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Vegetable, animal, and mineral natures

Vegetabilisch / Animalisch / Mineralisch

The Way of Truth divides created things into vegetable, animal, and mineral natures.

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 wordThe Way of Truth divides created things into vegetable, animal, and mineral natures.
  • In the Sophic HydrolithThe initial division includes herbs, wood, trees, and things which burn with flames under vegetable nature; living beasts and what belongs to flesh and blood under animal nature; metals, stones, and things which do not give off flames under mineral nature.
  • In this editionThe translation retains “natures” for Naturen and “coction” for Kochung.
  • A place to readFlaming growth, flesh/blood life and non-flaming minerals classify three natures.

Meaning

The Way of Truth divides created things into vegetable, animal, and mineral natures. These are not merely modern taxonomic kingdoms. The speaker defines them through visible behaviour and bodily character, then explains their differences through degrees of coction of a shared beginning. The terms classify things and describe conditions into which an essence may pass.

Use in the book

The initial division includes herbs, wood, trees, and things which burn with flames under vegetable nature; living beasts and what belongs to flesh and blood under animal nature; metals, stones, and things which do not give off flames under mineral nature. All three nevertheless arise from one principle or first matter. Difference therefore does not require three unrelated origins.

The later account makes the distinction a deficiency or difference of coction. The sages are said to have studied a separation of liquor from essence and to have asked how the least-cooked essences could receive assistance. After the described preparation, an essence is no longer vegetable or animal but mineral. That statement treats the names as changeable degrees in the speaker's account, not as permanently fixed identities supplied by modern biology.

A further comparison ranks the natures by the firmness with which liquor and elemental fire are united. Vegetable nature is least cooked, and animal nature is nearly equal to it; mineral nature is highest because its constituents resist separation more strongly. Metals' different behaviour from flaming wood serves as the visible support for this argument. The same passage explains blackening, whitening, and reddening through this progressive account, with reddening understood as making perfect rather than necessarily painting a material visibly red.

This is the Via's distinctive explanatory system. The Nature dialogue's distinction between bare being, growth, sensation, and humanity belongs to a related but different argument. Reading the two through one generic “three kingdoms” formula would hide both the Via's common essence and the dialogue's explicit restrictions on mineral reproduction.

Places to read

  1. Way of Truth · unit 9Flaming growth, flesh/blood life and non-flaming minerals classify three natures.
  2. Way of Truth · unit 14Differences between natures arise from deficiency of coction.
  3. Way of Truth · unit 15Cooked essence ceases to be vegetable/animal and becomes mineral.
  4. Way of Truth · unit 30Vegetable is least cooked, animal nearly equal, mineral most thoroughly cooked.
  5. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 2Nature’s different taxonomy denies metals life, nourishment and reproductive seed.
  6. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 13The answering alchemist distinguishes mineral being, vegetal growth, animal sensation and the human rational soul.

Translation

The translation retains “natures” for Naturen and “coction” for Kochung. Those choices help preserve the text's link between classification and development. “Deficiency of coction” is an actual explanatory claim in Way of Truth · unit 14, not the lexicon's diagnosis of physical substances. The listed combustion criteria are likewise reported historically and should not be treated as a complete or accurate modern classification of materials.

Attested forms

Vegetabilische; Animalische; Mineralische; mangelung der kochung; Vegetabilisch; Animalisch; Mineralische Essentia; vegetabilische Natur; animalische Natur; mineralische Natur