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 wordPassion here is Christ's suffering, rendered through a series of concrete verbs and conditions rather than a single abstract noun.
- In the Sophic HydrolithThe material comparison begins with the conjoined compound placed in fire and undergoing changes on its way to a more-than-perfect state.
- In this editionThe English largely preserves the sequence of short clauses, allowing the reader to hear the pressure of accumulation.
- A place to readHunger, fatigue, tears, captivity, scourging, crowning and yielding spirit give bodily specificity to Christ’s passion.
Meaning
Passion here is Christ's suffering, rendered through a series of concrete verbs and conditions rather than a single abstract noun. Hunger, weariness, weeping, captivity, binding, scourging, crowning, and yielding the spirit give the theological comparison its historical specificity. The action-series includes what Christ undergoes; it does not imply that he is the direct agent of everything done to him.
Use in the book
The material comparison begins with the conjoined compound placed in fire and undergoing changes on its way to a more-than-perfect state. The author then turns to the divine-and-human person, Christ Jesus, appointed by his heavenly Father to the furnace of tribulation. The ensuing list is not incidental decoration. It supplies the actual suffering which the furnace-image interprets.
The account moves from hunger and the wilderness temptations through weariness and tears to the anguish of the final passion. Captivity and binding name imposed conditions; being struck, mocked, spat upon, scourged, and condemned distinguish successive acts of others against him. Carrying the cross and being nailed between two criminals place bodily exhaustion and public shame together. Gall and vinegar, the loud cry, and yielding the spirit bring the narrative to death.
The passage also pauses to draw a consequence for baptized Christians. Christ's threefold contest is a testimony that public confession brings temptation and pressure toward apostasy. That application does not make every reader's suffering identical with Christ's saving passion. It establishes a pattern of following and conflict within the treatise's larger comparison.
The author closes by directing readers to the Evangelists for fuller accounts. The list thus presents itself as selective, not a complete Gospel harmony. Nor should its accumulated verbs be transformed into a medical reconstruction of the death. The lexical interest is how material process-language is anchored in a narrated life, and how the relation between willing endurance and imposed suffering remains visible.
Places to read
- Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 26Hunger, fatigue, tears, captivity, scourging, crowning and yielding spirit give bodily specificity to Christ’s passion.
Translation
The English largely preserves the sequence of short clauses, allowing the reader to hear the pressure of accumulation. It also retains the source's biblical references, including references whose chapter wording may look unfamiliar. This article reports those as printed attributions rather than silently supplying corrected citations. “Yielded up his spirit” translates an action at the end of the list; it should not be confused with the separate alchemical description of extracting a material spirit.
Attested forms
hunger; müde; geweinet; gefangen; gebunden; gegeisselt; gecrönet; Geist auffgeben