I Aurum
Gold
Struck as a ringed sun with a centred point. The point must be cut, not inked — a filled dot spreads on damp paper and the sign is read as Sal by the third impression.
II Argentum
Silver
The crescent opens leftward on all workshop plates. Reversed crescents belong to the southern houses and are not accepted here.
III Hydrargyrum
Quicksilver
Three marks in one column. Where space is short the crescent may be shrunk but never detached; a floating crescent denotes the metal's vapour instead.
IV Cuprum
Copper
Circle over cross, the cross-bar set below the midpoint of the stem. Older plates set it level; the difference is how the third impression is dated.
V Ferrum
Iron
The arrow rides at forty-five degrees, its head open. A closed head is the sign of the mineral rather than the worked metal.
VI Stannum
Tin
Read as a numeral four by readers who have not been taught otherwise, which the workshop tolerates: the confusion has never cost a batch.
VII Plumbum
Lead
The scythe. Its cross-bar is the heaviest stroke on the entire plate — a deliberate weighting, so the eye falls to lead first and works upward.
VIII Ignis
Fire
Equilateral, apex up, no bar. All four elemental triangles share one width so the division reads as a single ruled row.
IX Aqua
Water
The exact inversion of Ignis. If the two are laid over one another the outline must close: this is the compositor's check.
X Aer
Air
Bar at one third from the apex. Set it lower and you have printed Earth upside down.
XI Terra
Earth
Bar at one third from the point. The most frequently mis-set sign in the whole table's history.
XII Sulphur
Soul
Fire mounted on a cross. Where the two meet the stroke is broken by a hair's width, so the triangle is never seen to rest on the body it animates.
XIII Sal
Body
One circle, one diameter. Because it is so plain the workshop cuts it last, when the hand is warm.
XIV Azoth
Spirit
Two rings with the outer one opened above and below. Not a traditional sign — the workshop introduced it in the second impression and has been arguing about it since.
XV Calcinatio
Calcination
Fire holding a dot: the residue already implied inside the flame. Degree I of the bench sequence.
XVI Solutio
Dissolution
Two waves, phase-opposed. Drawn in phase they would read as a current and be mistaken for Distillatio's condensate.
XVII Putrefactio
Putrefaction
A circle struck through. The only sign on the plate permitted to touch its own border, which is the engraver's joke about containment.
XVIII Distillatio
Distillation
The retort in profile, neck to the left of centre. Kept pictorial because no abstract mark has ever survived a workshop vote.
XIX Sublimatio
Sublimation
An arrow rising from a ground rule. The rule is thinner than the arrow so the eye reads departure, not support.
XX Coagulatio
Coagulation
Square with one diagonal. The only right angles in twenty-two signs; they are what make the operations division feel like an ending.
XXI Fermentatio
Fermentation
Two reversals of direction in a single stroke. The engraver's note reads simply: draw it slowly.
XXII Proiectio
Projection
Circle pierced by an outbound arrow. Placed last so that the arrow points off the plate and into the reader's margin — the table's parting gesture.
Set from the workshop's own matrices. Plate III, third impression, twenty-two signs on laid paper. Corrections to the compositor, second bench.