"The whole world is a living mirror of the Divine unity and is full of divine correspondences."
"The wise man will seek within himself for the mysterious cause of things, and will not rest content with superficial explanations."
"Nature is the living garment of God."
"The universe is one vast living organism, animated by the divine breath and permeated by the divine light."
— Robert Fludd
Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia
The Metaphysical, Physical, and Technical History of the Two Worlds, Namely the Greater and the Lesser
published between 1617 and 1621
The work is divided into two major volumes:
- Cosmologia (The Macrocosm) – the “Greater World,” dealing with the divine, the cosmos, the elements, angelic hierarchies, and metaphysical structure of reality.
- Anthropologia (The Microcosm) – the “Lesser World,” concerned with the human being as a mirror of the universe, including the soul, spirit, body, medicine, and arts.
Together, Fludd presents a total vision of reality, one rooted in the ancient Prisca Theologia, which he believed to be the original divine wisdom passed down from Adam through the patriarchs, Moses, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, and others.
Utriusque Cosmi Maioris scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia, c. 1617 by Robert Fludd
— Robert Fludd
Der übernatürliche Philosoph, oder die Geheimnisse der Magie, nach allen ihren Arten deutlich erkläret by Bond, W., c. 1742 (Based on an image from Robert Fludd's book)
"The mysteries of intelligence never fall under the senses, nor can the ineffable Essence be grasped by them. Indeed, the mind cannot even conceive their ideas through imagination unless reason and intellect rise to such a height of understanding that they attain the illumination of the divine. Therefore, reason must rise to divine speculation, lifting the intellect into the sphere of the mind, where, illuminated by divine light, it perceives celestial truth."
"Henceforth therefore it plainly appeareth, that all men are but Unity in essential virtue and act, the which is so united to the first actor in Nature, that it is altogether in truth inseparable and indivisible from it, although men and all things else divide and branch themselves into different persons and shapes in respect of their Macrocosmical materials; for number, distinction, difference and multitude are the defective progression of blindfold and deceitful matter. But in the subtle spirit and form is stability, permanency and Unity, from whence only the sweet consonance of peace and the world's harmony is extracted. Then how far wandrest thou (O fond Man) in the glimmering of darkness and error, which groundest thy faith on things subject unto the outward sense, which are only compositions of antipathy and discord, and neglectest to behold with spiritual eyes the central and hidden truth, where Unity abideth compassed about with gleeful joy and peaceful sympathy? Return, return, (I say) unto thyself, subject thy body unto thy reasonable soul by diving into thy inward treasure, and then prostrate and submit thy mental and spiritual part unto thy God; for so shalt thou be made one spirit with him, conditionally that thou doest persevere in humility, and acknowledge from thy heart that grace of thy Creator, by which thou shalt be glorified and exalted. Wherefore I cordially admonish thee to ascend from this world unto God, that is, to penetrate quite through thyself, for to climb up unto God is to enter into thyself, and not only inwardly to visit thy dearest Soul, but also to pierce into the very centre thereof, to view and behold there thy Creator; which thou mayest the better gather and recollect the beams of thy inward man from the distractions of this outward world, and revoke them from external actions, to participate with thy inward joys." — Robert Fludd, "Clavis Philosophiae"
"This Elixir is the true temple of wisdom, the impregnable castle of Cupid, that powerful god of Love, the beauteous and bright city of the sages, the true pattern of the heavenly Jerusalem, the mark of perfection at which all imperfect spirits do tend as to the port of their final happiness, the scale of Justice, the queller and extinguisher of vice, and the final complement and exaltation of form, and exact being." — Robert Fludd
"The mysteries of intelligence never fall under the senses, nor can the ineffable Essence be grasped by them. Indeed, the mind cannot even conceive their ideas through imagination unless reason and intellect rise to such a height of understanding that they attain the illumination of the divine. Therefore, reason must rise to divine speculation, lifting the intellect into the sphere of the mind, where, illuminated by divine light, it perceives celestial truth."
— Robert Fludd
"Marvelous is the love and fellowship of the flesh and the soul, of the spirit of life and the mud of the earth: for the whole man may be said to be formed from these two conjoined. For thus it is written: “God made man from the mud of the earth, and breathed the breath of life into his face ”[Genesis 2:7], giving him sense and intellect, so that through sense he might vivify the clay associated with him, and through intellect rule it; that likewise he might enter inwardly through the intellect and contemplate the wisdom of God, and outwardly through the sense behold the works of his wisdom. God illuminated the intellect from within but adorned the sense without, so that the whole man might find recreation in both, namely felicity within and enjoyment without. But since outward things cannot last long, man is bidden to turn from the things without to the things within and to ascend from the things within to the things above, that is to say from sense to imagination, from imagination to reason, from reason to intellect, thence to mind or intelligence and thus to God.” - Robert Fludd
"Henceforth therefore it plainly appeareth, that all men are but Unity in essential virtue and act, the which is so united to the first actor in Nature, that it is altogether in truth inseparable and indivisible from it, although men and all things else divide and branch themselves into different persons and shapes in respect of their Macrocosmical materials; for number, distinction, difference and multitude are the defective progression of blindfold and deceitful matter. But in the subtle spirit and form is stability, permanency and Unity, from whence only the sweet consonance of peace and the world's harmony is extracted. Then how far wandrest thou (O fond Man) in the glimmering of darkness and error, which groundest thy faith on things subject unto the outward sense, which are only compositions of antipathy and discord, and neglectest to behold with spiritual eyes the central and hidden truth, where Unity abideth compassed about with gleeful joy and peaceful sympathy? Return, return, (I say) unto thyself, subject thy body unto thy reasonable soul by diving into thy inward treasure, and then prostrate and submit thy mental and spiritual part unto thy God; for so shalt thou be made one spirit with him, conditionally that thou doest persevere in humility, and acknowledge from thy heart that grace of thy Creator, by which thou shalt be glorified and exalted. Wherefore I cordially admonish thee to ascend from this world unto God, that is, to penetrate quite through thyself, for to climb up unto God is to enter into thyself, and not only inwardly to visit thy dearest Soul, but also to pierce into the very centre thereof, to view and behold there thy Creator; which thou mayest the better gather and recollect the beams of thy inward man from the distractions of this outward world, and revoke them from external actions, to participate with thy inward joys."
— Robert Fludd (17 January 1574 – 8 September 1637), "Clavis Philosophiae"