ASCENDING AND DESCENDING "SIGNS."

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permissible to be disclosed. As they, however, were very fond of diagrams and mystic figures, of which they left many in those rarities (mostly ill-executed, but each wonderfully suggestive) called "Gnostic gems," we will supply a seeming elucidation of this their astrological assumption of "what was earliest;" for which see the succeeding figure.

() Libra (the Balances) leads again off as the "hingepoint," introducing the six winter signs, which are: () Libra again, (m) Scorpio, () Sagittarius, () Capricornus, () Aquarius, and (x) Pisces.

Turning-point-Libra. (The sign "Libra" was added

by the Greeks.)

The first six signs, or ascending signs, are represented by the celestial perpendicular, or descending ray, as thus:

Fig. 13.

The last six signs, or descending signs, are represented by the terrestrial ground-line, or horizontal,

or "equatorial" (symbol, or sigma), as thus:

Fig. 14.

The union of these (at the intersection of these rays) at

F

the junction-point, or middle point, forms the "Cross," as thus:

Fig, 15. (B.) "Cross."

In figure C, the union of fig. 16 and fig. 17 forms the cross. Fig. 18 is the mundane circle. Fig. 19 is the astronomical cross upon the mundane circle. The union of fig. 18, fig. 17, and fig. 16, in this respective order, gives the crux-ansata, so continual in all the Egyptian sculptures, which mark or sign is also the symbol of the Planet Venus, as below.

Fig. 20. The Crux-Ansata.

Fig. 21. Mark of the Planet Venus.

Their origin is thus traced clearly to the same original meanings, which reappear under all sorts of disguises, and are varied in innumerable ingenious ways, in all the mythologies-incessantly disclosing, and inviting, and as continually evading, discovery. This abstruse mark particularly abounds in the Egyptian temples, where every object and every figure presents it. Its real meaning is, however, intended to be buried in profound darkness.

T

From the Breast of a Mummy. (Museum, Lond. Univ.)

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

FIRE-THEOSOPHY OF THE PERSIANS.

HE Fire-Philosophers, or Philosophi per ignem, were a fanatical sect of philosophers, who appeared towards the close of the sixteenth century. They made á figure in almost all the countries of Europe. They declared that the intimate essences of natural things were only to be known by the trying efforts of fire, directed in a chemical process. The Theosophists also insisted that human reason was a dangerous and deceitful guide; that no real progress could be made in knowledge or in religion by it; and that to all vital-that is, supernatural-purpose it was a vain thing. They taught that divine and supernatural illumination was the only means of arriving at truth. Their name of Paracelsists was derived from Paracelsus, the eminent physician and chemist, who was the chief ornament of this extraordinary sect. In England, Robert Flood, or Fludd, was their great advocate and exponent. Rivier, who wrote in France; Severinus, an author of Denmark; Kunrath, an eminent physician of Dresden; and Daniel Hoffmann, professor of divinity in the University of Helmstadt,-have also treated largely on Paracelsus and on his system.

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus was born

in 1493, at Einsiedeln, a small town of the canton of Schwitz, distant some leagues from Zurich. Having passed a troubled, migratory, and changeful life, this great chemist, and very original thinker, died on the 24th of September 1541, in the Hospital of St. Stephen, in the forty-eighth year of his age. His works may be enumerated as follow. 1. The German editions: Basil, 1575, in 8vo; Ib. 1, 1589-90, in 10 vols. 4to; and Strasbourg, 1603-18, in 4 vols. folio. 2. The Latin editions: Opera omnia Medico-chymico-chirurgica, Francfort, 1603, in 10 vols. 4to; and Geneva, 1658, in 3 vols. folio. 3. The French editions: La Grand Chirurgerie de Paracelse, Lyons, 1593 and 1603, in 4to; and Montbéliard, 1608, in 8vo. See Adelung, Histoire de la Folie Humaine, tom. vii.; Biographie Universelle, article "Paracelse;" and Sprengel, Histoire Pragmatique de la Médecine, tom. iii.

"Akin to the school of the ancient Fire-Believers, and of the magnetists of a later period," says the learned Dr. Ennemoser, in his History of Magic (most ably rendered into English by William Howitt), "of the same cast as these speculators and searchers into the mysteries of nature, drawing from the same well, are the Theosophists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These practised chemistry, by which they asserted that they could explore the profoundest secrets of nature. As they strove, above all earthly knowledge, after the divine, and sought the divine light and fire, through which all men can acquire the true wisdom, they were called the Fire-Philosophers (philosophi per ignem). The most distinguished of these are Theophrastus Paracelsus, Adam von Boden, Oswald Croll; and, later, Valentine Weigel, Robert Flood, or Fludd, Jacob Böhmen, Peter Poiret, &c." Under this head we may also refer to the Medico-surgical Essays of Hemmann, published at Berlin in 1778; and Pfaff's Astrology.

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As a great general principle, the Theosophists called the soul a fire, taken from the eternal ocean of light.

In regard to the supernatural-using the word in its widest sense-it may be said that "all the difficulty in admitting the strange things told us lies in the nonadmission of an internal causal world as absolutely real: it is said, in intellectually admitting, because the influence of the arts proves that men's feelings always have admitted, and do still admit, this reality."

The Platonic philosophy of vision is, that it is the view of objects really existing in interior light, which assume form, not according to arbitrary laws, but according to the state of mind. This interior light, if we understand Plato, unites with exterior light in the eye, and is thus drawn into a sensual or imaginative activity; but when the outward light is separated, it reposes in its own serene atmosphere. It is, then, in this state of interior repose, that the usual class of religious, or what are called inspired, visions occur. It is the same light of eternity so frequently alluded to in books that treat of mysterious subjects; the light revealed to Pimander, Zoroaster, and all the sages of the East, as the emanation of the spiritual sun. Böhmen writes of it

in his Divine Vision or Contemplation, and Molinos in his Spiritual Guide,-whose work is the ground of Quietism: Quietism being the foundation of the religion of the people called Friends or Quakers, as also of the other mystic or meditative sects. We enlarge from a very learned, candid, and instructive book upon the Occult Sciences.

Regard Fire, then, with other eyes than with those soulless, incurious ones, with which thou hast looked upon it as the most ordinary thing. Thou hast forgotten what it isor rather thou hast never known. Chemists are silent about it; or, may we not say that it is too loud for them?