I. Ludovicus, Gotofridus. A.”

The portrait bears the signature, “ Mathseus Merian Basilien: fecit.”
The work is dedicated to Williams, then Bishop of Lincoln, Keeper of the Great Seal, afterwards Archbishop of York, a well-known ecclesiastical politician in the reign of Charles I. Fludd addressed Williams as most prudent Councillor, and stating that he himself, like Williams, being of Cambrian origin, he desires to dedicate the work to him. He refers to his gifts to the University of Cambridge, to his prudence, to his equable mind, to his interest in books and libraries, to his services at Westminster. Fludd signs himself “ Rob. Fludd, Prosapiae suse origine Cambro- Britannus.”
As the De Anatomise triplici ” is “ portio tertia ” of the
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second section of the “ Historia,” so the “ Meteorologia Cosmica” is Portion IV., Part 1. The author, as usual, commences with a “ Proemium.” In it he is to demolish the tottering basis of the Ethnick Philosophy, and the palpable errors of Ethnick sectaries, who have defaced true Christian doctrine. These are the persons who, having repudiated the teaching of the true theosophical doctors, have taken refuge in vain Ethnick doctrine. This is shown by their differing from S. Paul, “ de meteororum essentia.” With that Apostle, Fludd denounces vain philosophy. The true has its central light in Christ, “ Dei Yerbum.” Ignorance of the operation of the Holy Spirit of God in nature, ignorance of Holy Scripture as the fount and original of all sciences, has led to the origin of idolatry — the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, of Isis and Osiris, and infinite other errors. On the other hand. Sacred Philosophy is to be found in the Arcane teaching of the sacred letters. The relation of the Divine Son to the Divine Father, in making all things, shows him to be Dei virtus et sapientia.” Fludd then shadows forth his great idea that all divine knowledge in regard to nature and its hidden workings was revealed and known to Moses, “ who was also learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Any- thing true in the Ethnicks is from this source, and these ancient writers are to be judged just as they agree or differ from the great Hebrew sage. True physical prin- ciples are either simple or mixed ; the former, substantial, including light, darkness, water, earth, the humid sphere, fire, heat, cold, dryness ; the latter, mixed vapours, exhala- tions of a fiery, aqueous, or mixed sort. Fludd refers his readers to his “ Historia Microcosmi ” in regard to his views of Mosaic principles. These, all Christians must follow in reverence. The beginning was in the separation of light from darkness, including the unformed mass of aqueous substance lying still there inert, but quickened by the word of God. The true meaning of “ Pan ” is explained, being universal nature ” rising to birth from the deformity of
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chaos. Towards the end of the treatise are several spaces left for plates, apparently not filled up. Perhaps the most interesting thing in the treatise is the large and curious chart following p. 140. It is entitled, “ Catoptrum Meteoro- graphicum.” Below the title are the words, “ Ensoph seu divinitatis infinitudo.” In the centre, under this, is the divine name in Hebrew letters on a glory encircled and double-rayed. From this an angel is flying, connecting the glory with a full -rayed sun, and the words, Michael custos Tiphereth.” On either side of the glory ” are niches with figures of the heavenly existences — Seraphim, Cherubim, &c., with their appropriate spheres and signs. The names of God are placed above — Ehieh, Jah, Elohim, El, Elohim-Gibor, Eloah, Jehova-Sabaoth, Elohim-Sabaoth, Sadai, Adonai. The last niche contains a figure of Gabriel, and is marked beneath, “ elementa.” Beneath these divine existences is a half-sphere filled with emblematic figures. Under the rays of the sun are “Aurora” — a fine pointed star, and “Rosa” — a face surrounded by a rim of rose petals. Illustrations of clouds, sunbeams, the rainbow, lightning, drops of blood, stones falling, hail, frost, rain, the winds, lunar-halo, vapour, dew, &c. At the bottom of the whole is a naked human figure lying on the ground, the head resting on the root of a tree. This legend issued from the mouth : — “ Homo est perfectio et finis omnium creatur- arum in mundo.”
The second part of the fourth portion treats “ De causa Meteororum Efiiciente.” This is either supernatural or natural, ordinary, good or bad, heavenly or elementary. The virtue of the sun is light, motion, heat. The sun gives light to the stars, a theory curiously illustrated by a diagram, page 189. This seems to show that Fludd still held to the geocentric theory, the earth being represented as the centre of the universe. The author then treats of the angelic existences, their various names as given by Cabalistic philosophers. The question whether angels or daemons were incorporeal, or if they had bodies of thinner
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or grosser air, is next discussed. This subject and the nine orders have been already treated of in the “ Historia.” Fludd s idea seems to have been that the different planets were occupied by inferior sorts of angels or good dsemons, whom he calls Lunares,” “ Joviales,” “ Mercuriales,” even “ Solares.” These latter must indeed be of the salamandrine nature. To each Zodiacal sign is attached a guardian — Malchidael, Aries ; Asmodel, Taurus ; Ambriel, Gemini, &c.
The four archangels guard the cardinal points, and have power over the four winds. Seraphim have power over fire ; Cherubim over air ; “ Tharsis ” over water ; Ariel over earth. Angels also rule the seventy divisions of the earth. The evil angels are also fully described in their powers and offices. A very curious illustrative chart is given at page 267. It represents the operations of the four archangels at the four cardinal points. Here, again, the “ round world ” is the centre of all. The '' Philosophia Sacra ” concludes with a series of experiments in natural science.
A considerable interval elapsed before the concluding work of Fludd was published. This is the ‘‘ Philosophia Moysaica.” It was issued at Gouda in 1638, the year after Fludd’s death. It had been fully prepared by him for the press, and it would appear that the English version, printed at London '' for Humphrey Moseley, at the Prince’s Arms, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1659,” was translated by the author. This was issued in two sections, the latter having a subsidiary title-page. The emblem on the first part of the English edition is the device and motto, “ Ich Dien,” referring to The Prince’s Arms ” ; the device on the second is threefold — the crowned thistle, the crowned rose, and the crowned harp. The Latin edition has also an emblematic frontispiece, which in some copies is inserted as a plate between the half-title and the title. The Latin edition of the “ Philosophia Moysaica ” has a title different from that of the English. The motto is Colossians i. 15, 16, “ Christ is the image of the invisible God, the first-born
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of every creature, ” &c. The plate on the title consists of a series of four greater and lesser circles, with two half- circles beneath. They are all shaded. The plate is also prefixed again to the title and explained. The half circles — the one plate is labelled “ Dionysius,” a man walking in darkness ; the other, “ Apollo,” a nimbused figure lifting up a naked man by his hands — irradiated. The whole is to represent the divine power and method in dispelling the darkness of chaos. The whole work is clearly printed in double columns.
This work, it is to be supposed, contained Fludd’s matured opinions on religion and philosophy, and was intended by him for more a popular use than most of his other treatises would serve. But it is certainly neither so able, so learned, nor so full as the '' Historia,” but it breathes the same warm spirit of personal devotion, so remarkably displayed in his Tractatus Theologo-Philo- sophicus.” The work is Fludd’s last legacy, the gift falling from his dying hands.
Before examining more minutely the ‘‘ Mosaicall Philo- sophy,” it may not be out of place to set down here the gist of the whole of Fludd’s labours as abbreviated by the four authors who appear to have been most conversant with his works.
Mr Hargrave Jennings says : —
“ The Rosicrucians, through the revelations concerning them of their celebrated English representative, Robertas de Fluctibus, or Robert Fludd, declare, in accordance with the Mosaic account of creation, — which, they maintain, is in no instance to be taken literally, but metaphorically, — that two original principles, in the beginning, proceeded from the Divine Father. These are Light and Darkness, — or form or idea, and matter or plasticity. Matter, downwards, becomes fivefold, as it works in its forms, according to the various operations of the first informing light ; it extends four-square, according to the points of the celestial compass, with the divine creative effluence in the centre. The worlds S2oiritual and temporal, being rendered subject to the operation of the original Type or Idea, became, in their Imitation of this Invisible Ideal, first intelligible, and then endowed with reciprocal meaning outwards from themselves. This produced the being (or thought) to whom, or to which, creation was disclosed. This is properly the ‘ Son,’ or Second Ineffable Person of the Divine Trinity. Thus that which w'e understand as a ‘ human mind,’ became a possibility. This second great, only intelligible world, the Rosicrucians call ‘ Macrocosmos.’ They distribute it as into three
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regions or spheres ; which, as they lie near to, or dilate the farthest from, the earliest-opening divine ‘ Brightness,’ they denominate the Empyrseum, the -^therseum, and the Elementary Region, each filled and determinate and foi’ceful with less and less of the First Celestial Fire. These regions contain innumerable invisible nations, or angels, of a nature appropriate to each. Through these immortal regions. Light, diffusing in the emanations of the cabalistic Sephiroth, becomes the blackness, sediment, crashes, which is the second fiery, real world. This power, or vigour, uniting with the Ethereal Spirit, constitutes strictly the ‘ Soul of the World.’ It becomes the only means of the earthly intelligence, or man, knowing it. It is the Angel-Conqueror, Guide, Saviour born of ‘ Woman,’ or ‘ Great Deep,’ the Gnostic Sophia, the ‘ Word made flesh’ of St. John. The Empyraeum is properly tlae flower, or glory (effluent in its abundance), of the divine Latent Fire. It is penetrated with miracle and holy magic. The Rosi- crucian system teaches that there are three ascending hierarchies of beneficent Angels (the purer portion of the First Fire, or Light) divided into nine orders. These threefold angelic hierarchies are the Teraphim, the Seraphim, and the Cherubim. This religion, which is the religion of the Parsees, teaches that, on the Dark Side, there are also three counterbalanc- ing resultant divisions of operative intelligences, divided again into nine spheres, or inimical regions, populated with splendidly endowed adverse angels, who boast still the relics of their lost, or eclipsed, or changed, . light. The elementary world, or lowest world, in which man and his belongings, and the lower creatures, are produced, is the flux, subsidence, residuum, ashes, or deposit, of the Ethereal Fire. Man is the microcosm, or ‘ indescribably small copy,’ of the whole great world. Dilatation and compression, expansion and contraction, magnetic sympathy, gravitation-to, or flight-from, is the bond which holds all imaginable things together. The connection is intimate between the higher and the lower, because all is a perpetual aspiration, or continuous descent : one long, immortal chain, whose sequence is never-ending, reaches by impact with that immediately above, and by contact with that immediately below, from the very lowest to the very highest. ‘ So true is it that God loves to retire into His clouded Throne ; and, thickening the Darkness that encompasses His most awful Majesty, He inhabits an Inaccessible Light, and lets none into His Truths but the poor in spirit.’ The Rasicrucians contended that these so ‘ poor in spirit ’ meant themselves, and implied their submis- sion and abasement before God.
“The Rosicrucians held that, all things visible and invisible having been produced by the contention of light with darkness, the earth has denseness in its innumerable heavy concomitants downwards, and they contain less and less of the original divine light as they thicken and solidify the grosser and heavier in matter. They taught, nevertheless, that every object, however stifled or delayed in its operation, and darkened and thickened in the solid blackness at the base, yet contains a certain possible deposit, or jewel, of light, — which light, although by natural process it may take ages to evolve, as light will tend at last by its own native, irre- sistible force upward (when it has opportunity), can be liberated ; that dead matter will yield this spirit in a space more or less expeditious by the art of the alchemist. There are worlds within worlds, — we, human organisms, only living in a deceiving, or Bhuddistic, ‘dream-like phase’ of the grand panorama. Unseen and unsuspected (because in it lies magic), there is an inner magnetism, or divine aura, or ethereal spirit, or possible eager fire, shut and confined, as in a prison, in the body, or in all sensible solid objects, which have more or less of spiritually sensitive life as they can more successfully free themselves from this ponderable, material obstruction. Thus all minerals, in this spai’k of light, have the rudimentary possibility of plants and growing organisms ; thus all plants have rudi- mentary sensitives, which might (in the ages) enable them to perfect and
DOCTOR ROBERT FLUDD.
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transmute into locomotive new creatures, lesser or higher in their grade, or nobler or meaner in their functions j thus all plants and all vegetation might pass ofif (by side-roads) into more distinguished highways, as it were, of independent, completer advance, allowing their original spark of light to expand and thrill with higher and more vivid force, and to urge forward with more abounding, informed purpose — all wrought by planetary influence, directed by the unseen spirits (or workers) of the Great Original Architect, building His microcosmos of a world from the plans and powers evoked in the macrocosm, or heaven of first forms, which, in their multi- tude and magnificence, are as changeable shadows cast off from the Central Immortal First Light, whose rays dart from the centre to the extremest point of the universal circumference. It is with terrestrial fire that the alchemist breaks or sunders the material darkness or atomic thickness, all visible nature yielding to his furnaces, whose scattering heat (without its sparks) breaks all doors of this world’s kind. It is with immaterial fire (or ghostly fire) that the Rosicrucian loosens contraction and error, and conquers the false knowledge and the deceiving senses which bind the human soul as in its prison. On this side of his powers, on this dark side (to the world) of his character, the alchemist (rather now become the Rosicrucian) works in invisible light, and is a magician. He lays the bridge (as the Pontifex, or Bridge-Maker) between the world possible and the world impossible ; and across this bridge, in his Immortal Heroism and Newness, he leads the votary out of his dream of life into his dream of temporary death, or into extinction of the senses and of the powers of the senses ; which world’s blindness is the only true and veritable life, the envelope of flesh falling metaphorically off the now liberated glorious entity — taken up, in charms, by the invisible fire into rhapsody, which is as the gate of heaven.” (“ The Rosicrucians,” 2nd ed., p. 188-191.)
Mr A. E. Waite says : —
“ Fludd distinguishes in several places between the Divine sophia, the eternal sapience, the heavenly wdsdom, which is only mystically revealed to mankind, and the wisdom which is derived from the invention and tradition of men. He declares the philosophy of the Grecians, or the ethnick philosophy, to be based only on the second, and to be terrene, animal, and diabolical, not being founded on the deific corner-stone, namely, Jesus Christ, who is the essential substance and foundation of the true science.
“ The original fountain of true wisdom is in God, the natura naturans, the infinite, illimitable Spirit, beyond all imagination, transcending all essence, without name, all- wise, all-clement, the Father, the Word, and the ineffable. Holy Spirit, the highest and only good, the indivisible Trinity, the most splendid and indescribable light. This Wisdom is the vapor virtutis Dei, and the stainless mirror of the majesty and beneficence of God. All things, of what nature and condition soever, were made in, by, and through this Divine Word or emanation, which is God Himself, as it is the Divine Act, whose root is the Logos, that is, Christ. This Eternal Wisdom is the fountain or corner-stone of the higher arts, by which also all mysterious and miraculous discoveries are effected and brought to light.
“Before the spagirical separation which the Word of God, or divine Elohim, effected in the six days of creation, the heavens and earth were one deformed, rude, undigested mass, complicitly comprehended in one dark abyss, but explicitly as yet nothing. This nothing is compared by St. Augustine to speech, which while it is in the speaker’s mind is as nothing to the hearer, but when uttered, that which existed complicitly in animo loquentis, is explicitly apprehended by the hearer. This nihilum or nothing is not a nihilum negativum. It is the First Matter, the infinite
M
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informal, primordial Ens, the mysterium magnum of the Paracelsists, It existed eternally in God. If God had not produced all things essentially out of Himself, they could not be rightly referred to Him. The primeval darkness is the potentia divina as light is the actus divinus — the Aleph tenebrosum and Aleph lucidum. Void of form and life, it is still a material developing from potentiality into the actual, and was informed by the Maker of the world with a universal essence, which is the Light of Mose&, and was first evolved in the empyrean heaven, the highest and supernatural region of the world, the habitaculum fontis lucidi, the region not of matter but of form — form simple and spiritual beyond all imagination. There is a second spiritual heaven, participating in the clarity and tenuity of the first, of which it is the base ; this is the medial heaven, called the sphce.ra cequalitatis, and it is corporeal in respect of the former. The third heaven is the locality of the four elements. The progression of the primordial light through the three celestial spaces was accomplished during the first three days of creation. Christ the Wisdom and Word of God, by His apparition out of darkness, that is, by the mutation of the first principle from dark Aleph to light Aleph, revealed the waters contained in the profound bosom of the abyss, and animated them by the emanation of the spirit of eternal fire, and then by his admirable activity distinguished and separated the darkness from the light, the obscure and gross waters from the subtle and pure waters, disposing the heavens and spheres, as above stated, and dividing the grosser waters into sublunary elements. These elements are described as follows : — Earth is the conglomeration of the material darkness and the refuse of the heavens ; Water is the more gross spirit of the darkness of the inferior heaven, nearly devoid of light ; Air is the spirit of the second heaven ; Fire, the spirit of the darkness of the Empyrean heaven.
“ Fludd’s theory of the Macrocosmus is enunciated in the following manner : —
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“ According to Fludd’s philosophy, the whole universe was fashioned after the pattern of an archetypal world which existed in the Divine ideality, and was framed out of unity in a threefold manner. The Eternal Monad or Unit}^ without any egression from his own central profundity, compasses complicitly the three cosmical dimensions, namely, root, square, and cube. If we multiply unity as a root, in itself, it will produce only unity for its square, which being again multiplied in itself, brings forth a cube which is one with root and square. Thus we have three branches differing in formal progression, yet one unity in which all things remain potentially, and that after a most abstruse manner. The archetypal world was made by the egression of one out of one, and by the regression of that one, so emitted, into itself by emanation. According to this ideal image, or archetypal world, our universe was subsequently fashioned as a true type and exemplar of the Divine Pattern ; for out of unity in his abstract existence, viz., as it was hidden in the dark chaos, or potential mass, the bright flame of all formal being did shine forth, and the Spirit of Wisdom, proceeding from them both, conjoined the formal emanation with the potential matter, so that by the union of the divine emanation of light and the substantial darkness, which w'as water, the heavens were made of old, and the whole world.
“ God, according to these abstruse speculations, is that pure, catholic unity which includes and comprehends all multiplicity, and which before the objective projection of the cosmos must be considered as a transcendent entity, reserved only in itself, in whose divine puissance, as in a place without end or limit, all things which are now explicitly apparent were then complicitly contained, though in regard to our finite faculties it can only be conceived as nothing — nihil, non Jinis, non ens, aleph tenebrosunij the Absolute Monad or Unity.
“Joined to the cosmical philosophy of Robert Fludd, there is an elaborate system of spiritual evolution, and the foundation of both is to be sought in the gigantic hypotheses of the Kabbalah. His angelology is derived from the works of pseudo-Dionysius on the celestial hierarchies, and he teaches the doctrine of the pre-existence of human souls, which are derived from the vivifying emanation dwelling in the Anima Mundi, the world’s spiritual vehicle, the catholic soul, which itself is inacted and preserved by the Catholic and Eternal Spirit, sent out from the fountain of life to inact and vivify all things.
“ These mystical speculations, whatever their ultimate value, are sublime flights of an exalted imagination, but they are found, in the writings of Robert Fludd, side by side with the crudest physical theories, and the most exploded astronomical notions. He denies the diurnal revolution of the earth, and considers the light of all the stars to be derived from the one ‘ heavenly candle ’ of the sun. Rejecting the natural if inadequate explanations of Aristotle and his successors, he presents the most extravagant definitions of the nature of winds, clouds, snow, &c. The last is described as a meteor which God draweth forth of His hidden treasury in the form of wool, or as a creature produced out of the air by the cold breath of the Divine Spirit to perform his w'ill on earth. Thunder is a noise which is made in the cloudy tent or pavilion of Jehovah, lightning a certain fiery air or spirit animated by the brightness and burning from the face or presence of Jehovah. Literally interpreting the poetic imagery of Scripture, he perceives the direct interference of the Deity in all the phenomena of Nature, and denounces more rational views as ‘terrene, animal, and diabolical.’ ” (“The Real History of the Rosi- crucians,” pp. 300-7.)
The Rev. J. Hunt, D.D., says : —
“ Many persons who did not form distinct sects. Among these we may
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DOCTOR ROBERT FLUDD.
ihclude the vKosicruciaiis, -^v^hose doctrines were expounded by Robert Fludd^ Doctor of Medicine. i In his ‘ Mosaical Philosophy,’ Fludd enters upon a longL argument, to prove that the Bible explains the philosophy of t^ie universe. This philoso'phy is properly theology, and therefore to be 4istinguished from that philosophy which begins from a knowledge of the rnaterial world. In pther words, theology is a 'priori, and philosophy It. posteriori. . They meet finally, and bear to each other a mutual testi- mony. But without the Scriptures, which are inspired by God, and are to us, so to speak,, the finger of God, we should never penetrate into the • centre and essence of being. , The old poetical image foutid in Plato is received as probably true, that nature is a chain, the highest and last link o^ which is fastened to the foot of Jupiter’s throne in heaven, while the lowest. is. fixed on earth. If such is the labyrinth of being, how could we,
whose souls tabernacle in clay, penetrate to the resplendent essence of that Being whose centre is everywhere. His circumference nowhere. It is only ^ because God has revealed Himself that we can explain the mysteries of the Creator or the creature.
“There is but one universe, and with this universe God is one ; but we must speak of God and the world, for they are yet distinct, and though but one world or universe, we must speak of the world which is aerial and which is temporal. The first has neither beginning nor end. The last has both a beginning and an end. But the aerial or angelical, which is the dwelling of the angels or blessed spirits, had a beginning, but will have no end. The angelical world is the intermediary between the eternal and the temporal. It is imaged by Jacob’s ladder, which unites earth and heaven. From this eternal ladder angels pass to the temporal. Xhen these worlds, being one universe, are, as it were, a wheel within a wheel. The central mover, or eternal Spirit, is in the aerial. By it the temporal is quickened, so that, as the Scriptures say, God is all in all. This,. Fludd maintains, is the true Christian Philosophy. He is to demonstrate it not only by the Bible, but by natural reason, and by ocular demonstration. He is ‘ to confound infidelity, and turn men from Ethnic Philosophy to the wisdom of God.’ It is not easy to understand the.‘ ocular demonstration,’ which seems to be simply that, as a weather- glass is full of air, and is rarefied or condensed by the presence or absence of the sun, so the universe is full of spirit, differently modified in different places and at different times. God, or Christ, who is the wisdom of God, is said to fill all. This has been explained by some as filling all virtually, but not essentially. To wliich Fludd answered, that where Christ is virtuall}'’ He must be essentially. All the passages of Scripture which are capable of what we may call a Pantheistic meaning are quoted and interpreted as teaching the immediate presence of God in all nature. Spirit is the Catholic element of the universe. It is invoked by the prophet to come from the four winds, and vivify the dead bones. It is the breath which makes frost and snow ; as it is said in Job, when God ' bloweth from the north the ice is made. It is God that thundereth, that rolleth the thick clouds, and maketh the cedars of Libanus to bend. The philosophy of the Bible is put in opposition to the philosophy -of the Heathen. By Ethnic philosophy Fludd means the doctrine that (%d only - works in the world by second causes, which at last he declares to haVebeen - the doctrine of Aristotle and his followers, but not of Plato, Empedocles, and Heraclitus.” (“ Religious Thought in England,” i. 240-241.)
iii.
In the “ Dictionary of National Biography ” (Rev. Gordon), it is stated : —
“ Fludd takes the position that all natural science is rooted in revela- tion. He opposes the ethnic ‘ philosophy ’ of Aristotle, and is equally
DOCTOR ROBERT FLUDD.
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opposed to all modern astronomy, for he denies the diurnal revolution of the earth. Holding with the Neoplatonists that all things were ‘ com- pletely and ideally in God ’ before they were made, he advances to a doctrine of the divine immanence which betrays a strong pantheistic tendency. In the dedication of one of his works (1617), he addresses the Deity, ‘0 natura naturans, infinita et gloriosa.’^ St. Luke he calls his ‘ physicall and theosophicall patron.’” (Vol. xx., voce “ Fludd, Robert.”)
^ This expression is also that of Giordano Bruno, who also had a doctrine of Monads and of the “ Anima Mundi.” Hunt pronounces “ the evidence for Bruno’s Pantheism doubtful.' This is the conclusion to which the most impartial of his biographers and critics have also arrived.” (Hunt, “ Skeptics of Ital. Renee.,” 312.)
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