Section I. Portion III. Part I. Book I.

never appears visibly, and yet it longs to reveal itself even to the common eye through a certain external effect. If, therefore, in the first place, we observe through the intellectual contemplation of philosophy how the element of earth is linked by an essential and inseparable bond with that of water, and by what path again the element of water is joined to that of air, and that aerial one to the fiery, and finally the element of fire to the fifth element or the luminous fifth essence original: quinta essentia—the "quintessence" or purest celestial ether (which fifth essence indeed participates in the golden disposition of the sun, for it is the purest fountainhead of the life of the fifth essence, in which the light and fiery ray of eternal wisdom, or of the sacred desire of the world, rejoices to bathe itself as if in the lap of the most chaste Psyche); then it will be a most easy thing for us (as I think) to know and gather why an ear of wheat rises directly and perpendicularly from the earth, and is sublimated, and is supported on high as if by the trunk of a tall pine.

For when putrefaction The chemical/alchemical process of decay necessary for new life is finished (without which, by the witness of the Sacred Scriptures, nothing dead can rise again or be exalted), that everlasting and never-dying spark of the fifth essence—derived immediately from the celestial progeny of the most fierce Apollo The sun god, representing the Sun (who set his tabernacle in the sun)—finding itself now liberated through putrefaction from the bonds of the four elements in which it was enclosed in its dark prison, attempts to take flight toward its ethereal fatherland from which it originally descended. And so, step by step, it first exalts its crest or head above the dark or heavy earth.

Next, the element of fire (which is connected to the spirit of the fifth essence by an admirable inclination and inviolable knot) rises up out of the earth after that fifth essence in subtle smokes and exhalations; not otherwise than we see in Arithmetic the number 5 follows consequently after 4. And thus by a certain natural glue the element of fire adheres to that of the ether; either because it would be impatient to leave and lose its sweet and formal companion, by whose presence this element, along with its three lower companions, is adorned with such beauty; or in that respect that every thing by natural instinct aspires to its native liberty and longs to return to its own mansion or fatherland.

By a similar reasoning, the air follows under the form or image of an invisible or subtle vapor, and ascends from the earth immediately after the fire, as one which is united to the element of fire by a plainly similar bond of nature, as the fire is to the fifth essence. Finally, the element of water succeeds the air in its series and order, whence it is observed to leap upward from the matrix of the earth immediately after the air; for it claims for itself the same privilege of combination with the air that the air had with the fire.

And although in the last place the earth embraces the volatile and fugitive element of water by the same reasoning, yet by reason of its heaviness, and also because of its desire for resting in the sphere assigned to it from creation, it halts the water in its motion and hinders it, lest it be carried further upward. And again, the hindered water hinders the air, to which it is joined by natural friendship; and again the hindered air stands as a bridle to the fire and restrains it in its motion; and here finally, it miserably retains the ray of the sun shut within, and prohibits it, and seems in every way to oppose its motion lest it tend further upward.

From this it happens that this celestial ray is forced to remain fixed against its appetite in the summit or top of the plant, which plant is bound by its roots to the dark earth, so that this solar spark is again imprisoned—partly by the air besieging it on all sides and enveloping it everywhere with degrees of thickening like a net, and partly by the other elements, and especially by the earth—and is captured no differently than it was before.

And yet, nevertheless, this peculiar spark of vital fire thus enclosed does not cease at every moment to attract to itself by a certain magnetic faculty, and to call down from on high, as if to its aid and assistance, formal sparks and a solar fire similar to itself, to dissipate and break those newly knotted and tied bonds. For the air is always filled with the multiplying rays of nature, which wander invisibly hither and thither in the aerial waves, and these are ready to bring aid to their captive companions, just as we see cohorts of armed soldiers divided from the battle line of an army are ready, given any occasion, to provide help to their comrades staying in the line when necessity demands.

But to these sparks of light possessing liberty and wandering everywhere in the aerial ocean, the same thing happens as to hungry and bold flies, which, preferring rashness to danger, are observed to immerse and plunge themselves so deeply into that slime of muddy honey or sugary syrup that at last they adhere so firmly to that lethal and deadly glue that they cannot return to their mansions. This same thing, I say, happens to these bright children of Phoebus Another name for the Sun or celestial freedmen, who, wandering invisibly in the air, attempt to liberate their incarcerated brothers, and being ignorant of material snares or treasons, are suddenly captured and cling to the nets of the gross elements, and are thus deprived of liberty and shut up in various prisons or dark bodies with their companions captured before.

Do we not also see that the visible winged creatures of the air are betrayed and deceived in the very same way by the viscous machinations of the cunning bird-catcher? What doubt can there be, then, but that those invisible fires are sometimes captured and imprisoned in the very same way by means of the deceitful engines of the earth? This (I say) is the sole reason that every thing is multiplied unto infinity through this enclosed spark alone; this is the manner by which every vegetable term: vegetable—referring to the entire kingdom of plants and growing things, though in itself corruptible, is nonetheless perpetuated through multiplication.

And indeed, I cannot produce any member in the whole vegetable kingdom more exquisite and excellent in multiplication than is this grain of Wheat; for the lowliest peasant, taught by experience, can prove to us that from the putrefied body of one single grain, sometimes three stalks of wheat with their complete ears or their heads abundant with hair rise up and reach perfection and maturity. The reason for this thing, as I think, is the abundance of radical moisture and native heat The two primary fluids/qualities believed to sustain life in medieval and early modern physiology which this plant possesses, since it is always a faithful and greedy receptacle of the vital rays which the sun liberally shoots forth from his golden palace into these lower regions. But lest you think this a fiction and derived from my own imagination, I shall [show] the truth of this matter by a certain ocular demonstration...