Coelum Terrae

mysteries. I do believe Raymond, and in accordance with that faith I make provision for my salvation. I will not disclose the secret, so that I may not be condemned. But if this does not satisfy you, whoever you are, let me whisper a word in your ear, and afterwards you may proclaim it from the rooftops. Do you know from whom, and how, that sperm or seed which people, for want of a better name, call the first matter proceeded? A certain enlightened man, in his day a member of that society which some painted buzzards are accustomed to laugh at, writes as follows: “God, supremely good and great, created something out of nothing; but that something became a single thing in which were all things, heavenly and earthly creatures.” [Vaughan’s accompanying English:] God, he says, incomparably good and great, created something out of nothing; but that something was made one thing, in which all things were contained, both heavenly and earthly creatures. This first something was a kind of cloud or darkness, which condensed into water; and this water is that one thing in which all things were contained. But my question is: what was that nothing out of which the first cloudy chaos, or something, was made? Can you tell me? Perhaps you think it is sheer nothing. It is indeed “nothing in relation to us”: nothing that we know perfectly. It is nothing, as Dionysius says,