The Proscenium of Truth

TO THE KEPPLERIAN APPENDIX

...and yet she is the fertile mother of all qualities, motions, and things. The true Chemist original: "Chymicus"; here Fludd means a spiritual alchemist, not a modern chemist., now transformed into a Theosophist, understands from a secret vision of nature that Nature is closest to God. He knows rightly what the Spirit of the Lord is, and what that fiery love is which was carried over the waters; it imparts a certain fiery vigor to them, without which nothing can indeed be procreated. He understands what that breath of life is which God breathed into created things, when it was said at the birth of the world: “Increase and Multiply.” He perceives, therefore, what that Soul of the World original: "mundi anima" is, so celebrated by the ancient Philosophers and Theosophists that they placed it—not without reason—within the sun. Once these things are rightly understood by him, the origin of true celestial motion cannot remain hidden or concealed from him, while the logic of that matter can be clearly demonstrated to his mind and eyes by a natural progression from the numbers 1, 2, 3—that is, from 6 to 4, which is another unity making the 7th day of the Sabbath, or the Jubilee, and the proof of rest. Hence it is said: “God has placed his tabernacle in the sun.”

But truly, I would not wish you to believe that this is understood regarding a Sophistic Alchemist, or a counterfeit or common one, but rather regarding a true Physicist original: "Physico"; in this context, one who studies the inner workings of "Physis" or Nature. looking toward the golden orb of divinity and the true sun. If you should count or consider me among their number, I would certainly prefer to truly be such a person than merely to be held as one, even if I were perhaps to be an object of hatred and mockery because of such a title before a world submerged in ignorance. For then it would be no small joy for me to understand, through that Alchemy, what was urged by the Royal Psalmist in Psalm 12:7: “The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” Similarly, this portion of Divine Alchemy would be rightly perceived by me: “Gold comes from the North because of God, who is terrible in praise” (Job 37:22); and also this axiom of the Wise Man in Song of Solomon 5:10: “The head of the bridegroom is distinguished, most pure gold, his locks are curly and black as a raven.”

Then that true portion of Alchemical science would not be hidden, as described in Job 28:1: “Silver has the beginnings of its veins, and there is a place for gold where it is refined; iron is taken from the earth, and stone dissolved by heat is turned into copper. He has set an end to darkness, and he considers the end of all things; even the stone of gloom and the shadow of death. A torrent divides the wandering people from those whom the foot of the needy man has forgotten and the pathless ones. The earth, from which bread arose, was overturned by fire in its place: its stones are the place of Sapphire, and its clods are gold,” etc.

If indeed I am a Chemist, this is truly the Alchemy which alone I embrace, having banished all the marks of counterfeit Chemistry beyond the Hyperborean mountains. And of this Alchemy of mine, the wise man speaks thus in Ecclesiasticus: “Medicine is brought forth from the earth, and a prudent man will not abhor it.”

But what does the author Referring to Kepler. think of Hermes? What does he think of his doctrine, the principles of whose natural things are found to be the same as those of the leader Moses? Yet here too, he delighted in dark riddles. The same can be said of Moses himself; since the discrepancy of both knowledge and time between them is thought to be so small that, according to the testimony of Enida Likely a reference to the Suda (or Suidas), a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia often cited by Renaissance scholars., Hermes lived in the time of Moses; he was even held by some skilled in antiquities to be Moses himself. However that may be, this man of the Egyptians is called Hermes Trismegistus, "Thrice-Greatest," because he taught concerning the Trinity, according to the testimony of the same Enida. What, then, of honor or infamy can there be in being called a disciple of Hermes—that is, a Hermeticist—to whom the foundations of nature were revealed?

Tell me, by the immortal God, what is more unjust than for men to hate what they do not know? Even if the matter deserves hatred, what is more subtle, what is more base, or what greater madness and folly is there than to damn it and hold as nothing a science in which they have smelled absolutely nothing? For they have never learned nature, nor the majesty of nature, nor its properties, nor the hidden operations of Physis The Greek term for Nature as a living, growing force.. Let the common Mathematicians croak and babble about their profound knowledge of nature; yet men are to be known by their results. For nature herself will enjoy the trophy she has fixed in the true Artist. By exquisite Mathematicians who deal with formal mathematics, Nature is measured and revealed; but to the counterfeit and the faulty, she remains naked, invisible, and hidden. These men, therefore, measure shadows instead of substance and are nourished by vain opinions; the former, having rejected the shadow, embrace the substance and rejoice in the vision of truth.

We conclude, therefore, against the opinion of Johannes Kepler, that such a thing is familiar to vain Mathematicians, nourished by false imagination and opinion; for they look at mathematical bodies in such a way that they forget those truly natural ones. This is for the ministers of True Alchemy, whose task it is to manifest hidden things, to extract nature submerged in opaque bodies, and to liberate the hidden light from the prison of darkness—as if from the abyss of ignorance—by breaking the chains. Finally, I would also like it noted here that the Author strives greatly in this place to trumpet the praises of his own work.

TEXT XII

“And even in books 2 and 3, where he treats the same material as I do, this is the difference between us: that what he borrows from the ancients, I draw from the nature of things and establish from the very foundations. He uses what he has received in a confused manner (due to the varying opinions of those passing it down) and uncorrected; I proceed in a natural order, so that all things are amended according to the laws of Nature and confusion is avoided; and thus I do not even apply my findings to the decrees of the ancients, except where no confusion follows.”