The Minor Works of Marsilio Ficino

...power, so that the light itself overflows, filled with a wondrous power; it is neither defined by a fixed quantity nor by any specific shape. Therefore, it touches an immense space of the imagination with its surrounding presence. In this way, it then exceeds our understanding, just as in itself it now overcomes the sight of our eyes.

By this same reasoning, you will seem to have found God—who "placed his tabernacle in the sun"—through the Sun as much as your strength allows. original: "qui in fole posuit tabernaculum suum"; a reference to Psalm 19:4, often interpreted by Renaissance philosophers like Ficino as the Sun being the physical dwelling or vehicle of the Divine.

Finally, just as nothing is more foreign to the divine light than matter that is completely formless, so nothing is more different from the light of the sun than the earth. Therefore, bodies in which the "earthy" condition prevails, being most unsuited to light, receive no light within themselves. This is not because the light is powerless to penetrate. For while it does not illuminate the inside of wool or a leaf, it nevertheless penetrates crystal in an instant, even though crystal is otherwise much harder to penetrate.

In the same way, the divine light "shines even in the darkness" of the soul, but "the darkness does not comprehend it." original: "lux in tenebris lucet; sed tenebre non comprehendunt"; a reference to the Gospel of John 1:5. Does it not also have this similarity to God: that God first instills the knowledge of divine things into angelic and blessed minds, and shortly thereafter, love? But in our souls, which believe as best they can here below, He kindles a purifying and converting love before He grants the understanding of divine things.

In the same way, the Sun instantly illuminates transparent and pure natures everywhere, which are already celestial in quality; but opaque materials unsuited for light he first warms, ignites, and refines, and only then illuminates. And once they have become light and permeable through both heat and light, he sometimes raises them to the heights.

Hence Apollo, with the piercing points of his rays, transfixes, purifies, dissolves, and lifts up the Pythonic mass. The "Pythonic mass" refers to the monstrous serpent Python from mythology, which Ficino uses here to symbolize heavy, dark, or corrupt matter that must be transformed by solar/divine energy. Nor is it right to overlook that, just as we hope Christ will eventually come into His kingdom and, by the overflowing splendor of His body, fully resurrect human bodies from the earth; so, after the deadly winter, we expect every year the Sun, reigning in Aries, Aries is the first sign of the zodiac, marking the spring equinox and the "rebirth" of nature. to revive the seeds of things in...