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

The Great Art page 38On these principles the ancient Philosophers distinguished only three Elements, and imagined theUniverse governed by three gods, children of Saturn, whom they called sons of Heavens and Earth.The Egyptians, from whom the ancient Greek Philosophers derived their systems, regarded Vulcan asthe father of Saturn, if we believe Diodorus of Sicily. Doubtless this is the reason which led them notto place Fire in the number of Elements. But as they supposed that the Fire of Nature, the principle ofelementary Fire, had its source in the Heavens, they gave the government of it to Jupiter; and, as ascepter and distinctive mark, they armed him with a thunderbolt with three darts, and gave him for awife his sister Juno, whom they imagined to preside over the Air. Neptune was placed over the sea,and Pluto over the infernal regions. The poets adopted these ideas of the Philosophers, who, knowingNature perfectly, saw fit to make only a trine division of it, persuaded that the accidents, whichdistinguish the inferior region of the air from the superior, did not form a sufficient reason to make areal distinction. They saw in them only a difference of dry and humid, siccum and humidum, of heatand cold united; which made them imagine the two sexes in the same Element.Each of the three brothers had a three-pointed scepter as a mark of his empire, and to indicate thateach Element, as we see it, is a composition of three. They were, properly speaking, brothers, sincethey were derived from the same principle, sons of the Heavens and the Earth, that is to say, the firstanimate matter from which all has been made.Pluto is called the god of riches and the master of the infernal regions, because the earth is thesource of riches, and because nothing torments men as does the thirst for wealth and ambition.It is not more difficult to apply the rest of the Fable to Physics. Several authors have interestedthemselves in this matter, and have demonstrated that the ancients proposed only to instruct by theinvention of these fables. The Hermetic Philosophers, who claim to be the true disciples and imitatorsof Nature, made a double application of these principles: seeing in the processes and progress of theArs Magna the operations of Nature, as in a mirror; they no longer distinguished the one from theother, and explained them in the same manner. Then they compared all that which takes place in theMagistery, to the successive stages of the creation of the Universe, by a certain analogy which theythought to remark in them. Is it surprising that all their fictions have had these two things for anobject? If one reflected, one would not find much of the ridiculous in their myths. If they personifiedall, it was to render their ideas more obvious; and one would soon recognize that the ridiculous andlicentious actions, which they attributed to these imaginary gods, were only the operations of Nature,which we see daily without noticing them. Wishing to explain themselves only by allegories, couldthey suppose things done otherwise and by other actors? Does not our ignorance of Physics give usthe foolish privilege of mocking them, and imputing to them ridicule, which they could perhaps easilyturn upon us if they were on the earth, to speak in the fashion of the present century? The analysis ofthe composites, or Mixts, gives us only the siccum and humidum; whence one must conclude thatthere are only two perceptible Elements in the composition of bodies, namely, Earth and Water. Butthe same experiment shows us that two others are concealed in them. The Air is too subtle to strikeour eyes: hearing and touch are the only senses which demonstrate to us its existence. As to the Fireof Nature, it is impossible for Art to manifest it, except by its effects.