From the book
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordSublimation is named among the preparations by which metals are brought into subtle forms.
- In KhunrathPage 90 places subliming among several possible prior treatments of silver and gold, alongside liquors, the still-head, sweetening and other operations.
- In this editionRetain “subliming” at the historical level of the passage.
- A reading distinctionThe description of what is carried upward with the metal is part of Khunrath’s causal objection.
Meaning
Sublimation is named among the preparations by which metals are brought into subtle forms. The treatise’s immediate concern is the warrant of the resulting product, especially when foreign corrosive materials have participated. It does not give a general definition sufficient to identify the process with every modern use of the word.
Use in the book
Page 90 places subliming among several possible prior treatments of silver and gold, alongside liquors, the still-head, sweetening and other operations. This is part of a concession: whether the metals remain bodily or have been elaborately prepared, their intended more-than-perfect state still requires the appropriate regeneration.
Pages 125–1262 focus upon workers who would turn the metals into salt by raising them with corrosive waters and poisonous materials into very loose, light powders. Khunrath attributes the products’ sharpness to what was added and carried up with them. Their staining effects do not establish the claimed power of silver- or gold-making salts.
The criticism is thus directed at an inference from subtle raised powder to philosophical tincture. Material change and fine texture are not denied; the larger claim is. This place belongs beside the discussion of separated principles, where an altered outward state likewise fails to cancel the starting metal’s specification.
The term also helps distinguish the conceded laboratory repertoire from the book’s positive operation lists. Page 160 does not repeat every operation previously mentioned. Its list has a different argumentative function, opposing claims for raw matter. Sublimation’s earlier presence should neither be erased nor mechanically added as another mandatory step in an imagined complete recipe.
Places to read
- 1599 p. 90Subliming belongs to the catalogue of possible prior metallic preparations.
- 1599 p. 125The metallic-salt interpretation being criticized is introduced.
- 1599 p. 126Raised powders produced with foreign corrosive and poisonous additions are denied tinctorial efficacy.
Translation in this edition
Retain “subliming” at the historical level of the passage. The text does not establish a modern identity for the powder or a particular apparatus, temperature or route. The distinction between subtle form and philosophical status is firmer than any reconstructed technical definition.
Source note
The description of what is carried upward with the metal is part of Khunrath’s causal objection. It is not a license to treat every named powder as a pure metal constituent.