Reckon and divide

Meaning

Reckoning and dividing belong to the main treatise’s compressed numerical instruction for the subsequent work. The passage invokes letter-like number-characters but also warns against seeking a term too precisely, allowing for intervening hindrances. Calculation is required and simultaneously bounded.

The English preserves the contrast between knowing how to divide and not calculating too narrowly. Its warning about haste ends in a pun on the hoped-for elixir and a failed result. This is not a transparent modern timetable. The lexicon records the interpretive problem and the danger of overconfidence rather than decoding the characters into newly actionable durations.