DiotimosReading Desk

Explained supporting records

Contraries and contrary qualities

widerwertige Qualiteten; widerwertige Ding

Contraries are qualities acting against and with one another within Nature’s transformations.

From the book

The Sophic Hydrolith, Water Stone of the Wise

Anonymous and companion authors · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Meaning

Contraries are qualities acting against and with one another within Nature’s transformations. Her exposition includes warm and cold, dry and moist, and a patient resisting an agent before losing its earlier form. Resistance therefore belongs inside transformation rather than being its simple opposite. Nature claims the power to proportion and unite contrary things, while the Alchemist’s revised account admits that turning the elements is not human handiwork. The English “contrariety” or “contrary qualities” keeps this technical opposition distinct from personal hostility. The moist is specifically said not to exist without its dry, and vice versa: the account does not license isolating each quality as an independently usable substance.

Places to read

  1. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 3Contrary qualities drive matter from one nature into another.
  2. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 5The patient is stripped of form through the struggle of contraries and desire of matter.
  3. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 7Nature unites contraries into temperament.
  4. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 15The Alchemist explains Nature’s blending of opposite qualities.

Attested forms

widerwertige Qualiteten; widerwertiges; entblösset; widerwertige Ding; warme; kalte; truckene; feuchte