28. If Heaven Wills It, Thou Shalt Know That Nature, Alike in Everything, Is the Same in Every Place

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet, [1917], at sacred-texts.com

28. If Heaven wills it, thou shalt know that Nature,
Alike in everything, is the same in every place.

I have already said that the homogeneity of Nature was, with the unity of God, one of the greatest secrets of the mysteries. Pythagoras founded this homogeneity upon the unity of the spirit by which it is penetrated and from which, according to him, all our souls draw their origin. ^b This dogma which he had received from the Chaldeans and from the priests of Egypt was admitted by all the sages of antiquity, as is proved at great length by Stanley and the astute Beausobre. ^c These sages established a harmony, a perfect analogy between heaven and earth, the intelligible and the sentient, the indivisible substance and the divisible substance; in such a manner that that which took place in one of the regions of the Universe or of the modifications of the primordial Ternary was the exact image of that which took place in the other. This idea is found very forcibly revealed by the ancient Thoth, called Hermes Trismegistus, ^d by the Greeks, in the table of Emerald which is attributed to him.

In truth, and without fiction, in truth, in truth, I say to you, that things inferior are like unto the superior; both unite their invincible forces to produce one sole thing, the most marvellous of all, and as all things are emanated by the will of one unique God, thus all things whatsoever must be engendered by this sole thing,—by a disposition of Universal nature. ^e

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I must say, however, that it is upon the homogeneity of Nature that were founded in the principle all the so-called occult sciences of which the principal four, relating to the human Quaternary, were Theurgy, Astrology, Magic, and Chemistry. ^a I have already spoken of the astrological science, and I have given sufficient evidence of what I think regarding the ridiculous and petty ideas concerning it that the moderns have conceived. I will refrain from speaking of the other three, on account of the prolixities into which the discussions that they would provoke might lure me. In another work I will endeavour to show that the principles upon which they were supported differed greatly from those which superstition and blind credulity have given them in times of ignorance; and that the sciences taught to the initiates in the ancient sanctuaries, under the names of Theurgy, Magic, or Chemistry, differed much from what the vulgar have understood in later times by the same words.

Footnotes

251:b Porphyr., Sent., no. 10, p. 221; Stanl., In Pythag., p. 775.

251:c Stanley, De Phil. chald., p. 1123; Beausob., Hist. du Manich., t. ii., l. ix., c. 1, § 10.

251:d Τρισμέγιστος, thrice greatest.

251:e It is said that this famous table of Emerald was found in the valley of Hebron, in a sepulchre where it was between the hands of the cadaver of p. 252 Thoth himself. Krigsmann, who assures us that this table must have read in Phœnician and not in Greek, quotes it a little differently from what one reads in the ordinary versions. Voyez Tabula Smaragdina, citée par Fabric., Bibl. Græc., p. 68.

252:a Hermès, In Asclep., c. 9; Jambl., De Myst. Egypt., c. 30; Maimon., Mor. Nevoch., part ii., c. 10; Origen, Contr. Cels., l. i.; Beausob., Hist. du Manich., t. ii., p. 49.