Twofold Mercury and Rebis

Use in the book

The pair stands between the numerical one and three at p. 54. The one is catholic crude Mercury; the two unfolds its active and passive relation; the three names body, spirit and soul. The sequence ends by saying that all are in one natural subject. Duality is therefore an analysis of the matter's internal constitution, and does not contradict the insistence that only one thing is required as the catholic beginning.

Further descriptions make the generative role explicit. Twofold Mercury is unctuous humidity and unctuous moist vapour, named as the proximate matter of all metals. The text provides a family of philosophical descriptions rather than a physical specification in modern chemical terms. Its scope is fixed by the same pri-material universality developed throughout the treatise.

A primary marginal gloss running from pp. 76–772 restates the limit: the catholic duplex is Mercury with its own sulphur, of the Philosophers rather than the common sort. This qualification matters because the main discussion is rejecting the supposed first matter found in metallic embryos. Neither volatility nor immaturity is sufficient to make those bodies universal.

At p. 121 the distinction becomes polemically exact. The true pri-material regeneration field is another Rebis or double Mercury from the one the Sophists would extract from corporeal metals. It is the common mother of silver and gold, rather than a product in or from them. At p. 127 the twofold catholic Mercury likewise belongs to the condition under which the metals' salt could serve the claimed transmutative end. Thus the later passages do not add a second source for the pair; they defend the same source against deceptive likenesses. The term has to be read with its origin and function, not merely counted as “two things.”

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 54Mercury with philosophical sulphur explains Rebis within the one-subject numerical sequence.
2. 1599 p. 77 · marginThe gloss continued from p. 76 identifies catholic duplex Mercury with its own philosophical sulphur.
3. 1599 p. 121True Rebis is the common pri-material field, not a double Mercury extracted from metals.
4. 1599 p. 127Twofold catholic Mercury is the required means by which the salt of metals is regenerated.

Translation in this edition

The modern note explains Rebis as a twofold thing and associates it with hermaphroditic conjunction. Khunrath's own Mercury-with-sulphur equation supplies the firm local definition. The adjective “philosophical” is essential evidence, not disposable antiquarian ornament.