Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 355
airy and flamy nature, " and thus this goddess of the Hindus
and the Egyptians ! is described as " The Soul of the World.
In the mystical square of 15, the Hindus draw a figure of a
man with his hands and feet extended to the four corners. He
is the image of the world, a real microcosm; as Bacon says,
" an ancient emblem that man was a microcosm or epitome of
the world. " 2
In a work which the present writer believes to be
Bacon's — written or dictated by him about the year 1600 — we
read:
" Man in the beginning (I mean the substantiall inward mau),
some short time, was a pure
both in and after his creation for
Intellectual Essence, free from all fleshly, sensuall affections.
In this state the Anima, or Sensitive Nature, did not prevail
over the spirituall as it doth now in us. For the superior mentall
part of man was united •
to God by an essentiall contact,
and the Divine Light, being received in and conveyed to the
inferiour parts of the Soul, did mortifie all carnal desires. . . .
The sensuall, ccelestial, sethereal part of a man is that whereby
we move, see, feel,
taste, and smell, and have commerce with
all material objects whatsoever. ... In plain terms, it is part
of the Soul of the World.
The writer explains at some length the nature of " this medial
soul or ethereal nature," and how by its means man's mind is
tuned to the ccelestial harmonies. He repeats, though in different
words, many Baconian ideas of the vital spirits which are
nature — " in man, in beasts, in vegetables, in minerals,
in all
and in everything this spirit is the mediate cause of composition
and multiplication; " adding remarks which echo precisely the
ideas in
the Be Augmentis of the biform figure of nature— the
sensual nature of man as contrasted or allied with the rational
spririt,— the Mens, or concealed intelligence. (Here we have
the Meni, the Moon, explained before.) " Now, as the divine
light flowing into the Mens (or intellect) did assimilate and convert
the inferior portions of the soul to God, so, on the contrary,
1 The Egyptians, though describing her as a Mother, yet use the masculine
pronoun in speaking of her. See The Book of God, i. 147.
2 The Microcosm will be fully explained when we come to speak of the
Symbolic Language of Bacon's Secret Society.