Accipe ovum & igneo percute gladio
Fire as the central motif, with the Vessel in a secondary part. From Atalanta Fugiens.
What is happening
Michael Maier, 1618 “Accipe ovum & igneo percute gladio.”
Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s Latin, put into English here: Take the egg and strike it with a fiery sword.
Michael Maier, 1618 “Est avis in mundo sublimior omnibus, OVUM
Cujus ut inquiras, cura sit una tibi.
Albumen luteum circumdat molle vitellum,
Ignito (ceu mos) cautus id ense petas:
Vulcano Mars addat opem: pullaster & inde
Exortus, ferri victor & ignis erit.”
Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s epigram, put into English here: There is a bird in the world higher than all others, and to seek out its EGG should be your one care. A soft white surrounds the yellow yolk; go at it carefully, as the custom is, with a fiery sword. Let Mars bring his aid to Vulcan, and the chick that rises from it will be conqueror of iron and of fire.
Key · 2 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 1
The picture
The egg on a bench, the sword raised, the furnace burning at the left. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
‘Accipe ovum & igneo percute gladio’: take the egg and strike it with a fiery sword. A soldier stands over an egg on a bench with his sword raised, and a furnace burns behind him. It is the plainest picture in the book and the strangest instruction.
‘Est avis in mundo sublimior omnibus’, there is a bird in the world higher than all others, and its egg, ‘Cujus ut inquiras, cura sit una tibi’, should be your one care to seek out. ‘Albumen luteum circumdat molle vitellum’, a soft white surrounds the yellow yolk: the egg is described as a thing with an inside, which is what a vessel is.
Then the sword, which has to be hot: ‘Ignito (ceu mos) cautus id ense petas’, go at it carefully, as the custom is, with a fiery sword. ‘Vulcano Mars addat opem’, let Mars bring his aid to Vulcan, iron to fire, and the chick that rises from the broken egg ‘ferri victor & ignis erit’, will be conqueror of iron and of fire. The furnace at the left is Vulcan, the sword is Mars, and the egg between them is the work.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
A count, a catastrophe, or the visible part of something that has no body. Note whether the flames are arranged in a number, breaking something, or standing where a figure would be.
In plain words A furnace burns in the wall at the left. Vulcan is the fire and Mars is the iron sword, and Maier wants both at once: the egg is to be opened with a fiery sword, and what hatches from it will be master of iron and fire together.
Michael Maier, 1618 “Vulcano Mars addat opem: pullaster & inde / Exortus, ferri victor & ignis erit.”
Symbolica Maier's Latin, put into English here: Let Mars bring his aid to Vulcan, and the chick that rises from it will be conqueror of iron and of fire.
Never the subject. What is inside it is.
In plain words An egg sits alone on a bench, and a man raises a sword over it. Maier's egg is the vessel of the work, white round yellow, and he says that seeking it out should be the reader's one care. The alchemists' egg is a flask, and here it is drawn as the thing itself.
Michael Maier, 1618 “Est avis in mundo sublimior omnibus, OVUM / Cujus ut inquiras, cura sit una tibi.”
Symbolica Maier's Latin, put into English here: There is a bird in the world higher than all others, and to seek out its EGG should be your one care.
Also carrying Fire
44 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
Where the detail is the subject
This is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about it.
In the same series
Portavit eum ventus in ventre suo
Nutrix ejus terra est
Vade ad mulierem lavantem pannos, tu fac similiter
Conjunge fratrem cum sorore & propina illis poculum amoris
Appone mulieri super mammas bufonem, ut ablactet eum, & moriatur mulier, sitque bufo grossus de lacte
Seminate aurum vestrum in terram albam foliatam
Record
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