A key to physic, and the occult sciences

A KEY TO PHYSIC,

...shaken confidence in one omnipotent, supreme, overruling Power, whose throne was the center of all things, and the abode of angels and blessed spirits.

To describe this interior heaven in terms adequate to its magnificence and glory is utterly impossible. The most we can do is to collect from the inspired writers and from the words of Revelation—assisted by occult philosophy In this context, "occult" refers to the study of hidden natural or spiritual laws, rather than modern connotations of the "supernatural." and a proper knowledge of the celestial spheres—that order and position of it which reason and the divine lights we have bring nearest to the truth. That God must be strictly and literally the center from which all ideas of the Divine Mind flow, like rays in every direction through all spheres and through all bodies, cannot be doubted. That the inner circumference of this center is surrounded, filled, or formed by arrangements of the three hierarchies of angels According to traditional theology, angels are organized into nine ranks or "choirs," grouped into three hierarchies. is also consistent with reason and Scripture; this forms what may be termed the entrance or inner gate of the empyrean heaven the highest part of heaven, believed by ancient philosophers to be composed of pure fire or light, through which no spirit can pass without their knowledge and permission. Within this, we must suppose the vast expanse or mansions of the Godhead and the glory of the Trinity to be. This is strictly in line with the ideas of all the prophets and evangelical writers. From this primary circle, or gate of heaven, Lucifer, the great Apostate, as Milton finely describes it, was hurled into the bottomless abyss; his office, as one of the highest order of angels, having placed him near the eternal throne, he became a competitor for dominion and power with God himself! But,

Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine an unbreakable, diamond-like substance chains and penal fire!

Milton, Paradise Lost, book 1, line 44, etc.

The circles next surrounding the hierarchies are composed of the ministering angels and spirits, and messengers of the Deity. In positions answering to the ideas of the holy Trinity, and intersecting all orders of angels, are seated—in fullness of glory and splendor—those superior angels or intelligent spirits who answer to the divine attributes of God. They are the pure essences or streams through which the will or decree original: "fiat" of the Godhead is communicated to the angels and spirits, and instantaneously conducted to the Soul of the World original: "Anima Mundi". Around the whole, like an atmosphere around a planet, the Soul of the World, or universal Spirit of Nature, is placed. Receiving the impressions or ideas of the Divine Mind, it conducts them onward to the remotest parts of the universe—to infinity itself—to, and upon, and through all bodies, and to all God's works. This Soul of the World original: "Anima Mundi" is therefore what we understand as Nature, or

Providence,