Agrippa von Nettesheim seems to speak of light as a substance…
Indeed, Agrippa seems very different in his definition of the Alchemical Light as an ineffable substance, which he calls Elixir or “Quintessence”. He identifies an ineffable substance as the instrument for communicating the life of the soul to the body and for maintaining the divine soul within the material body. This substance is defined as the noblest part of the body and, at the same time, the lowest and most intimate part of the soul. A “lucid and very light body” that receives the impressions of external objects and assimilates them to the soul.
I understand that this light-substance, despite being very light, has its own degree of density.
You could also call it “vapor”. Agrippa himself defines it as follows.
A vapor, typically, emanates from a body…
Nevertheless, is has a nature similar to the stars. But the fact that it can also be extracted from gold leaves us confused.
It is hard to believe that a star’s emission could be extracted from metallic gold.
Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim: “A pure, lucid, subtle vapor that the heat of the heart generates from the purest blood: appropriately extracted from gold or other bodies, it was called an Elixir by Arab astronomers, but it could also be called “sky”, “ether”, or “Quintessence”. This spirit, derived from the four elements work, “possessed a vital principle” and had a nature “analogous to the substance of stars”: spirits and effluvia. Effluvium, Quintessence and Elixir are terms which give the idea of something coming out of a body.
Originally, it came down from the stars. Still, we can we define it as the “medium” of propagation as a substance between matter and the soul. Is this what the alchemists meant by “alchemical light”?
Let us hear from two of Agrippa’s contemporaries. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499):“Corpus tenuissimum, quasi non corpus, et quasi iam anima, sed etiam quasi non anima, et quasi iam corpus”. A very subtle body, almost not a body and almost already a soul, but also almost not a soul and almost already a body.
Ioannes Fernelius/Jean Fernel (1497-1558, the physician who invented the term “physiology” to describe the body’s functions) interpreted Ficino’s ineffable substance as the carrier and seat of the mind and all its properties.
Many functions, a semi-materiality… at this point one wonders whether this alchemical light is static like photonic light or mobile like a vapor.
Let us hear from two of Agrippa’s contemporaries. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499):“Corpus tenuissimum, quasi non corpus, et quasi iam anima, sed etiam quasi non anima, et quasi iam corpus”. A very subtle body, almost not a body and almost already a soul, but also almost not a soul and almost already a body.
Ioannes Fernelius/Jean Fernel (1497-1558, the physician who invented the term “physiology” to describe the body’s functions) interpreted Ficino’s ineffable substance as the carrier and seat of the mind and all its properties.
Can a light that is called alchemical ever be static, given that Alchemy itself is defined as pure movement?
Is this light following the trail of something, mirroring itself, or circling something?
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