The Great Art

The Great Art page 48
Light is the principle of life, and shadow of death. The souls of the Mixts are rays of Light, and
their bodies are abysses of shadows. Everything lives by Light, and everything which dies is deprived
of it. It is because of this principle, to which we pay so little attention, that we say commonly of a
dead man, il a perdu la lumière, (he has lost the light); and as Saint John says, “Light is the life of
men,” (Evang., ch. I.).
Each composite has faculties which are peculiar to it. As far as animals are concerned, we need only
to reflect upon their actions to be convinced of this. The time of mating, which is so well known to
them, the just distribution of parts in the progeny; the use which they make of each member; the
attention and care which they give to the nourishment and defense of their young; their different
affections, of pleasure, of fear, of good will toward their masters, their disposition to receive
instructions, their skill in procuring the necessaries of life, their prudence in shunning that which
could injure them, and many other things which an observer may notice, prove that their soul is
endowed with a kind of reasoning.
Vegetables have also a mental faculty, and a method of knowing and foreseeing. The vital faculties
are with them the care of producing their like, the multiplicative, nutritive, augmentative, sensitive
and other virtues. Their idea is manifested in the presage of the weather, and the knowledge of the
temperature which is favourable to them to germinate and shoot forth their stalks; their strict
observation of climatic changes, as laws of Nature, in the choice of the aspect of the heavens which is
suitable for them; in the manner of burying their roots; of elevating their stalks; of extending their
branches; of developing their leaves; of forming and coloring their fruits; of transmuting the elements
into food; of infusing into their germs a prolific virtue.
Why do certain plants grow only in certain seasons, although one sows them as soon as they are
mature, or they are sown by the natural fall of their grains? They have their vegetative principle, and
yet they will develop it only at certain times, unless art furnishes them that which they would find in
the season suitable for them. Why does a plant sown in bad ground, adjacent to good soil, why does it
direct its roots to the side of the latter? What teaches an onion placed in the earth, germ downwards,
to direct it towards the air? Why do ivy and other plants of the same species, direct their feeble
branches towards trees which can sustain them? Why does the pumpkin push its fruit with all its
strength towards a vase of water placed near it? What is it that teaches plants, in which one remarks
the two sexes, to place themselves always the male near the female, and often very much inclined
towards each other? Let us confess that all this passes our understanding; that Nature is not blind and
that she is governed by Wisdom.
Of the Generation and Corruption of the Mixts
Everything returns to its principle. Each individual exists in potentiality in the material world before
appearing in its individual form, and will return in its time and in its order to the point whence it has
departed, as the rivers in the sea, to be born again in their turn, (Eccles., ch. I. V. 5). It is perhaps thus
that Pythagoras understood his metempsychosis which has not been comprehended.
When the Mixt is dissolved, because of the weakness of the corruptible elements which compose it,
the ethereal part abandons it, and returns to its native country. Then derangement, disorder and
confusion take place in the parts of the corpse, because of the absence of that which preserved order
in it. Death, corruption, take possession of it, until this matter receives anew celestial influences,
which reuniting the scattered Elements, will render them suitable for a new generation.
This vivifying spirit does not separate from matter during generative putrefaction, because it is not
an entire and perfect corruption, as that which produces the destruction of the Mixt. It is a corruption
Copyright © Flaming Sword Productions 1997