Seminate aurum vestrum in terram albam foliatam
The sown earth as the central motif, filed under the Heavens. From Atalanta Fugiens.
What is happening
Michael Maier, 1618 “Seminate aurum vestrum in terram albam foliatam.”
Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s Latin, put into English here: Sow your gold in white foliated earth.
Michael Maier, 1618 “Ruricolae pingui mandant sua semina terrae,
Cum fuerit rastris haec foliata suis.
Philosophi niveos aurum docuere per agros
Spargere, qui folii se levis instar habent:
Hoc ut agas, illud bene respice, namque quod aurum
Germinet, ex tritico videris, ut speculo.”
Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s epigram, put into English here: Country people commit their seed to the rich earth once their rakes have broken it up. The Philosophers have taught to scatter gold through snow-white fields that hold themselves like a light leaf. Do this, but look well at the other thing, for you will see, as in a mirror, that gold sprouts from the wheat.
Key · 1 motif
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
The picture
A sower scattering seed across a field, a town behind; the earth rather than the heavens, filed with the cosmos as the nearest group the archive has. 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.
‘Seminate aurum vestrum in terram albam foliatam’: sow your gold in white foliated earth. Merian's sower is a farmer with a hat and a basket, and what falls from his hand is coin.
Maier starts with the farmer, ‘Ruricolae pingui mandant sua semina terrae’, country people commit their seed to the rich earth once the rakes have broken it into leaves. Then the philosophers: ‘Philosophi niveos aurum docuere per agros’, they have taught to scatter gold through snow-white fields. And the reason, in the last couplet: look well at the other thing, for ‘Germinet, ex tritico videris, ut speculo’, you will see, as in a mirror, that gold sprouts from the wheat.
The earth here is the earth and not the sky, and the archive has no group for it. It is filed with the heavens as the nearest thing it has, and the plain line on the mark says so. What the emblem teaches is a correspondence, which is what the heavens usually teach in these pictures: what the field does to seed, the white earth does to gold.
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 diagram of everything, drawn so that a person can be found inside it. Note where the human figure stands in the scheme.
In plain words A sower walks a ploughed field scattering not seed but coins of gold. The white field is the foliated earth of the motto, thin as leaf, and Maier's promise is that gold sown in it sprouts as wheat does, so that the reader may see the one in the other as in a mirror. The archive has no group for the earth and files the field with the heavens, its nearest neighbour.
Michael Maier, 1618 “Philosophi niveos aurum docuere per agros / Spargere, qui folii se levis instar habent:”
Symbolica Maier's Latin, put into English here: The Philosophers have taught to scatter gold through snow-white fields that hold themselves like a light leaf.
Also carrying the Heavens
61 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
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
Fit pullus à nido volans, qui iterùm cadit in nidum
Record
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