A New Light of Alchemy

4But someone will ask how we know these things, since heavenly matters are hidden from human understanding. I answer that they are manifest to all philosophers. Indeed, incomprehensible wisdom itself inspired them to recognise that all things were created after nature's example, that nature draws her pattern from these mysteries and works accordingly, and that nothing happens on earth except after the example of the heavenly monarchy. This is evident from the angels' various offices. In the same way, nothing is born or generated except naturally. All human discoveries, indeed all arts that exist or will exist, arise only from nature's foundations.

4.2The Most High Creator wished to make all natural things manifest to humanity. He therefore showed us that heavenly things themselves were made naturally, so that through them his absolute and incomprehensible power and wisdom might be better known. Philosophers may see all this in nature's light as in a mirror. They therefore valued this science highly for knowledge, both of all natural things and of the Creator's own power, rather than from greed for gold or silver. They wished to speak of these things sparingly and only figuratively, lest divine mysteries, through which nature is illuminated, be revealed to the unworthy. You may readily understand this if you have learned to know yourself and are not stubborn, for you were created in the likeness of the greater world, indeed in the image of God himself. In your body you have the anatomy of the whole world. As a firmament you have the quintessence of the four elements, drawn from the chaos of sperm into the womb and bound into skin, its further boundary. You have the purest blood in place of fire, in which the soul's seat, as viceroy, is established in the vital spirit. You have the heart in place of earth, where the central fire continually works and maintains this fabric of the microcosm in existence. You have the mouth as Arctic pole and the belly as Antarctic. Every member corresponds to heavenly things.

4.3I shall leave a fuller account of this in my Harmony, in the chapter on astronomy. There I have written how astronomy is an easy, natural art; how the aspects of planets and stars cause effects; and why rain and other events are predicted from aspects. It would take too long to recount it here. All these things are linked together there and come about naturally. Concerning divinity, I have wished only to supply the diligent student of this secret with some things the ancients omitted, so that the Most High God's incomprehensible power may reach his heart more clearly and he may love and worship him more fervently.