Origin 1520 to 1540
Sulphur is one of the tria prima, the three philosophical principles that Paracelsus (early sixteenth century) set at the foundation of alchemy alongside the older doctrine of the four elements. Sulphur is the soul and the active, fiery, expansive principle: combustibility, passion, desire, and the animating spirit that gives a substance its distinctive character and its power to burn and to change. In the tria prima it is the volatile force that must be wedded to fixed Salt through the mediation of Mercury, and it is commonly associated with the Sun, with the color red, and with the quality of heat. On the human level it answers to the soul, the seat of feeling and will.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1520 to 1540 1Tradition: Paracelsus: the tria prima, adding salt to the older pair Origin Period700 to 1000 CE 2Tradition: Arabic alchemy: the sulphur-mercury theory of the metals Place of OriginIslamic world for the sulphur-mercury pair 1 Place of OriginSwiss and German lands for the tria prima 1 Attributed Author / CompilerAdded salt to the older Arabic sulphur-mercury pair 1 Attributed Author / CompilerParacelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541) 1 Learn More
The Alchemical Principle of Sulphur
Sulphur is one of the tria prima, the three philosophical principles that the physician and alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541) set at the root of all substances, alongside Sulphur, Mercury and Salt. It stands for the soul, the active and combustible principle; the fiery, expansive quality that gives a thing its character and its power to burn and to change.
The three principles
Paracelsus taught that every material thing is composed of these three, whose balance accounts for its nature: Sulphur the soul, Mercury the spirit and Salt the body. In the scheme of correspondences the principle is linked with the Sun.
These principles are not the ordinary substances that share their names; they are qualities or philosophical elements. They are described here as part of the documented tradition of European alchemy and Paracelsian medicine, in which they became a standard framework for thinking about matter and transformation.
Sources The Secrets of AlchemyLawrence M. Principe with Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the RenaissanceWalter Pagel
Sulphur Before There Were Three Principles
The three alchemical principles were two for several centuries before they were three, and Sulphur is one of the original pair.
The two-principle theory
The doctrine that all metals are composed of two principles, a sulphur and a mercury, comes out of the Arabic alchemical tradition and passed into Latin Europe with the translations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is a theory of metals, and it did real explanatory work: differences between metals were accounted for by the proportions and the purity of the two constituents, which made transmutation a question of adjusting a mixture rather than of creating a substance from nothing.
Not the yellow powder
The principle called Sulphur is not brimstone. Alchemical writers were explicit that they meant a philosophical sulphur, a principle of combustibility and of fixed, formative nature, and that the mineral of the same name was at best an instance of it. Readers who take the principle for the element will misread almost every passage in which it appears.
How a third arrived
A third principle, Salt, was added in the sixteenth century in the work of Paracelsus, giving the set of three, the tria prima, that this atlas records. The addition is datable and attributable, which is unusual in this literature, and it made the scheme a theory of all bodies rather than of metals alone.
Connections
Commonly Conflated with (See Note)
Paracelsus's tria prima named the active, combustible alchemical principle Sulphur after the element it resembled, but the two are not the same: alchemical Sulphur is a principle (the soul, the fiery active nature), not modern chemical sulfur.
Source The Secrets of AlchemyLawrence M. Principe
Corresponds To
Originates in Language
Source The Secrets of AlchemyLawrence M. Principe
Source The Secrets of AlchemyLawrence M. Principe
Source Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of TimeCharles Webster
Sources
1. Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time
Charles Webster, Yale University Press, 2008on Paracelsus's career and its setting
2. The Secrets of Alchemy
Lawrence M. Principe, University of Chicago Press, 2013The Paracelsian tria prima (sulphur, mercury, salt) in the history of alchemyView the Source Psychology and Alchemy
C.G. Jung, Princeton University Press, 1968The symbolism of the three philosophical principlesView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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