Sacred and Truly Christian Philosophy, or Cosmic Meteorology

On the Material Cause of Meteors.

...hidden in the bowels of the world, as we have said. Hermes Trismegistus original: "Mercur. Trismegistus"; a legendary Hellenistic figure regarded as the author of the Hermetic Corpus says in Pimander, Book 10: The human soul is carried in this manner: the mind in reason, reason in the soul, the soul in the spirit, and the spirit in the body. This spirit, diffused through the veins, arteries, and blood, stirs the living creature on all sides and supports and carries the suspended mass of the body. Because of this, some were deceived into thinking the moisture of the blood was the soul; it clearly escaped their notice that it is necessary for the spirit first to flow into the soul, then for the blood to thicken, and the hollow veins and arteries to be stretched out, and finally for the animal to be dissolved—which dissolution is the death of the body. In these words, he denotes the dominion of the spirit or air in the body, since he makes it the vehicle of the soul. Indeed, he seems to suggest how, by the mediation of the spirit with its ethereal form, the blood originally flowed forth. It is as if he said: through the "airy meteor" In this period, "meteor" referred to any phenomenon of vapors, fluids, or spirits, whether in the sky or the body, agitated by its own internal form, the internal part of man and even his humors are procreated. This is according to that saying of Hippocrates mentioned above: "At the beginning of winter, bile grows cold and decreases, and phlegm original: "pituita" increases anew." From this it is clear that air, with its internal essence, is the cause of the variety of humors, or the change of one humor into another. These humors take on the appearance of meteors; indeed, upon the dissolution of the living creature, the blood is accustomed to migrate back into its internal spirit, just as the meteors of the sky vanish into the air. Whence Trismegistus also says: As the soul returns into itself, the spirit is contracted into the blood, and the soul into the spirit, etc.

Do not the Holy Scriptures also confirm that the seat of the soul is the blood? From which it follows that blood is nothing other than tempered air of a "second mixture," reduced into that bloody mass by thickening, like a natural meteor. Therefore, this air—dispersed everywhere through the body and carrying the soul through every small part of the body (just as it is said by the Philosophers to be "in the whole and in any part")—is that "sublime place" in which meteors or "imperfectly mixed" things are procreated. It is also the place from which, by thickening caused by "Microcosmic winds" (made in imitation of those in the Macrocosm), various meteors—both healthy and unhealthy—are produced in man. Those which are more spiritual and invisible assert good or evil passions of the soul, according to the favorable or unlucky nature of the meteor created in and from that airy medium. Therefore, we must sincerely say the same thing regarding the internal efficient cause of these meteors as we said of the meteors of the great world: namely, that the primary cause is the essence-making property of the ineffable Name of GOD, turning either toward mercy or toward punishment. These things are ordained, and then afterward commanded to be executed by His angelic ministers who "do His word," by the mediation of the air. They change and convert the air into this or that nature and constitution according to the will of the Divine Creator, which we propose to demonstrate more openly and copiously elsewhere.

And in this way, you have before your eyes an anatomy of the human spirit, and at the same time its necessary relationship with that of the Macrocosm. Now, let me speak—and indeed briefly—concerning the comparison between the human body and spirit (the "lesser world") and the spirit of the earth in the "greater world." Between these most noble creatures of the sublunary world, a very great and necessary commerce and reciprocity takes place at every moment of time.

Thus, as we drink from the sacred fountain that God established man in His own image, so also we read abundantly that He created and ordained all His creatures for the use of man. Whence Pico della Mirandola and other experts in divine philosophy quite aptly call Man "every creature." Following him in nobility and excellence among the lower bodies is this immense Earth. By its nod and administration, all lower bodies that are perfectly mixed are nourished and refreshed daily, after they have first received the foundation of their mass and structure from it. And yet, this huge and giant creature was created for human use, according to that of the royal Psalmist: GOD made the earth and gave it to the sons of men. From which it is right to gather that man himself is the end The final purpose or goal of all creatures, and consequently a creature of extraordinary height. The Earth is next to him in dignity, for it is not only the base of the external man, but it also produces, contains, and nourishes all creatures required for human life and sustenance. Certainly, if we explore the matter a little more curiously, there is the greatest relationship between these two creatures in their composition. For just as we observe man to be composed of body and spirit, in which spirit a certain divine soul or internal active principle holds its habitation, so the matter stands with the mass of the Macrocosmic Earth. It was composed and formed by the Creator from an external body and an internal spirit, in which spirit a certain "Solar soul" dwells, which the wise have—not without reason—called the Central Sun. Both of these extraordinary creatures are therefore "animals" (if I may say so) endowed with the same functions and offices of life. Both bodies are vehicles, receptacles, and matrices of influences—both from the super-celestial and celestial regions and from the sublunary air. These bodies contain similar spirits "cut out" from the universal sublunary air as if from a great cliff or spiritual sea, just as we see the lunar circle or sphere embrace the entire mass of sublunary air. This kind of air or spirit, enclosed in man as much as in the earth, has as much fellowship and commerce with the universal worldly air as a single drop of water has to its whole; for they are joined by an inseparable "glue" to the air or Great Spirit of the World, just as a drop of seawater, when joined to the whole, is united with that entire body of water by an inseparable union. For air, whether enclosed in the earth or in man, is...

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