Three Books of Occult Philosophy

returned to their own simplicity, virtue is above all the fulfillment that completes all occult and natural operations: and these are the foundation of all natural Magic. The elements of the third order are not elements primarily in themselves, but are composites original: "decomposita", varied, manifold, and interchangeable with one another: they are an infallible medium, and therefore are called the "means of nature," or the "soul of nature’s middle ground" original: "anima mediæ naturæ": there are very few who understand their profound mysteries. In these, through certain numbers, degrees, and orders, is the completion of every effect in any natural, celestial, or super-celestial thing. They are wonderful and full of mysteries that can be worked in Magic, both natural and divine: for through them, the bindings original: "ligationes", as well as the loosenings and transmutations of all things, the knowledge and prediction of the future—even the driving out of evil demons and the conciliation of good spirits—descends from them. Without these threefold elements and the knowledge of them, let no one trust that they can perform anything in the occult sciences of Magic and nature. However, whoever knows how to reduce these into those—the impure into the pure, the manifold into the simple—and knows how to discern their nature, virtue, and power in number, degrees, and order without dividing the substance: that person shall easily obtain the science and perfect operation of all natural things and celestial secrets.

On the wonderful natures of fire and earth. Chapter V.

A decorative woodcut initial 'A' depicting a personified figure, possibly a wind god or celestial being, seated among swirling clouds.

FOR the operation of all wonders, says Hermes Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Hellenistic figure associated with the origin of alchemy and magic, two things suffice: fire and earth; the latter is passive, the former is active. Fire (as Dionysius Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a Christian Neoplatonist philosopher says) comes clearly in all and through all, and is yet removed; it is bright to all, yet simultaneously hidden and unknown; when it is by itself, without the presence of matter in which to manifest its own action, it is boundless and invisible, powerful in its own right for its own action, mobile, yielding itself to all things that approach it in any way, renewing, the guardian of nature, illuminating, ungraspable by virtue of its veiled splendors, clear, distinct, leaping back, tending upward, moving sharply, exalted, not subject to the insult of being diminished, always moving and causing movement, grasping others while remaining ungrasped, not needing another, growing secretly from itself, and manifesting its own greatness to the materials it takes up, active, powerful, present invisibly to all things at once; it does not allow itself to be neglected, but like a kind of vengeance, generally and specifically it suddenly reduces things to reason; it is incomprehensible, impalpable, not diminished, most lavishly distributed in all its own transmissions. Fire is a boundless and unruly portion of things (as Pliny Pliny the Elder, author of the Roman "Natural History" says), and it is doubtful whether it consumes more or brings forth more. Fire itself is one, and penetrating through all things, as the Pythagoreans Pythagorici|Followers of the philosopher Pythagoras, who believed the universe was built on mathematical principles and harmony say, but it is dilated in heaven and shining, yet constricted in hell, dark and tormenting; in the middle world it participates in both. Fire, therefore, is one in itself, but manifold in the recipient, and distributed in different ways according to different things, as Cleanthes A Stoic philosopher whose views were preserved by the Roman orator Cicero testifies in Cicero. There is also this adventitious original: "adinuentitius," meaning artificial or acquired fire which we use: it is in stones, which by the strike of an iron...