The Secret Teachings of All Ages · 192 of 236

The Universe Created by the Dual Principle of Light and D...

From Fludd's Philosophia Mosaica.

The Supreme Deity is symbolized by the small globe at the top, which is divided into two hemispheres, the dark half representing the divine darkness with which the Deity surround Himself and which serves as His hiding place. The radiant hemisphere signifies the divine light which is in God and which, pouring forth, manifests as the objective creative power. The large dark globe to the left and beneath the dark half of the upper sphere signifies the potential darkness which was upon the face of the primordial deep and within which moved the Spirit of God. The light globe to the right is the Deity who is revealed out of the darkness. Here the shining Word has dissipated the shadows and a glorious universe has been formed. The divine power of this radiant globe is cognizable to man as the sun. The large light and a dark section represents the created universes partaking of the light and darkness which are in the nature of the Creator. The dark half represents the Deep, or Chaos, the Eternal Waters pouring forth out of the Deity; the light half-circle containing the figure of Apollo represents the diurnal hemisphere of the world, which in the ancient Mysteries was ruled over by Apollo. The dark half-circle is the nocturnal hemisphere ruled over by Dionysius (Dionysos), whose figure is faintly visible in the gloom.

Insight · 2

Robert Fludd's Philosophia Mosaica (1638, published posthumously) was his final and most ambitious work — a defense of the Mosaic cosmogony against the new mechanical philosophy of Mersenne, Gassendi, and Kepler. The dual-globe diagram Hall describes, with the dark and light hemispheres of the supreme Deity and the corresponding dark-and-light hemispheres of the created universe, is one of Fludd's signature visualizations. The doctrine — that creation is the polarization of an originally undifferentiated divine into a manifest opposition of dark and light — has its roots in Pythagorean dualism, in the kabbalistic ein-sof becoming the sephiroth, and in Boehme's contemporaneous account in the Aurora. Fludd's contribution is the visual articulation of the doctrine in geometric terms suitable for the seventeenth-century engraver's burin.Fludd, Philosophia Mosaica (1638); Huffman, Robert Fludd.

The Apollo-and-Dionysos division of the cosmos into diurnal (Apollonian, ordered, intellectual) and nocturnal (Dionysian, generative, dissolving) hemispheres is much older than Fludd. Plutarch in De E apud Delphos describes Apollo as ruling the year half from spring equinox to autumn and Dionysos the other half — the two gods sharing the temple of Delphi in turn. The structure became Nietzsche's organizing opposition in The Birth of Tragedy (1872). What Fludd is doing here is mapping this Greek liturgical duality onto the cosmogonic structure: the manifest universe is composed of an Apollonian and a Dionysian hemisphere, with the godhead containing both as its dark and light aspects. Hall reads the diagram as straightforwardly Hermetic-Christian; the deeper roots in Greek mystery religion are worth seeing.Plutarch, De E apud Delphos; Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.

themselves upon the fourth floor, where stood a square kettle filled with silver sand warmed by a gentle fire. The great white egg was placed upon the warm sand to mature. In a short time it cracked and there emerged an ugly, ill-tempered bird, which was fed with the blood of the beheaded royal persons diluted with prepared water. At each feeding its feathers changed color; from black they turned to white and at last they became varicolored, the disposition of the bird improving the while. Dinner was then served, after which Virgo Lucifera departed with the bird. The guests ascended with ropes, ladders, and wings to the fifth floor, where a bath colored with fine white powder had been prepared for the bird, which enjoyed bathing in it until the lamps placed beneath the bath caused the water to become uncomfortably warm. When the heat had removed all the bird's feathers it was taken out, but the fire continued until nothing remained in the bath save a sediment in the form of a blue stone. This was later pounded up and made into a pigment; with this, all of the bird except the head was painted.

Context

The seven-floored tower with the great white egg matured on warm silver sand, the ugly black bird that emerges, the feeding with blood of the beheaded royal persons, the change of plumage from black to white to many-colored — this is the alchemical Great Work performed as ceremonial in the Hochzeit's fourth day. The bird represents the substance in the retort moving through the canonical color sequence: nigredo (black, putrefaction), albedo (white, purification), cauda pavonis or rubedo (multi-colored peacock's tail, then deep red, indicating completion). The procedure is faithful to mainstream alchemical theory as set out in Mylius's Anatomia Auri (1628) and other contemporaneous compendia. The dramatic embodiment in Andreae's narrative is what made the Hochzeit one of the most influential alchemical works in print despite its small size.Andreae, Chymische Hochzeit; Mylius, Anatomia Auri.

The guests thereupon ascended to the sixth floor, where stood a small altar resembling that in the King's throne room. The bird drank from the little fountain and was fed with the blood of the white serpent which crawled through the openings in the skull. The sphere by the altar revolved continuously. The watch struck one, two, and then three, at which time the bird, laying its neck upon the book, suffered itself to be decapitated. Its body was burned to ashes, which were placed in a box of cypress wood. Virgo Lucifera told C.R.C. and three of his comrades that they were lazy and sluggish "labourators" and would therefore be excluded from the seventh room. Musicians were sent for, who with cornets were to "blow" the four in ridicule from the chamber. C.R.C. and his three companions were disheartened until the musicians told them to be of good cheer and led them up a winding stair to the eighth floor of the tower directly beneath the roof. Here the old warden, standing upon a little round furnace, welcomed them and congratulated them upon being chosen by Virgo Lucifera, for this greater work. Virgo Lucifera then entered, and after laughing at the perplexity of her guests, emptied the ashes of the bird into another vessel, filling the cypress box with useless matter. She thereupon returned to the seventh floor, presumably to mislead those assembled there by setting them to work upon the false ashes in the box.

C.R.C. and his three friends were set to work moistening the bird's ashes with specially prepared water until the mixture became of doughlike consistency, after which it was heated and molded into two miniature forms. Later these were opened, disclosing two bright and almost transparent human images about four inches high (homunculi), one male and the other female. These tiny forms were laid upon satin cushions and fed drop by drop with the blood of the bird until they grew to normal size and of great beauty. Though the bodies had the consistency of flesh, they showed no signs of life, for the soul was not in them. The bodies were next surrounded with torches and their faces covered with silk. Virgo Lucifera then appeared, bearing two curious white garments.

The virgins also entered, among them six bearing great trumpets. A trumpet was placed upon the mouth of one of the two figures and C.R.C. saw a tiny hole open in the dome of the tower and a ray of light descend through the tube of the trumpet and enter the body. This process was repeated three times on each body. The two newly ensouled forms were then removed upon a traveling couch. In about half an hour the young King and Queen awakened and the Virgo Lucifera presented them with the white garments. These they donned and the King in his own person most graciously returned thanks to C.R.C. and his companions, after which the royal persons departed upon a ship. C.R.C. and his three privileged friends then rejoined the other "artists," making no mention of that which they had seen.

Later the entire party were assigned handsome chambers, where they rested till morning.