Pernety - A Treatise On The Great Art.pdf - cyjack.com

The Great Art page 33He composed this body of a clay extracted from the purest substance of all created bodies. He drewhis mind from all that which is most perfect in Nature, and He gave him a soul made by a kind ofextension of Himself. It is Hermès who speaks: “Mens, ò Tat, ex propriâ essentiâ Dei est. Aliquasiquidem est Dei essentia. Qualiscumque tamen ille sit, hœc ipsum sola absolutè novit. Mens itaqueab essentiœ Dei habitu non est prœcisa : Quin etiam velut diffusa, solis splendoris instar. Hœc autemmens in hominibus quidem Deus est; eâ de causâ homines dii sunt, ac ipsorum humanitas divinitatiest confinis,” (Pymand., cap.II.) The BODY represents the sublunary world, composed of Earth andWater; it is because of this that it is composed of the dry and humid, or of bone, of flesh and of blood.The MIND, 25 infinitely more subtle, holds the middle place between the soul and the body, andserves as a bond to unite them, because one can join two extremes only by a mean. It is this, which byits igneous virtue, vivifies and moves the body under the direction of the soul, of which it is theminister; sometimes, rebellious to its orders, it follows its own fantasies and inclinations. It representsthe firmament, the constituent parts of which are infinitely more subtle than those of the Earth andWater.Lastly, the SOUL is the image of God Himself, and the Light of Man.The body draws its nourishment from the purest substance of the three kingdoms of Nature, whichpass successively from one into the other to end in Man, who is the complement, the end and theepitome.Having been made of Earth and Water, it can be nourished only by an analogous substance, that isto say Water and Earth, and it could not fail to resolve into them.The mind is nourished by the Spirit of the Universe and by the quintessence of all that whichconstitutes it, because it has been made from it. The soul of man communicates with the divine Lightfrom which it derives its origin.The preservation of the body is confided to the mind. It works over the gross nourishment which wetake from vegetables and animals, in the laboratories in the interior of the body. It separates the purefrom the impure; it keeps and distributes, through the different circulatory systems, the quintessenceanalogous to that from which the body has been made, in order to increase its volume, or to maintainit; it rejects the impure and heterogeneous by means destined for this purpose.It is the true ARCHEUS 26 of Nature, which van Helmont, (Traité Des Maladies,) supposes placed inthe orifice of the stomach; but of which he seems not to have had a clear idea, since he has spoken ofit in such a confused manner as to be almost unintelligible. 27This Archeus is an igneous principle, the principle of heat, of movement and of life, which animatesbodies and preserves its manner of being as long as the weakness of its organs permit. It is nourishedby principles analogous to itself, which it attracts continually by respiration: this is why deathsucceeds life almost immediately when respiration is intercepted.25 What Pernety calls MIND answers to the Astral Body of the Kabbalists; the “Perisprit” of the Spiritists, equilibriatingterm between the material body and the pure spirit. It is the hvr Ruah, of the Kabbalah, the Linga Sharira of EasternPhilosophy.E.B.26 Physicists and particularly Spagyric Philosophers call this the Universal and Particular Agent; it is that which inducesmovement in Nature and causes the seeds and germs of all sublunary beings to reproduce and multiply their species.Pernety in Dict. Myth.Herm.27 The Reader will discover here, that through the embarassed manner in which Pernety expresses himself here, that theARCHEUS is that same nervous (?) force which is concentrated in the Solar Plexus, that part of our organism which is thetheatre of the occult life of the initiate.E.B.