(1) You adduce, however, as a thing by no means to be despised, “ the artificers of efficacious images .” But I should wonder if these were admitted by any one of the theurgists who survey the true forms of the Gods. For why should any one exchange truly existing beings for images, and descend from the first to the last of things? Or do we not know that all things effected by an adumbration of this kind, have an obscure subsistence, are the phantasms only of that which is true, and appear to be good, but in no respect are so? Other things, also, of this kind that accede, are borne along in a flowing condition of being; but obtain nothing genuine, or perfect, or manifest. But this is evident from the mode of their production: for not divinity, but man is the maker of them. Nor are they produced from uniform and intelligible essences, but from matter, which is assumed for this purpose. What good, therefore, can germinate from matter, and from the material and corporeal-formed powers which are in bodies? Or is not that which derives its subsistence from human art, more imbecile than men themselves, who impart existence to it? By what kind of art, likewise, is this image fashioned? For it is said, indeed, to be fashioned by demiurgic art; but this is effective of true essences, and not of certain images. Hence the image-producing art is distant by a great interval from the seminal production of realities. Besides, neither does it preserve a certain analogy with divine fabrication.

(1) Why, therefore, does the maker of images, who effects these things, desert himself, though he is better than these images, and consists of things of a more excellent nature, and confide in inanimate idols, which are inspired with the representation alone of life, contain a renovated harmony, and which is externally multiform, and are in reality diurnal? Shall we say that something genuine and true is inherent in them? Nothing, however, which is fashioned by human art is genuine and pure. But you will say, that simplicity and uniformity of energy predominate in the whole of their composition. This is very far from being the case. For the idol, according to its visible composition, is mingled from all-various and contrary qualities. Shall we say then, that a certain pure and perfect power is manifest in them? By no means. For a thing of this kind possesses an adventitious multitude of effluxions, collected from many places, and which shows itself to be imbecile and evanescent. But if these particulars, which we have enumerated, are not found to take place in images, is stability present with them, as it is said to be [by the patrons of these images]? By no means, likewise, is this the case. For these idols are extinguished with much greater rapidity than the images which are seen in mirrors.

(2) For they are immediately formed by the accession of fumigations from exhaling vapours; but when the fumigation is mingled with, and diffused through, the whole air, then the idol is likewise immediately dissolved, and is not naturally adapted to remain for the smallest portion of time. Why, therefore, should the man who is a lover of truth, pay attention to these useless delusions? I, indeed, do not think them to be of any value. For if the makers of these images know that the fictions about which they are busily employed, are nothing more than the formations of passive matter, the evil arising from an attention to them will be simple. But in addition to this, these idol-makers are similar to the images in which they confide. And if they pay attention to these idols as if they were Gods, the absurdity will be so great, as neither to be effable by words, nor to be endured in deeds. For a certain divine splendour never illuminates a soul of this kind, because it is not adapted to be imparted to things which are entirely repugnant to it; neither have those things which are detained by dark phantasms a place for its reception. This delusive formation, therefore, of phantasms, will be conversant with shadows, which are very remote from the truth.

(3) Such, therefore, as the truth is, such also it is requisite to unfold it to others. It must be said, then, that the maker of images neither uses the celestial circulations, nor the powers which are inherent in them, nor those powers which are naturally established about them; nor, in short, is it possible to come into contact with them. But he artificially, and not theurgically, applies himself to the last effluxions which openly proceed from the nature of them, about the last part of the universe. For these effluxions, I think, being mingled with a partial matter, are capable of being changed and transformed differently at different times. They likewise receive the transposition, from some things to others, of the powers which are in partial natures. The variety, however, of such like energies, and the composition of a multitude of material powers, are not only entirely separated from divine fabrication, but also from natural production. For nature produces her proper works collectively, and at once, and accomplishes all things by simple and incomposite energies. Hence it remains that a commixture of this kind, about the last and manifest celestial effluxion, and about the things which are moved by a celestial nature, is artificial.

(2) For divinity does not fabricate all things, either through the celestial physical motions, or through a partial matter, or through powers thus divided; but he produces the worlds by conceptions, will, and immaterial forms, and through an eternal and supermundane soul. The maker of images, however, is said to elaborate them through the revolving stars. But the thing does not in reality subsist so as it appears to do. For since there are certain infinite powers in the celestial Gods, the last genus of all the powers in them is physical. But again, of this power one portion being inherent in spermatic reasons [or productive powers], and prior to these reasons being established in immoveable natures, essentially precedes generation. But another portion being inherent in sensible and visible motions and powers, and in celestial effluxions and qualities, has dominion over the whole visible order of things. This last power, therefore, in all these rules over the circumterrestrial manifest generation in places about the earth. Many other arts, however, as for instance, the medical and gymnastic, use this power, which has dominion over visible generation, and the qualities of the effluxions sent from the heavens employ it, and likewise all such arts as in their operations communicate with nature. And moreover, the image-making art attracts a certain very obscure genesiurgic portion from the celestial effluxions.

(7) Behold how many arts [employed] on one material, how many labors on one single sketch; and all exceeding fair, and all in perfect measure, yet all diversified! Who made them all? What mother, or what sire, save God alone, unmanifest, who hath made all things by His Will?

(597) No wonder. Suppose now that by the light of the examples just offered we enquire who this imitator is? If you please. Well then, here are three beds: one existing in nature, which is made by God, as I think that we may say—for no one else can be the maker? No. There is another which is the work of the carpenter? Yes. And the work of the painter is a third? Yes. Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintend them: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter? Yes, there are three of them. God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one bed in nature and one only; two or more such ideal beds neither ever have been nor ever will be made by God. Why is that? Because even if He had made but two, a third would still appear behind them which both of them would have for their idea, and that would be the ideal bed and not the two others. Very true, he said. God knew this, and He desired to be the real maker of a real bed, not a particular maker of a particular bed, and therefore He created a bed which is essentially and by nature one only. So we believe. Shall we, then, speak of Him as the natural author or maker of the bed? Yes, he replied; inasmuch as by the natural process of creation He is the author of this and of all other things. And what shall we say of the carpenter—is not he also the maker of the bed? Yes. But would you call the painter a creator and maker? Certainly not. Yet if he is not the maker, what is he in relation to the bed?

(8) And no one saith a statue or a picture comes to be without a sculptor or [without] a painter; doth [then] such workmanship as this exist without a Worker? What depth of blindness, what deep impiety, what depth of ignorance! See, [then] thou ne'er, son Tat, deprivest works of Worker! Nay, rather is He greater than all names, so great is He, the Father of them all. For verily He is the Only One, and this is His work, to be a father.

(596) He must be a wizard and no mistake. Oh! you are incredulous, are you? Do you mean that there is no such maker or creator, or that in one sense there might be a maker of all these things but in another not? Do you see that there is a way in which you could make them all yourself? What way? An easy way enough; or rather, there are many ways in which the feat might be quickly and easily accomplished, none quicker than that of turning a mirror round and round—you would soon enough make the sun and the heavens, and the earth and yourself, and other animals and plants, and all the other things of which we were just now speaking, in the mirror. Yes, he said; but they would be appearances only. Very good, I said, you are coming to the point now. And the painter too is, as I conceive, just such another—a creator of appearances, is he not? Of course. But then I suppose you will say that what he creates is untrue. And yet there is a sense in which the painter also creates a bed? Yes, he said, but not a real bed. And what of the maker of the bed? were you not saying that he too makes, not the idea which, according to our view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed? Yes, I did. Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot make true existence, but only some semblance of existence; and if any one were to say that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any other workman, has real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth. At any rate, he replied, philosophers would say that he was not speaking the truth. No wonder, then, that his work too is an indistinct expression of truth.

(596) Why not? for the duller eye may often see a thing sooner than the keener. Very true, he said; but in your presence, even if I had any faint notion, I could not muster courage to utter it. Will you enquire yourself? Well then, shall we begin the enquiry in our usual manner: Whenever a number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have also a corresponding idea or form:—do you understand me? I do. Let us take any common instance; there are beds and tables in the world—plenty of them, are there not? Yes. But there are only two ideas or forms of them—one the idea of a bed, the other of a table. True. And the maker of either of them makes a bed or he makes a table for our use, in accordance with the idea—that is our way of speaking in this and similar instances—but no artificer makes the ideas themselves: how could he? Impossible. And there is another artist,—I should like to know what you would say of him. Who is he? One who is the maker of all the works of all other workmen. What an extraordinary man! Wait a little, and there will be more reason for your saying so. For this is he who is able to make not only vessels of every kind, but plants and animals, himself and all other things—the earth and heaven, and the things which are in heaven or under the earth; he makes the gods also.

(4) As a goldsmith, taking a piece of gold, reduces it to another newer and more beautiful form, just so this soul, striking down this body and dispelling its ignorance, makes for itself another newer and more beautiful form like that either of the fathers, or of the Gandharvas, or of the gods, or of Prajapati, or of Brahma, or of other beings.

(11) And they made for selves molten images, and they worshipped each the idol, the molten image which they had made for \themselves, and they began to make graven images ind unclean simulacra, and malignant spirits assisted 3.v*;?v'v. knd seduced (them) into committing transgression land uncleanness.

(53) a a ExumeENust! saith: The envious have laid waste the whole Art with the multiplicity of names, but the entire work must be the Art of the Coin. For the Philosophers have ordered the doctors of this art to make coin-like gold, which also the same Philosophers have called by all manner of names.

The Turba answereth: Inform, therefore, posterity, O Exumenus, concern- ’ 161 ing a few of these names, that they may take warning! And he: They have named it salting, sublimating, washing, and pounding Ethelias, whitening in the fire, frequently cooking vapour and coagulating, turning into rubigo, the confection of Ethel, the art of the water of sulphur and coagula. By all these names is that operation called which has pounded and whitened copper. And know ye, that quicksilver is white to the sight, but when it is possessed by the smoke of sulphur, it reddens and becomes Cambar. Therefore, when quicksilver is cooked with its confections it is turned into red, and hence the

Philosopher saith that the nature of lead is swiftly converted. Do you not see that the Philosophers have spoken without envy? Hence we deal in many ways with pounding and reiteration, that ye may extract the spirits existing in the vessel, which the fire did not cease to burn continuously. But the M water placed with those things prevents the fire from burning, and it befalls those things that the more they are possessed by the flame of fire, the more they are hidden in the depths of the water, lest they should be injured by the heat of the fire; but the water receives them in its belly and repels the flame of fire from them.

The Turba answereth: Unless ye make bodies not-bodies ye achieve nothing. But concerning the sublimation of water the Philosophers have treated not a little. And know that unless ye diligently pound the thing in the fire, the Ethelia does not ascend, but when that does not ascend ye achieve nothing. When, however, it ascends it is an instrument for the intended tincture with which ye tinge, and concerning this Ethelia

Hermes saith:

Sift the things which ye know; but another: Liquefy the things. Therefore,

Arras saith: Unless ye pound the thing diligently in the fire, Ethelia does not ascend. The Master hath put forth a view whichI shall now explain to the reasoners. Know ye that a very great wind of the south, when it is stirred up, sublimates clouds and elevates the vapours of the sea.

The Turba answereth: Thou hast dealt obscurely. And he: I will explain the testa,* and the vessel wherein is incombustible sulphur. But I order you to congeal fluxible quicksilver out of many things, that two may be made three, and four one, and two one.

(5) 'And as, my dear, by one nugget of gold all that is made of gold is known, the difference being only a name, arising from speech, but the truth being that all is gold?

(26) Now you will say, this must be God! No, it is not God, but it is God's Friend. Christ said; My Father works, and I work also; but it works not; it is in a Thing imperceptibly, and yet it may well be overpowered and used; especially in Metals, there it can (if itself be pure) make pure Gold of Iron, and of Copper; it can make a little grow to be a great deal, and yet it puts forth nothing. Its Way is as subtle as the Thoughts of a Man, and the Thoughts do even arise from thence.

(1) It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the vision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic Intellect will be able also to come to understand the Father and Transcendent of that Divine Being. It concerns us, then, to try to see and say, for ourselves and as far as such matters may be told, how the Beauty of the divine Intellect and of the Intellectual Kosmos may be revealed to contemplation.

Let us go to the realm of magnitudes: Suppose two blocks of stone lying side by side: one is unpatterned, quite untouched by art; the other has been minutely wrought by the craftsman's hands into some statue of god or man, a Grace or a Muse, or if a human being, not a portrait but a creation in which the sculptor's art has concentrated all loveliness.

Now it must be seen that the stone thus brought under the artist's hand to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone- for so the crude block would be as pleasant- but in virtue of the form or idea introduced by the art. This form is not in the material; it is in the designer before ever it enters the stone; and the artificer holds it not by his equipment of eyes and hands but by his participation in his art. The beauty, therefore, exists in a far higher state in the art; for it does not come over integrally into the work; that original beauty is not transferred; what comes over is a derivative and a minor: and even that shows itself upon the statue not integrally and with entire realization of intention but only in so far as it has subdued the resistance of the material.

Art, then, creating in the image of its own nature and content, and working by the Idea or Reason-Principle of the beautiful object it is to produce, must itself be beautiful in a far higher and purer degree since it is the seat and source of that beauty, indwelling in the art, which must naturally be more complete than any comeliness of the external. In the degree in which the beauty is diffused by entering into matter, it is so much the weaker than that concentrated in unity; everything that reaches outwards is the less for it, strength less strong, heat less hot, every power less potent, and so beauty less beautiful.

Then again every prime cause must be, within itself, more powerful than its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an unmusical source but from music; and so the art exhibited in the material work derives from an art yet higher.

Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations; then, we must recognise that they give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Ideas from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that much of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking. Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no model among things of sense but by apprehending what form Zeus must take if he chose to become manifest to sight.

(6) If thou would'st see Him too through things that suffer death, both on the earth and in the deep, think of a man's being fashioned in the womb, my son, and strictly scrutinize the art of Him who fashions him, and learn who fashioneth this fair and godly image of the Man. Who [then] is He who traceth out the circles of the eyes; who He who boreth out the nostrils and the ears; who He who openeth [the portal of] the mouth; who He who doth stretch out and tie the nerves; who He who channels out the veins; who He who hardeneth the bones; who He who covereth the flesh with skin; who He who separates the fingers and the joints; who He who widens out a treading for the feet; who He who diggeth out the ducts; who He who spreadeth out the spleen; who he who shapeth heart like to a pyramid; who He who setteth ribs together; who He who wideneth the liver out; who He who maketh lungs like to a sponge; who He who maketh belly stretch so much; who he who doth make prominent the parts most honorable, so that they may be seen, while hiding out of sight those of least honor?

(88) You have an example of this in gold, and in silver, which you cannot make to be pure or fine gold or silver, unless it be melted seven times in the fire. [Psalm xii. 6.] But when that is done, then it remaineth in the middle or central seat in the heart of nature, which is the water, sitting in its own quality and colour.

(32) Bonellus saith: According to thee, O Pythagoras, all things die and live by the will of God, because that nature from which the humidity is removed, that nature which is left by nights, does indeed seem like unto something that is dead; it is then turned and (again) left for certain nights, as a man is left in his tomb, when it becomes a powder.* These things being done, God will restore unto it both the soul and the spirit thereof, and the weakness being taken away, that matter will be made strong, and after corruption will be improved, even as a man becomes stronger after resurrection and younger than he was in this world.

Therefore it behoves you, O ye Sons of the Doctrine, to consume that matter with fire boldly until it shall become a cinder, when know that ye have mixed it excellently well, for that cinder receives the spirit, and is imbued gh with the humour until it assumes a fairer colour than it previously possessed.

Consider, therefore, O ye Sons of the Doctrine, that artists are unable to paint with their own tinctures until they convert them into a powder; similarly, the philosophers cannot combine medicines for the sick slaves until they also turn them into powder, cooking some of them to a cinder, while others they grind with their hands. The case is the same with those who compose the images of the ancients. But if ye understand what has already been said, ye will know that I speak the truth, and hence I have ordered you to burn up the body and turn it into a cinder, for if ye rule it subtly many things will proceed from it, even as much proceeds from the smallest things in the world. It is thus because copper like man, has a body and a soul, for the inspiration of men cometh from the air, which after God is their life, and similarly the copper is inspired by the humour from which that same copper receiving strength is multiplied and augmented like other things. Hence, the philosophers add, that when copper is consumed with fire and iterated several times, it becomes better than it was.

The Turba answereth: Show, therefore,O Bonellus, to future generations after what manner it becometh better than it was! And he: I will do so willingly; it is because it is augmented and multiplied, and because God extracts many things out of one thing, since He hath created nothing which wants its own regimen, and those qualities by which its healing must be effected. Similarly, our copper, when it is first cooked, becomes water; then the more it is cooked, the more is it thickened until it becomes a stone, as the envious have termed it, but it is really an egg tending to become a metal. It is afterwards broken and imbued, when ye must roast it in a fire more intense than the former, until it shall be coloured and shall become like blood in combustion, when it is placed on coins and changes them into gold, according to the Divine pleasure. Do you not see that sperm is not produced from the blood unless it be diligently cooked in the liver till it has acquired an intense red colour, after which no change takes place in that sperm?*

It is the same with our work, for unless it be cooked diligently until it shall become a powder, and afterwards be putrefied untilit shall becomea spiritual sperm, there will in no wise proceed from it that colour which ye desire. But if ye arrive at the conclusion of this regimen, and so obtain your purpose, ye shall be princes among the people of your time.

(29) Through art (the process of learning) the whole mass of base metals (the mental body of ignorance) was transmuted into pure gold (wisdom), for it was tinctured with understanding. If, then, through faith and proximity to God the consciousness of man may be transmuted from base animal desires (represented by the masses of the planetary metals) into a pure, golden, and godly consciousness, illumined and redeemed, and the manifesting God within that one increased from a tiny spark to a great and glorious Being; if also the base metals of mental ignorance can, through proper endeavor and training, be transmuted into transcendent genius and wisdom, why is the process in two worlds or spheres of application not equally true in the third? If both the spiritual and mental elements of the universe can be multiplied in their expression, then by the law of analogy the material elements of the universe can also be multiplied, if the necessary process can be ascertained.