Three Books of Occult Philosophy · 162 of 186

Book III, Ch. 29: Of the Characters and Seals of spirits

We must now speak of the Characters and Seals of spirits. Characters therefore are nothing else then certain unknowable letters and writings, preserving the secrets of the Gods, and names of spirits from the use and reading of prophane men, which the Ancients called Hyeroglyphicall [hieroglyphical], or sacred letters, because devoted to the secrets of the Gods only. For they did account it unlawfull to write the mysteries of the God [gods] with those Characters with which profane and vulgar things were wrote. Whence Porphyry saith, that the Ancients were willing to conceal God, and divine vertues by sensible figures, and by those things which were visible, yet signifying invisible things, as being willing to deliver great mysteries in sacred letters, and explain them in certain Symbolical figures; as when they dedicated all round things to the World, the Sun, the Moon, hope, and fortune, a circle to the heaven, and parts of a circle to the Moon, Pyranide [pyramids] and Obelisks to the fire, and Olympian Gods; a Cylinder to the Sun and Earth; a mans Yard to generation and Juno, to whom also by reason of the feminine sex the triangular figure. Wherefore this kind of Characters hath another root beside the pleasure, and authority of the institutor, of him I say, who received power of instituting, and consecrating these kind of letters, such as were many Prelates amongst divers Nations, and Sects of Religions, whose institutions came not to us, by reason that few of them were delivered by the Authors scatteringly, and by fragments. Of this kind of character therefore are those which Peter Apponus [Petrus d’Abano] notes, as delivered by Honorius of Thebes, the figures whereof are such, being related to our Alphabet.