Magia Adamica

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,