noun: the most typical example or representative of a type
noun: the purest and most concentrated essence of something
noun: the fifth and highest element after air and earth and fire and water; was believed to be the substance composing all heavenly bodies
Paracelsus
“The Magi in their wisdom asserted that all creatures might be brought to one unified substance, which substance they affirm may, by purifications and purgations, attain to so high a degree of subtlety, such divine nature and occult property, as to work wonderful results.
For they considered that by returning to the earth, and by a supreme magical separation, a certain perfect substance would come forth, which is at length, by many industrious and prolonged preparations, exalted and raised up above the range of vegetable substances into mineral, above mineral into metallic, and above perfect metallic substances into a perpetual and divine Quintessence, including in itself the essence of all celestial and terrestrial creatures.” [The Aurora of the philosophers by Paracelsus]
Archibald Cockren
By this Quintessence or quintum esse, Paracelsus meant the nucleus of the essences and properties of all things in the universal world.
From the 'Golden Casket' of Benedictus Figulus comes the following:
"For the elements and their compounds in addition to crass matter, are composed of a subtle substance, or intrinsic radical humidity, diffused through the elemental parts, simple and wholly incorruptible, long preserving the things themselves in vigour, and called the Spirit of the World, proceeding from the Soul of the World, the one certain Life filling and fathoming all things, so that from the three genera, or creatures, Intellectual, Celestial and Corruptible, there is formed the One Machine of the Whole World.
This spirit by its virtue fecundates all subjects natural and artificial, pouring into them those hidden properties which we have been wont to call the Fifth Essence, or Quintessence. . . . But this is the root of life, i.e., the Fifth Essence, created by the Almighty for the preservation of the four qualities of the human body, even as Heaven is for the preservation of the Universe.
Therefore is this Fifth Essence and Spiritual Medicine, which is of Nature and the Heart of Heaven, and not of a mortal and corrupt quality, indeed possible. The Fount of Medicine, the preservation of Life, the restoration of Health, and in this may be cherished the renewal of lost youth and serene health be found."
Turning from the words of the alchemists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to those of a twentieth century scientist, let me quote from Sir Oliver Lodge's 'Ether and Reality' once again:
"Apollonius of Tyana is said to have asked the Brahmins of what they supposed the Cosmos to be composed.
'"Of the five elements."
'"How can there be a fifth," demanded Apollonius, "beside water and air and earth and fire?"
'"There is the ether," replied the Brahmin, "which we must regard as the element of which the gods are made; for just as all mortal creatures inhale the air, so do immortal and divine natures inhale the ether." ["Alchemy rediscovered and restored", c. 1941, by Archibald Cockren]
Oswald Wirth
"It is essential, in fact, to unite the two natures, if one wishes to achieve the coagulation of Mercury, in other words to attract the Fire from Heaven and to assimilate it. The victorious follower of elementary attractions possesses true freedom, because the spirit dominates in him over matter: he has become fully Man by overcoming animality. Just as the head commands the four limbs, a fifth principle must subjugate the Elements; it is the Quintessence, which is the very essence of the personality or, if one prefers, the entelechy ensuring the persistence of being.
This mysterious entity has as its symbol the Pentagram, or the Star of Microscome which, under the name of Blazing Star, is well known to the Freemasons.
They have made it the characteristic emblem of their second grade, which one can claim only after having been successively purified by Earth, Air, Water and Fire. The initiatory ordeals are modeled in this on the operations of the Great Work; the four purifications relate to putrefaction (Earth), to the sublimation of the volatile part of Salt (Air), to the ablution of Matter (Water) and to the spiritualization of the Subject (Fire).
The last test alludes to the conflagration which fills the being with an entirely divine ardor, as soon as its source of initiative is exalted by the heat of the Fire-Principle animating all things.
The Quintessence is sometimes represented by a rose with five petals.
In one of his figures, Nicolas Flamel thus shows us the Hermetic Rose emerging from the mercurial stone under the influence of the Universal Spirit. On the other hand, the Rosicrucian mystics combined the rose with the cross and saw in it the image of the Man-God that we carry within us. The Savior was in their eyes the divine Light which shines within the purified soul.
At first it is only a spark, a frail child born of the celestial Virgin, in other words of this transcendent, immaculate, universal psychic essence, which is destined to invade us. This invasion represses what is inferior in us: thus the apocalyptic Woman crushes the head of the Serpent, seducer of our earthly vitality, while the Redeemer grows to deify us by illuminating us.” [Talk on Alchemy by Oswald Wirth]
See Also
Aether
entelechy
Ether
Etheric Elements
Fifth Element
quintessential
Subdivision
What the Ether is