The Great Art

The Great Art page 32
most subtle, Water comes next, and then Earth. As the object which I have, in giving these abridged
principles of Natural Philosophy, is only to instruct the amateurs of Hermetism, I will not enter into
the details of the formation of the stars and their movements.
Of Light and Its Effects
Light, after having acted upon the parts of the dark mass, which were nearest to it, and having
rarefied them more or less in proportion to their distance, finally penetrated even to the center, in
order to animate it in its entirety, to fertilize it, and to make it produce all that which the Universe
presents to our eyes. Thus it pleased God to fix its natural source in the sun, yet without collecting it
there entirely. It seems that God had wished to establish it as the only dispenser of light, in order that
the light created by an unique God, Himself the Increate Light, should be communicated to creatures
by a single agent, as if to indicate to us its first origin.
From this luminous torch all the others borrow their light and the brilliancy which they reflect upon
us; because their compact matter produces in regard to us the same effect as a spherical polished
mass, or a mirror on which the rays of the sun fall. We must judge of celestial bodies as of the moon,
in which sight alone reveals to us solidity, and a property common to terrestrial bodies of intercepting
the rays of the sun, and of producing shadow, which property belongs only to opaque bodies. One
must not conclude from this that the stars and planets are not transparent bodies; since clouds, which
are only vapors of water, also make a shadow intercepting the solar rays.
Some Philosophers have called the sun the soul of the world, and have supposed it placed in the
middle of the Universe, as it would be easier for it to communicate everywhere its benign influences
from a center. Before having received them the Earth was in a kind of idleness, or as a female without
the male. As soon as it was impregnated by them, it produced immediately, not simple vegetation as
formerly, but animated and living beings, animals of all species.
Thus the animals were the fruit of light, and having all the same principle, how could they,
according to the common opinion, be antipathetic and contradictory? It is from their union that all
bodies are formed according to their different species, and their diversity arises only from the greater
or less proportion of each element in their composition.
The First Light had scattered the germs of things into the matrix which was fit for each one; that of
the sun has fertilized them and made them germinate. Each individual preserves within himself a
spark of that Light, which reduces germs from latency into activity. The spirits of living beings are
raised of this Light, and the soul of Man is a ray, or emanation, of the Increate Light. God, that
eternal, infinite, incomprehensible Light, could He manifest Himself to the world except by light?
and must one be astonished if He has infused so many beauties and virtues in His image, which He
has formed Himself, and in which He has established His throne: In sole posuit tabernaculum
suum,(Psalm 18.)
Of Man
God in materializing Himself, to speak thus, by the Creation of the World, did not think that it was
enough to have made such beautiful things, He wished to place upon it the seal of His divinity, and to
manifest Himself still more perfectly by the formation of Man. To this end, He made him in His
image, and in that of the World. He gave him a soul, a mind and a body ; and of these three things,
united in the same subject, He constituted humanity.
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