transformation he seeks. It condemns a route, not the possibility of the desired end.

Places to read

  1. Part II: matter and the work · unit 22Imperfect bodies are claimed to be transformed.
  2. Part III: benefits and their rank · unit 10The tincture is said to perfect imperfect metals into clear dense gold.
  3. Part III: benefits and their rank · unit 12Metal and gem transformation are claimed.
  4. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 3Four become one and sulphur/mercury become metals.
  5. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 9Nature turns lower into upper and cold/dry into moist/warm.
  6. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 12Elemental turning is glossed as subliming lowest and making highest lowest.
  7. Philosophical Summary · unit 1Metal transformation requires knowledge of generative origin.
  8. Way of Truth · unit 23True transmutation is the desired outcome rejected methods cannot attain.

Translation

The English varies 'change', 'transmute' and 'turn' according to the immediate object. That variation is useful: the directional reversal of upper and lower should not disappear under a universal translation 'transmutation'. Conversely, the main treatise's paired verbs in Part Three reinforce an asserted change into gold. This entry records the speakers' claims without translating their principles into modern chemical identities or combining their procedures.

Attested forms

immutirt; verendert; perfect; transmutation; verkehren; verkehre; vntere; obere; Verkehre die Element; vnterste; oberste; verkehret; verwandlung der Metallen; imperfecta corpora; transmutiren; transmutiret