DiotimosReading Desk

Main articles

Soul’s extraction and ascent

anima; außgezogen; in die höhe geführet

Anima is soul, here belonging to the earthly body of the sun within the main process-description.

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 wordAnima is soul, here belonging to the earthly body of the sun within the main process-description.
  • In the Sophic HydrolithPart II: matter and the work · unit 20 attributes the transforming action to mercurial water, called an essential or supernatural fire, assisted by common fire and art.
  • In this editionThe English renders anima as ‘soul’ and retains ‘for a time’, ‘like ash’ and the successive return and reunion.
  • A place to readThe main process describes the solar body losing powers as its soul is drawn out and carried upward.

Meaning

Anima is soul, here belonging to the earthly body of the sun within the main process-description. ‘Drawn out’, ‘carried upward’ and ‘separated’ distinguish extraction, direction and relation to the body. The vocabulary personifies the material’s loss of active power, while the body is said to lie like ash, for a time dead and powerless.

The phrase ‘for a time’ is important. Extraction is not the completed work and does not entail permanent abandonment of the body. The adjacent units describe refreshment and eventual reunion, so the separation must be read within that larger local movement rather than as a self-sufficient goal.

Use in the book

Part II: matter and the work · unit 20 attributes the transforming action to mercurial water, called an essential or supernatural fire, assisted by common fire and art. The solar body is dissolved and deprived of its powers; blackness accompanies the account, and the soul is borne upward. The text makes a difference between the agent, its assistance and the body undergoing change. It does not simply say that external heat mechanically extracts a recognizable modern substance called soul.

The next unit describes downward return in drops, moistening and refreshing the body so it does not wholly languish and burn. Upward and downward movement are therefore related to preservation as well as separation. The warning against haste makes governance consequential, but it does not give the lexicon licence to reconstruct a practical heating schedule.

Part II: matter and the work · unit 22 brings soul and spirit back into an inseparable fixed union with the body. The author responds to that union with astonishment, fear and trembling, and calls the body newly risen and glorified. These evaluative words prepare the material pattern’s later spiritual application. Yet the extraction passage itself concerns the earthly work. The believer’s spiritual dying elsewhere is explicitly not bodily death; the material analogy should not be turned into a recommendation for physical self-separation or harm.

Places to read

  1. Part II: matter and the work · unit 20The main process describes the solar body losing powers as its soul is drawn out and carried upward.
  2. Part II: matter and the work · unit 21The following unit describes returning drops that refresh the body rather than abandoning it.
  3. Part II: matter and the work · unit 22The later account brings soul, spirit and body into fixed reunion.
  4. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 49The later spiritual analogy expressly distinguishes dying to sin from bodily death and preserves bodily support.

Translation

The English renders anima as ‘soul’ and retains ‘for a time’, ‘like ash’ and the successive return and reunion. Those qualifications make the account more exact than the isolated label ‘soul extraction’. The wording is a historical explanation of a claimed material transformation, not evidence that an actual soul has been experimentally removed or a chemical fraction independently identified.

Attested forms

außgezogen; in die höhe geführet; gescheiden; anima