DiotimosReading Desk

Metals and transmutation

Upper and Lower Metals

Oberen Metalla; vnteren Metallis; Metallorum inferiorum in superiora

Upper and lower name the metallic hierarchy governing the proposed transmutation.

From the book

Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordUpper and lower name the metallic hierarchy governing the proposed transmutation.
  • In KhunrathPages 87–8923 identify the upper end of the transformation and explain why its silvern or golden determination must come from the corresponding metal.
  • In this edition“Upper/lower” retains the author’s hierarchy.
  • A reading distinctionPage 160 distinguishes projection upon lower metals from transmutation into upper metals.

Meaning

Upper and lower name the metallic hierarchy governing the proposed transmutation. The upper metals are explicitly silver and gold. The lower are the metals upon which the prepared silver- or gold-making medicine acts; the passages do not provide a complete enumerated class.

Use in the book

Pages 87–8923 identify the upper end of the transformation and explain why its silvern or golden determination must come from the corresponding metal. Ordinary metallic perfection is insufficient; the active medicine must be more-than-perfected. Page 96 accordingly calls the special Stones transmuting tinctures that make silver or gold out of lower metals.

Page 102 describes the communication as reaching form and being at the root. This is stronger than surface resemblance. The hierarchy therefore provides the source and target of an asserted change of kind, not merely a valuation by market price.

The distinction also sharpens the exclusion on page 105. Recovering silver or gold already present in a mineral or metal is not a passage from a lower kind into an upper one. Nor is bringing embryonic silver or gold to ripeness. Both may deliver precious metal without exhibiting the claimed change.

“Lower” should consequently remain a relational term in this argument. Replacing it everywhere with a modern closed list of base metals would add detail the book does not state.

Places to read

  1. 1599 p. 88Transmutation’s upper ends are specified as silver and gold.
  2. 1599 p. 89The upper metals are expressly named and their determinate natures discussed.
  3. 1599 p. 96The special Stones act upon lower metals according to their silvern or golden kind.
  4. 1599 p. 102The alleged communication reaches form and being.
  5. 1599 p. 105Recovery and ripening are excluded from the relevant transformation.

Translation in this edition

“Upper/lower” retains the author’s hierarchy. “Base metals” is only a lookup aid and should not imply a modern metallurgical classification or a complete set of elements supplied by the text.

Source note

Page 160 distinguishes projection upon lower metals from transmutation into upper metals. The prepositions preserve the difference between target of application and proposed resulting kind.