Astrologers

"But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that God who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by the counterworking of His will, which is the good."

"Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven."

"And thus He will bring back His world to its former aspect, so that the Cosmos will once more be deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and restorer of the mighty fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with unceasing hymns of praise and blessing."

"We give Thee grace, Thou highest and most excellent! For by Thy Grace we have received the so great Light of Thy own Gnosis. O holy Name, fit Name to be adored, O Name unique, by which God only must be blest through worship of our Sire, of Thee who deignest to afford to all a Father's piety, and care, and love, and whatsoever virtue is more sweet than these, endowing us with sense, and reason, and intelligence;-with sense that we may feel Thee; with reason that we may track Thee out from appearances of things; with means of recognition that we may joy in knowing Thee. (A Hymn of Grace for Gnosis)"

"So the various equality of every shape being differenced, that the species of the qualities, by distance may be known to be infinite, yet so united to this, that the whole may seem one, and from that one, all to have their being; wherefore the whole World are the four Elements of which it is compounded, Fire, Water, Earth, Air; one World, one Soul, one God."

"Now be thou present with me, as much as thou art able I both in mind, and wisdom: for the reason of the Divinity which is to be known by the divine intention of the undemanding, is most like unto a Torrent running with a violent and swift stream from a high Rock, whereby it glides away from the understanding of such, who are either Hearers or Dealers in it."

"How quickly hast thou learned, by the very light of reason; for said I not this, that all things are one, and one all things? that all things were in the Creator, before he created all things; neither unworthily is he said to be All, whole parts are all things; therefore in this whole Discourse have a care to remember him, who being One, is All, even the very Creator of all things; all things descend from Heaven into Erath, into the Water, and into the Air."

"The Sun is its father, the Moon its mother, the wind has carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse."

"And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one, so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation."

"The Fire only, in that it is carried upward, is lively subservient to that which descends; for whatsoever descends from above is generating, and whatsoever ascends upward is nourishing; the earth alone abiding in it self is the receiver of all things, and the restorer of all things she receiveth."

"Thou Asclepius, serves instead of a Sun unto me; for God hath brought thee to us, that thou mightest be present with us in thy divine Discourse, being such which may seem worthy to carry a greater lustre of Piety and Religion, than all the works before done of us, or any gifts inspired by divine Inspiration; which if understandingly thou shalt regard, thou shalt be richly filled with all good things throughout thy whole soul: If not withstanding there may be many good things, and not one generall, in which all things are, for the one is perceived to consent and agree with the other; all these things belong to that One, and that One is All; for the one so coheres to the other, that they can not be separated. Chapter I"

"Thou Asclepius, the soul of every man is immortal, but not all alike; for there is a difference both in the time and manner."

"A Hymn to All-Father God WHO, then, may sing Thee praise of Thee, or praise to Thee? WHITHER, again, am I to turn my eyes to sing Thy praise; above, below, within, without? There is no way, no place is there about Thee, nor any other thing of things that are. All are in Thee; all are from Thee; O Thou Who givest all and takest naught, for Thou hast all and naught is there Thou hast not. And WHEN, O Father, shall l hymn Thee? For none can seize Thy hour or time. For WHAT, again, shall I sing hymn? For things that Thou hast made, or things Thou hast not? For things Thou hast made manifest, or things Thou hast concealed? How, further, shall I hymn Thee? As being of myself? As having something of mine own? As being other? For that Thou art whatever I may be; Thou art whatever I may do; Thou art whatever I may speak. For Thou art all, and there is nothing else which Thou art not. Thou art all that which doth exist, and Thou art what doth not exist,-Mind when Thou thinkest, and Father when Thou makest, and God when Thou dost energize, and Good and Maker of all things (i, 105)."

"Yet the very mythos, which apparently surrounds his existence, has a special value to occultists, for a similar obscurity and absence of specific data attaches to the characters of Melchisedek, King of Salem, Osiris, Attis, Confucius, and John the Baptist, of all of whom the origin is unknown."

"But on the pious soul the Mind doth mount and guide it to the Gnosis' Light. And such a soul doth never tire in songs of praise to God and pouring blessing on all men, and doing good in word and deed to all, in imitation of its Sire (ii, 155)."

"I, Mind, Myself am present with holy men and good, the pure and merciful, men who live piously. To such My Presence doth become an aid, and straightway they gain Gnosis of all things, and win the Father's love by their pure lives, and give Him thanks, invoking on Him blessings, and chanting hymns, intent on Him with ardent love (ii, 14)."

"Come unto me; fulfil all that I crave; be favourable to me together with good fortune and the blessing of the Good."

"Hermes Trismegistos, the Egyptian, who first instituted hieroglyphs, thus becoming the prince and parent of all Egyptian theology and philosophy, was the first and most ancient among the Egyptians ... Thence, Orpheus, Mousaios, Linos, Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxos, Parmenides, Melissos, Homer, Euripides and others learned rightly of God and of divine things ..."

"I know thy names in the Egyptian tongue, and thy true name as it is written on the holy tablet in the holy place at Hermes’ city, where thou dost have thy birth."

"I know thee, Hermes, and thou [knowest] me; [and] I am thou, and thou art I."

"Lord Hermes, come to me, and give me grace, [and] food, [and] victory, [and] health and happiness, and cheerful countenance, beauty and powers in sight of all!"

"Perhaps no character in history has formed the subject of so much and so varied study and speculation as that of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus and we shall realize the truth of this statement as we individually seek light upon the sublime philosophy rightly attributed to this Avatar. At the very outset, we are confronted with a remarkable dearth of exact information regarding his person and life. A dearth all the more inexplicable when we realize that from the Rosicrucian standpoint Hermes may be justly regarded as one of the greatest of all Messiahs who have incarnated on this sphere."

"I know thy Name that shineth forth in heaven; I know thy forms as well; I know thy tree; I know thy wood as well."

"I know thee, Hermes, who thou art, and whence thou art, and what thy city is."

"They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which He has built..."

"No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the Gods of heaven, will be heard or believed."

"The pious will be deemed insane, and the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good."

"it is not quite as Tat supposes. There is no one Song of the Powers written in human speech and kept secret; no manuscript, no oral tradition, of some physically uttered hymn. The Shepherd, Mind of all masterhood, hath not passed on to me more than hath been writ down, for full well did He know that I should of myself be able to learn all, and see all things. He left to me the making of fair things. Wherefore the Powers within me, e'en as they are in all, break into song. The Song can be sung in many modes and many tongues, according to the inspiration of the illumined singer. The man who is reborn becomes a psalmist and a poet, for now is he tuned in harmony with the Great Harmony, and cannot do otherwise than sing God's praises. He becomes a maker of hymns and is no longer a repeater of the hymns of others. But Tat persists; his soul is filled with longing to hear some echo of the Great Song. "Father, I wish to hear; I long to know these things!""

"Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry."

"That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing."

"Hermes' message to humanity remains timeless[;] his words are a call to the awakening of the divine within ourselves. To transcend and transform this suffering world into a paradise on earth. And he is calling his people today once again, to rise and race towards building a Divine Just State as he had hoped for humanity."

"The first essential in chemistry is that you should perform practical work and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain to the least degree of mastery. But you, O my son, do experiment's so that you may acquire knowledge. Scientists delight not in abundance of material; they rejoice only in the excellence of their experimental methods."

"The most important collection of Arabic alchemical texts was supposedly written by Jabir ibn Hayyan, but... the writings, known collectively as the Jabirian Corpus, were the work of a Muslim sect... Isma'iliya... completed by 987, but probably compiled over... several generations. ...[H]ow much, if any ...is due to [Jabir] is not known."

"The Viper has always been so remarkable for its venom, that the most remote antiquity made it an emblem of what is hurtful and destructive. Nay, so terrible was the nature of these creatures, that they were very commonly thought to be sent as executioners of divine vengeance upon mankind for enormous crimes, which had escaped the common course of justice."

"Venomous animals, when they bite or sting, inflict a wound, and instil into it a drop or more of liquor, which infects the fluid of the nerves, and by this means inflames the membranes: hereupon a swelling arises, sometimes to a degree of mortification, which spreads to the neighbouring parts."

"We resolved to end our poison-enquiries by tasting the venomous liquor. According, having diluted a quantity of it, with a very little warm water, several of us ventured to put some of it upon the tip of our tongues. We all agreed, that it tasted very sharp and fiery, as if the tongue had been struck through with something scalding or burning. This sensation went off in two or three hours: and one gentleman, who would not be satisfied without trying a large drop undiluted, found his tongue swelled with a little inflammation and the soreness lasted two days. But neither his nor our boldness was attended with any ill consequence."

"Those things, which are experienced to be in their whole nature, or in their most remarkable properties, so contrary to animal life, as in a small quantity to prove destructive to it, are called Poisons: whether they are hurtful by being taken inwardly at the mouth, or communicated to the body externally by a wound."

"In the year 1721, his present Majesty, then Prince of Wales, ordered Dr. MEAD to assist at the Inoculation of some condemned criminals, intending afterwards to recommend the practice of it to the people by the illustrious example of his own Royal Family; our ingenious Physician, not content with examining all of the effects of the Circassian operation upon six of the prisoners, caused the Chinese method likewise to be tried on the seventh. The success of these experiments is universally known ..."

"The intellect is prompted by nature to comprehend the whole breadth of being. ... Under the concept of truth it knows all, and under the concept of the good it desires all."

"The people who have discovered something important in any of the more noble arts have principally done so when they have abandoned the body and taken refuge in the citadel of the soul."

"The inquiry of the intellect never ceases until it finds that cause of which nothing is the cause but which is itself the cause of causes. This cause is none other than the boundless God. Similarly, the desire of the will is not satisfied by any good, as long as we believe that there is yet another beyond it. Therefore, the will is satisfied only by that one good beyond which there is no further good. What can this good be except the boundless God?"

"The rational soul in a certain manner possesses the excellence of infinity and eternity. If this were not the case, it would never characteristically incline toward the infinite. Undoubtedly this is the reason that there are none among men who live contentedly on earth and are satisfied with merely temporal possessions."

"If someone asks us which of these is more perfect, intellect or sense, the intelligible or the sensible, we shall promise to answer promptly, if he will first give us an answer to the following question. You know, my inquiring friend, that there is some power in you which has a notion of each of these things—a notion, I say, of intellect itself and of sense, of the intelligible and the sensible. This is evident, for the same power which compares these to each other must at that time in a certain manner see both. Tell me, then, whether a power of this kind belongs to intellect or sense? ... Sense, as you yourself have shown, can perceive neither itself nor intellect and the objects of intellect; whereas intellect knows both. ... Therefore, intellect is not only more perfect than sense but is also, after perfection itself, in the highest degree perfect."

"When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects. Thus extreme brightness offends the eye, and a very loud noise offends the ears. Mind, however, is otherwise; by its most excellent object it is neither injured nor ever confused. Nay, rather, after this object is known, it distinguishes inferior things at once more clearly and more truly."

"The ancient Greek philosopher, Democritus, propounded an hypothesis of the constitution of matter, and gave the name of atoms to the ultimate unalterable parts of which he imagined all bodies to be constructed. In the 17th century, Gassendi revived this hypothesis, and attempted to develope it, while Newton used it with marked success in his reasonings on physical phenomena; but the first who formed a body of doctrine which would embrace all known facts in the constitution of matter, was Roger Joseph Boscovich, of Italy, who published at Vienna, in 1759, a most important and ingenious work, styled Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis ad unicam legem virium, in Natura existentium redacta. This is one of the most profound contributions ever made to science; filled with curious and important information, and is well worthy of the attentive perusal of the modern student. In more recent days, the theory of Boscovich has received further confirmation and extension in the researches of Dalton, Joule, Thomson, Faraday, Tyndall, and others."

"Gassendi, le meilleur philosophe des littérateurs et le meilleur littérateur des philosophes... [Gassendi, the greatest philosopher among literati and the greatest literato among philosophers...]"

"Boyle entertains the hypothesis of a universal matter, the concept of atoms of different shapes and sizes, and the possibility of existence of substances that might properly be called elements... The atomic theory as originally conceived by Democritus and Epicurus, developed by Lucretius, and resurrected by Gassendi from about 1647 on, was doubtless the source from which Boyle derived his ideas, ...as he cites both Epicurus and Gassendi. Boyle, however... avoids any dogmatic assertion of these hypotheses. It is plain, however, that these atoms or "corpuscles" as he calls them are a constant element of his thought."

"Man lives very well upon flesh, you say, but, if he thinks this food to be natural to him, why does he not use it as it is, as furnished to him by Nature? But, in fact, he shrinks in horror from seizing and rending living or even raw flesh with his teeth, and lights a fire to change its natural and proper condition. … What is clearer than that man is not furnished for hunting, much less for eating, other animals? In one word, we seem to be admirably admonished by Cicero that man was destined for other things than for seizing and cutting the throats of other animals. If you answer that ‘that may be said to be an industry ordered by Nature, by which such weapons are invented,’ then, behold! it is by the very same artificial instrument that men make weapons for mutual slaughter. Do they this at the instigation of Nature? Can a use so noxious be called natural? Faculty is given by Nature, but it is our own fault that we make a perverse use of it."

"THE central figure of Rosicrucian literature, towering as an intellectual giant above the crowd of souffleurs, theosophists, and charlatanic professors of the magnum opus, who, directly or otherwise, were connected with the mysterious Brotherhood, is Robertus de Fluctibus, the great English mystical philosopher of the seventeenth century, a man of immense erudition, of exalted mind, and, to judge by his writings, of extreme personal sanctity. Ennemoser describes him as one of the most distinguished disciples of Paracelsus, but refuses to number him with "those consecrated theosophists who draw all wisdom from the fountain of eternal light." He does not state his reasons for this depreciatory judgment, and the brief and inadequate notice which he gives of Fludd's system displays such a cursory acquaintance with the works in which it is developed, that it is doubtful whether he had taken pains to understand his author."

"At the beginning of the 17th century many learned heads in England were occupied with Theosophy, Cabbalism, and Alchemy: amongst the proofs of this... may be cited the works of , of Norbert, of Thomas and Samuel Norton, but above all (in reference to our present inquiry) of Robert Fludd. Fludd it was, or whosoever was the author of the Summum Bonum 1629, that must be considered as the immediate father of Freemasonry, as Andrea was its remote father. What was the particular occasion of his own first acquaintance with , is not recorded: all the books of Alchemy or other occult knowledge, published in Germany, were at that time immediately carried over to England — provided they were written in Latin; and, if written in German, were soon translated for the benefit of English students. He may therefore have gained his knowledge immediately from the three Rosicrucian books. But it is more probable that he acquired his knowledge on this head from his friend Maier (mentioned in the preceding chapter) who was intimate with Fludd during his stay in England, and corresponded with him after he left it. At all events he must have been initiated into Rosicrucianism at an early period, having published his apology for it in the year 1617."