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Hippo]ytns, Phibsophumeim, 6.17

Cf.. for example, the " Tahles of rhe Theorems. ” §2.3 of J. Dee, Mon.is hieroglyphics (Antwerp 1564) wherein are also mentioned three stages: the first refers to a "seed of power" prior to the elements an< self-conceived”, the second to "punishment and sepulcher"; the third to a state "existing after th elements.” which is resurrection by one’s own power and "triumph of glory.”

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Recently, in contrast to the notion of progress and the idea that history has been represented as the more or less continuous upward evolution of collective human­ity, the idea of a plurality of the forms of civilization and of a relative incommu­nicability between them has been confirmed. According to this second and new vision of history, civilization breaks down into epochs and disconnected cycles. At a given moment and within a given race a specific conception of the world and of life is affirmed from which follows a specific system of truths, principles, under­standings, and realizations. A civilization springs up, gradually reaches a culminat­ing point, and then falls into darkness and, more often than not, disappears. A cycle has ended. Perhaps another will rise again some day, somewhere else. Perhaps it may even take up the concerns of preceding civilizations, but any connection between them will be strictly analogical. The transition from one cycle of civili­zation to another-one completely alien to the other—implies a jump, which in mathematics is called a discontinuity.⁵²
Although this view is a healthy reaction ro the superstition of history as
progress—which came into fashion more or less at the same time as materialism and Western scientism²—nevertheless, we should be cautious, for in addition to a plurality of civilizations we have to recognize a duality- -especially when we limit ourselves to those times and essential structures that we can embrace with some measure of certainty.
Modern civilization stands on one side and on the other the entirety of all the civilizations that have preceded it (for the West, we can put the dividing line at the end of the Middle Ages). At this point the rupture is complete. Apart from the multitudinous variety of its forms, premodern civilization, which we may as well call "traditional/’² means something quite different. For there are two worlds, one of which has separated itself by cutting off nearly every contact with the past. For the great majority of moderns, that means any possibility of understanding the traditional world has been completely lost.
This premise is indispensable for the examination of our subject. The hermetico- alchemical tradition forms part of the cycle of premodern "traditional" civilization and in order to understand its spirit we need to translate it inwardly from one world to the other. Who undertakes this study without having acquired the ability to rise above the modern mind-set or who has not awakened to a new sensitivity that can place itself in contact with the general spiritual stream that gave life to the tradition in the first place, will succeed only in filling his head with words, symbols, and fantastic allegories. Moreover, it is not just a question of intellectual understanding. We have to bear in mind that ancient man not only had a different way of thinking and feeling, but also a different way of perceiving and knowing. The heart of the matter that will concern us is to reevoke, by means of an actual transformation of the consciousness, this older basis of understanding and action.
Only then will the unexpected light of certain expressions dawn on us and certain symbols be empowered to awaken our interior perception. Only then will we be conducted through them to new heights of human realization and to the understanding chat will make it possible for designated "rites” to confer "magical” and operant power, and for the creation of a new "science” that bears no resem­blance to anything that goes by that name today ⁵³
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S he fundamental issue in our study is the human experi­
ence of nature. The average modern man’s relationship with nature is not the one that prevailed in the premodern "cycle,” to which, along with many other traditions, the hermetico-alchemical tradition belongs. The study of nature today devotes itself exhaustively to a conglomeration of strictly reasoned laws concerning various "phenomena”—light, electricity, heat, etc.—which spread out kaleidoscopically before us utterly devoid of any spiritual meaning, derived solely from mathematical processes. In the traditional world, on the contrary, nature was not thought about but lived, as though it were a great, sacred, animated body "the visible expression of the invisible." Knowledge about nature derived from inspiration, intuition, and visions, and was transmitted "by initiation” as so many living "mysteries," referring to things that today have lost their meaning and seem banal and commonplace—as, for example, the art of building, medicine, cultivation of the soil, and so forth. Myth was not an arbitrary or fantastic notion.- it arose from a necessary process in which the same, forces that shape things acted upon the plastic faculty of the imagination, unfettered by the bodily senses, to dramatize themselves in images and figures that were woven into the tapestry of sensory experience and resulted finally in a "significance” of moment.¹
"Universe, hear my plea. Earth, open. Let the Waters open for me. Trees, do not tremble. Let the heavens open and the winds be silent! Let all my faculties ⁵⁴
celebrate in me the All and One!”—these are the words of a hymn that the "Sons of Hermes” recited at the beginning of their sacred operations;² such was the height to which they were capable of elevating themselves. The following is an even more emphatic version.-