Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitMagia Adamica

Reading language

To the Reader

earth digested. See: in a few words I have disclosed to you Nature’s whole system and her royal highway of generation. It is now your duty to develop this truth; and if you are wise, you may find your advantages in my book. The four elements are humanity’s objects and, implicitly, its subjects; but earth is invisible. I know the ordinary person will stare at this and judge me scarcely sober when I declare earth—the grossest and most tangible of substances—invisible. Yet, upon my soul, it is so. More than that: the human eye has never seen earth, nor can it be seen without art. Making this element visible is the greatest secret in magic, for it is a miraculous nature and, of all the others, the most holy, according to Trismegistus’s reckoning: “Heaven, ether, air and the most holy earth.” As for this foul, gross body upon which we walk, it is a composite,

rather than earth; it contains earth, but even that is not our magical earth. In a word, every element is visible except one, namely earth. When you have reached sufficient perfection to know why God has placed earth in concealment, you possess an excellent figure through which to know God himself and how he is visible and invisible. Hermes declares that in the beginning earth was a quagmire, a trembling kind of jelly: nothing but water congealed through the incubation and heat of the divine Spirit. [New translation of the Latin:] “While earth was still trembling, it was made solid as the sun shone.” [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “While earth was still a quivering, shaking substance, the sun afterwards shone upon it and compacted it, or made it solid.” The same author introduces God speaking to earth and impregnating her with every kind of seed in these words. [New translation of the Latin:] “And when he had filled his equally powerful hands with the things that were in Nature,

and in what surrounds it, and had firmly clenched his fists, he said: ‘Receive them, O holy earth, destined to become the mother of all, so that you may seem lacking in nothing.’ Opening hands such as a god ought to have, he sent down everything necessary for the constitution of things.” [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “When God, he says, had filled his powerful hands with the things which are in Nature and in what surrounds Nature, then, closing them again, he said: ‘Receive from me, O holy earth, ordained to be the mother of all, lest you lack anything.’ Immediately opening such hands as it befits a god to have, he poured down everything necessary for the constitution of things.” This is the meaning: the Holy Spirit, moving upon the chaos—an action which some divines compare to a hen incubating her eggs—communicated various other influences to matter together with his heat. For just as

we know that the sun dispenses not only heat but also some other secret influx, so God did the same in creation. From him the sun and all the stars received what they possess, for God himself is a supernatural sun or fire, according to that oracle of Zoroaster:

“The maker who, working by himself, fashioned the world Was a certain other mass of fire.”

He therefore hatched matter and brought forth the secret essences, as a chick is brought from its shell. Hence that other proposition of the same Zoroaster:

“All things were generated under one fire.”

Nor did he merely generate them then: he also preserves them now through a perpetual outflow of heat and spirit. Hence in the Oracles he is styled:

“Father of men and gods, Abundantly enlivening fire, light, ether and worlds.”

This is sufficient notice. Now, reader, I must tell you that I have encountered some recent attacks on my two former discourses; but truth is proof against attack, and, far from being overcome, I have nowhere even been understood. When I first saw the libel and its address to Philalethes, I judged the author serious, intending to inform himself rather than abuse me. This notion quickly vanished: as I read his opening part, his ears shot out of his skin and displayed him as a perfect ass. His observations are one continuous croak, and the oyster-whores expound the same philosophy every day. It is a scurrilous, senseless piece; and, as he aptly styles himself, he is a chip of a blockhead.

His qualities do indeed surpass those of others; among themselves, however, they rank as equals: his malice matches his ignorance. I laughed to see the fool’s disease: a flux of gall which set him dripping at

the jaws, while someone else held the press for him like Porphyry’s basin beneath Aristotle’s well. There is something monstrous in him: his excrements run the wrong way, for his mouth defecates. He is so far from being human that he is worse even than a beast. Such are his accomplishments; as for his person, I hand him over to the dog-whippers to be thoroughly lashed from behind, and to bear the corrections of his front imprinted on his rear. I cannot yet find a more fitting punishment. Since his head could learn nothing but nonsense, it follows, part answering to part, that his tail should be taught some sense.

That is all for now. For this discourse I wish the common fortune of truth and honesty: to deserve well and be spoken ill of. As for applause, I do not fish so high in the air as to catch it. It is a kind of popularity which makes me despise

it, for I defy the crowd’s noise: they attend to truth’s success rather than truth itself. I therefore commit this piece to the world without any protection beyond its own worth and the judgement of the soul that understands it. As for the rest, since I cannot force their approval, I shall not beg for it. I would not become great through levies, nor rich through appeals for charity. They may be what they will, and I shall be what I am.

Eugenius Philalethes.

34.The Latin list is translated as “Heaven, ether, air and the most holy earth.” Vaughan distinguishes the invisible earth of his argument from ordinary ground and then from the magical earth; these qualifications are retained.

35.The printed “in Obscondito” is understood as in abscondito, “in concealment.” The fresh translation of the short Hermetic quotation is followed by Vaughan’s own fuller English rendering.

36.The next Latin quotation crosses the source-page boundary. Its fresh English rendering likewise continues into the following unit; Vaughan’s own complete English account then follows, rather than replacing the first rendering.

37.The oracle’s Latin is translated afresh. Altera can mean “other” or “second”; the rendering uses “other” without fixing a numbered hierarchy of fire. Vaughan introduces it as an oracle of Zoroaster; that attribution is part of the historical reception.

38.The Latin lines describe a father of men and gods continually enlivening fire, light, ether and worlds. They receive a fresh English translation here; no separate historical English version follows in the source.

39.Vaughan now returns from the account of creation to the reception of his earlier discourses. The ass’s ears, the term oyster-whores and the blockhead insult are retained as part of the historical invective. The Greek κώαξ imitates a frog’s croak; the modern reading translates it as croak.

40.Native print confirms “Gale,” understood here as gall, or bile. The flowing-mouth image continues through “still at the Chops,” rendered as dripping at the jaws. It joins the bodily abuse to the language of liquid flowing from a still.

41.A posteriori is rendered “from behind,” preserving the bodily joke. “Errata” becomes corrections, joining the contrast between front and rear to the language of a printed book. The Porphyry-and-Aristotle comparison is retained without inventing a separate historical event behind it.

42.Imposts are levies. Briefs can refer to authorisations for charitable collections; the modern reading takes the paired expressions as an image of exacting and begging. Vaughan returns to his refusal to force or solicit approval.