A Discovrse of Fire and Salt. Blaise de Vigenère
3, called Worlds, or Heavens, (it must not be thought strange, if wee repeate the same more then once; for from thence proceed all the secret sciences,) that is to say, the elementary here below, subject to perpetuall alteration, and vicissitude of life, and of death; the Celestiall aloft, above the Circle of the Moone, incorruptible in respect of it selfe, as well for its purity, and uniformity of substance, as for its continuall and equall motion; nothing therein prædominating the one or the other; which two constitute the Sensible world. There is afterward the Intelligible, abstracted from all corporeity and matter, which the Apostle cals the third World, where hee was ravished, this (said hee) whether in the body or out of the body, God knowes, 2 Cor. 12. 3. for not onely the World and the Heaven, are put one for the other, but yet the Heaven for Man; The heavens declare the glory of God, according to which, most part of the Fathers interpret it; and Man reciprocally for Heaven. As Origen sets it forth, upon the 25 Treatise of Saint Matthew. Mans heart is properly called Heaven, and the Throne not already of the Glory of God, as is the Temple, but of God properly. For the Temple of the glory of God, is that wherein, as in a Glasse, wee see ourselves by Ænigma. But Heaven that is above the Temple of God, where his Throne is, is to see him wholly as it were face to face: which hee hath almost transcribed word for word out of the booke Abahir to Zohar, and other ancient Caballists, whereof he consisteth for the most part.
Moreover some say that the Heavens are sometimes put for God himselfe, as in the 32 of Deut. Heare O Heaven the words I speak: and in the 8 chapter of the 1 of Kings, according to the Hebrew verity, in the prayer of King Solomon at the dedication of the Temple; Heare O Heaven. In this third Heaven or World, whereof the Apostle spake, although God bee every where, yet the seate of his Divinity is there more especially established, then elsewhere, with his separated Intelligences that assist him to execute his commands. Blesse the Lord yee Angels, mighty in power, doing that which he ordaineth, hearing the voice of his words: wherefore Theologians called it the Angelicall world, without all place and time; which Plato in his Phæd. said that no mortall men ever yet had sufficiently celebrated it, according to its excellency and dignity, being all of light; who from thence stretched out her selfe, and derives it so, as out of an inexhaustible Fountaine, to all sorts of Creatures, even according as the ancient Phœnician Theologie carryed which the Emperour Julian Parabates alledged in his prayer to the Sunne. That Corporeal Light proceeded from an Incorporeal Nature. The Celestial world participates of darkenesse, and of light, whence proceed all the faculties and powers that it brings it. And the elementary all of darknesse, designed for the reason of its instability by water. The Intelligible by Fire, because of its purity and light, and the Celestial by the Aire, where fire and water come to joine; the Earth by this reckoning, should remaine for Hell; as in truth this earthly habitation is nothing but a true Hell: But by Heaven Moses understood the Intelligible World, and by earth the Sensible, attributing the two higher elevated Elements, Aire and Fire, to Heaven, because they alwayes tend upwards, and Water and Earth, which for their gravity tend downward: but all that, by him was yet more mystically shadowed, as Zohar sheweth it, by the admirable construction of his Tabernacle, then which, there is nothing more spirituall. Gold, Silver, and pretious Stones, representing the Sensible world, and Bezaleel, that was the Conductor of the worke, the Intelligible, and the Workman filled with a Divine Spirit, with Sapience, Intelligence, Knowledge, and all the most accomplisht learning, as almost every word carries it, woven with Bezel, the shadow, and El God.
The prophane Poets have divided the Sensible World into 3, for they never tooke much paines to penetrate into the Intelligible: And assigned the superiour part thereof, from the circle of the Moone upward, to Jupiter, the low Terrestriall to Pluto, and the middlemost, which is from the Earth to the Moone, to Neptune: which the Platonists call the Generative Vertue, because of the humidity, impregned with Salt, which provoketh much to generation, according as the word Salacitas designes it, as Plutarch puts it in the 4 Question of Naturall Causes, and in his Treaty of Osiris: wherefore the said Poets attribute more fecundity to the said Neptune, then to all the other Gods.
Each of these 3 worlds furthermore, hath particularly its science, which is double; the one common and triviall, the other mysticall and secret. The Intelligible world to our Theologie, and the Caballe the Celestial to Astrologie and Magie; and the elementary, to the Physiologie and Alchymie, which revealeth by the resolutions, and separations of Fire, all the more hidden, and darke secrets of natures, in three kindes of the composed: for no man can know the composition of a thing that is ignorant of its destruction, saith Geber. But these three divine sciences have beene by the depravation of ignorant and evill spirits turned aside to a crying downe, that men durst scarcely speak thereof, but must presently incurre the bruite of being an Atheist, Witch, or a false money-coyner. We say then, after Empedocles and Anaxagoras; All this our reason disputes by a Journey of composition and resolution, going this way and that way, up and downe. That all the Elementary science consisteth in the mixtion and separation of the Elements, which is perfected by fire, to which Alchymy turnes all: As Avicen declareth very openly in his Treaty of l’Almahad, or Division of Sciences. And Hermes in that of his 7 chapters, Understand yee sonnes of the wise, the Science of the four Elements, whose secret apparition is no where signified, except they bee divided and compounded, because out of the Elements nothing is made profitable without such a Regiment; for where Nature ends her operations, there Art begins. Take such a composed Elementary, what you will, herbe, wood, or other the like, upon which, fire may exercise its action, and put it in an Alembic or Cornue. Cornue; first let them separate the water, and afterwards the oyle, if the fire bee moderate, if more pressed and reinforced, both together: but the oyle will swimme above the water, which may easily bee separated by a fonnel of Glasse. This water is called Mercury, which of it selfe is pure and cleane; and oyle, the sulphur, adustible and infect, that corrupts every compounded thing: In the bottome of the vessel will rest the Ashes, of which by a forme of lee, with water the Salt will bee extracted, and after you have withdrawn the water with Balneum Mariæ, as men call it: for the oily unctuosities do not mount by this degree of fire, no more doth the Salt, but much lesse; and the indissoluble Earths stript of all their humidities proper to vitrifie: for saith Geber, every private thing by its owne humidity doth performe none but a vitrificatory fusion. So there are two volatill Elements, namely the liquid, Water and Aire, which is Oyle, for all liquid substances naturally shunne the fire, which elevates the one, and burnes the other. But not those two which are dry and solid; which are Salt, wherein is contained Fire, and pure Earth, which is Glasse: over whom the fire hath no power but to melt and refine them. See there the four Elements redoubled, as Hermes cals them, and Raymund Lullius the great Elements; for as every Element consists of two qualities, these great Elements redoubled, Mercury, Sulphur, Salt, and Glasse, participate of the two simple Elements, (to say better) of all four; according to the more, or the lesse, of the one, or of the other; Mercury holding more of the Aire, to which it is attributed; Oyle or Sulphur, of the Aire; Salt, of Fire; and Glasse, of the Earth, who findes it selfe pure and cleane in the Center of all the composed Elementaries, and is the last to reveale it selfe exempt from others. Of this sort by the Artifice and operation of Fire, and of its effects, we depure all infections and filth, even to reduce them to a purity of incorruptible substance from this time forward; by the separation of their inflamable, and terrestriall impurities; for (saith Geber) the whole intention of the Operator, is versed in this, that the grosser parts being cast away, the worke may bee perfected with the lighter; which is to mount from the corruptions here below, to a purity of the Celestial world, where the Elements are more pure and essential, fire there predominating which is the chief of all others. Hitherto touching Alchymie, and wherein shee is versed.
Magick for the Celestial world, was in times past, a holy and venerable Science, which Plato in his Charmis cals the true Medicine of the soule; and in the first, Alcibiades puts it, that it was wont to shew the Elders of the great Kings of Persia, to teach them to reverence God, to forme their temporall domination according to the patterne of the order and policy of the Universe. But it is nothing else properly (as Orpheus saith) but a forme of marriage of the starry heaven with the earth, whither hee darts his influences, by which shee impregnes