OCCULT PHILOSOPHY

...and when dissolved, it becomes water, and when that is thickened and condensed, it becomes earth it becomes earth; through heat, however, it evaporates and passes into air, and that air, when overheated, passes into fire; and this fire, when extinguished, returns into air; and when cooled down from excessive burning, it becomes earth, or stone, or sulfur, just as is evident from the effects of lightning. Agrippa is describing the cycle of elemental transformation. The reference to "sulfur" from lightning reflects the historical belief that the "brimstone" smell following a lightning strike was a physical residue of the fire turning into earth. Plato, however, believes that earth is entirely transmutable, and that the other elements are transmutable both into it and into each other. Earth is therefore divided by the finer elements—not transformed, but dissolved or mixed into those things which dissolve it, eventually returning to itself. Each of the elements has two specific qualities, the first of which it retains as its own, and in the second it agrees with the following element as a middle ground. For fire is hot and dry, earth is dry and cold, water is cold and moist, and air is moist? and hot. In the Aristotelian system, air is traditionally moist and hot. The OCR text here is damaged but the logic of the "interconnected" qualities requires "moist" to bridge water and fire. In this way, according to two contrary qualities, the elements are contrary to each other: such as fire to water, and earth to air. Furthermore, the elements are opposed in another way: for some are heavy, such as earth and water, and others are light, such as air and fire. For this reason, the Stoics A school of Hellenistic philosophy that held that the universe is composed of active and passive principles. called the former passive and the latter active. Moreover, Plato, distinguishing them in another way, assigns three qualities to each: to fire, namely, sharpness, rarity thinness or lack of density, and motion; but to earth, obscurity, density, and rest. According to these qualities, the elements of fire and earth are opposites. The remaining elements borrow qualities from them, so that air receives two qualities of fire—rarity and motion—and one from earth, namely obscurity. Conversely, water receives two from earth—obscurity and density—and one from fire, namely motion. But fire is twice as rare, three times more mobile, and four times sharper than air. Air is twice as sharp, three times rarer, and four times more mobile than water. Consequently, water is twice as sharp as earth, three times rarer, and four times more mobile. In the same way...