Prima materia, raw material, or first matter (from Latin, materia from mater, mother, with the meaning of source, origin) is a concept in philosophy and theology about the fundamental matter of the universe, from which all substances would have been made. In alchemy, it is the omnipresent initial material necessary for the alchemical magnum opus and for the creation of the philosopher’s stone. Esoteric alchemists describe prima materia using similes and compare it to concepts such as anima mundi.
History
The ancient Greeks sought an arché and the early roots of the idea can be found in the pre-Socratics, through Anaximander’s ápeiron, Thales’ water, Heraclitus’ fire, and Anaxagoras’ philosophy, which described nous in relation to chaos. Empedocles’ cosmogony is also relevant. The concept of prima materia is sometimes attributed to Aristotle. Cicero translated ὕλη, the designation Aristotle gave to ἀρχαί and χώρα, as materia.
Plato developed the concept of khôra (Receptacle) as a third type between the intelligible world and the sensible world, describing it as the primordial receptive space of beings, and the disorder (chaos) shaped by the Demiurge gives rise to the cosmos:
“As we said at the beginning, all these things were in a state of disorder when God implanted in them proportions both in relation to themselves and in their relations to one another, to the extent that it was possible for them to be in harmony and proportion. For at that time nothing participated in this, except by accident, nor was there anything that deserved to be called by the names we now use, such as fire and water.” –Timaeus, 69b
This matter is immersed in the question of Being, non-being, and becoming among the pre-Socratics, and the receptacle was later referred to by Platonists as prime matter, as seen, for example, in Plutarch. Aristotle cites Plato’s Receptacle, criticizing the lack of elucidation of the concept and elaborating on it in On Generation and Corruption:
“What Plato wrote in the Timaeus is not based on any conception articulated with precision. For he did not clearly state whether his “Dreamer” exists separately from the elements; nor does he make use of it.” –On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, 329a13-15
Aristotle had attempted to define a “prime matter” and frequently cited the term prôtê hulê, but criticized this name for being too materialistic, using prôton hupokeimenon (underlying primordial thing) or substrate of matter, which is neither an element nor something sensible or perceptible, and which does not vary in the manifestation of beings in becoming.
“For its substrate, at any specific moment, is the same, but its being is not the same.” –On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, 319b4-5
For him, matter proper was something beyond the basic components of other material things. Without predicated qualities, he defines matter (in this case, the primordial) as the ultimate substrate predicated on all substances:
“By “matter” (hyle), I mean that which is not itself called substance (ousia), nor quantity, nor anything else by which being is categorized. For it is something of which each of these things is predicated, whose being is different from any of the other predicates. For the others are predicates of substance, but substance is predicated of matter. Therefore, the latter is not itself substance, nor quantity, nor anything else. Nor is it the negation of any of these; for even negations belong to things accidentally.” –Metaphysics, 1029a20–26
“Matter, in the most appropriate sense of the term, must be identified with the substrate that is receptive of coming-to-be and passing-away; but the substrate of the other types of change is also, in a certain sense, matter, because all these substrates are receptive to contrarieties of some kind.” –On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, 320a2-4
“Nature is prime matter, and this in two ways: prime in relation to the thing or prime in general” –Metaphysics, 1015a7–10
In his hylomorphism, matter is potentiality, an interpretation adopted by Augustine of Hippo and Simplicius and popularized as the concept referring to pure potentiality, which receives the form from unmoved movers, which in turn would be pure form without matter; this was later adopted by the Scholastics.
In Stoicism, the system of matter in the universe was influenced by the dualism of Timaeus and by the definitions of Aristotle and other earlier Greeks, but the concept of unqualified prime matter came to be called substance (ousia), upon which reason or god (logos) acted; they were the two principles of the universe. From ousia, the passive, qualified matter was engendered, with God by his pneuma (breath) “producing as a demiurge each thing throughout matter” (Diogenes Laërtius 7.134). Other associated concepts were that of conflagration, equating prime substance with fire: “The world is generated when substance is transformed from fire by air into moisture” (DL 7.142); and the biological analogy of an immanent god acting in matter: “Just as seed is wrapped in seminal fluid, so god, who is the seminal reason of the world, remains behind in moisture, making matter useful to himself in the successive stages of creation” (DL 7.136). This doctrine was according to Zenon of Citium, as reported by Diogenes Laërtius, Stobaeus, and Calcidius. Chrysippus identifies the primary quality of “fire” as being light. Seneca wrote in one of his letters:
“The universe derives from these causes. There is an agent – divinity; a raw material – matter itself; a form, which is the orderly arrangement of the world as we contemplate it; a model, which is the grandeur and beauty of the universe as divinity conceived and realized it; a purpose – the purpose of creation.” –letter 65
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is also a description of primordial matter:
Before the sea, the earth, and the sky that covers all,
nature had, throughout the universe, a single face
which they called Chaos, a rough and undigested mass;
there was nothing, except the inert weight and disparate
ill-arranged seeds of unrelated things.
The broad influence of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, including Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, reverberated in the Western theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with discussions about the concept of prime matter as cosmic matter shaped by God, about whether it was created, would be coeternal or not, and associating it, for example, with primordial waters or the abyss/primordial chaos of scriptures like the Hebrew Genesis.
In Alchemy
When alchemy developed in Greco-Roman Egypt on the foundations of Greek philosophy, it included the concept of prima materia as a central principle. Mary Anne Atwood uses words attributed to Arnaldus de Villanova to describe the role of prima materia in the fundamental theory of alchemy: “That there resides in nature a certain pure matter, which, discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself proportionally all imperfect bodies it touches.” Although descriptions of prima materia have changed throughout history, the concept has remained central in alchemical thought.
Alchemical authors used similes to describe the universal nature of prima materia. Arthur Edward Waite asserts that all alchemical writers concealed its “true name.” Since prima materia has all the qualities and properties of elemental things, the names of all kinds of things were attributed to it. A similar account can be found in Theatrum Chemicum:
They compared “prima materia” to everything, to man and woman, to the hermaphrodite monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, to chaos, to the microcosm and the confused mass; it contains within itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more marvelous in the world, for it generates itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.
Comparisons were made with Hyle, primitive fire, Proteus, Light, and Mercury. Martin Ruland the Younger lists over fifty synonyms for prima materia in his alchemical dictionary of 1612. His text includes justifications for the names and comparisons. He repeats that “the philosophers have so admired the Creature of God, which is called the Primordial Matter, especially in relation to its efficacy and mystery, that they have given it many names and almost every possible description, for they did not know how to praise it enough.” Waite lists eighty-four additional names.
Names designated to Prima Materia in Ruland’s 1612 alchemical dictionary, Lexicon alchemiae sive dictionarium alchemistarum.
- Microcosm
- The Philosopher’s Stone
- The Eagle Stone
- Water of Life
- Poison
- Venom
- Chamber
- Spirit
- Medicine
- Heaven
- Clouds
- Nebula or Mist
- Dew
- Shadow
- Moon
- Stella Signata and Lucifer
- Permanent Water
- Burning and Fiery Water
- Saltpeter and Nitre Salt
- Lye
- Bride, Wife, Mother, Eve
- Pure and Uncontaminated Virgin
- Virgin’s Milk, or Fig
- Boiling Milk
- Honey
- A Spiritual Blood
- Bath
- A Syrup
- Vinegar
- Lead
- Tin
- Nature’s Sulfur
- Moon’s Saliva
- Ore
- The Serpent
- The Dragon
- Marble, Crystal, Glass
- Scottish Gem
- Urine
- Magnesia
- Magnet
- White Ethereal Substance
- White Moisture
- White Smoke
- Manure
- Metallic Entity
- Mercury
- The Soul and the Sky of Elements
- The Matter of All Forms
- Philosophers’ Tartar
- Dissolved Refuse
- The Rainbow
- Indian Gold
- Heart of the Sun
- Chaos
- Venus
Carl Gustav Jung considered alchemical terms and procedures as symbols of psychic activity. He relates prima materia to the chaos of disordered elements in the unconscious of the human mind, which needs to be refined and transformed:
Yet no one ever knew what this primordial matter is. The alchemists did not know, and no one found out what it really meant, because it is a substance in the unconscious that is necessary for the incarnation of the god.
In Physics
In early modern physics up to the 19th century, physicists ignored the philosophical concept of an inert primordial matter and focused more on the action properties of forces and physical substances, being interested in an atomistic view in calculations and even proposing ether theories, but without referring to Aristotle. Isaac Newton rejected the Aristotelian concept of prima materia as something without qualities, not individualized and undetermined, or non-being; he preferred using the term extension to describe infinite space, where God would shape matter according to the capacities of his essence, and considered ether as a medium for transmitting forces at a distance. Leibniz, however, considering his philosophical background, adopted the term prima materia for abstract matter, perfectly fluid and infinitely divisible as possible, associating it with ether and the Chinese qi, stating that it would be the “continuous mass filling the world … from which all things are produced through motion and in which they are resolved through rest.”
With the development of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, the Aristotelian concept of potentiality and matter was considered by some physicists to describe the nature of probabilities of wave functions and the emergence of forces and particles. Werner Heisenberg understood an energetic layer behind particles or a “hohlraum oscillator,” as a type of prima materia in the Aristotelian sense.
Another physicist who made analogies with Aristotelian concepts was Wolfgang Smith:
To this end, let us remember that all traditional cosmogonies envision the cosmos as emerging from a primordial material substrate alluded to through a variety of symbolic forms in the sacred literatures of humanity and later designated by various technical terms, from the Vedantic Prakriti to the scholastic prima materia. Among all these designations of the material substrate, the one that is somewhat more directly pertinent to our present inquiry is the Greek term ‘Chaos,’ as we read in Hesiod’s Theogony: ‘Verily at the first Chaos came to be.’ What first ‘came to be’ can therefore be conceived as a plethora of warring possibilities, ‘warring’ in that they are mutually incompatible on the plane of manifestation. A block of marble contains myriad potential forms, yet only one of these forms can be actualized by the art of the sculptor.
