The Book of Creation & Book of Scripture
the Book of Nature and the Book of Divine Revelation
“Twofold is the Macrocosmic Cabala which is handed down to us: the Macrocosmic Cabala of the Book of Nature, and the Macrocosmic Cabala of the Book of Scripture. Both are from God, both are true, both agree perfectly.” - Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605) – Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (1595/1609): From the circular diagram in the 1609 edition: “Oratorium et Laboratorium” with the famous inscription “Quæritur in Libro Naturæ et Sacræ Scripturæ”
The Book of Nature and the Book of God
In traditional Hermetic-Alchemical symbolism, there exist two great books:
- The Book of Nature: The visible universe, with its laws, patterns, analogies, and correspondences. Through observation, experimentation, and meditation, the alchemist learns Nature’s secrets directly.
- The Book of God (Scripture, Divine Revelation): Spiritual truths revealed explicitly through inspired teachings, traditions, scriptures, and mystical revelations.
To the alchemist, both books harmonize. The Book of Nature reveals God’s wisdom through tangible reality, while the Book of God offers direct insight into spiritual truths. Mastery and wisdom are gained by reading, interpreting, and reconciling both books.
Scripture and Nature are two revelations of one God. Scripture gives the explicit word; Nature gives the implicit word. Nature is symbolic. It uses correspondence, analogy, and signature. Scripture is symbolic. The literal meaning is not sufficient; true reading requires Hermeneutics, Qabalah, and inner illumination. The Adept must read both books simultaneously.
Both books are written by the same divine Author, written in different languages, and perfectly harmonious when correctly interpreted. The mature adept must become literate in both. Both books are authored by God and therefore cannot contradict each other when properly read.
The Book of Nature is written in the “language of things” (signatures, correspondences, analogies); its alphabet is plants, minerals, stars, animals, and laboratory phenomena.
The Book of Scripture is written in human language and provides the key to correctly interpret the signatures of Nature (especially after the Fall corrupted human understanding).
The true alchemist, magus, or mystic must become bilingual: able to read the hieroglyphs of creation and the revealed text of the Bible.
Both books require purification of perception. Nature without illumination ……. Scripture without illumination leads to dogmatism. Neglecting either book leads to error: pure bibliolatry produces sterile dogma; pure naturalism produces materialism or idolatry. The Adept seeks direct perception of both. The reconciliation of the two books in the heart of the adept is the essence of the “Philosophers’ Stone” or true wisdom.
“There are, therefore, two kinds of knowledge in this world: an eternal and a temporal. The eternal springs directly from the light of the Holy Spirit, but the other directly from the Light of Nature.” - Paracelsus
The Inner Third Book of the Soul
The“third book” is the soul. The third book one must read is oneself.
the observable cosmos as a legible archive of God's craftsmanship and the Bible as explicit revelation
Quæritur in Libro Naturæ et Sacræ Scripturæ "It is sought [or 'It is to be inquired after'] in the Book of Nature and [the] Sacred Scripture."
The Book of Nature (librum naturae)
“We must seek for knowledge where we may expect to find it. He who wants to study the book of nature must wander with his feet over the leaves. Every part of the world represents a page in this book, and all the pages together form the book that contains her great revelations.” – Paracelsus
"the book of nature [can become] readable and comprehensible" - Galileo Galilei
nature itself is a source of knowledge and wisdom, to be studied as a book written by God.
Nature itself is a readable text, open to human knowledge and understanding.
Nature’s book is the alchemist’s primary scripture, and reading it correctly is their central discipline.
studying plants, minerals, and stars is akin to reading a sacred text.
“The realms of nature are the letters, and man is the word that is composed of these letters.” - Paracelsus
by patiently spelling out Nature’s symbols (in the laboratory and in the wild), the alchemist could read the larger “Word” or meaning – learning the grammar of God’s creation.
“Seeking for truth, I considered with myself that if there were no teachers of medicine in this world, how would I set to learn the art? No otherwise than in the great open book of nature, written with the finger of God.” - Paracelsus
“Through this door I entered, and the light of nature, and no apothecary’s lamp directed me on my way.” - Paracelsus
Paracelsus emphasized "the value of observation in combination with received wisdom," uniting empirical study with mystical insight. The Natural Philosopher reads both the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture, finding the same divine truths written in different languages.
"Know nature, universally, and particularly; from the book of the most holy Scripture: Of the nature itself, which is, and the greater world, the whole: and the lesser world, this is man, for example, according to both his body and his spirit."
— The Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom, c. 1595 by Heinrich Khunrath
“Nature is the universal teacher. Whoever does not learn from her, the book, from which one learns, will teach him nothing.”
— Paracelsus, Paragranum
“Do not believe me because I write it, but because nature teaches it.”
— Paracelsus, Volumen Paramirum
“The physician is the servant of nature, not her master. Therefore he must follow the will of nature in all things.”
— Paracelsus, Opus Paramirum
“Nature is the manifested God; the outward world is a figure of the inward spiritual world.”
— Jacob Bohme, The Signature of All Things
“The whole outward visible world with all its being is a signature or figure of the inward spiritual world; and the two worlds belong together as body and soul.”
— Jacob Bohme, The Signature of All Things
“Nature is the book which the Eternal writes; to read it is to read God.”
— Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, Emblem I commentary
“Every creature is a word of God.”
— Meister Eckhart, Sermons
“To read the scripture of creation, one must read with the inner eye.”
— Meister Eckhart, Paraphrase of several sermons
“All of creation is a book, and God is the writer.”
— Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias
“Creation is the garment of the Holy One, blessed be He.”
— The Zohar I.134b
The Book of Scripture
the "Book of Scripture," the revealed word of God
"Know thyself, from the book of the Holy Scriptures; The nature of the whole Universe, that is, and the whole Macrocosm, and the Microcosm, whether you yourself, according to both your body and your spirit; finally, and your mind, united to God."
— Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae by Heinrich Khunrath
"God has sent His heart together with His life into us, and everything is written there. Whoever reads that book within himself has learned enough. The other (external) book is like Babylon, a fable, which a person tries to understand through letters (scriptures) without inner enlightenment. Such a person must learn from the letter externally because he cannot read his own inner book. Let him first read within himself, and then he will discover, on his own, everything that the children of God have written. — The remainder of books written by Jacob Behme, c. 1662
The Two Lights
“The light of Nature is a great light, but it must be guided by the greater light of God’s word.”
— The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony by Basil Valentine
“Study the book of Nature diligently, for it is written by the finger of God.”
— Twelve Keys by Basil Valentine
“All of Holy Scripture and all of Nature, the great and small world, are full of God.”
— Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae by Heinrich Khunrath
“The Bible is the key to the understanding of Nature, and Nature is the key to the understanding of the Bible.”
— Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae by Heinrich Khunrath
“Sacred scripture interprets nature; nature demonstrates scripture.”
— Michael Maier, Themis Aurea
“Our Philosophy is not a new invention, but the same which Adam received after his fall and which Moses and Solomon used. It is founded on the book of Nature and on the book of Scripture.” - Fama Fraternitatis (1614)
“The whole world is as an open book, written by the finger of God.” - Confessio Fraternitatis (1615):
“The divine is hidden in everything; the whole world is a book written by the finger of God.”
— Giordano Bruno, De la Causa, Principio et Uno
“The universe is the shadow of God; to study nature is to read the divine text.”
— Giordano Bruno, Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante
“God has given us two books: the book of scripture and the book of the world.” — Marsilio Ficino, Often attributed to Ficino’s letters
“It is the duty of the wise to read the book of Scripture and the book of Nature together.”
— Pico della Mirandola, Heptaplus
“God hath left two Records of Himself for man to contemplate and search into: the one is written in great letters in the Book of the Creature or Nature; the other in smaller characters in the Sacred Scriptures.”
- Robert Fludd (1574–1637), Mosaicall Philosophy (1659)
“Two lights are given to man for his direction: the Light of Grace (in Scripture) and the Light of Nature. He who neglects either remains in darkness.”
- Johannes Baptista van Helmont (1580–1644):
“Some books are to be read, but this book of the universe is to be read by looking.”
— Augustine, Confessions
“The whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly than any single creature does.”
— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but cannot be understood unless one first learns to understand the language and characters in which it is written.”
— Galileo, Il Saggiatore (The Assayer), 1623
Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096–1141) – often regarded as the first to clearly articulate the Two Books metaphor in the Latin West:
“The whole sensible world is like a book written by the finger of God … but also every creature is like a figure, not invented by human determination, but established by the divine will to manifest the invisible things of God’s wisdom … Thus the universe is like a book (liber universus est quasi quidam liber).”
- Didascalicon, Book VII, ch. 4
Raymond of Sabunde (d. 1436) – author of the famous Theologia Naturalis seu Liber Creaturarum (c. 1434–36):
“There are two books given to us by God: one is the book of the universe (liber universi), or the book of nature; the other is the book of Sacred Scripture. The first book is given to all men so that all may read it … the second book was given because the first was not sufficient after sin.”
Oswald Croll (c. 1560–1609), Basilica Chymica (1609), Preface:
“God has given us two books: the Book of Conscience within us, and the Book of Nature without us. The first teaches us to know ourselves; the second, the creatures and their virtues. Both are necessary to the true physician.”
Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) – repeatedly returns to the two books:
“God has given us two books: one is the living book within us, the heart; the other is the book of nature and creatures. Whoever cannot read the first will never understand the second.”
(De Signatura Rerum, ch. 1)
“The whole outward visible world with all its being is a signature, or figure of the inward spiritual world … This outward world is the book of the signature of the eternal Word.”
The Rosicrucian Confessio Fraternitatis (1615):
“God has given man two eyes: one to contemplate the wonders of nature, the other to read Holy Scripture. Both are necessary for perfect knowledge.”
Comenius (Jan Amos Komenský, 1592–1670), a Pansophist heavily influenced by alchemical and Hermetic ideas:
“The Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture are two volumes of one and the same divine library.”
Paracelsus, Paragranum (c. 1530): “The physician must pass through two schools: the visible and the invisible … The visible is the school of Nature, the invisible is the school of God in Holy Scripture.”
Paracelsus, Labyrinthus Medicorum (1538): “There are two kinds of wisdom: the wisdom of God and the wisdom of Nature. The wisdom of God is revealed in Scripture; the wisdom of Nature is revealed in the light of Nature (Lumen Naturae). Both must be known.”