Och is the Sun-associated Olympic governor named in the Arbatel. The 1575 Basel print and Turner’s later English version preserve different forms of his account.
- Planetary category
- Sun ☉
- 1575 province line
- 28
- Source passage
- Aphorisms 16–17
Place in the seven-name list
Och is the fourth Olympic governor, placed between the Mars-associated Phaleg and Venus-associated Hagith. Aphorism 16 assigns 28 provinces in the Basel print; Aphorism 17 says Och governs solar things. The paragraph is comparatively elaborate. It claims wisdom, health and long life, instruction in medicine, production of gold, precious stones, and public honor. These are claims of a sixteenth-century magical work. The astronomical Sun and the book’s named solar governor are different kinds of things, even when a later diagram puts both beneath the same glyph.
What the book attributes
The source’s material about gold is often excerpted as if the Arbatel were mainly an alchemical shortcut. In context it is one attributed office among many in a text that begins with prayer, divine permission, secrecy, and care for the neighbor. Aphorism 17 contrasts a natural process occurring over a long period, a chemical process, and an immediate magical one. That comparison reveals the author’s view of nature and art, but it does not demonstrate transmutation. Its three-layer account belongs to the source’s theory of nature and art, not to a recipe or demonstrated effect.
The printed record
Och’s Latin name is short and particularly vulnerable to accidental alteration in OCR or secondary tables; an editor’s English line may also spell it as Hoc with a correction. The printed page and Peterson’s bilingual transcription expose those variants. In the province series, 28 is the midpoint value between Phaleg’s 35 and Hagith’s 21. The photographed edition preserves the early printed character, while a later redrawing can impose a precision absent from that page.
