Alchemical terminology is a problem.
Its meaning can vary between texts or hold several meanings in the same document. Alchemical jargon is murky at the best of times because it rests on the spectrum from a hyper-technical term of art to a secret code to out-and-out sacred babble. For this and other reasons, we will exercise some editorial authority to present what we think is the most coherent interpretation of the relevant ideas.
For this article, the offending term is Prima Materia, or “First Matter.”
What is Prima Materia?
Answering categorically, Prima Materia refers to one of two things:
1) Singular: undifferentiated source matter, Chaos.
2) Plural: the constituent parts of matter, salt, mercury, and sulfur.
The latter category is called the Tria Prima, or sometimes the “prime elements.” These are distinct from the four elements previously explored in that the Tria Prima describes the constituency of matter rather than the behavior of matter.
First Matter - Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury
Matter displays three qualities that operate along two axes of consideration.
The first two qualities are Philosophical Sulfur and Philosophical Mercury, which correspond to the matter’s animate qualities, the Masculine/Feminine axis. Paracelsus referred to these as their combustibility and changeability, respectively. In this context, combustibility refers to a material’s reactivity of form and its chemical action. Changeability is a material’s impressionability or its receptivity to change of form.
The third quality is Philosophical Salt, which is the physical substance or permanence of the material. Between the salt and the animating attributes, the second axis reveals itself as Abstract/Concrete.
Paracelsus’s model for demonstration was the burning of wood. The fire was the intrinsic sulfur of the wood revealing itself in reaction, releasing the wood’s mercury in the form of changeable smoke, leaving the salt of the wood as ash.
The interaction of the Tria Prima was the framing device for the whole of the alchemical project, the “chemical wedding” of Queen Albedo (mercury) and King Rubedo (sulfur). The first generation of this wedding was supposed to be the seven classical metals, all materials composed of the Tria Prima in different proportions. These proportions could be adjusted by chemical process, such that lead (or even feces) could be brought into perfect balance and made gold.
Employing the Three
How you implement this knowledge in your story may not be immediately apparent. We’ll attack from the distinction between philosophical and material to jump-start the reader's imagination.
The Tria Prima are understood via analogy, meaning that the mercury of the wood that manifests in the smoke is not literal mercury. If the mercury is philosophical (read: abstract), it can be reinterpreted as a variable category. If the smoke of amber differs from that of a virgin’s hair, perhaps their mercuries are also different.
Let’s explore that idea.
Sample Scenario - The Lair of Oroglec the Unconscionable
Oroglec, a ruthless wizard, professional evildoer, and proud dungeon owner, has a security problem. There is a portcullis between his inner laboratory and the outer dungeon. Do-gooder heroes and rival villains drop by often enough that he needs to keep the portcullis closed to preserve his arcane secrets. Still, he passes into the outer dungeon often enough that constantly opening and closing the portcullis is a pain.
Oroglec could hire a goblin to man the portcullis, but the goblin could be bought off, coerced, or killed. He could bind a spirit to the door mechanism, but that could be unbound or banished. Installing a more advanced automatic mechanism would require clearing out more of the earth around the portcullis, which would threaten the structural integrity of the dungeon (not to mention the hassle of managing keyfobs).
He needs something with the qualities of a loyal sentience, with the upkeep convenience of an automatic mechanism. He requires the portcullis to be like…a guard dog.
Oroglec removes the portcullis and subjects it to a chemical bath of mercury of puppies, infusing the iron gate with the trainability and loyalty of man’s best friend. The result is the most ferocious and disciplined guard-door an adventuring party has ever had the misfortune to step through.
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| And you wondered why dungeons were so weird. |
The First Matter - Singular
Despite splitting the term Prima Materia in two and dispensing with one, we still have two Prima Materias! We are burdened again with vague, interchangeable alchemist-speak because the singular form of Prima Materia can refer to both the substance of Chaos and the Philosopher’s Stone!
This is the second time this article that the Philosopher’s Stone has come up, and it will be touched on only so far as is relevant to the matter at hand, which is its relationship to/role as “First Matter.” For a more exhaustive exploration of the Philosopher’s Stone and its properties, see our article on the subject [article forthcoming].
Chaos as Stuff
We discussed Chaos and Order before as principles, but we should have delved into Chaos as a substance in great detail. We fill that gap here:
Chaos (Material) - that which is undifferentiated
This Chaos goes by many names, almost all of which are interchangeable with the Philosopher’s Stone, but the most important has to be Hyle.
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| Robert Fludd's [1574-1637] diagram of the universe, being the intersection of God and the Hyle. |
Hyle was the term used by Aristotle when he started examining the notion of physical matter in general. At the time, the Greek language did not have a word that meant “matter” in the abstract; it only had words referring to raw materials. Aristotle chose the word hyle, or “wood” (lat. silva), to refer to that-which-accepted-shape.
Aristotle conceived that all four elements comprised this hyle in proportion, using his formulation of dry/moist and hot/cold. The universal quality of Aristotle’s hyle notion readily adapted into a Platonic abstraction, which we’re sure would have annoyed him greatly.
Aristotle’s four-elements conception was adopted and reiterated by the early Hermeticists. The third book of the Corpus Hermetica, “The Holy Sermon,” describes the four elements* emerging from the primordial mud, which was adopted as one of the universal images of the Platonic Hyle.
The Hyle, containing all substances without differentiation, merely awaits a shaping will to impose itself and separate the substances from each other, establishing Order.
*This compiler has separated the four elements and the Tria Prima into the respective categories of phenomena and substance for convenience’s sake. These terms of art were used inconsistently historically, continuing the tradition. Our research indicates that the Tria Prima is an innovation that post-dates both Aristotle and the early Hermeticists by several centuries.
Chaos and the Philosopher’s Stone
Material Chaos is all matter without differentiation. It is, as its name clearly states, Chaos. The Philosopher’s Stone, in contrast, is an ordered, purposed thing. You use it to turn lead into gold! Why, then, do the alchemists use their names interchangeably?
This is because of an essential dogma of alchemy: the Philosopher’s Stone is a revelation of the divine through base matter, and no matter is as base as Chaos. To the alchemist, primordial Chaos is the Philosopher’s Stone, and the only thing preventing the operator from observing this is their own ignorance.
On realizing the Philosopher’s Stone, the Chaos ceases to be undifferentiated, but instead the revealed every-thing in hypostasis! The particulars of what that hypostasis means will be discussed in our Philosopher’s Stone article [article forthcoming].
This allows us to address why both are called the “first matter”: perspective. One is first in sequence, the other first in hierarchy. In Christian analogy, Chaos is the first matter in the way that Adam is the first man, and the Philosopher’s Stone is the first matter in how Christ is the first man. In another frame, Chaos is Romulus as Rome’s first king, and the Philosopher’s Stone is the Emperor as the first citizen of Rome.
Material Chaos in Popular Fiction
Taking an educated guess, this compiler is sure that most readership will find these ideas familiar in form if not frame. Notions of “material chaos” abound in fantasy fiction, sometimes as an antagonistic force or a source for magical action. It is pretty often wild, destructive, and unpredictable.
We’re sure most of this readership is familiar with at least one derivative, but we’ll share a few of our examples:
Example 1: Brust’s Amorphia
In his Vlad Taltos novels, author Steven Brust sources magic from a literal sea (two, actually) of physical chaos. This stuff, called amorphia, writhes about as a formless, colorless substance that contains all forms and colors within it. It reacts to contact with more stable matter by catalyzing it into more amorphia.
In-setting, this chaotic energy source is utilized through two forms of magic: "imperial" and "pre-imperial" sorcery. In pre-imperial sorcery, the caster draws directly from a source of material chaos and imposes their will directly and in combination with constructed will proxies (magical devices and arrangements). This is an unstable, high-risk practice. On the other hand, Imperial sorcery draws this chaotic energy through a stabilized conduit called trellanstone, a composite material of amorphia and necrophia, a crystalline analog for the will of an intelligent being. This magic is significantly lower risk, and instances of amorphia mishap don't result in continent-spanning oceans of the stuff.
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| Chaos Theory by Daniel "Tempest" Emmerling, (2004) |
Keep it Simple
Example 1 above might be the cleanest implementation of material chaos this compiler has encountered. Its relationship to magic is directly articulated. The danger posed by contact with amorphia is demonstrated plainly in the narrative. It’s the most straightforward implementation of material chaos I’ve seen and used effectively.
There is nothing wrong with engaging storytelling devices simply.
Example 2: Pratchett’s Octarine
In the Discworld novels of Sir Terry Pratchett, the world is held together by something called the Elemental Magic Force, which takes the place of the electromagnetic force and is responsible for all magical action. Powerful fields of this EMF are marked by the magical eighth color octarine, the color of imagination. Octarine contains all the other colors and is thought to be their source. It’s a sort of fluorescent greenish yellow-purple, and the only people who can see it are those insufferable wizards (and you, unless you close your eyes; it's those splotches of color).
Novelty and Sustainability
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a parody of fantasy fiction and many other things besides. The formulation of octarine is a novel way to bridge ancient magical thinking with the incomprehensible jargon of advanced physics, riffing on the systematization of nonsense that abounds in fantasy fiction.
Knowledge of the primordial Chaos inspired Sir Pratchett to stretch one joke through hundreds of permutations across 41 novels. Don’t be afraid to reframe old ideas with new systems and theories, even if only for a laugh.
Example 3: Warhammer’s Warp
The Warp, or Immaterium, of Games Workshop’s Warhammer franchise is an entire universe of psychoreactive immatter. In the Immaterium, space and time are fashions rather than constants, and its unstuff possesses no form while containing all forms. Magic, demons, and unfathomable horror roil in this realm beyond.
Machina ex Opācitās
Often, “chaos” is interpreted as or employed as an excuse for randomness. Introducing “chaos” into the world causes havoc, mutation, disfiguration, or absurdity. This is true in Warhammer, where Chaos and the Warp are a universal justification for everything strange. Warp stuff influences ordinary matter to meta-reaction and psycho-reaction. While the resulting horror tends to be motif-bound or otherwise thematically relevant, the absurd is now on the table.
Suppose one reaches too profoundly into the Immaterium and loses control. In that case, they might turn into a living garden sprinkler of purple fire, become possessed by a demon, or turn everyone around them into a feral cannibal. They might also replace their vocabulary with precisely what everyone wants to hear, make time run perpendicular, or transmute their bones to children’s toys and bad ideas.
As explained in our Chaos and Order article, this sort of Chaos tends towards conceptual gags.
Prima Materia-derived all-nothing like the Warp introduces a broad mechanical principle that glosses over physical, chemical, and rational concerns for cause and effect in your story. If you can sell the audience on this machine-from-opacity, you’re free to indulge the priorities of this kind of story: aesthetic and character.
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See Also:
Clear Cosmology
Elements - Earth [Pending]
Elements - Water [Pending]
Elements - Air [Pending]
Elements - Fire [Pending]
Magical Materials
Tria Prima - Mercury [Pending]
Tria Prima - Sulfur [Pending]
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Bibliography
-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins.
-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins.
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