Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

BACON
CHAPTER YIII.
THE VITAL SPIRITS OF NATURE.
" In Nature's infinite book of socresy, a little I can read."
— Antony and Cleopatra.
seems to have been strongly influenced and stimulated
by the study of the works of the celebrated theosophist,
physician, and chemist, Paracelsus, whom he often cites
(not always with approval), aud from whose doctrine of the
" Vital Spirits of Nature " it is clear that he must have derived
the original germ of those lovely ideas of all-pervading life
which reappear throughout his writings, and preeminently in the
Midsummer Night's Bream, Macbeth, and The Tempest.
When the comet or new star suddenly shone forth in 1572,
in the constellation of Cassiopeia, it was marked as a portent
or harbinger of success for the boy Francis, who in that year
went up for the first time to Cambridge, and who even at that
early age was manifesting signs of future greatness.
Now it is worthy of note that this same portent was observed
by Paracelsus as heralding the advent of " the artist Elias, " by
whose means a revelation was to be made which would be of the
highest importance to the human race; and, again, this prophecy
of Paracelsus was accepted by the Rosicrucians as true, and
as finding its fulfilment in the fact that in the year 1572 the
wonderful boy did make his appearance, and became the founder
of their society.
" Paracelsus, in the eighth chapter of his Treatise on Metals,
gives utterance to the following prognostication : God will permit
'
a discovert/ of the highest importance to be made ; it must be
hidden till the advent of the artist Elias.'
" In the first chapter of the same work he says: 'And it is
true, there is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered; for
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