Note 214 — Chapter IV
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This distressing outbreak on the part of Gower will scarcely seem extravagant to those who remember how intensely poetical were many of the theosophic hypotheses. Analogies which would only occur to imaginative men in their hours of reverie were solidified into principles and enrolled in the code of nature. Nothing could be more opposite to the sifting process of modern investigation than the fanciful combination and impersonation of those days,—more akin, by far, to mythology than to science. Conceits such as the following are those of the poet,—and of the poet as far gone in madness as Plato could wish him.
The waters of this world are mad; it is in their raving that they rush so violently to and fro along the great channels of the earth.
Fire would not have burned, darkness had not been, but for Adam’s fall. There is a hot fire and a cold. Death is a cold fire.—Behmen.
All things—even metals, stones, and meteors—have sense and imagination, and a certain ‘fiducial’ knowledge of God in them.
The arctic pole draws water by its axle-tree, and these waters break forth again at the axle-tree of the antarctic pole.
Earthquakes and thunder are the work of dæmons or angels.
The lightnings without thunder are, as it were, the falling flowers of the ‘æstival’ (or summer) stars.—Paracelsus.
Hail and snow are the fruits of the stars, proceeding from them as flowers and blossoms from herb or tree.—Paracelsus.
Night is, in reality, brought on by the influence of dark stars, which ray out darkness, as the others light.—Paracelsus.
The final fires will transform the earth into crystal. (A summary expression for one of Behmen’s doctrines.)
The moon, planets, and stars are of the same quality with the lustrous precious stones of our earth, and of such a nature, that wandering spirits of the air see in them things to come, as in a magic mirror; and hence their gift of prophecy.
In addition to the terrestrial, man has a sidereal body, which stands in connexion with the stars. When, as in sleep, this sidereal body is more free than usual from the elements, it holds converse with the stars, and may acquire a knowledge of future events.—Paracelsus. See Henry More’s Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, § 44.