Category: Cosmogony

“This Magnus Limbus, then, or Yliaster of Paracelsus, is simply our old friend “Father-Mother,” within, before it appeared in Space… It is the universal matrix of Kosmos, personified in the dual character of Macro- and Microcosm (or the Universe and our Globe)** by Aditi-Prakriti, the Spiritual and the physical nature. For we find it explained in Paracelsus that “the Magnus Limbus is the nursery out of which all creatures have grown, in the same sense as a tree grows out of a small seed; with the difference, however, that the great Limbus takes its origin from the Word, while the Limbus minor (the terrestrial seed or sperm) takes it from the earth. The great Limbus is the seed out of which all beings have come, and the little Limbus is each ultimate being that reproduces its form, and that has itself been produced by the ‘great.’ The latter possesses all the qualifications of the great one, in the same sense as a son has an organization similar to that of his father.” (See Comment. Book II. para. iii.) . . . “As Yliaster dissolved, Ares, the dividing, differentiating, and individualising power (Fohat, another old friend,) . . . began to act. All production took place in consequence of separation. There were produced out of the Ideos, the elements of Fire, Water, Air and Earth, whose birth, however, did not take place in a material mode, or by simple separation,” but by spiritual and dynamical, not even complex, combinations — e.g., mechanical mixture as opposed to chemical combination — just as fire may come out of a pebble, or a tree out of a seed, although there is originally no fire in the pebble, nor a tree in the seed. Spirit is living, and Life is Spirit, and Life and Spirit (Prakriti Purusha) (?) produce all things, but they are essentially one and not two. . . . The elements too, have each one its own Yliaster, because all the activity of matter in every form is only an effluvium of the same fount. But as from the seed grow the roots with their fibres, and after that the stalk with its branches and leaves, and lastly the flowers and seeds; likewise all beings were born from the elements, and consist of elementary substances out of which other forms may come into existence, bearing the characteristics of their parents.” (“This doctrine, preached 300 years ago,” remarks the translator, “is identical with the one that has revolutionized modern thought, after having been put into new shape and elaborated by Darwin. It was still more elaborated by Kapila in the Sankhya philosophy”) . . . . The elements as the mothers of all creatures are of an invisible, spiritual nature, and have souls.* They all spring from the “Mysterium Magnum.” (Philosophia ad Athenienses.)