Prima materia, the first matter or primary matter, is the foundational concept of alchemical philosophy: the undifferentiated, formless substrate from which all material things arise and to which all things can, in principle, be reduced. The concept derives from Aristotelian hylomorphism, in which matter (hyle) is a pure potentiality that receives form (morphe) to become any particular substance. Alchemists adopted this philosophical framework and gave it practical application: if all metals ultimately derive from a single primary matter, then transmutation is theoretically possible, since it requires only the removal of one form and the imposition of another upon the same underlying substrate.

De Jong demonstrates that Maier draws on both Aristotelian philosophy and the Turba Philosophorum's teachings on primary matter, showing how the two traditions converge in the opening emblems of Atalanta Fugiens where the cosmological framework is established. The Tabula Smaragdina, source of the motto for Emblem I, encodes the doctrine of prima materia in its statement that "all things arose from this one thing by adaptation," while the Turba develops the theme of reducing metals to their component mercury and sulphur as a means of accessing the primary matter beneath.

The identification of prima materia was one of the greatest puzzles of alchemical practice, and the literature is filled with hundreds of contradictory descriptions. Alchemists described it as something vile and ubiquitous, found everywhere but recognized by no one, simultaneously the most worthless and the most precious substance in the world. This deliberate obscurity was partly protective (concealing dangerous knowledge from the unworthy) and partly philosophical (reflecting the genuine difficulty of grasping a concept that denoted pure potential prior to all determination). Morienus, the fictitious Christian alchemical author whose work was translated from Arabic in the twelfth century, states that Adam took the Philosopher's Stone with him from Paradise, and that since then it has been present in everybody. De Jong reads this as expressing the universality and accessibility of the prima materia.

In Atalanta Fugiens, prima materia operates as the hidden substrate underlying the entire emblem sequence. Emblem I establishes the cosmological context: the hierarchy of elements from heavy earth through water and air to divine fire traces the path from gross matter to refined spirit, and the reverse path from spirit to matter marks the descent into prima materia. Emblem II, "His nurse is the earth," develops the theme of primary matter as the nutritive ground from which the Philosopher's Son is nourished. The earth-as-nurse image presents prima materia not as abstract potential but as concrete, maternal substance that feeds and sustains the growing Work.

The dissolution imagery that runs through the emblem sequence represents the practical approach to prima materia: matter must be broken down, dissolved, and reduced to its primary state before it can be reconstituted in perfected form. Emblem IV, with its love potion that dissolves brother and sister into their common origin, encodes this return to prima materia through the union and dissolution of opposites. De Jong notes that Maier symbolizes the disintegration into "partes minutissimas" in Emblem XLIV, dealing with Osiris's death, and that Emblem XLVIII represents the return to primary matter through the allegory of a sick king.

De Jong connects the prima materia concept to the pre-Socratic philosophy that survives, in what she calls a "degenerated way," in Arabic alchemy through the Turba Philosophorum. The idea that all things arise from and return to a single underlying substance is recognizably Thalean or Anaximandrian, filtered through Aristotelian metaphysics and adapted to the practical concerns of metallic transmutation.

Emblem L, the final emblem, depicts the woman and the serpent who both die after their union and dissolve in each other's blood, representing the ultimate dissolution and mutual destruction that returns all differentiated substance to the undifferentiated prima materia from which the perfected Stone can finally emerge. The entire arc of the fifty emblems thus traces a journey from prima materia (Emblem I's cosmological foundation) through differentiation, purification, and conjunction, back to prima materia (Emblem L's mutual dissolution), and beyond to the perfected product.

In chemical terms, the concept of prima materia finds no direct equivalent in modern science, though the idea that all elements are composed of the same fundamental particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) represents a distant echo of the same intuition. The alchemists' conviction that lead and gold shared a common origin was, in a sense, correct: both are composed of the same subatomic particles, differing only in their arrangement.

For the museum visitor, prima materia is the alchemists' name for the raw potential of the universe before it takes any particular shape. It is the blank canvas before the painting, the silence before the music, the chaos before creation. Every emblem in Atalanta Fugiens depicts one moment in the process of coaxing that raw potential into its highest possible form.

Meanings Across Registers

De Jong shows that alchemical terms operate simultaneously across material, medical, spiritual, and cosmological dimensions.

Alchemical

The undifferentiated base substance from which the Stone is made; paradoxically described as worthless and everywhere available, yet unrecognized by the ignorant.

Medical

The radical moisture or fundamental bodily substrate that precedes differentiation into the four humors; the basic vitality underlying all physiological processes.

Spiritual

The raw, unformed psyche before the work of individuation begins; the chaotic prima materia of the unconscious from which the Self must be extracted.

Cosmological

The primordial chaos or hyle from which God fashioned the cosmos; the formless substrate underlying all manifest creation, coeval with the Creator.