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 wordPotentiality names what can be or become; actuality concerns its realized being and operation.
- In the Sophic HydrolithThe alchemist is trying to recount what Nature has taught him.
- In this editionThe English renders the phrases as ‘potentiality’, ‘in actuality and operation’ and ‘previously existed only potentially’.
- A place to readThe alchemist explains transformation through disposed matter, agency, potentiality and actuality, then illustrates forms contained in seed.
Meaning
Potentiality names what can be or become; actuality concerns its realized being and operation. The Latin phrases in potentia and in actu occur within the alchemist’s reply to Nature, not as a separately introduced glossary of scholastic terms. Wirckung supplies the accompanying German vocabulary of operation or effect.
The passage’s particular syntax is difficult: it speaks of an object as a subject according to power and potentiality and of substance maintained in actuality and operation. The lexicon should explain the contrast it makes without rewriting the sentence into a perfectly regular philosophical system the source does not fully state.
Use in the book
The alchemist is trying to recount what Nature has taught him. He describes proper matter, vessel, place and fire, then the relation between agent and disposed patient. Changing contrary qualities permits matter to assume a new form. Potentiality and actuality articulate this movement from a capacity within matter towards realized form; they do not authorize any arbitrary thing to become anything else.
His own modest qualification matters: he wishes he could recount Nature’s meaning rightly. This is a learner’s reconstruction, not an unqualified independent pronouncement. He also says that turning the elements is not human handiwork, preserving Nature’s principal role alongside limited human administration of warmth.
The later seed examples make the account accessible. Human seed contains the prospective human form, including differentiated bodily parts; fruit comes from fruit and an animal from an animal. The analogy emphasizes resources and orderly likeness already belonging to the seed. It is not a claim that fully formed miniature organs can be seen inside it, nor does the passage demonstrate a modern developmental mechanism. The transition from potential to actual is governed by the text’s account of Nature and divinely ordered generation.
Places to read
- Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 15The alchemist explains transformation through disposed matter, agency, potentiality and actuality, then illustrates forms contained in seed.
Translation
The English renders the phrases as ‘potentiality’, ‘in actuality and operation’ and ‘previously existed only potentially’. It retains the awkward object–subject relationship rather than concealing it behind a free paraphrase. The entry accordingly marks that difficulty while using the explicit seed illustration to explain the conceptual contrast. It does not import the Nature dialogue’s other statements about metallic generation as if they were automatically resolved by this one paragraph.
Attested forms
Wirckung; potentia; in actu; in potentia