VERY ESTIMATED
OF THOSE WHO ENJOY HERMETIC TRUTHS
Translated from German into French by
ANTOINE DU VAL
Having seen you doubt a science of which you should be better convinced, it seemed necessary to me to trace the foundations of it, according to whether the reading of the true Philosophers and experience have taught it to me. I use no Rhetoric for this purpose, judging it superfluous to adorn the material of the world, which is the most beautiful of itself. Holy Scripture, which is dictated by the Holy Spirit, and contains the word of the great God, despises ornament and delights only in true and simple sayings. Ignorance, on the contrary, and falsehood, of which the father of falsehood sowed the seed in the modern schools, wants to be plastered with attiffets to hide its faults; art and make-up are for imperfect beauties. You will see in the rest of this Letter a Physics which will appear extravagant and impertinent in the sense of these same Schools, and I tell you in advance that the least Pedant will condemn it as boldly as if he understood it very well and that my feelings will be banished from his reason as freely as he could do, if our holy Science were subject to his jurisdiction.
But I leave everyone his judgment free, and I only want to punish the presumptuous and the ignorant with their own qualities which they will keep as penance. So I only claim to write this letter to you who have the key to decipher its mysterious content, so that you can confirm your knowledge and support it on an unshakable foundation to give glory to God and serve your neighbour. You will find most of what I write to you in Les Philosophes, but you will nowhere see it piled up in this way and in so few words. They are simple, but important and real. Read, reread and think well, bringing everything back to the touchstone which is nature; she will guarantee you for me of the truth. Parallel his actions with my words, and keep your observations to yourself. In order therefore to understand what is in question, know that Physics is a science by means of which natural substances are explained as natural with their harmony; it is the science of nature or a habit by means of which we know nature and the things which derive their being from it.
The author of this nature is God, who naturally subsists by himself, without beginning or end. He is supremely and uniquely Wise, Powerful and Good. As he is infinite, and as we are finite, we can say nothing of him which is not too much below his glory and perfection; a part can in no way understand the whole: the excellence of his works magnifies him much more than the weakness of our expression.
When we contemplate his works in general, we observe there from their principle, the Chaos, the Elements, and the elemental things. Chaos was an agitated compound of vivifying water and fire, that all things of this world were produced by the eternal Word of God. It was the matter containing all the forms in power, which then manifested when his will was reduced to act. This shapeless body was aquatic, and called by the Greeks hule, denoting by the same word water and matter. This matter has been distinguished from God into three classes: Upper, Middle and Lower region. The upper is absolutely enlightened, eminent and subtle: the lower absolutely dark, filthy, impure and coarse. The average is mixed with one and the other of these qualities.
The last class or low region nevertheless contains all the essences and virtues of the Creatures of the superior, so that what the superior Creatures are actually in manifest form, the inferior Creatures are so in occult power and essence. The upper class or region reciprocally created, so that there is nothing in the lower whose nature and virtues it does not contain: what the higher essences are externally, the lower are internally. Both, however, cannot act equally; for the superior intellectual Creatures can act if they will, in the same way as the inferior ones; but the lower ones are prevented by the dark filth of their bodies from acting as the Angels would do, unless they are illuminated from above and endowed with divine and more than human virtues. In all that above it is to be noticed that the lower region is not entirely stripped of light. nor the superior of some mixture (however delicate) of darkness, having only the Creator there who dwells in a pure and inaccessible light. The creature, though opposed to each other, never fails to mix to procreate by this extended and surrendered power, like the short and long arm in Geometry; It is by means of this admirable operation that movement has commanded Chaos. The eternal word of the Father in having first separated the elements, and then the higher and lower elemental things, both terrestrial and celestial and supercelestial. For the creation of Heaven presupposes that of the inhabitants, who are the blessed Angels, to whom the soul of men becomes like, when separated from the material senses, and purified of impurities by the Holy Spirit, it rises in firm faith in God. , seeking and finding in the father of lights that supernatural clarity unknown to the sensual man. By this way the grace of the Lord manifested (Genesis, 1) to his servant Moses this marvelous reaction; it is by this same grace that, mortifying our perverse flesh, and rising to new life, we lift the flight of our soul above all material things, penetrating the confused darkness of chaos, to observe, both by the revealed word of God, and by the light of his eminently shining brightness, and in his great works, and as a man created in his likeness, the proceedings of this wondrous operation, until that spark of light, of which we are capable in this mortality, come to grow to enlighten us fully in Eternity.
There are three things to observe in this chaos: 1° the first and formless water: 2° the vivifying fire, from which the water was stirred; and (3) the manner in which particular beings were produced from this chaos or general being. This formless and imperfect water was incapable, without the vivifying fire, of producing anything. It was before the elemental water, and contained the body and the spirit which conspired together to procreate the subtle and gross bodies. This first water was cold, damp, filthy, impure and dark (Genesis, I), and held in creation the place of the female, just as the fire, whose innumerable sparks like different males, contained as many clean dyes to the procreation of particular creatures. This fire which preceded the elemental, vivified all that is produced from chaos; it is that of nature, or to put it better, the spirit of the Universe subtly diffused in this primary and formless water. This fire may be called form, like water matter, mingled together in chaos. It did not subsist separately without the water, which is properly its habitat, and the matter or the vehicle which contains it. However, this fire is only a subordinate instrument, and which cannot act in any way by itself, being only a material tool of the great immaterial hand of God. or of his uncreated word which proceeded from him. and proceeds from it continually, as we see in the first and second chaps. of Genesis, making by this fire the impressions of various tinctures on various species.
I call Tinctures the astral and punctual powers. For the tincture is like an essential point, from which, as from the center, issue the rays which multiply in their operation. But as these rays could not operate in themselves, for their proximity and resemblance, they needed an aquatic body dissimilar to their properties, so that its mass by this central fire, and by means of the disposition of the word of God, as well as other things, take shape. Fire is not a body, but it takes one moreover, which it disposes to its destined end: it remains more willingly in a perfect body than in another; it contains the definitions of all things, and receives in itself, according to the virtues of its imagination which the eternal word of God has imprinted on it, the dispositions of various seeds; it is warm, dry, pure and diaphanous. These last two qualities are the sources of all light: its heat causes it to act on water, as being the principle of all the heat of the elements and elemental things; its dryness is the principle of constancy in creatures; its diaphaneity marks its subtlety, which makes all sorts of bodies penetrable for it; its purity excludes all imperfections, for the fire chases them away from itself, and aspires to the constancy of Eternity, as the end of the world and the new creation will show. Aristotle improperly calls it the principle of motion. Fire, then, is the nature that does nothing in vain. who cannot err, and without whom nothing is done. For this active spirit, though inherent in different bodies of this world, is yet always the same; and although it serves to vivify various tinctures, according as they are distinguished in creatures by the Creator, it only disposes them according to their capacity.
This chaos thus created. God began to work on this tenebrous body, infusing it with some rays of light by means of the Spirit of God who moved over the waters, separating the darkness from the light, and giving the darkness the lower and middle abode, as in the upper light. 11 separated {Genesis. 1, verse 6.) the waters from the waters, placing the material and the gross in the sea and in the land, and raising the subtle and spiritual below and above the firmament (Genesis, CXLVIII, verse 4 .), so that it could serve as a vehicle, an instrument and a mediator to the Universal Spirit, to carry orders and active aids to the passive and particular spirits of the sublunaries. This not being enough, God gave the third degree of light, separating the earth, or the dry from the waters and the sea, so that the earth would not be prevented by the excessive mixing of the waters, from producing the herbs and the trees bearing fruit. He also separated by the expanse of the Heavens the lower waters from the upper ones, and assembled diffused light, luminaries to distinguish the times and the seasons, in order to operate by their rays or measured influences on the creatures, which he created. of their distinguished elements to live in them, and inhabit this admirable edifice of which he gave the Lordship to man made in his image and according to his resemblance to serve and bless him.
The element is a body separated from chaos, so that the elemental things consist by it and in it: it is the principle of a thing, like the letter of the syllable. The doctrine of the elements is very important, being the key to the sacred mysteries of nature.
The elements conspire together, and easily change into each other, and we see earth change into water, water into air, and air into fire. The earth changes into water, when the water by the movement of the heat of the center of the earth penetrates its conduits in the form of vapour, and receives by this exhalation its subtle essence, so that it does not appear no difference between water and land. This earth, reduced to water by the heat of the sun raised in the middle region of the air, being digested there for some time, changes into fire, and forms thunders and lightnings. He who knows the means of changing one element into another, and making heavy things light, and light things heavy, can call himself a true Philosopher. This can only be through a certain universal chaos, the center of which contains the virtues of higher and lower things, reducing earth to water, water to air, and air to fire. One element is never without the other, for fire without air is extinguished, water without air rots, the earth itself could not make a globe without water, which without the other elements does not produce anything it would be. The fire purges the air, the air the water, and the water the earth, and by the movement of the fire one is perfected in the other. Fire is always the least in quantity, as the first in quality; where he dominates he begets perfect things. The elements are active when they work on a body to form something new; passive when one suffers the other to do something about it and one acts the other suffers. The water acts on the fire, concentrating it by seclusion in its body; the fire works on the earth, in order to elevate it to its own dignity, and this will last until all the elements, by mutual action, reach sovereign perfection. The higher elements act much more perfectly than the lower ones, as appears by the actions of Heaven or fire, because of its purity and elevation, by virtue of which they exalt the lower elements, as the lower ones in return lower or attract and humiliate superiors. And it is by means of this attraction and expulsion, that the world breathes and lives, communicating the being of higher things (as said is) to lower ones, and so vice versa. This marvelous operation is done by means of the spirit of the invisible and impalpable Universe in itself, except that it makes itself such, because of the situation and its vehicle. Especially since this Mercury, this messenger from Heaven, and who carries its ordinances on earth, takes on certain wings to facilitate its flight. This instrument is visible and palpable, but the spirit itself is not, for being of an absolutely spiritual nature, and whose essence flees the senses.
To better understand this mystery, which is very great and excellent, let us consider that earth and water occupy the lower compartment, to be less excellent than Heaven, which is fire, and is located above, like the air which is a middle element between subtle fire and earth; and coarse water comes in between. Now, in order for the earth to be exalted by fire and raised to sovereign perfection, it was necessary that the fire purge it of its filthy filth, and that for this purpose it be placed in its belly to operate there until having separated all the impurity of the earth, he drew the essence pure and without faeces.
But this virgin earth being unable to act without the middle elements, the fire acts on the water, which composes the same globe with the earth and this by means of the air, stealing this water by its heat, and reducing it to vapor, uniting in same time the earth to its nature. Thus nature, which always proceeds in order, tends from things low by means to the summit of perfection, and as the earth is a compact body, water cannot at the same time transform it into its own nature: c This is why it often rises by means of the heat of the Sun, distilling it and returning it to the earth, in order to bring there the virtue of fire, so that by its repeated sprinklings, the earth is resolved in its seeds; for the inherent seeds of earth have in themselves the fire of nature, participating in the celestial fire, which resolves, by means of very subtle vapours, the earth into water, in order to be able to penetrate and vivify the entrails of the seeds.
After that, he converts it by continual digestion, into a crystalline oil, which represents the air by its diaphanous clarity, and finally lights it, after having stripped it of all its impurities, of its ardent flame, causing it to expire day by day, and rising to higher places through air, and reducing it to the same essence of fire. This is how one element participates in the nature of the other: the element therefore is a spiritual body containing a material that is gross and visible; they cannot rest, but are in a perpetual movement, to average the pro-creation of things: some lean more in their inequalities towards the corporeal form, the others towards the spiritual nature.
When these elements are one day (by the new emotion of the new creation) devoid of all impurity, then their body and spirit will be in just balance, and bound together by the sacred bond of eternity; the inequality removed, the movement will be likewise removed, which composes time, and where there is no longer any, eternity appears of itself. Of all the materials known to us, the most equally composed is gold, which having pure and unequal elements, approaches eternity more than any other material, and gives, being made spiritual and applicable to the body human, a Medicine which far surpasses all other Medicines. And without the obstacle of the curse that sin attracts and on our own elements and on our food, this excellent medicine would have another effect. Speaking earlier of harmony, I will touch this chord more distinctly, showing that it is not impossible to mechanically represent the Macrocosm with the elements of this Universe, in the form of a perpetual movement; I admit, however, that we only know it in part, sin having driven us out of Paradise, the entrance to which is forbidden us in this decrepit and miserable life. Nevertheless, we will try to catch some branch which passes over the wall of the garden of Eden, and not being able to enter it nor to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, we will try to have at least some leaf of it, although (as said is) dried up and corrupted by our unfortunate iniquity.
Fire and air are the superior elements. Fire is the first, preferable to all others, because of its purity, subtlety and perfection caused by its simplicity, which makes it nobler and more powerful; the spirit of the Universe possesses it and marvelously fortifies it. The air, to be less pure, never penetrates it completely, nor does it unite completely with it, except after being purified of its faeces. The elemental fire acts only when it is concentrated, then its rays gain strength, and powerfully cast their influences. After God had concentrated (Genesis 1, verse. 10) both the elements and (verse. 11) the elemental things, concentrating the fire or the astral point in the particular seeds, he also concentrated (verse. 14) the diffused light in certain luminaries to send (ver. 15) their rays to the earth, and cause them to operate there. When he wants to act, he drives out (if he is the strongest in a body) the impure and superfluous vapors in the air, to be digested there; if he is the weakest, the vapors oppress and suffocate him; for the fire strives to purify all things and reduce them to sovereign perfection, as the Philosophers know. And the more an element is penetrating, the more active it is. He is pure and suffers no impurity. There are two kinds; for it is either interior or exterior: the exterior supports the interior, exciting it to stir up the different qualities of the body it penetrates, and complete the work of nature; these two fires are so familiar and collateral, that meeting with their forces in the same subject, one strengthens the other to reach the summit of perfection. Fire is an element which acts in the center of everything, by the movement of nature, which causes emotion, emotion the air, the air the fire, and the fire separates, purges, digests, colors and ripens each seed in the matrix and in the situation that the Creator has assigned to it from the beginning. This element cannot withstand raw water, but it drives it out and reduces it to vapor by means of its heat. It is not that it is impossible to make water compatible with fire and to make it last in the greatest flame until making water inseparable from fire, but the path is known to very few. people, and belongs to the Cabal of Secret Philosophy. Elemental fire is Heaven or the very firmament where the stars reside, whose visible influences convict those who deny it of error. D contains abundantly the Spirit of the Universe, which is fire, and communicates itself through the vehicle of the air to sublunary things and gives them life; for life is but a flow of natural fire in the living body. This must be understood of animal life; for the life of the reasonable soul is a far nobler and purer stream of fire of super-celestial substance drawing its outward fire immediately from the Spirit of God, who quickens and purifies it, beginning with the attraction of the rays of her faith, and by the communication or impression of the rays of her grace and light, to inspire in her the principles of eternal life, until, accompanied by a body stripped of all impurities, she may appear glorified before the throne of God . The bodies which subsist in Heaven, draw their nourishment from it, and then send their rays or influences to the earth; to prevent, that by this emission their virtue does not come to decrease, the Eternal ordered by his ineffable wisdom that they attract as many elements purified from the ground as they return there. And it is thus that the admirable circulation of nature takes place, of which this operation of the spokes is the great wheel. The supreme fire is the worsened Heaven, where reside the spiritual Stars, which have no body of compact light; they are of a more subtle and eminent essence than the visible stars, and have much more power: they are spirits who each represent the Forces and Virtues of this Universe, enjoying their great simplicity, purity and perfection of a permanent bliss.
The darkness which veils our souls in this corruptible world, renders the Stars to us, which attend before the Sacred Majesty of the Eternal, invisible; they see (out of time) at the same time and all at once, and what we know, and what we do not know. The super-celestial waters with their supremely pure air and fire, compose the worsened Heaven. It is spoken of these super-celestial waters in Genesis, 1; Daniel, 3, 6: Psalmist, 104, 3. It is a very pure substance, shining, subtle, inflamed, but not consumed, which constitutes the interior of the Angels (Schamaijm) and of the blessed, the true Paradise composed of incorruptible and perfect elements, such as were those which Adam enjoyed before sin. The upper Macrocosm contains all that the lower has. It is from the continual influence of this incorruptible water that all things in this world are animated and disposed. Having communicated itself to the visible Stars, it passes from the Stars into the air, from the air and the water and through the water into the earth, so that it clearly appears that the lower world is the picture of the upper world. And as in this world the air stands on the water, and the fire on the air, so in the Angelic world the superheavenly air is above the superheavenly waters, and in the most eminent is the supremely pure fire which composes the inaccessible light, where God has constituted the dwelling place of His Majesty. Let no one blame us for embarking on such lofty material, besides saying nothing that is unworthy of our God, nor that goes against his holy Word: there is a secret key that opens the door to these secrets, it is hidden in a very common body, and contemptible in the eyes of the vulgar, but very precious to those of true Philosophers.
Air is a subtle, diaphanous, light and invisible Element, the link between higher and lower things, the home of the Meteors. There is nothing in the world that can do without this element. All creatures draw their life and nourishment from it, it fortifies the radical humidity and nourishes the vital spirits. Nothing would come into this world if the air permeated itself and attracted multiplicative nourishment; the air contains a frozen spirit, better than all habitable earth; this element is purer than water and less pure than Heaven; it partakes of the purity of the higher element, and of the impurity of the lower ones, and is richly endowed with the Spirit of the Universe.
The lower Elements are water and earth; their exaltation depends on the eminence of the superiors, and it is necessary that, in order to perfect themselves, they are often elevated and enriched with the superior virtues: it is necessary, I say, that the earth is often elevated by means of the water, so that the fire residing in the bowels of the earth may appear in its operations: the water never returns to the earth unless it is amended and bears some new virtue. The rain does more than the simple water which the gardener waters. Water would not penetrate the earth, if it were not animated by superior or inferior heat, as in Summer when the heat of the Sun and the power station steal the water, and cause it to rise through the roots in the plants, to finish digesting it and reduce it to plants, flowers and fruits; the heat causes the humidity of the earth to rise in mist, which, being lifted, falls back in rain by its gravity, and returns the humidity to the earth to make it fruitful. Because this universal tide is fattening from Heaven, and each time brings back new virtues.
Water is a moist and coarse element, it is the habitation of fishes, the food of plants and minerals, the refreshment of animals, the aid of generation, and the vehicle by means of which bodies consist of the elements. lower, and receive the influences of Heaven. This element contains the other three, and is used to produce. preserve and increase all the bodies we see. It contains an excellent Medicine, endowed with superior and inferior virtues. Happy is he who knows how to fix it with his mind. As fire separates things that are joined, water rejoins those that are separated; nature, joining the higher things with the lower ones by means of the middle, uses water to communicate to the earth what fire distills into water by means of the air; for the essence of fire falling in the air, that of both falls into water, and that into the earth which is the receptacle of all seeds; if the water did not pass and repass incessantly through the conduits of the earth, the astral fire would consume it by the weathering of its movement, and in passing through the earth it attracts nature from it, dressing itself in its most delicate essence. , and aiding in putrefaction which is the mother of generation; for without water there is no putrefaction. Passing through bituminous and sulphurous places, it attracts that warmth and virtue that we see in the hot baths of Ballaruc and elsewhere. Passing through veins enriched with minerals or metallic springs, it similarly attracts their virtue, and produces salutary waters, the fountains of which are seen at Spa and elsewhere, for water always smells of what has been heated with it, like the e see in the composition of the broths that the cooks prepare every day. The central heat does (as said is) everyday the same with elemental water and fruits from the bowels of the earth.
This is how the Steward and the absolute Lord of the world makes his distillation in the Macrocosm; one day his paternal goodness will exalt his glorious Majesty by his omnipotence, heightening this very pure fire which serves as firmament to the super-celestial waters, and strengthening the degree of the central heat to reduce all the waters to air and calcine the earth, so that, all the impurities consumed by the fire, he returns to the purified earth a water circulated in the air and similarly purified to compose a new world, consisting of a new Heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21-7) where in sovereignly pure, immutable and exalted elements, will live the glorified bodies of the Elect of God, after they are changed (1 Cor., 15, 51), to be glorified, that is to say, purified from filth perishable and peccant that veils our souls in this miserable life, to enable it to enjoy divine clarity immediately (Is., 60, 19 and 20). 0 Lord! When will we see your holy face? How long will we wallow in the darkness of ignorance where sin keeps us chained? In short, water by a salt imperceptible to the senses, dissolves the seeds that the earth contains; this dissolution separates the bodies, this separation leads them to putrefaction, and this putrefaction to a new life.
The last element is the earth, hard, filthy, impure, arid, the habitat of animals, plants, metals and minerals, filled with infinite seeds, less simple than the other elements, of which the earth is properly the waste and the receptacle. It is a fixed body which retains the impressions of influences from above more perfectly than do the other elements. Water and air do not retain them so well, for they penetrate to the center of the earth from where they return copiously to the surface. Earth and water constitute the same globe, and operate jointly in the procreation of animals, vegetables and minerals; it possesses a spirit nourishing the material bodies; as it is of the nature of salt, it is easily dissolved by water which penetrates the pores of the earth, to take on the nature of vegetables. The earth consolidates the bodies, tempering the humidity of the water, so that they take the form for which they are intended; water and fire contest incessantly in this element by means of air: if water predominates, corruptible things are born from it;
if fire, from it comes lasting things. The earth encloses the heavy things in itself, and throws away the light ones; it is the mother and womb of all seeds and all compositions. It is, as well as water, the matrix of universal Medicine; because the spirit of the Universe, is fixed in it, but it is not universally and everywhere. For this effect, it is necessary to change the earth into water, the water into air, and the air into fire. We draw from the earth which comes to us from above the perpetual movement, if it dissolves in its water, by means of the Philosophical fire, after it has resumed the form of the chaos that the elements had before the separation of the elemental things.
Having thus sketched out chaos and the elements, let us do the same with elemental things. They are substances which come from the elements, have an affinity with them; they are either spiritual or corporeal. The former are created from the essence of the subtlest elements; the more subtle they are, the more force and power they have, the excellence of the operation depending absolutely on the subtlety of the essence. The purest elements have the most subtle spirits, which serve as instruments of the eternal word of God. Spirits are superior or inferior: the former inhabit Heaven, and are of the first or second class. Those of the first are very pure and dwell in the worse Heaven; and as they are above the firmament and the measured movement of the stars, they are not subject to time; they hear and understand things, not successively, but all at once; they are distinguished by Orders and by Powers (Cor. 1, 16), there being Archangels (1 Thess., 4,16), Angels being distinguished from Powers (Rom., 8, 38). The Spirits of the second class are those who dwell in the Firmament of the visible stars: as they preside over the operations of the astral fire, they have been called Salamanders; they serve as instruments for the operations which the blessed angels exercise in the lower creatures, the perfect light from above being communicated to the lower imperfect only by this means or medium. These spirits are innumerable, and have their distinct and definite functions like the creatures which inhabit the globe of the earth. As many as there are different Stars in the Firmament, so many different orders of Spirits: there are Solar, Lunar, Saturnian, Mercurial, who dominate the globe of the earth. by their influences: it is they who exploit even the moral functions in man, leading him to actions of civil probity, with which we have seen the Gentiles adorned; but as it comes only from the subordinate Heaven, it takes rays of the light of the Supreme Spirit to crucify our own flesh, and to sacrifice it even for divine glory, renouncing all our corruptible felicities for the incorruptible, until to love our enemies, and hate our own corrupt nature. Affections which go beyond the order of nature come immediately from the uncreated light of the Spirit of God. The spirits which preside in the air, consume in themselves and convert into their own nature that chaos which is composed of all things, none of which created cannot happen: they lead the Meteors and often produce by the will of sovereign Creator, the prodigious effects of wind and thunder; they are not all evil, nor subject to the Prince of this world who reigns ibns the ;iir. They are not universal, but distributed in certain dispositions for different functions. The remnant of the terrestrial and aquatic spirits have alike theirs, following the orders of the Eternal; on either side they are less powerful than the ventilated ones. What good spirits do in the course of nature comes from those who are good, and whom God has created elementary for this purpose; what is evil and sinister comes from the evil Spirits thrown out of the worsened Heaven because of their rebellion, for which they are condemned to live, as well as sinful man, instead of the pure and incorruptible elements, in the impure and perishable. The evil spirits who are the devils artificially play spiritual and corporeal elements in elemental things to ruin them, and especially man, in whom they hate the image of the Eternal, whom they try by a malicious desire to corrupt. , annihilate and plunge into darkness; but as the darkness only serves to make the excellence of the light more apparent and more beautiful, so their black malice only serves to exalt the more the goodness and the light of the Almighty, who makes them cooperate even in their damnation, lean them, to glorify Justice and Glory with his infinite power, by their vain and fruitless resistance.
Having dealt with everything above, we must descend to contemplate the palpable bodies subject to our senses. After the spiritual Elements, let us consider the bodies drawn from the Elements externally from a corporeal nature, internally from a spiritual nature; because the bodies are only the prisons which lock up the interior and active spirits to limit them; they are limited in life and death; the more organs they have, the more corruptible they are, the only unity being immortal, for composition presupposes separation. The first thing to contemplate in this are the hypostatic principles; they are active substances taken from suitable elements of temperament, in order to compose elemental things. We call these three principles Salt, Sulfur and Mercury. Where they are well proportioned, they form a durable substance; where they are not, the thing is impure and perishable. Purity consists in the harmony and proportion of the three, impurity in inequality.
Salt is the substance of things and a fixed principle comparable to the element of earth. It nourishes the Sulfur and the Mercury which act on it until they have made it volatile as for them, raising it to their perfection. The Salt retains them as a reward and coagulates them, imparting to them its fixed nature; and as it is fixed and dry, it assembles what is liquid; being dissolved in a suitable liquor, it helps to dissolve solid bodies, as its fixed nature on the other hand consolidates them. Its budding vigor gives it strength as it is dissolved by means of Mercury and Sulphur. It is active only insofar as it is made such by the ministry of the other two principles; then its power is reduced to action. Because by dint of the harmony between the three principles, one cannot exist or act without the other. It is the Salt and the Sulfur which preserve the bodies from putrefaction, removing the superfluous humidity capable of causing this rot. No solid body is deprived of salt, which is said to be the fixed, dry and firm principle; it is impossible that without this principle one can form a body. When wood is burned, the coarsely mercurial and superfluous humidity evaporates, the coarsely sulphurous and bituminous matter is consumed by the fire and similarly evaporates, tending to perfection by its elevation; but the Salt remains in the ashes with the humid fixed radical, which cannot be consumed or destroyed.
Sulfur is a fatty and oily principle which binds the two other principles entirely different for the excess of their dryness and humidity, so that it serves them as a medium and as a ligament to join them and hold them together: for it participates in both of substance, having part of the solidity of Salt and part of the volatility of Mercury; it is susceptible to fire operating by desiccation, and consumes the superfluous; it is by virtue of this operation that it coagulates the Mercury, but it does not complete it alone, for the Salt which is intimately incorporated into it assists it powerfully.
Sulfur produces odors, but if the whole substance of the fixed Salt, drawn from the interior of the Sulphur, is equally diffused by all the parts of the body, it will have coagulated its Mercury in such a way that this body there will not give off any odor. , as we see in gold and in silver.
The Mercury is a spiritual, airy, rare liquor, thickened with a little sulphur, and the closest instrument to natural heat; he gives life and vigor to sublunary creatures, and strengthens those who are feeble; it is of the nature of air, and shows itself such by its evaporation, while it feels the least heat, although it is comparable to water by its fluxibility, and does not contain itself in its own terms, but in foreign terms, that is, in humidity; it dominates in imperfect and corruptible bodies, because it has too little salt and sulfur; but where it is reduced to the same nature well proportioned with the two other principles, it composes an incorruptible body, such as we see in it gold, from which, because of this admirable proportion, we can draw a medicine, very excellent and salutary.
After contemplating the three principles of nature, two words must be said about the seed. It is an extract drawn, exalted and separated from a body by means of a suitable liquor, matured in proper vessels for the propagation of its kind. The natural balm which is a spiritual essence of the three principles, a celestial, crystalline and invisible spirit, inhabiting a visible body, animates the seed. This seed, as a seed, is not a sentient body, but rather its receptacle; it is produced by means of heat, and that not by art but by nature: it cannot last if it is procreated from corruptible elements: this should be noted by those who seek an incorruptible Medicine in bodies corruptible and imperfect animals, vegetables and minerals. No seed can grow or multiply if it is deprived of its active virtue by an extraneous heat; roast chicken no longer spawns. Each seed never mingles out of its kingdom; the metals do not suffer any mixture of plants, nor plants of animals in their procreation. All kinds of seeds are spiritually instructed by the Creator to mechanically complete the course of their appointed time procreation, by means of their tincture and power which manifests when the impediments are lifted; for they must be removed if a legitimate generation is to be made, and there is no matter which does not have its particular and designated virtues to cooperate (if it is pure) with the seed and to walk in concert with it in the end intended by the sovereign Creator; being impossible that this inner and outer virtue remain fruitless, if it is well disposed. The seed is clothed in an elementary body specific to itself, attracting by its magnetic virtue the nourishment it needs. Everything above acts on the passive elements, which are earth, massive and coarse, and water of the same qualities, whose concentration with the active principles in the same inseparable matter is the masterpiece of the Philosophers, or rather from the grace and omnipotence of the Lord our God. Of the three principles of nature thus outlined, there are the three accidents of nature and elemental things to be considered, which are generation, preservation, and destruction. The generation of each particular body is made from its own seed, and that in its own womb; for if the seed is not correct, or the womb pure and natural, there can be no generation. The animal semen requires an animal matrix; the vegetable seed requires a vegetable matrix, and the mineral seed wants a mineral matrix, which must be observed well to avoid vulgar errors; and this is properly a good and sortable matrix, which answers absolutely to the seed of his reign. And how could it be that a natural and legitimate seed duly purified of its foreign and harmful accidents, laid down either by nature without artifice or by artifice according to nature in its true womb, fail to produce its like?
Do we not daily see gardeners and laborers operating by grafting and sowing in good soil, producing what those who very wrongly call themselves great Philosophers, are unaware of doing in the mineral kingdom. But it is as impossible without nature, to increase and make an ox grow by all conceivable artifices, as it is lettuce or gold. On the contrary, it is absolutely necessary, if any generation is to be made by artifice, that this artifice conforms completely to nature, which contains the order which the eternal Creator has prescribed from the beginning for creatures; none of which, nor even the blessed Angels, have the power to change anything in this order.
Let those therefore who are unaware of this order learn it, before risking anything against this order and if they cannot understand or learn it, they will do well to let nature operate without them, since as well she will do without them, when they would not think so. I pity those wretches who want to copy an original which is unknown to them, and work in an operation of which they cannot even speak. I therefore conclude that those who wish to operate by imitating nature must know first the seeds and then also the matrices, and then if they choose the true seed, such as nature has formed it, in its habitat, and likewise the womb as nature formed it, and let them put that well purged and well conditioned seed into that womb, delivering the concoction to the nature of the fire inherent within them; then, I say, they can expect a favorable success. In this article it is not enough to know the particular seed of each body of the three kingdoms of nature which ordinarily has it inherent in itself, it is also necessary to know the seed of the universal Spirit which it admirably infuses in animals. , to plants and minerals without anything remaining or being generated: for this Spirit, this fifth element, this instrument of the Eternal, is absolutely required in the procreation of things. Thus as it contains the universal tincture of the seeds, it likewise has the power to operate on the universal, and must reasonably serve as the basis of the universal Medicine, which no one has ever drawn, nor will draw from a particular body. animals, plants, or minerals.
Nothing can be born from any seed, which does not rot by means of a natural and endowed heat when its salt being dissolved in a suitable liquor penetrates by this way the substance of the seed, so that the spirit included is formed from its matter a habitat suitable for the multiplication of its species. Animals multiply by animals, plants by plants, and minerals by minerals; it must be done by order in each species, as we see that the Eternal has commanded (Genesis, 24); there is no putrefaction without solution and no solution without liquor; but this liquor must be proportioned to each species, first according to its essence or its quality, then according to its quantity.
The second article necessary for this generation is the fire which must be slow and soft, so that the liquor which contains the natural salt of the matter does not separate from it while evaporating, which would cause, instead of life, death. The matrix containing the seed must be well closed to concentrate the virtue of the acting spirit, and the matter must not be taken out of its matrix where it works for its putrefaction; for if you take out the grain of dissolved wheat while it is putrefying in the ground, it will perish. The virtue of the seeds varies according to that of the matrices. The seeds must be equal, both male and female, without mixture, lest confusion of species breed monsters. Generation is followed by regeneration; it is either natural or artificial. The natural is made by nature alone when the ripened seeds fall into the ground and are reborn by multiplying; the artificial is when the worker operates by means of nature and imitating it and preparing the matrices, as the plowman does when digging, smoking, watering and preparing the earth. Thus the Philosopher must treat his philosophical earth, whose pores are tight and compact, he must moisten them, penetrate them, soften them, make them subtle, nourish and ripen by means of this nourishment, making it more than simply perfect and capable, by means of this regeneration, to multiply to a second life. This is the Phoenix rising from its ashes; it is the Salamander which remains in the fire; it is there the universal Chameleon which has the capacity to be clothed with all the colors and properties which one opposes to him. Consider the admirable relationship that eternal and temporal things, spiritual and corporeal, immaterial things have, and see according to the lights that God has given us if you will not find the image, however imperfect, of superior things in the lower ones. Man corrupted by sin and subject to perdition was to, by means of your regeneration, ascend to the glory of eternal life and bring closer to the life and divine clarity from which he was sequestered; this is why, in order to attain it, it was necessary that the immaterial word of God descend (so to speak) from heaven and be made flesh so that it may satisfy in this perfect and sacred flesh for imperfect and damned men, who , provided that they are incorporated, spiritually by faith, the perfection and the merit of this incarnate word participate in its Eternity and its Glory, where those who do not participate in it remain in perdition. See, I say, how this ineffable and incomprehensible marvel of the wise Providence of God is sketched out and portrayed to us in the subordinate creature. To give (for example) to imperfect and corruptible bodies the perfection and constancy they lack, must not the universal and celestial Spirit take their form and cause them to be reborn in order to subsist, by means of regeneration in the second life, as we daily see the animal and vegetable kingdoms? And does not the Cabala of Secret Philosophy show those who are part of it that this universal Spirit, incorporated, by a manipulation as admirable as it is hidden, into the Philosophical earth, leads it by the degrees dictated by the prescribed course of nature to that perfection which, being then apprehended by defective and perishable bodies, causes them to be reborn into a new life, where they are beyond the jurisdiction of the transitory elements? This reflection pictured the incarnation of the Eternal Son of God before he was manifested in the flesh to the pagan philosophers and compelled the Magi of the East in the time of his appearance to distinguish and recognize his star, and to come to adore him at Bethlehem. This mature reflection must also lead us to recognize the mysterious harmony of the uncreated word with the subordinate creature of the word immediately revealed and of the divine will in act mediately, and in a word of the spiritual and material works of the Eternal our God whose most lofty Majesty we must incessantly praise, who manifested himself to us, poor unworthy creatures, in a sovereignly excellent way, to prepare us to magnify him one day in his spiritual reign. as we now magnify him imperfectly in his material realm.
There follows the conservation of elemental creatures, which is done by the same things as generation. But as this conservation is done through the absorption of external matter, there is always some matter which it appropriates and incorporates as suitable to its nature, and some matter which it rejects as evil proper to its nature. The nourishment which effects this preservation is spiritual or corporeal; the last is visible and palpable, the first invisible and impalpable, but of two different selves, of which one inherent in nourishing matter is less purified, the second much purer since it is only the universal Spirit present at all things, which is like the governor of that particular spirit and the bond which ties the visible material with the invisible material, that is, the body with the Spirit together. As much as the elements and the foods which nourish a body are pure and sequestered with impurities, so much the more as the food is perfect. What is most capable of perfecting this food is the simplicity of its composition when it is not made of many different species. When this food is excellent, it can cause a whole renovation in the body which appropriates it. The snake is renewed or rejuvenated by changing its skin, man does the same when, by the assumption of an excellent and universal Medicine, his white hair changes to black and his wrinkled skin to a fresh complexion. Plants likewise become green again by the application of Universal Medicine and gold becomes younger as it changes to liquor in Mercury through the benefit of fire. I could say many things about this conservation if I were not afraid to write a book instead of a letter.
There remains the destruction of elemental things, which is usually done by its opposite, when one of the qualities overcomes the other. It is done either by dissolution, or by coagulation: this dissolution being coarse, the destruction is done by wounds, fall, fraction, dissection; the delicate dissolution takes place by corrosion and by ignition. There is, however, a gifted dissolution which takes place by the way of nature, and transplants the body to a more constant and perfect nature. Coagulation in turn causes destruction. when the liquid coagulates so that draws destruction accordingly, while the spirits and vapors dry up or shut up by obstructions.
This consideration finished, we cast our eyes, with justice, towards the superior operations of the Stars destined to infuse their distinct properties into the three kingdoms, for the propagation of their distinct seeds. The light inherent in these bodies cannot rest, but it continually works to raise the light inherent in the particular bodies, as this one works to attract the higher. This influence is a spirit endowed with the power to communicate itself by means of the rays to the sublunary bodies. When these influences are simple, that is to say, of a single Star, they operate only simply. But the united influence of the rays of different stars which unite their rays, operates differently in the lower bodies, either to hasten or to prevent their actions. The fixed stars are those whose movement is less perceptible, because of its lateness, which represents intervals and the figures always the same.
To abbreviate, I refer you to those who profess to deal with it more fully, only wanting to say two words about Pianotes, which are Stars whose movement is visible, and whose effect is remarkable, both to harm and to profit. : their aspect being very powerful, whether it is straight or collateral, whether it operates by conjunction or by opposition. The main ones are the Sun and the Moon. the first of which can be said to be an abundant source of light and heat.
The soul of the world or the Universal Spirit powerfully possesses this star, which is released by its rays to give way and movement to the Universe. The virtues of all things are inherent in the Sun, and its movement regulates that of the seasons and of the bodies which are under the class of the seasons. And as God willed that superior things should have their image in inferior things, it happens that we see one of the Sun in gold, which possesses the dilated virtues of the Sun, tightened in its body, which if we reduced in power in action, have enough to give back to imperfect or sick bodies, the solar and invigorating virtue that they lack. The Sun attracts by its magnetic virtue the purest spirits, and perfects them to send them back by its rays, in order to restore and increase the bodies of particular creatures. The Moon draws its light and its influences from the Sun, sending them back to the earth at night, and marks the months with its shortened movement. This Eve drawn from the rib of Adam (or Sun) performs in the aforesaid operation the office of the female, and presides in moist matter, feminine and passive, as the Sun does in dry and active matter.
The lesser planets are primarily the Heterodromes, which run their course through a diverse and unequal motion: these are Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. The first completes its course in twelve years. the second in thirty, and the third in two years.
The Homodromes which make their way with almost equal speed are Venus and Mercury. The first completes its circle in a year, and the second likewise. Speaking of the metals, perhaps, I will touch a word on their affinity and harmony with the Planets. However, leaving aside the Meteors, I content myself with telling you generally that they are generated in the air like minerals in the earth, vapors, and are reduced by virtue of the Stars and of certain forms: they are four sorts, according to the Elements: Comets and falling Stars, which are thunderbolts, holding fire; the wind of the air; rain and hail, water; stones, thunderbolts and earth.
This contemplation (where I leave the field free to your meditations) finished, it remains to consider the lower elemental things which make up the three kingdoms of Nature, namely: the animal, the vegetable and the mineral.
Let's start with the last, and observe that each metal spiritually hides all the others in itself, especially since they all come from the same root, namely sulphur, salt and Mercury. Mercury is a filthy liquor, which well prepared, fire cannot consume; it is begotten in the bowels of the earth, and is spiritual, white in appearance, moist and cold, but indeed and in power hot, red and dry. Mercury willingly receives into itself the things that are of its nature and incorporates them. This metallic water greedily swallows up the perfect metals in order to use their perfection for its own exaltation; nature having imprinted on him this instinct, as on all creatures, of tending by the legitimate way to the improvement and multiplication of his species. The sulfur which enlarges the Mercury, is the fire which is inherent and natural to it, and which, by means of the exterior movement of nature, completes its digestion and ripening. He does not make a separate body, but a separate faculty from Mercury, and he is. inherent and incorporated. Salt is a dry, spiritual consistency and alike inherent in Mercury and Sulphur, giving the latter the power to digest the first metal. Now, as in the course of ordinary nature and before the coagulation of the metal, salt is very infirm, God has inspired the Philosophers with the way of adding to Mercury a pure, fixed and perfect salt, in order to operate in a short time what nature does only with the work of many years. The generation of metals takes place as follows: the Universal Spirit mixes with water and earth, and draws from them a greasy spirit which he distills in the center of the earth, to raise it from there. . and place it within its proper matrix, where it is digested into Mercury, accompanied by its salt or sulfur, from which the metal is then formed, which is done when the tincture hidden in the Mercury shows itself and comes to be born, for then the Mercury is congealed and changed into metal. Often Mercury becomes charged in this matrix with an impure sulfur which prevents it from perfecting itself into pure gold or silver, to which the influence of the lesser Planets and the constitution of the matrix contribute, and cause it to become lead, or iron. , or copper which do not suffer the examination of fire. This decoction requires a continual and temperate outer heat, which, assisted by the inner metallic spirit, finally reaches its maturity. The conservation of the metals is done by means of the interior metallic sulphur, and while they subsist in a place of their own. The destruction of metals is done by means of things which have no harmony with them, such as waters and corrosive substances, which the curious have well to note. Gold is a perfect metal, the elements of which are so generally balanced that one does not predominate the other; this is why the ancient Philosophers sought in this perfect body a perfect Medicine, and which is not found in any other body subject to being destroyed by any inequality, for a thing subject of itself to destruction, could not give to others a health or amendment of consequence.
The question is to make gold alive, spiritual, and applicable to human nature, which it is not in its simple and compact nature: to arrive at this perfection, it must be reduced in its female to its first nature, and remake by its demotion the path of regeneration, of which I spoke above. Dead gold in itself is good for nothing and is sterile; but made alive, it has enough to germinate and multiply. The vivifying metallic spirit is concealed so long as it resides in a compact and earthly body; but reduced from his power in act, he is able to operate not only in the propagation of his species, but also because of his equally proportioned elements, he will restore health and vigor to the body of animals. As the celestial Sun communicates its clarity to the planets, so one can communicate its perfection and virtue to imperfect metals. This is why the ancient Cabalists designated the planets and the metals by the same characters, and it is not without great reason that gold and the sun were represented by a whole circle and its center, because the he one and the other contains in itself the virtues of the whole Universe: the center signifies the earth, the circle the sky. He who knows how to reduce the central virtues of gold to its circumference, acquires the virtues of the whole Universe in a single Medicine. Gold appears and is volatile; this spiritual and volatile nature properly contains its medicinal and penetrating virtue because without solution it does nothing.
Gold has a very great affinity with Mercury, and it is only necessary to join them after having made them pure and without stains, to unite them together, being both incorruptible and perfect: l One of these bodies is the inferior, and the other the superior, of which Hermes speaks: but note that gold in its compact, massive, and corporeal nature, is useless to any Medicine or transplantation. This is why it must be taken in its volatile and spiritual nature. Roundness being designated by the perfection of gold which casts its rays diametrically measured from the center to the circumference, and the four qualities equally balanced in gold representing the four equal lines laid in a rectangle, which form the equilateral square, the Cabala secret finds in the material of this metal, the probable and perceptible form of the squaring of the circle. But since few people are able to understand hidden mysteries, it is not proper to lay them out in view of the unworthy.
Silver, although more perfect than other metals, is less so than gold, it relates to the celestial moon and has its virtue as well as its character. It is very useful in its own way to expert Philosophers. As gold has the signature in the Macrocosm, of the Sun, and in the Microcosm, of the heart, so silver has the signature in the Macrocosm, of the Moon, and in the Microcosm, of the brain, of which it is a medicine singular, if it is made spiritual and impalpable.
The Lesser Metals are two soft, namely lead and tin, and two hard, namely iron and copper; they are composed of an impure sulfur and an unripe mercury. Each one being endowed with a spirit limited to a certain degree, dominates in the Philosophical cures only on the diseases where presides a spirit subordinate to that which is inherent in one of these metals.
Precious stones are different because of their digestion, and are diaphanous because they are congealed with pure water with the spirit of the Universe, endowed with certain tints, not quite dissimilar to those of metals, which gives them both color and virtue. The common and non-transparent stones are congealed with filthy and impure earth mixed with a tenacious and sticky humidity, which, when dried, composes the soft, or sandy, hard stone, more or less according to the quantity or quality of this humidity.
Minerals are materials that are neither stone nor metal. Vitriol, common mercury, and antimony partake most of metallic matter. The last is the womb and vein of gold and the seminary of its tincture: both contain excellent medicine. Common salt, ammonia, rock salt, saltpetre and alum follow it and are generated from the salty waters. Sulfur, on the contrary, is frozen from pure earthly dryness. For bitumen, there are several kinds; it is a tenacious earth juice susceptible to fire: there is some hard and liquid; the first is asphalt, pissasphalt and yellow amber; the second is oleaginous like naphtha and arabic amber. The minerals of the third kind are orpiment, sandarac, gypsum, chalk, clay, Armenian earth, and congealed earth.
After the contemplation of the mineral kingdom sketched superficially, it is necessary to do as much, but summarily, of the vegetable, lest this letter become imperceptibly a book in the hands of a man who did not, nor will ever do. Plants are bodies that have roots in the earth and grow their stems, leaves, fruits and flowers in the air. Their interior seed aided by an exterior heat, and above all animated by the Universal Spirit, by means of the influence of the Stars, shows itself in the propagation of its species. Consider on your own account in the solid and liquid, spiritual or corporeal parts of a vegetable, their natural balm, which agitates them with their humidity, or the Mercury which moistens and sustains them. Their anatomy will show you in their solidity their flesh, in their ligaments like the arteries and the veins which are used for the steps which the universal spirit makes in them. The remnant of their limbs are root, stem, bark, pith, wood, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, moss, juice, gum or root: where your meditation will dictate on the footing of what I have said above, both about the universal of creatures and about creatures in particular what there is to observe concerning their generation, preservation and destruction. They are subject to the seasons which arrest or hasten, according to their properties, their qualities inherent in each plant separately, to make it take its destined course from the foundation of the world. One would never have made speak of their different species and virtues, as also of their signature and constellation, or else to distribute and arrange them under the Stars which dominate each plant in particular, and to demonstrate to the senses that the signatures refer to various diseases with the harmony of the subordinate spirits which govern and the perfections of the plants and the imperfections of the diseases: but this path, although marvelously beautiful and pleasant, is too long, and only makes it circle around the cabalistic center, where one arrives by an infinitely shorter and easier path, if we consider exactly the beginning and the end of this letter. In my opinion, having the key to general science, one easily penetrates the properties of particular creatures, but it is very difficult to climb from the particular to the general, because naturally one descends much more than one ascends, and the trouble is always greater to speak to the Prince himself than to his servants.
The animal is a mobile body and feeds on plants and minerals: for the latter two participate in each other. As it would be a large and ample work to decipher its parts and species minutely, I will touch on it only in passing. Animals are composed of body and soul: the first is properly the habitat of the second. The bodies are all penetrable by animal souls, and have more or less condensed parts relating to the elements of the Macrocosm. The bones which are the driest are similar and approaching the earth. The cartilages are parts less hard than the bones and bendable, like also the ligaments, membranes, nerves, arteries, veins; of which I refer to the anatomists, as well as of the other parts where we will find that they relate to the elements: the dry to the earth, the humid to the water and the spiritual to the air or to the fire.
Animal spirits are subtle vapours: there are superior and inferior; these are either aquatic or terrestrial, and preside in the parts of the body which suit them most, following the example of the spirits of the Macrocosm, which contribute their functions to the elements from which they derive their origin. The spirit of fire or celestial resides in the heart and animates others by its activity; he operates properly in the Microcosm what he does in the Macrocosm, except for what he is particular in the one, as he is general in the other, where he has attachment with the subordinate spirits of the great world, each animal being able to qualify as such, although more imperfectly than man does, made alone in the image of God. I will hardly prevent myself from speaking more than I wanted to do of the sensitive soul and its diversity with the reasonable.
The sensitive soul is a spiritual substance, it resides as such in the brain, and dominates the animal spirits, being instructed and made capable by the Creator, of feeling, appetite and motion. To call it by its name, it is a spark of the universal spirit, drawn by the Sovereign from the essence of the flabbergasted sky and imprinted on the animal seed to govern it in the class where it is placed: the rays of this soul does not shed light beyond the limits of their animal spirits, even animal man not understanding the things which are of the spirit of God; for as this animal soul is only of the flabbergasted class, it cannot raise its flight above its homeland. On the contrary, all the animal and finite faculties must be dormant and regenerated, when the reasonable soul rises to God and prostrates itself before the Throne of His Majesty to draw spiritual lights from it. So that the rays of this sensitive or animal soul suffer, in order to reside in the animal and elementary spirits, a very great mixture of darkness attached to filthy and impure matter, which makes it less subtle and penetrating, preventing it from knowing things only by surface area. The reflection of these rays inflames the imagination, and moves the appetite which takes the place of will in this soul, and causes the emotion of the bodily parts, which depend on it, according to the organs and their perfection or defect, from which comes that some operate more or less perfectly than others.
Man is the most perfect of creatures, his body is more excellently and delicately organized than that of other animals, this being required for his dominant functions. The material of this body is hardly different from that of other animals, but the form, of the parts of which I refer to those who have composed volumes of it, for fear of making it one of repetitions.
His rational soul is of a flabbergasted nature, endowed by the Creator with the ability to hear what is happening under the Empiric sky and what the Macrocosm contains. When the Creator formed man (Genesis, 2, v. 7) of earth, it is not said that he made his soul of any material, but that he infused it into him, blowing his nostrils from it. breath of life, of which man was made into a living and immortal soul: if it is pure, it is, I say, capable of knowing what is of the Macrocosm and of judging it. It can exercise its intellectual operations concentrated in itself and without the help of the external or material senses, which the animal soul cannot do, because the senses are linked, all its functions are attached. The rational soul is a mirror which represents things very remote, which the material senses cannot do: it even penetrates by sound reasoning invisible and impalpable things. As long as she entangles her faculties in material things, she finds it difficult to raise her eye to sublime things; but if it is assisted by divine grace to extricate itself, then it can employ its whole strength, and exploit strongly. For just as the superior and inferior Stars, I say generals and individuals, derive their light and their life from the concentrated light of the Sun, so rational souls can do nothing of themselves if they are not illuminated by the rays of the grace of the Sun of Righteousness, our Lord Jesus Christ, through his Holy Spirit.
The admirable Providence of the Father of light willed that at the end of the third day and towards the beginning of the fourth of creation, the previously diffused light would take form in the Sun which illuminates the temporal world, and that towards the end of the three thousand years after the creation, the divine Majesty took flesh to enlighten and govern the eternal world. And as our souls are eternal, they are (I say those of the Elect) from this life, dwelling places and temples of the Holy Spirit who leads and perfects them, as the spirit of the Universe makes the material spirits. O how happy we would be if the accursed sin did not obscure the clarity of our souls, which since this unfortunate accident only know in part and certainly, to take it well, rather imperfectly. Everything, I say absolutely everything that remains to us of the excellent light that the soul sees in its creation is given to us only by measure of the pure mercy of God and according to his good pleasure, without which our brutalized soul is as if confused with the animal and under its domination to live and die with it; for it precipitates it into death, as on the other side the soul regenerated by the spirit of God quickens and raises the animal soul to eternal life. Those therefore who would perfect their souls must address themselves in firm faith to God, and put off by serious repentance the filth of sin in order to obtain the Holy Spirit, which is the sure pledge of their salvation and leads them from grace to grace, and from light to light, until having deposited according to the present order the perishable dirt which veils the soul, they can put on in the second life the same body, but purified and made spiritual, in order to present themselves before the Throne of the Lord and to magnify and glorify it in all eternity. His paternal mercy leads us there for the love of his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory forever. Generation in the animal kingdom is quite visible, and as you find ample descriptions of it, I dispense with it. Animals are preserved by means of elements, foods and medicines, the quantity and quality of which cause them more or less good and harm. Their destruction takes place when one of the principles predominates the other: this inequality causes their bad weather. Where humidity abounds, come the diseases which partake of it, such as cathars, dropsies; if fire, burning fevers; which should lead, in the search for cures, the minds of the curious towards the remedy capable of restoring and preserving that balance of principles which causes health. There remains the harmony of things, which is a material as ample as it is beautiful and useful. All that I have just said to you above speaks only of that, and when I would not say anything else about it, I would believe to have been amply satisfied with it. Nevertheless, to satisfy your curiosity, I would tell you in the form of an epilogue, that the relationship must be great from one creature to another, since the material does not differ, only the form. The very elements drawn from a single chaos differ among themselves only by reason of their disposition. All things emanated from unity and return to it. This contemplation is like the key to the greatest secrets of Nature, where we see that everything is ordered in time, in measure and in weight. Observing the generation, preservation and destruction of the three kingdoms of Nature, you will see that they agree entirely with each other in this point; they are born of the three principles of Nature, where the active takes the place of male and the passive of female, and by the interior heat of the semen and by the exterior of the decoction; it does not matter that the origin is different in form, as the creatures are also different from each other. They subsist and are preserved by the attraction of the balm similar to that which is inherent in them, which serves them as food, by the exterior heat, and which strengthens the interior, preserving the humors in equilibrium. They are destroyed by the attraction of bad weather residing in foods and elements that the Eternal has cursed (Genesis, 3, 27), because of the sin of man, by the reduction of the organs and by hereditary bad weather. to blood. Each body of the three kingdoms needs the seed, the womb, its movement, its double and proportionate heat, so that they only differ among themselves in the situation which the Creator has given them with their form and the intention to multiply each in his kind (Genesis, I, 22).
It is not enough to know the harmony of the essential earthly things, but one must observe their concert with the superior ones. The elementary Sun has a very great resemblance to the central; they send back their rays and attractions to each other by a continual and reciprocal reverberation, to facilitate by this movement the propagation of the Creatures. The Moon and the Stars alike have a continual intercourse with the astral powers, inherent in the sublunary bodies, where dwell spirits, relating in virtue and inclination to each other. Then consider the harmony of minds and bodies with their parallel operations, as I have sketched them lightly above. And above all admire the relationship of the spiritual world to the material, one bears the image of the other, and what will one day appear exalted in the upper world, is seen in some way sketched out in the lower. The elementary Sun presides over the government of the perishable world, and the Sun of Justice presides over the direction of the eternal world; time being a movement, its created director is mobile, and Eternity, consisting of constant rest, is governed by the immutable which has been, which is, and which will be the same from century to century. When he appears immediately in the glorified person of his eternal Word in the flesh, as he appears mediately in the material instruments, arranged for the direction of the admirable work of Creation, his immense light will dim that which he has distinguished from chaos for regulate the movement of time, which will end at the same instant that the fire of this new incomprehensible clarity will banish the perishable and the obscure, exalting our bodies to this luminous diaphaneity of which his paternal kindness has shown an admirable sample (Math., 17 , v. 2 and Mark. 9, v. 3) as also (2 Kings, 2, v. 11) where the presence of the Eternal at the rapture of Elias worked on him almost in the same way. Then all things emanating from the incomprehensible unity of the Eternal, having perfected their course in the harmony of the lower Macrocosm, will return to this purified union of darkness, which will take the place of damned earth in this new creation, and will serve as to the spirits of evil men, excluded from the light and presence of the Eternal. Just as Angels and blessed men will dwell in incomprehensible glory to praise, bless, and exalt him forever. His paternal Goodness and Mercy forgive us our trespasses and satisfy us with the goods of his house for the love of his only Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory and honor. forever. Amen.
Here, Sir, is the extract from my reading of The Philosophers, simple and without affectation of ornament or ostentation, which I present to you with as good a heart as I am.
Sir, your, etc.
Quote of the Day
“make him white, or white him with the nimblenesse of the fire, so long till out of him arises the spirit which is called Hermeses bird, so the earth will remaine cinerated in the ground which is of a fiery nature, so thou hast 4 elements in the earth which did remaine in the ground, and it is the fire”
Alberius
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher
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