Prima materia

[3] When alchemy developed in Greco-Roman Egypt on the foundations of Greek philosophy, it included the concept of prima materia as a central tenet.

Mary Anne Atwood uses words attributed to Arnaldus de Villa Nova to describe the role of prima materia in the fundamental theory of alchemy: "That there abides in nature a certain pure matter, which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself proportionally all imperfect bodies that it touches.

[5] A similar account can be found in the Theatrum Chemicum: They have compared the "prima materia" to everything, to male and female, to the hermaphroditic monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, chaos, microcosm, and the confused mass; it contains in itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more wonderful in the world, for it begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.

He repeats that, "the philosophers have so greatly admired the Creature of God which is called the Primal Matter, especially concerning its efficacy and mystery, that they have given to it many names, and almost every possible description, for they have not known how to sufficiently praise it.

Names assigned to the Prima Materia in Ruland's 1612 alchemical dictionary, Lexicon alchemiae sive dictionarium alchemistarum.