The Great Art

The Great Art page 38
On these principles the ancient Philosophers distinguished only three Elements, and imagined the
Universe 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 as
the father of Saturn, if we believe Diodorus of Sicily. Doubtless this is the reason which led them not
to place Fire in the number of Elements. But as they supposed that the Fire of Nature, the principle of
elementary Fire, had its source in the Heavens, they gave the government of it to Jupiter; and, as a
scepter and distinctive mark, they armed him with a thunderbolt with three darts, and gave him for a
wife 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, knowing
Nature perfectly, saw fit to make only a trine division of it, persuaded that the accidents, which
distinguish the inferior region of the air from the superior, did not form a sufficient reason to make a
real distinction. They saw in them only a difference of dry and humid, siccum and humidum, of heat
and 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 that
each Element, as we see it, is a composition of three. They were, properly speaking, brothers, since
they were derived from the same principle, sons of the Heavens and the Earth, that is to say, the first
animate 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 the
source 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 interested
themselves in this matter, and have demonstrated that the ancients proposed only to instruct by the
invention of these fables. The Hermetic Philosophers, who claim to be the true disciples and imitators
of Nature, made a double application of these principles: seeing in the processes and progress of the
Ars Magna the operations of Nature, as in a mirror; they no longer distinguished the one from the
other, and explained them in the same manner. Then they compared all that which takes place in the
Magistery, to the successive stages of the creation of the Universe, by a certain analogy which they
thought to remark in them. Is it surprising that all their fictions have had these two things for an
object? If one reflected, one would not find much of the ridiculous in their myths. If they personified
all, it was to render their ideas more obvious; and one would soon recognize that the ridiculous and
licentious 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, could
they suppose things done otherwise and by other actors? Does not our ignorance of Physics give us
the foolish privilege of mocking them, and imputing to them ridicule, which they could perhaps easily
turn upon us if they were on the earth, to speak in the fashion of the present century? The analysis of
the composites, or Mixts, gives us only the siccum and humidum; whence one must conclude that
there are only two perceptible Elements in the composition of bodies, namely, Earth and Water. But
the same experiment shows us that two others are concealed in them. The Air is too subtle to strike
our eyes: hearing and touch are the only senses which demonstrate to us its existence. As to the Fire
of Nature, it is impossible for Art to manifest it, except by its effects.
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