FRANCISCO GIORGI COMMENTS upon inestimable steep influences which pour ubiquitously out of heaven across the receptive surfaces of earth. I see in this a most marvelous neutrality, yet I notice how many seem inclined to moralize and grapple with fright if planets recede or advance, if new stars glow at the horizon, if comets lose or gain luster. Why is this? Do they fear what happens below or that omnipotence above? I am unsure. Angles intersect.
KHUNRATH EXPLAINS HOW the universal medium of preservation and restoration shall be the Regnant Child which by its own equilibriate virtue contrives to expunge mortal suffering, thereby rectifying both provinces—both of corpus and mind—depending on the capabilities of each. But I would sound out first a cause. I suspect impurities adhere to their substance. I think acidity weakens the spleen, sugar expands the kidney, grief sours the lung and salts encrust the heart. I observe quick-silver trembling in the aludel. I watch menacing seeds sprout. And there is strange emptiness behind the moon.
PORPHYRY HAS ARGUED that life’s wheel deviates from its axis so that our consequence must be dissolution. Now death betrays a duplicate structure—one which men understand where the body disassociates itself from the soul, but another comprehended only by philosophers in which the soul feels emancipated. Therefore, no physician should look to advantage in gold, nor intermediate benefits, searching instead for merit lest inimitable unities be denied while the source of the fountain flow undiscovered.
VERULAM BELIEVES THAT by replenishing the impulse and vital principle, vis vitae, a corpus may be rejuvenated. Perhaps. Like planets that men invest with fancy, they are one thing, men’s image another. Thus it becomes a habit of metaphysic to ring changes about our Egg—around and about once more—with each note and cadence varying. All the same, very little turns smoothly for its song. So many men, so many opinions. Suppose we should burn a tree, enclosing ash, smoke, vapor and every other component within a cucurbit, adding to this a living seed. Will the tree be able to reconstitute itself? Yes, it will. But without the seed could it be vivified? No, because the principle of a plant does not subsist upon ashes nor upon smoke, but within the restitutory Mysterium Magnum from whence it must be urged to reclaim its vital semblance, endowed with qualities it once possessed.
SUPPOSE A CHILD lovingly retained the sperm of his parents, would he not duplicate their configuration? Yes, of course, just as a pine tree is anxious to recreate its predecessor. Hence it must be commingling that makes the son to diverge and become estranged—to reject the sound of his father’s foot-step, to withdraw from his mother’s affectionate touch. Why does he fail to acknowledge superior regents? Upon what miscalculation would he admit no governance except his own? I account men’s souls equal but about their operation I note perplexing diversity.
THOUGHTS THAT I conceive—are these mine? Or, being universal, do they but await apprehension? If the latter, then innumerable ideas exist which I am not able to grasp, as stars are created or extinguished at such a distance that men pass by oblivious. And the provenance of stars being infinite, like that of ideas, how does the realm of perception end?
IN MY JUDGMENT the mind resembles an instrument focused upon delicate inquiry, and therefore man is driven to the resolution of puzzles. I have myself stood amazed to see silver burnished with ash of basilisk duplicating the magisterial gleam of gold. I have watched a birch tree cringe when the axeman approached. I have heard a violin register living torment with every note. I have listened to the yowl of a starved bitch discourse upon the largeness of suffering. Thoughtfully I walk back and forth like the god Morpheus with his horn and ivory box of dreams.
MY UNDERSTANDING IS altogether tenuous, incomplete. Even so I have been persuaded of very much. I think minerals succeed through the transference of radical moisture and vegetables through some increase of efflorescent activity, but animals attempt to profit according to the exigencies of their being, because all things yearn for a nutriment to which they grow accustomed. Surely this is true, but why? Stones must fall, boiling water evaporate. What further leverage is required?
WHAT CAUSES A seed to produce its fruit? Sponginess within the soil, which was authorized by heaven so that atmosphere and liquid succeed in finding access to the interior flame which presses up through earth’s core. By this inosculation are humid vapors subtly exhaled which corrupt or decompose the germs of things anxious to regenerate themselves. Thus each prepares and welcomes vivification.
I THINK ATMOSPHERE might be a vital or pervasive spirit that begets both life and substance in men, encouraging and fulfilling, which is why I consider it not an element but a providential glue or a medium to provide coherence. And because it retains attributes of celestial mobility it is able to communicate with sleepers, disturbing them until they groan and twitch in dreadful efforts to escape while struggling against the mighty import of divination. That is why men dream. But as to why obsessed individuals dream with the impetuous desire of those miniature comets which flame across August, I do not know. I regard these as stones graven according to heaven’s face—Gamahei.
IT SEEMS APPARENT how nature was not meant to be comprehended but acts magically. I cannot say why the dandelion that blooms at seven enfolds itself at five, nor why the pimpernel withdraws at night. What encourages such dissent? Were not both nurtured by soil and aether and sidereal radiance? Or how should the dog shake his tail when he is
