Phoenix and pelican distinction

Meaning

The Christological passage describes a phoenix reviving its young. The supplied edition preserves that wording rather than changing it to the more familiar pelican image. Familiarity with a different Christian emblem is not, by itself, evidence that this reading should be emended.

The pelican named in Nature’s opening workshop rebuke is a vessel term in a different source and argument. It should not be merged with the phoenix merely because both are bird names encountered in alchemical writing. The lexicon follows the transmitted image and the separately named apparatus, while leaving any proposed correction to a properly evidenced textual investigation.