Last time we explored the divine human form in Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy books and introduced another astrologer, Robert Fludd. Fludd was a 17th century English scientist, doctor, alchemist and Rosicrucian who wrote vast books filled with beautiful illustrations to explain his Neoplatonist and Hermetic knowledge of the cosmos. He also helped to translate the King James Bible, and according to some, was one of the founders of Freemasonry.

His most famous work, Utriusque Cosmi, was published in five volumes and the full title in English is The metaphysical, physical and technical history of the two worlds, the greater and the lesser. The book covers the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm, including the creation of the world, cosmology, astrology, occult mathematics and Kabbalah, harmonics and music theory, vision and optics, as well as military strategy, fortifications and architecture, and his science experiments.

There’s not much he leaves out, as Jamie James says in The Music of the Spheres:

“Fludd took as his subject everything. … and rationalised (if the word can be used to describe so mystical a thinker) every aspect of the universe, visible and invisible, in a system that was essentially an expansion of the concepts of ‘musica mundana’ and ‘musica humana’…”

For Fludd, everything that existed in the human world had a parallel in every other realm through a kind of “mystical kinship”, and sometimes the amount of information involved becomes unmanageable, as James explains:

“A considerable amount of shoehorning and fudging was required to fit everything into place, but that, it would seem, was just what magic was for. For sheer grandiosity of vision and its spectacular intellectual nerve, Fludd’s system towers alone, albeit in a slightly mad way, like Aristotle in Wonderland.”

Utriusque Cosmi explores the underlying harmony of the universe, or macrocosm, and its reflection in man, or the microcosm, using music and the maths that underpins the cosmos. The following text is quoted and paraphrased from the glorious Alchemy and Mysticism by Alexander Roob. Fludd uses an illustration of the Divine Monochord which is based on Pythagorean mathematics and harmonic intervals, saying:

“The monochord is the internal principle which, from the centre of the whole, brings about the harmony of all life in the cosmos.”

God is the Great Chord and by controlling the tension of the strings, he can change the density of all the material things in the universe. The cosmic lyre is divided into the ideal upper half, or active octave, and the lower material half, or passive octave. These sections are also divided into harmonious intervals of 4ths and 5ths, with the Sun at the centre transforming light into matter.

To create the cosmos, God descends through the three world octaves and breathes his spirit into man and the microcosm. Because man is a microcosm of the whole, we include all three octaves in ourselves, the whole ladder of creation, elemental, celestial and super-celestial.

So the human body is a “vessel of all things” and can connect with every other level or octave, through material means, as well as subtle and spiritual. Man in the drawing below is F at the bottom with the hierarchy of angels above. The “middle-soul” is E, the ethereal sphere through which man connects with the elements. At the top is A, which he calls “pure spirit” and the “chimney to God.”

The human body partakes of all worlds. “In this picture [below] we see the wonderful harmony in which the two extremes, the most precious and the most gross, are linked.” This means the soul and the body and they’re brought together by the cosmic spirit, represented as the string of the monochord. At birth, the soul descends from the higher spheres and in death, returns the same way.

Man is the “Mirror of all nature and symbol of art”. In the Great Chain of Being, man is at the centre and is connected to the divine fire by Virgin Nature, who man can only imitate. Nature is the soul of the world and mediates between the divine spirit and its material expression. She stands with one foot on the earth and one in the water and on her breast is the Sun.

Robert Fludd may be best known today for his spat with Kepler as they argued about their different approaches to Hermetic knowledge and its application to cosmology. Fludd was looking back to the old medieval view and the esoteric tradition of Hermeticism, while Kepler was looking forward to the emerging rationalist view based on mathematics rather than mysticism.

Kepler’s problem was with Fludd’s use of Pythagorean numerology. But in The Music of the Spheres, Jamie James says there were fewer differences between them than perhaps Kepler would’ve liked to admit. Kepler used “magic-tinged mathematics” in his work, while Fludd used a “vaguely mathematical species of magic.”

For his part, Kepler was a true believer in the new Copernican heliocentric worldview that placed the Sun at the centre of the solar system. He took against Fludd for his geocentric and humanistic system that placed the Earth and mankind at its centre. James explains:

“Fludd considered himself to be among…those wise few who have been initiated into the eternal mathematics that govern creation. Kepler, unacquainted with the mysteries of alchemy and the Rosicrucian brotherhood, was thus hopelessly side-tracked with his endless carping about measurements. For Fludd, the very notion of measuring the universe was erroneous.”

Kepler dismissed Fludd’s intricate diagrams as “hieroglyphs and pictures”, while claiming his own use of imagery was fine because he was doing maths. He also pointed out that the Divine Monochord didn’t reflect the empirical data, and Fludd responded that it didn’t matter. Kepler replied that it mattered if you were trying to make music. (You can imagine them today, roasting each other on Twitter or posting attack videos on YouTube 😂)

James says that Kepler

“has gone to such extraordinary lengths to reconcile the observed planetary motions with the Pythagorean ratios that he is understandably annoyed with a self-proclaimed Pythagorean who cannot even get the musical ratios right.”

But Kepler got things wrong too and failed to admit that the elliptical orbits of the planets don’t really fit the Platonic Solids as per his scheme. On the surface it looks like a spat between two different worldviews but Kepler actually believed in the same Hermetic wisdom as Fludd, at one point saying:

“either Pythagoras is Hermetising, or Hermes is Pythagorising.”

Kepler was steeped in the same worldview as Fludd and as James says, was hardly “a paragon of rational materialism”, especially by today’s standards. Despite this, Kepler was fighting for a quantitative use of mathematics rather than the more subjective and qualitative approach of Pythagoras and Fludd. In volume 2 of A History of Western Astrology Nicholas Campion says:

“Kepler the Platonist and Fludd the Neoplatonist engaged in a celebrated public argument, competing for the right to represent classical philosophy in the modern world.”

Fludd lost the battle and Kepler’s approach to mathematics led to the creation of modern astronomy and the demise of astrology. The new heliocentric cosmology pushed all other worldviews into the shadows and the old holistic worldview of the macrocosm and the microcosm fell out of favour and went underground. But like all great ideas, it didn’t die…

You can explore the manuscript of Utriusque Cosmi online here – it’s in Latin but you can look at the pictures! Next time we’ll explore Fludd’s alchemical creation of the world…

Images: Wiki Commons

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