Last time we introduced the work of Robert Fludd and his illustrations of the harmony of the spheres, and explored the reasons for his public spat with Kepler. Fludd believed in the Hermetic view of the macrocosm and the microcosm, and used Pythagorean principles of mathematics and musical harmony to explain how the cosmos was created. He also saw creation as an alchemical process and illustrated it with a series of fantastic drawings that look like mandalas or cymatics images.

The following text is from the excellent Alchemy and Mysticism by Alexander Roob, with quotes from volume 1 of Utriusque Cosmi by Robert Fludd. We start with the abyss:

God divided primal, dark chaos, the Prima Materia, into the three divine, primary elements of light, darkness and spiritual waters. These waters, in turn, were the roots of the four Aristotelian elements, of which earth is the coarsest and the heaviest, comparable to the dark sediment, the ‘raven’s head’ that is left on the bottom of the retort in the process of distillation.

No wonder, wrote Fludd, that our planet is such a vale of tears, given that it has emerged from the sediment of creation, where the devil dwells. From the Zohar, Fludd quotes:

“When the secret of secrets wished to reveal himself, he began to produce a point of light. Before that point of light broke through and became apparent, the infinite (en soph) was entirely hidden and radiated no light.”

“Light, the inexhaustible source of all things, appears in the darkness and with it the watery spirits that begin to divide into near (bright) and far (dark).”

In the centre are the dark waters, far from the light, forming the source of matter; at the edge are the upper waters, from which the divine fiery heaven will unfold. The bright cloud in between is a state “called variously the Earth-spirit, the Spirit of Mercury, the Ether and the Quintessence.”

The chaos of the elements from the lower waters “is a confused and undigested mass in which the four elements fight against each other.”

The ideal final state of material is achieved when the elements are arranged according to the degrees of their density: (from outside to inside in the image below) Earth, Water, Air and Fire. In the centre appears the Sun, gold.

The first day of creation, quoting Milton, Paradise Lost: “Let there be light, said God; and forthwith Light sprung from the deep; and from her native east, to journey through the airy gloom began, sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun was not…” The dove is the spirit of God:

“The uncreated light of the spirit reflected in the sphere of the fiery firmament as in a mirror, and the reflections in their turn, are the first manifestations of created light.”

The earth belongs to the lowest level of the elements, the sediment of creation.

According to the proportions, the grossest element couples with the most subtle when the elements of air and water are produced.

The second day, quoting from Genesis 1, 6 and 8: “And God said, Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water… And God called the vault heaven.” The ethereal sphere with the fixed stars and planets divides the upper waters from the lower. In this sphere the upper heavenly quality (form) is in balance with the lower heavenly quality (material).

The third day. Fire arises as the first and most subtle element. This is not, as Fludd stressed, the ‘invisible fire’ of the alchemists, but the material fire that Paracelsus called the ‘dark’ fire, which leads everything alive to destruction. Life in the Paracelsian sense is a process of destruction by fire.

The sequence by which the elements are ordered in an ascending degree of purity – earth, water, air and fire – is repeated in the structure of the entire cosmos from the sublunary, elemental heavens, the ethereal heaven to the empyrean.

The stars on the outer edge of the ethereal sphere only became visible with the creation of the sun, for they store its light and after a space of time emit it again like phosphorus.

“The perturbations attendant on creation had caused some of the celestial light to be trapped in the cold mass of the central earth. Obeying the law of gravity, this celestial substance began to rise towards its rightful place in the heavens, and it was thus that our sun was formed.”

In the firmament the sun is the visible representative of the divine fire and of love. Its corresponding part in the human body is the heart, “which emits its vital rays (the veins) in a circle from the centre, and thus animates each individual limb.” Quoted from Fludd’s book Philosophical Key.

When the sinking hot rays of the sun encounter rising, watery steam, they condense and give rise to the planets.

The spirit of God hovers as a dove above perfect creation, which is already menaced by the Fall. In the Tractatus apologeticus, Fludd emphasised that the chief goal of macrocosmic study must be to study the role of the divine spirit in creation, for without the light emanating from this spirit, life is not possible.

In this final image, the things that look like UFOs are little angels! Here’s a cropped larger version so you can see them doing their thing – click to embiggen:

The above text is rather incomprehensible but the drawings are great and might provide a source for contemplation and meditation. The process begins in the darkness of the abyss where the first Light appears, and then undergoes various separations to form the microcosm of the material world and man. Each of the worlds or levels of being are separated, from the elements up to the lower heavenly realm and the celestial realm beyond the stars.

The idea is that everything is emanated from the Light of God which penetrates into the darkness. This happens in both the inner and outer worlds because man is the microcosm of the macrocosm and contains all within. Every realm is alive and filled with beings who are arranged in a hierarchy, also known as the Great Chain of Being.

Explore the manuscript of Utriusque Cosmi online here and see if you can make sense of the Latin…!

Images: Wiki Commons

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