Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), a German shoemaker and religious writer in Görlitz, explains a difficult alchemical expression in a letter to Christian Steinberg. A practical problem confronts a letter writer here. How can one explain what a particular substance means when its familiar qualities may tempt a reader into identifying it too quickly? Böhme approaches the problem by describing what the substance does within the course of his argument.
[…] a spirituall Being, which is environed with the four Elements, which also changeth the four Elements into one […]
– Jacob Boehme, The Epistles of Jacob Behmen, 1649, Letter XXIII, 17.[1]
He speaks of a spiritual being surrounded by the four elements and able to turn those elements into one. The two movements deserve to be read separately. First the reader imagines something situated in the midst of its surroundings. Then the surroundings themselves undergo a change as what appeared as four distinct things becomes a unity. The wording shifts the emphasis from the number of ingredients to their relation. A vessel in which separate things visibly lose their former arrangement offers one possible image of the shift.
In the same passage Böhme introduces the name Mercury and distinguishes its meaning here from an ordinary identification with quicksilver. The difficulty of language thereby becomes tangible for his correspondent. A familiar word may require an act of understanding before it can be attached to an object in view. The brief account of four and one carries that demand particularly well. To follow it, a reader must first attend to difference and then ask what kind of unity those differences could make possible.
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The stone is called anthracitis because, like the carbuncle, it too is fiery in colour, though encircled by a white vein. Its peculiar property is that, thrown into fire, it goes out as if lifeless, whereas when water is poured over it, it flares up.
Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636)
Etymologiae · 1911 · XVI, 14, 2
Our translation from the Latin edition.
The Philosophers take for example an Egg, for in this the four elements are joined together. The first or the shell is Earth, and the White is Water, but the skin between the shell and the White is Air, and separates the Earth […]
A man who knew how to mix the four elements rightly has always been counted among the foremost smelters. He mixes them rightly when he casts no more ore, which partakes of earth, into the furnace than is fitting, pours in water […]
Georgius Agricola (1494–1555)
De Re Metallica · 1557 · p. CCCXVIII
Our translation from the German edition.
Even stones may be seen breathing in the emanations of the luminaries. […]
You ask the cause of the marvel. In this gem there lies a manifold greenness, as if in layers of bark, one hidden beneath another.
Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576)
Historiae lapidum · 1663 · p. 522
Our translation from the Latin edition.
For the formation of the flesh is on and about the bones, which in the bodies of animals resemble stones.
By their hardness they long retain, even after being torn away, the traces and gifts of the life of the world that they once possessed while still attached to the earth.
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499)
Three Books on Life · 1529 · p. 176
Our translation from the Latin edition.
[…] which cannot be spoken without admiration, that in a dead stone there should be a living vertue to move it self: who is there, unless he try it, that will believe these things?
Giambattista della Porta (c. 1535–1615)
Natural Magick · 1658 · p. 194
Wording of the English edition.
[…] it imparts soul to things inanimate, motion to things immoveable […]
Many of the young sort, being of greater courage, seemed as though they wished to go out of the circle, but were prevented by the workmanship which set a band of gold in the manner of a wall about the rock and them.
Heliodorus of Emesa (Roman imperial period or late antiquity)
An Ethiopian Story · 1923 · p. 149
Wording of the English edition.
First, in stones she performed all the tasks of a good geometer. […]
Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680)
Mundus subterraneus · 1678 · p. 22
Our translation from the Latin edition.
This stone or this piece of wood is a light to me. […]
John Scottus Eriugena (9th c.)
Expositions on the Celestial Hierarchy · 1865 · Expositiones, I, Sp. 129
Our translation from the Latin edition.
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