What is prima materia?

In the French version, the prima materia ("primary matter, first matter") is a foundational principle of alchemy, though the details differ between editions. The name is taken from real alchemical texts, although the French writers interpret it quite liberally. Furthermore, the word materia in alchemical contexts doesn't simply refer to matter as we understand it, but to the created world (see A dictionary of western alchemy by Jordan Stratford).

The prima materia is the residual Ka present in all material objects, leftover from the original formation of the Earth and the movements of the magic fields. It is the origin of matter. Alchemy operates by acting on this prima materia, activating it and causing the desired magical effect. The alchemical substance generates its own miniature magic field, which resonates with the ambient magic fields of the Earth to produce the spell (so alchemy spells cannot be cast if the appropriate magic field isn't present).

In editions prior to 5th, the goal of alchemy was to refine the prima materia. At the third circle, adepts would create substances composed of pure prima materia. There were five kinds: the Philosopher's Stone, Philosopher's Mercury, Cosmic Egg, Elixir of Life, and Spiritus Mundi. These substances were basically microcosmos themselves, miniature worlds. The goal of the third circle was to take these microcosmos and bring them to the new world of Arkhémia, where they would become new features of the landscape.

In 5th edition, prima materia is now tracked as resource for generating alchemical substances. Objects rich in prima materia (official examples include fine natural pearls, opals, ashes from funeral pyres, gold nuggets, and silver) are placed in the athanor and broken down to collect and refine the prima materia. This is then transformed into the alchemical substances by the corresponding construct: powders in the athanor, vapors in the aludel, metals in the crucible, ambers in the retort, and liquors in the alembic. Each formula requires a certain amount of prima materia of the appropriate Ka(s) to produce the substance containing that spell. The materials of the third circle are now referred to as the alchemical processes.

The prima materia has many names in real alchemy and several adjacent poorly distinguished concepts, like iliaster and ultima materia.

The alchemical term iliaster is a compound of the Greek hyle ("matter") and the Latin astrum ("star"), coined by Paracelsus. It essentially means "cosmic essence" and is considered synonymous with the prima materia. To my knowledge, it wasn't mentioned in the Nephilim rules.

According to some sources (see The modern alchemist: a guide to personal transformation by Richard and Iona Miller, p26-7), during the phase of rubedo ("reddening") the prima materia is transformed into the ultima materia ("final matter"). This is equivalent to the substances created at the Third Circle in Nephilim (also called the Great Work, Red Work and Philosopher's Stone), but to my knowledge the term ultima materia is never used in the game either.

Hope you enjoyed!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Necromancy explained, part 2

In part 1 of this series , I recapped the rules and spells of 3rd edition Necromancy. In this part 2 I will recap and compare Necromancy from the 1st, 2nd and—surprisingly—the 5th edition. The 1e Selenim and The Black Book supplements introduced all the original rules and spells, while the 2e and 5e Selenim supplements just copyedited the 1e Selenim supplement and added metaplot developments. Now, something to understand about the non-3e Selenim rules is that they’re extremely vague and wishy washy. They’re not really rules so much as somebody’s overly enthusiastic but ill-defined pitch and notes for a potential supplement. MultiSim management couldn’t decide whether Selenim should be NPCs or PCs so they okayed this mess. 3e massively cleaned things up, which is why I used that edition as the foundation for this series. Anyway, on to the actual rules… Paths of Necromancy Prior to 3e Necromancy was introduced as a single technique with no circles. However, the spells were loosely or
Read more

The Good Ministers of the Ayres

Many of the names for the entities in the Summoning rules are drawn from a list titled “The Good Ministers of the Ayres” that appears in The Magician's Companion by Bill Whitcomb and Mysteria Magica by Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips. The Good Ministers are organized into 91 sub-orders of the Enochian Aethyrs and the titles of which come from the Aurum Solis, an order of magical practitioners contemporary with the Golden Dawn (supposedly). Despite the mention of Olamot and Sefirot in the game fluff, these entities aren't related to Kabbalah but come from Enochian magic. The original names were distorted by being translated from English into French and then back into English by translators unfamiliar with the original source. For example, "The Swift Ones of the Portals of Flame" was garbled into "The Swift Flame Portals." If I was revising the summoning rules, then I would go back to the original names. The descriptions seem to have been made up by the
Read more

What are Quests?

First codified in the third edition of the French version, a Quest is a type of Occult Skill that measures the PC's progress along a Quest that ultimately culminates in Agartha. There are many different Quests, such as the Quest for the Golden Fleece, the Treasure of the Templars, the Golem, etc. The lost Tablets of the Major Arcana each provided their own instructions for a different " Arcane Quest ", but there are more " Esoteric Quests " beyond those 22. Esoteric Quests may be associated with particular Occult Sciences, Artifacts, Past Lives, Secret Societies, Secret Places, Akashic Realms, and so on. The secret revealed by third edition was this: PCs don't need to achieve max level in their Dominant Ka, Metamorphosis, Third Circle or Lore Skills in order to achieve Agartha. They need only complete their chosen Quest. So even a relatively young and inexperienced Immortal may achieve Agartha if they play their cards right. (Otherwise you'd go into the
Read more