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Perfection and more-than-perfection

vollkommen; perfect; plusquam perfect

Perfection names fulfillment of a thing’s proper capacity, but the work also uses more-than-perfection for an agent whose power benefits other things.

From the book

The Sophic Hydrolith, Water Stone of the Wise

Anonymous and companion authors · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordPerfection names fulfillment of a thing’s proper capacity, but the work also uses more-than-perfection for an agent whose power benefits other things.
  • In the Sophic HydrolithPart Three reports the claim that the prepared, more-than-perfect Stone is the highest medicine, but the narrator declines detailed medical judgment as a non-physician.
  • In this editionThe English “more than perfect” translates the learned plusquam expressions rather than supplying a modern superlative.
  • A place to readThe world's deficiencies and corruption are objects of restoration.

Meaning

Perfection names fulfillment of a thing’s proper capacity, but the work also uses more-than-perfection for an agent whose power benefits other things. It is therefore not a single quantitative scale on which every metal, human being and divine person may be placed without qualification. The object, kind of perfection and stage of the argument must remain explicit.

The introduction contrasts imperfection, deficiency and corruption with restoration. Later titles praise the Stone as a perfect accord of elements and an enduring body. These titles assert qualities of the described perfected matter; they do not erase the introduction’s separate statement that the earthly restorative cannot abolish bodily death.

Use in the book

Part Three reports the claim that the prepared, more-than-perfect Stone is the highest medicine, but the narrator declines detailed medical judgment as a non-physician. The theological comparison then makes the compound’s progress through tribulation an image for Christ’s life and Passion. Its account of colours and suffering is analogical; it must not be turned into a claim that divinity literally requires chemical repair.

Nature distinguishes the most perfect metal from that which can perfect other things. Gold’s superiority within its own class does not grant the Stone’s alleged healing and transformative powers. She reserves natural formation and the uniting of contrary qualities to her own God-derived agency. The Summary, by contrast, permits human art to assist Nature’s products towards greater perfection and distinguishes natural from philosophical Mercury. These are specific accounts of capability, not one merged dictionary doctrine.

Via makes perfection the outcome of coction and union of essence with liquor. Its interpretation of reddening is especially consequential: it means making complete and perfect, exemplified by both Sun and Moon, not simply producing a red visual surface. Its concluding self-purification language assigns the changes to the subject under coction. A colour taken alone therefore does not prove that the required completion has occurred.

Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 32 makes the distinction between an agent’s completeness and recipients’ benefit explicit: multiplication begins after Christ’s divine-and-human perfection and means that his still-imperfect members are united with him. Their reception does not repair a deficiency in Christ. The earthly restorative’s continued destructibility in Opening explanation · unit 2 likewise prevents more-than-perfection from becoming a promise of bodily immortality.

Places to read

  1. Opening explanation · unit 1The world's deficiencies and corruption are objects of restoration.
  2. Opening explanation · unit 2Restoration and life-extension do not abolish bodily death or the remedy’s own destructibility.
  3. Part III: benefits and their rank · unit 8The prepared stone is described as beyond perfect before supreme medicinal praise.
  4. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 16The earthly stone is called perfect accord of elements and an indestructible body.
  5. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 26The material compound passes through operations and colours until more than perfect.
  6. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 32Christ’s completed perfection precedes multiplication, which the author explains as his members’ union with him.
  7. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 7Nature claims to perfect metal and human body.
  8. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 8Gold is best metal but the higher secret perfects other things.
  9. Philosophical Summary · unit 9Philosophical Mercury allegedly perfects and restores more powerfully than natural Mercury.
  10. Way of Truth · unit 30Reddening means completed union, including both Sun and Moon.
  11. Way of Truth · unit 35Improvement occurs reflexively through coction.

Translation

The English “more than perfect” translates the learned plusquam expressions rather than supplying a modern superlative. Via’s “Reddening is to be understood as making complete and perfect” is an explicit interpretation and must control reading of its colour-word. Conversely, “perfect” in Nature’s description of ordinary gold is class-relative. The aligned wording makes these differences inspectable; flattening them into one approved process would remove a genuine disagreement in the collected volume.

Attested forms

vnuollkommen; mangelhafft; vollkomlichen; vollkommene vergleichung; vnzerstörlicher Leib; vnvolkommene; vollkommen; vollkommenste; perficiret; mehr dann vollkommene; Rothmachung; perfect; reiniget; erhöhet; sublimirt; plusquam perfect; plusquam perfectum; perficire; reficiren