ON THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS

To those dwelling there, he grants darkness perpetually proportioned to the light; but to others, he grants it for a defined time. If the divine earth, nourishing us upon her back, should turn our face away, she will obtain for us only his slanted rays; yet for those whose crown of the head she has placed directly beneath him, she obtains his straight rays. Certain bodies of the world moved toward him—which many understand to be living beings and gods, second under one prince The "one prince" refers to the Sun or the Monad in Neoplatonic thought—receive light from his highest point or apogee original: "apogio"; the point in an orbit farthest from the earth as they call it; while others have him in opposition, or in what they call the middle latitudes and intervals. When the hemisphere of the moon itself—which many philosophers understand to be another earth—is turned toward him, it receives free light; but this earth, saddened by the positioning of that globe between them, shows to the moon a face shadowed toward it, while the moon's own hemisphere is turned away.

Therefore, the Sun, remaining and abiding as one and the same perpetually, is made to appear as one thing to some and another to others, according to their different dispositions; he is rendered different and again different. In no other way should we believe that this solar art will be one thing to one person and another to another.

PHILOTIMUS: What is it, Hermes, that you are saying to yourself? What is this little book you have in your hands?

HERMES: It is a book On the Shadows of Ideas, condensed for internal writing A reference to the art of memory or "inner writing" of the soul, about which I am uncertain; whether—