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medicine. Therefore through the mystery of the incarnate Word, his death and blessed resurrection, we remedy our soul's diseases. Through divine knowledge of the physical stone, we not only remedy our body's diseases and imperfections but also provide assistance in dispelling the darkness and shadows obscuring our spirit. Thus, following the path Jesus Christ shows us and guided by art and nature, we free ourselves from our first father's ancient sin. After removing sin's first hearth and leaven, we are changed into a new human being. Like nature, we acquire our body's final, perfect glorification within the same conflagration of this universal fire, in which every creature will be clarified together with humanity, as we shall see below when speaking of the resurrection of bodies. We have sufficiently indicated the corruption and death of things, the mystery of our restorer fastened to the wood of the Cross, and likewise the alteration of our incorruptible matter. But one will not find what
The Apocalyptic Beasts
Beasts and dragons in a landscape beneath celestial signs and figures. Scan 223.
Saint Peter's figures signify to us on this subject unworthy of our application.
In this figure the darkened sun and moon red as blood are depicted, and the earth was shaken by a violent, convulsive movement. This can be observed in these sacred figures or images made upon different notes and arguments of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. What does the darkening of sun, moon and stars foreshadow, except—as above—the mystery of the incarnate Word, or God, principle of light and source of life? Beneath flesh's human and mortal figure, as within a dark dungeon or tomb, he suffers only an eclipse of the eighth part of his light. It is like an image of his death or corruption, without his being affected by it. This celestial body is not so darkened within it that it fails to give true and certain proofs of his omnipotence and divine power. Scarcely is this child, cherished by God and awaited by humanity, upon earth before he is revered and adored with sovereign homage and divine worship.
Who, through this pomp and display of the nativity, does not understand the more certain and august truth of his future resurrection? Likewise, through the same deeply hidden mysteries of our religion, we foretell Jesus Christ's advent or mercy and Christians' future resurrection. If we wish to search these mysteries and free them from nature's coverings, we establish several nativities, corruptions, deaths and, so to speak, advents of our stone, as seen in our philosopher's preceding figures, the poets' fables, and those represented in these sacred figures or images. Physically, this entire and perfect eclipse of the sun explains nothing other than the true corruption of solar sulfur, which all the signs of this figure demonstrate more than sufficiently. This sulfur of gold and mercury reach such blackness in their corruption that philosophers judge and call it blacker than the black raven itself. Then the moon below, which is a substance of more fixed gold, is dyed a bloody red. It receives its nature and tincture through their closely united
and very perfect dissolution and association. The stars falling from heaven are particles of solar sulfur falling upon mercurial earth and plunging into our sea. In this art this sulfur is ordinarily taken for Heaven because it contains all the forces and powers of stars and planets, after the manner of celestial things. This convulsive movement of earth and these spirits blowing violently from the world's four quarters, as a fig tree drops its fruit when shaken by a great wind, signify mercurial vapors said to be very hot, very dry, very cold and very moist. Because of their different nature and diverse origin, they are therefore said to blow from the world's four corners at the time of the spirit's corruption. The vessel's upper part fills with so many vapors and little clouds that the winds seem, in some fashion, to blow and shake the earth with great movement. Consequently kings and princes hide in caverns and rocky hollows of mountains and say to the mountains: fall upon us and hide us. The kings and princes designate solar and lunar spirits for us,
who, within this great corruption, desire only death in order to rise again into a better life. They are clothed in royal garments. Thus the ancients gave them different names and compared them to the dragon appointed to guard the Hesperides' golden apples, which Jason killed with Medea's poisoned drug. They said that the two serpents strangled or corrupted by Hercules in his cradle are the two sperms generated in earth's womb and recesses through the operation of the four elements. They also compared them to bulls vomiting fire and flames that had to be mastered beneath the yoke, because of the new vapors turning from yellow to greenish and from red to black. These are more deadly than venom, more fugitive and violent than the wind that carries death; they called them by these different names.
They further veiled this corruption beneath another shadow of fable and the dark dust of characters, representing serpents devouring one another, or the figure and image of serpents strangling one another. For through their venomous nature and mortal tooth,
that is, through heat and mercury's pontic fieriness, the corruption and death of all bodies take place. This is marked by the blackness occurring at this time, as heat acts upon viscous, unctuous matter. The poets conceal this corruption beneath another shadow of fable. Some represented the black, mournful appearances of Theseus's vessel, a certain indication of complete corruption, through this universal eclipse of the two great heavenly bodies. But we pass over the tales and fictions they recount about it. Let us survey the mysteries still hidden beneath this corruption, because it begins with a perfect conjunction of different natures: that is, through the powers of male and female. They called it androgyne, andros gēnos, which are the Greek names of man and woman. They even claim that it is the concord and sworn peace between brothers. This means that the celebrated, ancient combat of hot against cold and dry against moist has ended, and that through moisture there ends
this ancient war and dispute, and the elements begin to ally and unite in a peace of mutual understanding.
This dispute of the elements is also rather ingeniously represented by the hypomachia, or mounted combat, seen in the present figure. There was a figure of a man mounted upon a white horse, strongly drawing his bow. He was given a crown and went forth victorious to conquer. The second, mounted upon a red horse, was permitted to take peace from the earth so that they would kill one another, and held a sword in his hand. Third, one sees a figure of a man holding a balance in his hand and mounted upon a black horse. His name is Death, and Hell followed him. He was given power to kill by sword, famine, death and earth's beasts, and so forth, throughout the world's four quarters.
Since they tasted what is hidden within the extended abyss of time, they understood it perfectly before Christ's birth through means that can be followed by
those who come after Jesus Christ. They left them graphically traced and openly displayed for us, as present things, drawing no knowledge of these matters except from nature's source, as God revealed them to humanity through nature itself. This is why he presented nature as a book open to everyone—even unbelievers, pagans and Saracens—to read and turn its pages, so that they would lay the blame for their damnation upon themselves rather than upon God. So that no one should distrust his own powers to attain it, he proclaimed these mysteries with his mouth and accomplished them through his works, although already announced by his prophets. He left them attested and confirmed by such great prodigies that demons are terrified, angels tremble, and those who were their sacred and truthful witnesses are seized with admiration. Only the impious person remains colder than a rock, as though stunned, astonished and motionless at the sight of such great miracles and prodigies.
Some scrupulous people will perhaps object that God did not present these prodigies to us as necessary for salvation, because everyone must leave this sacred and natural theology, and thus there would be as many Doctors as Christians. This does not follow, for no one is obliged by divine command to study theology and this natural science. It is enough to have faith: firmly to establish and believe from the heart, without doubt; to guard with great piety; to profess aloud; and even to sign with one's blood, against all Jesus Christ's enemies and hell itself, everything taught by the Church's orthodox truth—whether revealed immediately by God himself or revealed immediately through angels or nature. Finally, let no one be frightened by this name of nature, which they consider ill-suited to speaking of divine things. So that they disapprove of it still less, let them learn above all that these things have been infused and revealed through nature, and through no other way, and that nothing which