Hermetikism and the Renaissance

Table of Contents

#

Article


PP.

1

Hermetic and Related Texts

J. Scarborough

19-44

4

Hermes Trismegistos, Proklos

B. Copenhaver

79-110

10

Mysticism & Millenarianism

G. Rousseau

192-230

13

Function of Analogy

B. Vickers

265-92

14

Literary Hermetikism

W. Shumaker

293-301

15

Jakob Bo:hme

I. Merkel

302-10

16

Rosicrucian Linguistics

Ormsby-Lennon

311-41

19

Cosmic Sanctuary

R. van Pelt

400-23

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1. (pp. 19-44) John Scarborough : "Hermetic and Related Texts in Classical Antiquity".

pp. 33-4 symbolic names {cf. sandha-bhasa in the Vajra-yana system} of materia medica, mostly herbs (GMPT XII.409-45)

p.

term

its meaning

33

snake's head

leech


snake's "ball of thread"

soapstone


snake's bood

haimatite


ibis's bone

buckthorn


hyrax's blood

hyrax


hamadryas-baboon's tears

dill juice


crocodile's dung

Aithiopian soil


hamadryas-baboon's blood

blood of a spotted gecko


lion's semen

human semen


blood of Hephaistos

wormwood


hamadryas-baboon's hairs

dill seed


semen of Hermes

dill


blood of Ares

purslane


eye's blood

tamarisk gall


shoulder's blood

bear's-breech, or stinking hellebore


loins' blood

chamomile


man's bile

turnip sap


pig's tail

"scorpion tail" (leopard's-bane)


physician's bone

sandstone


blood of Hestia

chamomile [again!]


goose's blood

mulberry-tree's "milk"


spice of Kronos

piglet's [viz., sucked by piglet] milk


lion's hairs {cf. lion's hairs in cup for the As`vinau}

turnip "tongue"


blood of Kronos

[sap?] of cedar


semen of Helios

white hellebore


semen of Heraklees

mustard-rocket


blood of Titan

wild-lettuce


head's blood

lupine


bull's semen

egg of blistre-beetle (Spanish-fly)


hawk's heart

heart of wormwood


semen of Hephaistos {ejaculated onto the thigh of Athene (GM 25.b)}

fleabane

34

semen of Ammon

houseleek


semen of Ares

clover


head's fat

spurge


belly's fat

earth-apple


foot's fat

houseleek [again!]

GMPT = Hans Dieter Betz : The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Chicago, 1985.

GM = Robert Graves : The Greek Myths. 1955.

pp. 36-7 another synonym-list for herbs' names

p. 36

"the synonym lists for plants in Dioscorides by Pamphilus contained extracts from Thessalus. Pamphilus has been mentioned ... in connection with Hermetic

p. 37

tracts as recorded by Galen, but ... Pamphilus ... compiled an alphabetic listing of plants, providing alternative nomenclatures ... . ... The Suda ... says that Pamphilus was a "grammarian in Alexandria," ... for both the Hermetic quotations ... and the botany",

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4. (pp. 79-110) Brian Copenhaver : "Hermes Trismegistos, Proklos, and ... a Philosophy of Magik in the Renaissance".

p. 82 prayer & music

"Renaissance readers ... appreciated the magical import ... of the Asclepius, where Hermes explains that the qualitas or magical power of the earthly gods ... results from "plants, stones and spices that have in them a natural power of divinity" attuned to the heavens and sensitive to celestial prayer and music."

p. 84 Hellenistic philosophies of magik

"there also emerged by the time of Bolos Democritus (ca. 200 B.C.) ... physico-philosophic theories of magic. The evidence for them is ...

Plotinus in Ennead 4.4,

Iamblichus in De mysteriis,

Apuleius in his Apology".

"perhaps the most important surviving statement of ancient magical theory, the work of Proclus ... Titled [Peri` te^s kath' He'llenas hieratike^s te'khnes] ... is probably a pre'cis made by Michael Psellus from a larger work of Proclus on magic. The art [te'khne] described here by Proclus is is called priestly [hieratike'] because it derives from his deep interest in the theurgic magic of the Chaldaean Oracles. The intent of this magic was religious -- man's immortalization and union with the god".

pp. 85-6 Proklos's philosophy of magik

p. 85

"Proclus's De sacrificio ... must be read in terms of Proclus's longer writings, especially the Elements of Theology. In that work ..., Proclus sets forth a double hierarchical structure for all entities, described sometimes as [seirai'] or "chains," sometimes as "orders" [ta'xeis]. Both aspects of the hierarchy begin with higher entities called monads and henads, the latter identified with the various Olympian gods. In both parts of the structure, divine power from above is transmitted even to the lowest members of an order or chain."

p. 86

"this idea of chains or orders linking terrestrial to celestial entities and thereby providing a basis for astrological magic was a leading feature of a philosophy that was above all else systematic and ... theosophist. ... He shared with Porphyry and Iamblichus a stronger interest in magic than what is implied in ... Plotinus ... . Thus, Proclus's high regard for theurgy, which Plotinus never mentions, is ... developed in conscious opposition to what Plotinus taught." [reference : PhP, pp. 213, 245-54]

PhP = Lawrence J. Rosan : The Philosophy of Proclus. NY, 1949.

pp. 86-8 Erot- ('Love') in sorcery, enchantment, and magik, according to Diotima and according to Ficino

p. 86

"Diotima's conversation with Socrates in the Symposium" : "Diotima begins (202E-203D) by calling Love one of the spirits who mediate between heaven and earth and "form the medium of the prophetic arts, of the priestly rites ... [he to^n hiere'on te'khne ...], initiation, and incantation, of divination and of sorcery [goetei'an]." Love, she explains, is "an adept in sorcery, enchantment [deino`s go'es kai` pharmakeu`s], and seduction." ... The magic described in De sacrificio ... becomes an erotic

p. 87

embrace of the insensible divine. Ficino also identified love with magic".


[quoted from Ficino's De vita (Opera, p. 570), commenting on Plotinos, Enn. 4.4.40, 43, 44 :] "Wise men in India ... say that the world is an animal throughout male and female alike, and that it joins itself everywhere in the mutual love of its members. ... The magician sets earthly things under heaven, subjects all things below to those above, so that everywhere feminine entities are fertilized by male entities suited to them."

p. 88

"Both his love and his magic are forces : They ... support the mutual attractions of all of these organs of the living cosmos. There is a real ... analogy among

the function of love in Ficino's physics,

the function of [pneu~ma] in Stoic physics [reference : PhS, pp. 2, 5, 27, 66], and

the function of force in Newton's physics. ...

Plotinus argued, ... "the qualities inducing love induce ... an art of magic ... [that] knit[teth] soul to soul." ... Plotinus insists on the organic unity of the world and on the erotic forces binding it together, just as Proclus does ... . ... Ficino uses the concept of ordo (cf. [ta'xis] to explain magical actions as a system of attractions ... within and among various sets (ordines) of corporeal and incorporeal entities in upper and lower regions of the cosmos."

PhS = S. Sambursky : Physics of the Stoics. London, 1959.

p. 91 sources of occult properties of substances, according to various literary authorities (as per Cornelius Agrippa, in his De Occulta Philosophia)

source of occult properties

authority

Alexandros of Aphrodisias

the elements

Platon

formative ideas

Avicenna

the intelligences

Albertus Magnus

specific forms

Hermes

the stars

pp. 103-5 Proklos : Peri Tes kath' Hellenas Hieratikes Tekhnes ('On the Priestly Art according to the Hellenes')

p. 103

"in heaven they saw earthly things acting causally and in a heavenly manner, in the earth heavenly things in an earthly manner. ... All things pray according to their own order and sing hymns, either intellectually or rationally or natually or sensibly, to heads of entire chains. ... In the earth, then, it is possible to see suns and moons terrestrially, but in heaven one can also see celestially all the heavenly plants and stones and animals living intellectually. So by ... connecting ... to the appropriate heavenly beings, the ancient wise men brought divine powers into the region of mortals, attracting them ... . ... By analogy, then, understand ...

p. 104

the divinization of mortal entities ... insofar as they share in the divine seed ... . ... One can also see that stones inhale the influences of the luminaries ... . Thus, all things are full of gods : Things on earth are full of heavenly gods; things in heaven are full of supercelestials; and each chain continues ... . ... Therefore, some solar angels seem to have forms ..., and though they are formless they appear formed to us [as if] held fast in form. Now if one of the solar demons becomes manifest ..., as soon as ... presented he becomes invisible ..., shrinking away from the signs of higher beings, as many ... when they see the likenesses of divine men. ... So it seems that properties sown together in the sun are distributed among the angels, demons, souls, plants, and stones that share them. From this evidence ..., the authorities on the priestly art have thus discovered how to

p. 105

gain the favor of powers above, mixing some things together ... in due order. They used mixing because they saw that each unmixed thing possesses some property of the god but is not enough to call that god forth. Therefore, by mixing many things they unified the aforementioned influences and made a unity generated from all of them ... . And they often devised composite statues and fumigations, having blended separate signs together into one ... through the unification of many powers ... . ... For consecrations and other divine services they search out appropriate animals as well as other things. Beginning with these things ..., they gained knowledge of the demonic powers ..., and through these very substances they achieved association with the [demons], ... learning some things from the [gods], for ... accurate consideration of the appropriate symbols. Thence ..., they had dealings with the ... divine powers."

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10. (pp. 192-230) G. S. Rousseau : "Mysticism and Millenarianism".

pp. 205, 230 the 1715 2nd edn of Cheynes Philosophical Principles; Blake

p. 205

"Creatures of the world were now direct reflections, or embodiments, of the Creator. ... Cheyne argued that forms of "divine things" exist ..., the material ones having been "Copied out" ... . ... creatures ... become "Images, Emanations, Effluxes, and Streams ... out of ... Abyss of Being," a position that appears closer to the Book of Urizen".

p. 230, n. 118

"Nelson Hilton comments on Cheyne's works in relation to Blake's imagery of the body in a perceptive chapter of Literal Imagination : Blake's Vision of Words (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), entitled "Fibres of Being," pp. 91, 93, 97 ... . ... For the internalization ... in Blake, especially ideas of selfhood ..., see chapter 8 of Stephen D. Cox's lucid study of "The Stranger within Thee" : Concepts of the Self in Late-Eighteenth-Century Literature (Pittsburgh, 1980), pp. 127-56."

p. 219 pantheism

"Cheyne ... at the end of his life espouses a pantheism in which every living creature embodies the specific attributes of the Godhead ... . ... Cheyne who wrote just before his death that "Man is a diminutive Angel, shut up in a Flesh Prison or Vehicle," has more in common with Blake's visionary physics and Coleridge's pantheism".

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13. (pp. 265-92) Brian Vickers : "On the Function of Analogy in the Occult".

p. 272 Indo-China, according to Ptolemaios {in accord with vamacara tantra}

"Those who live in southeastern Asia ... practice "consecrating the genital organs," are "concupiscent," and "carry out their relations with women openly"; ... "most of them beget children by their own mothers" ([PT,] p. 141)

PT = Ptolemaios : Tetrabiblos. Loeb Classical Library, London, 1940.

pp. 273-4 paratactic sympathetic harmony

p. 273

"The occult is ... paratactic : that is, categories are joined up with each other laterally, added on like building blocks. The typical method ... is the use of hierarchical categories .. to generate related categories ..., and the classification of reality in these terms. The method underlying the whole system is the correlation of preexisting categories".

p. 274

A "table from Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis (The Universal Work of the Muses), ... is headed "The sympathetic harmony of the world, demonstrating the symphony of all nature in ten enneachords." ... Kircher sets out in this grid a 9-fold correspondence between ten distinct categories of existence".

pp. 275 table of correlations with the 9 orders of angels (MU, vol. 2, p. 393)

archetype

planet

mineral

stone

plant

S`rapi^m

firmament

splendor

cat's-eye

herbs

Krubi^m

Saturn

lead

topaz

hellebore

Thronoi

Jupiter

copper

amethyst

petunia

Domin.

Mars

iron

diamond

absinthe

Virtutes

Sun

gold

amalgam

heliotrope

Potestates

Venus

tin

beryl

ragwort

Principatus

Mercury

quicksilver

agate

paiony

Arckhangeloi

Moon

silver

selenite

lunaria

Angeloi

Earth

sulphur

magnet

grain

MU = Athanasius Kircher : Musurgia Universalis. Roma, 1650. 2 voll.

p. 275 continuation of table of correlations with the 9 orders of angels (MU, loc. cit.)

tree

aquatic

bird

beast

color

berry-trees

starfish

guinea

leopard

variegated

cypress

tuna

owl

ass, bear

swarthy

citrus

sturgeon

eagle

elephant

pink

oak

psyphias

falcon

wolf

flaming

laurel

dolphin

chicken

lion

golden

myrtle

trout

swan, dove

deer

green

pomegranate

beavre

parrot

hound

caerulean

pod-fruit

oystre

duck, goose

cat

white

fruit-trees

eel

ostrich

insect

black

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14. (pp. 293-301) Wayne Shumaker : "Literary Hermetikism".

p. 294 lineage of transmission of the doctrine to Platon

"the esoteric philosophy was unitary and had descended from Trismegistus in a direct line through

Orpheus,

Aglaephemus,

Pythagoras, and

Philolaus to

Plato."

{Because Orpheus and Aglao-phemos are Thraikian, this may imply a Thraikian provenience for Tris-megistos.}

p. 294 Bear-constellation of Trimegistos

"Milton's Il Penseroso ... expresses a wish to "out-watch the Bear, / With thrice-great

{The name /Tris-megistos/ ('Thrice-greatest') may be intended to apply here to Proitos, who had [as also had >al-Lahh] three daughters (GM 72.g). Proitos vowed on account of (GM 72.i) Kallistoi, who had been transformed into (GM 22.h) the Bear-constellation.}

Hermes (lines 87-88)".

{Hermes may be mentioned here on account of his having raped (Apollod. 3:2:5 -- GM 93.b; HM&F, p. 390, n. 41. Bibliotheke 3:14 -- "A") heroine Apemosune on slippery animal-hides : cf. "Kallisto, who appeared with her bear-skin in the great painting of Polygnotos at Delphoi ({Pausan.] X. xxxi. 2)" (ROPC, p. 263).}

HM&F = Herodas, the Mimes and Fragments. http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/herodas/the-mimes-and-fragments-ore/page-58-the-mimes-and-fragments-ore.shtml

"A" = http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/apemosyne.html

ROPC = Robert Brown : "Researches into the origin of the primitive constellations of the Greeks, Phoenicians and Babylonians". Williams & Norgate, London, 1899. http://www.archive.org/stream/researchesintoor01browuoft/researchesintoor01browuoft_djvu.txt

{The namesake of Apemosune's sister Ae:rope was so fecund that "her dead body was still able to produce an abundance of breastmilk to feed the newborn" (Pausanias : Description of Hellas, 8.44.7-8), a tale likewise told (in Bodish literature) of the mother of infant god Rudra.}

p. 296 Shakespeare : The Tempest

"Ariel, an aerial spirit or sylph, ... Prospero has freed from a cloven pine in which he had been imprisoned by Sycorax, a witch and the mother of an earth spirit, or gnome, who had been fathered by a devil. Prospero's control over the sylph is magical, and the sylph ... can make himself invisible. ... Prospero ... puts a spell on his daughter Miranda, and when she awakens causes her and Ferdinand ... to fall instantly in love. ... All this magic is assisted by the fact that Prospero had discerned "a most auspicious star" ... . ... "Some vanity" of Prospero's art -- that is, ... for fun -- includes appearances of ... "certain nymphs," who speak and sing".

p. 296 praeternatural music in plays by Shakespeare

"Owen Glendower, in Henry IV, Part 1, was born to the accompaniment of prodigies and summons spirits from a thousand-leagues' distance to provide music (act 3, sc. 1).

Lorenzo, in The Merchant of Venice, knows that the heavens are filled with music; to Jessica he says, "There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st / But in his motion like an angel sings" (act 5, sc. 1)."

p. 296 a succuba

"The Weird Sisters, in Macbeth, ... can ... cause storms, change themselves into rats, and ... One boasts of her intention to become a succubus to a sailor (act 1, sc. 3)."

p. 297 goddesses in plays by Shakespeare

There appear "Hecate twice in Macbeth, where she once ... will make artificial spirits out of a drop distilled by the moon (act 2, sc. 5), and

Diana (... in a dream sequence) in Pericles."

p. 298 Henry Vaughan

An "anthology, edited by Alexander M. Witherspoon and Frank J. Warnke, remarks of Vaughan that he frequenty used ... "the kind of recondite learning cultivated by his brother Thomas {cf. infra, p. 311}, who was famous as an alchemist and mystical philosopher" (Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry [New York, 1963]). The Dictionary of National Biography notes Vaughan's translation of a volume of excerpts called Hermetick Physic and calls him a pantheist."

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15. (pp. 302-10) : Ingrid Merkel : "Hermetic Imagery in the Work of Jakob Bo:hme.".

15.1 (pp. 302-4) Jakob Bo:hme & his writings

p. 302

Jakob Bo:hme exercised influence "on romatic writers sand on German idealism, notably on Franz von Bader, on Schelling [LPhSch] and on Hegel. Bo:hme ... was born in 1575 in Altsedenberg, Silesia, and he died in 1624 in Go:rlitz."

p. 303

"Abraham von Franckenberg, a devoted disciple and Bo:hme's first biographer, was ... historian ... through his De vita. He reports that ... Bo:hme acquired ... Gnostic and Neoplatonic concepts, along with an alchemical vocabulary."

p. 304

"In 1612 ... He composed Aurora, That Is, ... Morning Redness in the Rising of the Sun ... . ... In his important writings --

Forty Questions of the Soul (1620),

Six Theosophical Points (1620),

The Signature of Things (1622), and

Mysterium Magnum (1623) --

he re-wrote with an ever-sharper focus, with greater mastery of the material, and with clearer concepts the original vision of the Aurora".

LPhSch = R. F. Brown : The Later Philosophy of Schelling : the Influence of Bo:hme on the Works of 1809-1815. Lewisburg (PA), 1977.

15.2 (p. 305) Tat

"When Tat, son of Hermes, had been invaded by the ten powers and had been cleansed, he was endowed with the vision of [to` pan], the All. ["Asclepius", in CH 2:206] He then rose through the seven spheres, leaving his old body and the world behind, to become a god himself."

{cf. possibly the travel to (GM 72.j) the "cave overlooking the river Styx" (the river wherein mortals are "immortalized" -- GM 160.h) by the two sons-in-law (GM 72.k) of Proitos, those sons-in-law being considered as (GM 72.6) "Egyptians".}

CH = Nock & Festugie`re (transll.) : Corpus Hermeticum. 4 voll. Paris, 1946-54.

p. 15.2 (p. 305) the sudden enlightenment of Jakob Bo:hme

"One day in 1600 he saw, according to Franckenberg, a tin plate on the wall of his shop glow ... (with a ... jovial glow).The radiance of the tin opened his eyes to the comprehension of the primordial". [vide infra, p. 319]

15.3 (pp. 306-7) mystic figurative allegory

p. 306

"Bo:hme ... arrived at his concept of figurative language naively through the frustrated awareness of mystics that all language is inadequate in the communication of mystical truth. ...

p. 307

A man cannot find any full similitude of it in this half-dead world (p. 198)."

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16. (pp. 311-41) Hugh Ormsby-Lennon : "Rosicrucian Linguistics".

16.1. (p. 311) Fama and Confessio

"the first English translations of the Fama and Confessio ... dess Lo:blichens Ordens des Rozenkreutzes ... appeared in English in 1652, the handiwork of Thomas Vaughan ... the ... Welsh alchemist." (F&CFRC)

F&CFRC = Eugenius Philalethes : The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R.C. ... the Rosie Cross. London, 1652.

16.2 (p. 312) ineffable transcendence

[quoted from IC, p. 190] "[The Platonists] made man feel the inadequacy of "discursive speech" for conveying ... the "ineffable" intensity of the mystic vision. It was they, also, who encouraged a search for alternatives to language ... for that immediacy of experience which language could never offer."

IC = Ernst Gombrich : "Icones Symbolicae : philosophies of symbolism and their bearing upon art." Symbolic Images : STUDIES IN THE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE, 2. Oxford, 1972.

16.2 (p. 315) authors of Rosicrucian doctrines in Great Britain

Principal authors were "John Dee and Robert Fludd, the first a putative source of Rosicrucian doctrine, the second the brotherhood's most distinguished English spokesman." [ThW, p. 51]

"Like Thomas Vaughan ..., Ashmole translated the Fama and Confessio ..., and in his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum he celebrated their skill as iatrochemists." [RE, pp. 236-7]

ThW = Frances Yates : Theatre of the World. Chicago, 1969.

RE = Frances Yates : The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. 1972.

16.3 (p. 319) the dazzling sudden enlightenment of Jakob Bo:hme

"In the first Behmenist tract to appear in English translation -- The Life of One Jacob Boehmen -- Abraham von Franckenberg, himself a Rosicrucian [p. 337, n. 45 : "On Franckenberg's Rosicrucianism, see Paul M. Allen, ed., A Christian Rosenkreutz Anthology (Blauvelt, N.Y., 1968), p. 490."], tells how the Silesian cobbler gained his primordial insight into the liber naturae. In 1600 Bo:hme was dazzled by sunlight glancing off a pewter dish in Go:rlitz and immediately [quoted from LOJB, sig. A2r :] "... perceived the wonderful or wonderworks ... in the signatures, shapes, figures, and qualities of all ... things, very clearly and plainly laid open." Bo:hme complemented this "primordial revelation" with ... his proposed ... restitution of the lingua Adamaica by "openings" that were ... Edenic ... ." [DW]

DW = Steven a. Konopacki : The Descent into Words : Jakob Bo:hme's Transcendental Linguistics. Ann Arbor, 1979.

16.3 (pp. 320-1) universal language (advocated by John Webster and by George Fox) for conjectural utopian universities

p. 320

"In the university as reformed by Webster, ... the Rosicrucian linguist worked on the construction of a universal language, [quoted from AE, p. 25 :] "a potent means ... to have repaired the ruines of Babel ... a ... cure for the confusion of tongues"".


"Fox explained [in 1658] to an Interregnum functionary dispatched from London to set up a new University in Durham,

p. 321

[quoted from JGF, pp. 333-4 :] they set them atop ... the Word ..., confused languages, at Babel and in Babylon, set a-top of ... life, by a persecutor."


[quoted from B-DT&P, introd., sig. A2v :] "All languages are to me no more than dust ..., and am come'd before languages into the power where all man shall agree."

AE = John Webster : Academiarum Examen; or, the Examination of Academies. London, 1654.

JGF = John L. Nickalls (ed.) : The Journal of George Fox. London, 1975.

B-DT&P = George Fox; John Stubs; & Benjamin Furly : A Battle-Door for Teachers and Professors to Learn. London, 1660.

16.3 (pp. 321-2) supernatural initiation of George Fox into the shamanic power of divine faith-healing

p. 321

[quoted from JGF, p. 27 :] "Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. ...

p. 322

The creation was opened to me, and it showed me how all things had their names given them according to their nature and virtue. And ... I should practice physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me ..., through the openings of that divine Word of wisdom ... ."


"The medical arcana ... Fox gained instantly through mystical illumination, regaining ... Fox's subsequent career as a folkdoctor -- a career unique among the sectaries only for its length and the surviving documentation." [GFBM]

GFBM = Henry J Cadbury (ed.) : George Fox's "Book of Miracles". Cambridge, 1948.

16.3 (pp. 322-3) mystic humming; occult language of birds

p. 322

"a mysterious humming presaged James Nayler's Christic descent upon Bristol."


[quoted from GIE, "To the Reader"] "They continued on their way, not answering in any other notes, but what were musical, ... but sometimes with such a buzzing melodious noise".


"In 1656 the alchemist Edward Bourne accompanied Fox from Worcester to Tewkesbury, later recording in his journal that the Quaker spoke [FPT, p. 278 :] "of the Glory of the first body, and of the Egiptian Learning, & of the Language of the birds ... ." ... Illuminated by [<]Eden, Adam had conversed with (as well as named) "the fowl of the air ..." (Genesis 2:20). ...

p. 323

"Solomon ... had communicated with the Queen of Sheba[<] via the birds, and

{Specifically, Sule^man spake with a hoopoe (Qur>an, surah 27 "The Emmet" 20-5).}


Apollonius of Tyana ... was, like Jesus {in a certain apocryphal gospel}, fluent in the "birds most learned Original." [p. 339, n. 82 : "on Apollonius, see The First Two Books of Philostratus, concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus, trans. Charles Blount (London, 1680) ...; on Jesus see John Bulwer, Chirologia ... (London, 1644), pp. 6-7."] ...

Rosicrucian linguists were necessarily fluent in mystical birdsong because... the language of birds was intrinsic to the gift of tongues ... . ... In mystical birdsong Bo:hme's signatura rerum were thus translated into the ... tongues of ... angels" [who have birds' wings].

GIE = The Grand Imposter Examined, London, 1656.

FPT = Norman Penney (ed.) : The First Publishers of Truth. London, 1907.

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19. (pp. 400-23) Robert Jan van Pelt : "... the Hermetic Temple : ... the Cosmic Sanctuary".

pp. 402-3 the 2 divine ideal cities {These are the known (on account of the "Emerald Tablet" of Hermes Trismegistos) as the 2 Emerald Cities, Jabarsa, and Jabalqa.}

p. 402

[quoted from Asklepios 3:27d, in GB&HT, p. 55 :] "the gods themselves who excercise their dominion over the earth will be restored one day and installed in a City at the extreme limit of Egypt, a City which will be founded

{This is Jabarsa, the world of souls, to the west.}

p. 403

towards the setting sun, and into which will hasten, by land and by sea {cf. the Kemetic Coffin-Text Book of the Two Ways}, the whole race of mortal men."


[quoted from Pikatrix 4.3, in GB&HT, p. 54 :] "the city of Adocentyn, founded by Hermes Trismegistos" : Hermes Trismegistos "in the east of Egypt constructed a City twelve miles long within which he constructed a castle ... . ... On the summit of the castle he caused to be raised a tower thirty cubits high on the top of which he ordered to placed a light-house the colour of which changed every day until the seventh day after which it returned to the first colours."

{This is Jabalqa, the world of archetypal eidola, to the east.}

GB&HT = Frances Yates : Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London, 1964.

p. 409 Campanella's City of the Sun [CSIRPh]

"The City of the Sun was round, with a temple at the center surrounded by seven concentric walls, on which palaces were built.

{[quoted from Herodotos : Historiai 1:98 ("E")] "Deioces ... built large and strong walls, those which are now called Ecbatana, standing in circles one within the other. And this wall is so contrived that one circle is higher than the next by the height of the battlements alone. And ... the circles are in all seven in number."}

The walls were decorated with im[a]ges that provided a pictorial encyclopedia of the world. ... The first circle of the walls -- mathematics -- was followed by the remaining circles until the outer perimeter with its portraits of ... the visionaries and founders of the ideal society ... were depicted. Thus, there was a clear progression from the abstract laws of the universe at the center of the scheme to those of the ideal society at the perimeter. ... The center of the temple was a domed hall with seven lights representing the seven planets. ... Campanella explained that heaven was the real temple of God; the ancient Stoic notion of templum mundi established the temple as a transitory monument."

CSIRPh = Tommaso Campanella : Civitas Solis Idea Reipublicae Philosophicae. Frunkfurt, 1623.

"E" = "Ecbatana" http://www.IranChamber.com/history/ecbatana/ecbatana.php

pp. 410-2 utopian cosmic temples, according to Rabelais

p. 410

"In Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais described ... the Abbey of The'le`me, and the temple of Dive Bouteille. Described at the end of the fifth book, the Dive Bouteille was a cosmic temple based on the descriptions of the Temple and Fountain of Venus in ... Hyperonomachia Poliphili. ["H&PTR"] ... Pantagruel and his companions were led to the oracle of the Dive Bouteille by a guide, or Lantern. Her light ... illuminated the way. Before the pilgrims reached the entrance of the subterranean temple {cf. subterranean Mithraion (temple to Mithras)}, ...

p. 411

they passed through the vineyard, ... filling their shoes with vine leaves {which are edible}. The pilgrims then descended a long, winding staircase with one hundred steps ... to the place of origin at the gateway of the temple below, but ... Lantern left them the moment they entered the main space of the temple, where they were left to the priestess of the ... fury Bacbuc {/Baqbuq/ ('Bottle, Cruse') in <ezra> 2:51}. ... At the center of the main sancturary was a large fountain on a heptagonal base with seven columns made of different precious stones and crowned with statues of the planets made of various metals. The fountain was covered with a crystalline dome. A large lamp, brighter that the sun {(!) Divine entities are sometimes described as brighter than the sun in mystical literature, but no actual lamp could have been that bright.} illuminating the entire temple, hung above it. ...

p. 412

Rabelais described this chapel of the oracle as lit by daylight shining through the walls {which thus must have been made of glass} ... . ... The founder of the Abbey of The'le`me (the utopia inhabited by people able to control their will), Friar John was the hierophant who symbolically opened the door to the winding staircase, which the pilgrinms had to ascend to return ... . ... Indeed, upon leaving the temple they entered ... a better world ... . ["A&B"] This was a world of enlightenment, ... directly protected by


a God who was characterized ... as an intellectual sphere, the center of which was everywhere and the circumpherence was nowhere."

{This is Definition II in Liber XXIV philosophorum ('Book of the 24 Philosophers') by [perhaps] Marius Victorinus of the 4th century Chr.E. "The definition ... draws from Porphyry's explanation of Pythagorean interpretation of the sphere" ("RL24Ph").}

"H&PTR" = G. Mallary Masters : "The Hermetic and Platonic Traditions in Rabelais' ' Dive Bouteille' ". STUDI FRANCESI 10 (1966):15-29.

"A&B" = Jesse Zeldin : "The Abbey and the Bottle". L'ESPRIT CRE'TEUR 3 (1963):73.

"RL24Ph" = "Review of :- Françoise Hudry (ed.), Marius Victorinus : Le livre des vingt-quatre philosophes: résurgence d'un texte du IVe siècle. Histoire des doctrines de l'antiquité classique 39. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2009." BRYN MAWR CLASSICAL REVIEW 2010.10.11. http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-10-11.html

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Ingrid Merkel & Allen G. Debus (edd.) : Hermeticism and the Renaissance. London : Associated University Presses, 1988.