Joseph
Curwen kept a copy of Fludd's
Clavis Alchimiae
in his collection.
[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - H.P.L.]
See also: Clavis Alchimiae
Robert
Fludd (1574-1637) was an English mystic involved with cabalist beliefs.
He wrote two books in defense of magic called "Mosaical Philosophy" and
"Summum Bonum," which contained his own version of the cabalistic theories.
According to Fludd, all creation proceeded from God, who is the sum of
everything, and all eventuallly returns to God. Fludd was a Rosicrucian
and claimed by the Freemasons as one of their own. Many modern occultists
perform rituals on September 8th, the date he died. These involve meditating
on the celebrated diagram of Man the Microcosm in his "Utriusque Cosmi-Historia."
Available text:
Robert Fludd - Origin and
Structure of the Cosmos.
Text translated by Patricia Tahil.
Introduction by Adam McLean.
This is
the first ever translation into English of a substantial section of Robert
Fludd's classic work Utriusque Cosmi historia. Patricia Tahil has here
translated the whole of the first two Books of the work which deal with
the origin and structure of the Macrocosm. Fludd shows himself attached
to the classical Ptolomaic picture of an Earth-centred Cosmos and he sums
up in this work the spiritual perspective of the ancient tradition (to
which he was passionately dedicated) on, the Macrocosm. Thus in his first
book he deals with the nature of the Primal Substance, the inner nature
of the Original Darkness, the Ancient Chaos, and the Universal Essence
from which the entire Creation was shaped. His second book deals in turn
with the threefold structure of the Macrocosm - the Empyrean World, the
World of the Ethers, and the Earthly World.
This volume
provides us with a clear picture of the Cosmos seen as a spiritual being
as it was grasped in the Western tradition in the early 17th century, just
a few decades before seeds of a purely materialistic mechanical view of
the Cosmos were sown into Western consciousness, which in time would emerge
as the 'Scientific' revolution in thought of the 18th and 19th centuries.
A valuable sourcework on Rosicrucian
Cosmic Science.