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]
See Also
Aether
Ether
Etheric Elements
Fifth Element
quintessential
Subdivision
What the Ether is