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Diptych of Discourses#2
The Garden of Cyrus
This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: printed in the year in 1736 in 58 pages; Subjects: Gardening / General;
30 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1658
About the author
Thomas Browne
469books115followersSir Thomas Browne(1605–1682) was an English polymath and author of works on various subjects, including science, medicine, religion and esoteric.
Browne's writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry. Browne's literary works are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffering from melancholia, his writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence.
After graduating M.A. from Broadgates Hall, Oxford (1629), he studied medicine privately and worked as an assistant to an Oxford doctor. He then attended the Universities of Montpellier and Padua, and in 1633 he was graduated M.D. at Leiden.
Browne's medical education in Europe also earned him incorporation as M.D. from Oxford, and in 1637 he moved to Norwich, where he lived and practiced medicine until his death in 1682. While Browne seems to have had a keen intellect and was interested in many subjects, his life was outwardly uneventful, although during the Civil War he declared his support for King Charles I and received a knighthood from King Charles II in 1671.
Browne's writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry. Browne's literary works are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffering from melancholia, his writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence.
After graduating M.A. from Broadgates Hall, Oxford (1629), he studied medicine privately and worked as an assistant to an Oxford doctor. He then attended the Universities of Montpellier and Padua, and in 1633 he was graduated M.D. at Leiden.
Browne's medical education in Europe also earned him incorporation as M.D. from Oxford, and in 1637 he moved to Norwich, where he lived and practiced medicine until his death in 1682. While Browne seems to have had a keen intellect and was interested in many subjects, his life was outwardly uneventful, although during the Civil War he declared his support for King Charles I and received a knighthood from King Charles II in 1671.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 23, 2019
While writing my first novelBig Sleep Boogie—available through Amazon now—I decided that an old book with a quincunx on the cover would be a perfect McGuffin for the plot. The quincunx is the five-point pattern found on the five-point die, and, in the course of doing what I thought would be just a wee bit of research, I found quincunx concept—from its use in renaissance gardening to its ancient mystical implications—to be a fascinating one. It was a search that inevitably brought me to Sir Thomas Browne—17th century author of the essays “Religio Medici” and “Urne BurialThe Garden of Cyrus.
Browne is a considerable prose stylist, an undeniable influence on that master of Romantic prose, Thomas De Quincey. Browne’s prose is periodic, ornate and difficult, and every passage typically has to be read more than once. I have to admit, though, that inThe Garden of CyrusBrowne undoes himself. Even though it is only fifty pages long, it took me quite awhile to finish it. I still don’t think I understand it. But, like the few dozen pages ofFinnegan’s WakeI completed, I enjoyed it more than almost anything else I’ve read that I barely understood at all.
I’m not sure the blame is Browne’s. After all, he was trying to something extraordinarily ambitious. In a small dense treatise of only five chapters—of course it would havefivechapters—he strives to trace this five point patterns through the works of nature and the designs of man, catalogue itsdecussations(the crossings—like those of never fibres—that the pattern implies), and.suggest some of its mystical implications to its continual appearance in the universal order.
I can’t really recommend this book whole-heartedly, for its difficulties are considerable, but I would strongly advice you to dip into it, here and there, just to sample the wonders of its prose. Here’s just a little sample. I believe Browne’s purpose is to indicate to us that the same pattern of quincunx and decussation that can be found above us in the stars is also revealed below us in the stones of the earth:
Could we satisfie ourselves in the position of the lights above, or discover the wisedom of that order so invariably maintained in the fixed Stars of heaven; Could we have any light, why the stellary part of the first masse, separated into this order, that the Girdle of Orion should ever maintain its line, and the two Starres in Charles’s Wain never leave pointing at the Pole-Starre, we might abate the Pythagoricall Musick of the Spheres, the sevenfold Pipe of Pan; and the strange Cryptography of Gaffarell in his Starrie Booke of Heaven.
But not to look so high as Heaven or the single Quincunx of the Hyades upon the head of Taurus, the Triangle, and remarkable Crusero about the foot of the Centaur; observable rudiments there are hereof in subterraneous concretions, and bodies in the Earth; in the Gypsum or Talcum Rhomboides, in the Favaginites or honey-comb-stone, in the Asteria and Astroites, and in the crucigerous stone of S. Iago of Gallicia.
August 15, 2013
Back in January, I printed a quote fromSir Thomas Browne’sHydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, or. A Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes Lately Found in Norfolk(1658). A reader named Kevin Faulkner took me to task for essentially taking the easy way out and not quite coming to terms with the work of the 17th century scientist, divine, and mystic. He recommended that I read the companion piece Browne published in the same year, entitledThe Garden of Cyrus, or, the Quincunciall, Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically Considered with Sundry Observations.
This week, I finally got around to readingThe Garden of Cyrus.When confronting such a powerful mind as Browne’s, with his phenomenal erudition, recall, and powers of observation, I must confess to feeling unworthy. Never before has prose risen to such poetic heights, with a level of difficulty that approaches Joyce’sFinnegan’s Wake.The following comes early in the first chapter:
Browne goes far beyond the lattice-work in nature and botany to a mystical consideration of the shape and of the number five, which it suggests in the Quincunx pattern, with a tree in the center and one at each of the four points in a lozenge-shape surrounding the central tree. As Browne says in his conclusion in Chapter Five (the last chapter, appropriately): “All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven.”
Sir Thomas Browne is not a writer one can read once over lightly. Each of his powerful essays, including hisReligio Medici,begs to be accepted as avade mecumto which the reader will return again and again.
And what does the reader gain? Actually, the erudition and complex latinate vocabulary by itself is not the reason for a further acquaintance: Rather, it is the way in which the towering speculations of the author are in the humble service of his God. For Browne, there is no conflict between science and Christianity. They complement each other at every turn.
Somehow, I feel as if my dreams tonight will be of rhombuses and quincunxes extending into the heavens, from the smallest parts of creation even unto the stars.
If you are even moderately interested in a difficult and rewarding author, I suggest you read his essays, and also look of Kevin Faulkner’s excellent website entitledThe Aquarium of Vulcan,which deals rather more substantially with Browne than I am able to at this time.
This week, I finally got around to readingThe Garden of Cyrus.When confronting such a powerful mind as Browne’s, with his phenomenal erudition, recall, and powers of observation, I must confess to feeling unworthy. Never before has prose risen to such poetic heights, with a level of difficulty that approaches Joyce’sFinnegan’s Wake.The following comes early in the first chapter:
Wherein the decussis is made within a longilaterall square, with opposite angles, acute and obtuse at the intersection; and so upon progression making a Rhombus or lozenge configuration, which seemeth very agreeable unto the originall figure; Answerable whereunto we observe the decussated characters in many consulary Coynes, even even those of Constantine and his Sons, which pretend their character in the Sky; the crucigerous Ensigne carried this figure, not transversely or rectangularly intersected, but in a decussation, after the form of an Andrean or Burgundian cross, which answereth this description.Now this is in no wise to be considered as light reading. Yet there is a Greco-Roman sense of majesty in which Browne takes the simple shape illustrated above, inspired by the tree planting pattern of Cyrus in ancient Persia, as one of the basic patterns in nature and art. And ultimately in the mind of God.
Browne goes far beyond the lattice-work in nature and botany to a mystical consideration of the shape and of the number five, which it suggests in the Quincunx pattern, with a tree in the center and one at each of the four points in a lozenge-shape surrounding the central tree. As Browne says in his conclusion in Chapter Five (the last chapter, appropriately): “All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven.”
Sir Thomas Browne is not a writer one can read once over lightly. Each of his powerful essays, including hisReligio Medici,begs to be accepted as avade mecumto which the reader will return again and again.
And what does the reader gain? Actually, the erudition and complex latinate vocabulary by itself is not the reason for a further acquaintance: Rather, it is the way in which the towering speculations of the author are in the humble service of his God. For Browne, there is no conflict between science and Christianity. They complement each other at every turn.
Somehow, I feel as if my dreams tonight will be of rhombuses and quincunxes extending into the heavens, from the smallest parts of creation even unto the stars.
If you are even moderately interested in a difficult and rewarding author, I suggest you read his essays, and also look of Kevin Faulkner’s excellent website entitledThe Aquarium of Vulcan,which deals rather more substantially with Browne than I am able to at this time.
February 18, 2016
Just how Sir Thomas Browne’s discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) has not been recognised as one of the greatest examples of hermetic philosophy in English literature remains a mystery. The very opening page of Browne's discourse includes no less than six major themes, symbols and preoccupations associated with hermeticism. Opening with highly original proper-name symbolism and naming the patron "deity" associated with Paracelsian alchemy, featuring Browne’s study of comparative religion, along with his distinctive spiritual-optical imagery, speculating upon the Creation and life’s beginnings, alluding to the potent alchemical symbol of the conjunctio of Sol et Luna and citing Plato’s discourse, the Timaeus, Browne could not spell out his esoteric inclinations to his reader more emphatically if he tried.
Unsurprisingly, because of its esoteric theme, the reception and literary appreciation of The Garden of Cyrus over the past three hundred and fifty years, has been little more than a potted history of the many prejudices, misapprehensions and hostilities surrounding the hermetic arts. Within twenty years of its publication, the theologian Richard Baxter opposed Browne's Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic vision, declaring to newly-ordained priests in 1678 -
'You shall have more.. solid truth than those in their learned Network treatises'.
Though appreciative of the stoic gloom and doom of Urn-Burial, Victorians literary critics considered The Garden of Cyrus to be an aberration of the imagination, and the publishing practice began, utterly against Browne's creative intentions, of dissecting his literary diptych and printing Urn-Burial separately, an erroneous trend which persists to this day. [1] Even Walter Pater a leading literary critic of Victorian England complained of Browne’s Platonic inclinations -
'his fancy carries him off it into some kind of chimeric frivolousness here'.
Edmund Gosse was another who detested it, petulantly stating -
'gathering his forces it is Quincunx, Quincunx, all the way until the very sky itself is darkened with revolving Chess-boards'
Yet Gosse also conceded, - 'this radically bad book contains some of the most lovely paragraphs which passed from an English pen during the seventeenth Century'.
Literary critics however have rarely understood the pervasive influence of the hermetic arts, or the vitality of the esoteric, in particular during the 1650’s. The decade of the Protectorate of Cromwell saw a ‘boom-period’ in the publication of esoteric literature, encouraged by a relaxation in printing-laws and the psychological Endzeitpsychosis of the era. There can be as few readers now, as in 1658, who have any idea of the artistic motivation behind Browne's penning a Pythagorean hymn in praise of the number five and Quincunx pattern during England’s short-lived Republic. Only his contemporary, the solitary figure of the Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan (c.1621-65) may have been aware of the hermetic content of Browne's literary diptych. Alluding to the dominant symbol of each respective Discourse, Vaughan described alchemy’s elusive Mercurius as -
‘our true, hidden vessel, the Philosophical Garden, wherein our sun rises and sets'.
In many ways The Garden of Cyrus with its allusions to astrology, Egyptology, the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras, the cabbala, physiognomy and Paracelsus, is a condensed compendium of esoteric lore. Its central chapter also features Browne’s contribution to the emerging new science. Dozens of sharp-sighted, detailed and meticulously recorded botanical observations are recorded. Like other alchemist-physicians, Browne was fascinated with life's beginnings. Many observations and speculations upon embryology, germination and generation dominate the central chapter of the discourse.
The Garden of Cyrus opens with the Creation being likened to the alchemical opus - God operating as a demi-urge figure and cosmic alchemist.
'That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day; When the diffused light contracted into Orbs, and shooting rays, of those Luminaries.'
This extraordinary, literally cosmic, opening, besides naming the Roman god nominated by Paracelsus as representative of the alchemical art and introducing the important themes of Light and Space, also features Browne’s study of comparative religion. Browne detected that the ancient Greek myth which describes the god of fire Vulcan donating arrows, i.e. Light, to Apollo and Diana, as recorded in the Fabulae of Hyginus [2] was a Creation myth in which -just like in the Biblical account of the Creation - Light appears upon the fourth Day. (And God said Let there be Light. Genesis 1:3). The ancient Greek myth in Browne’s view was no blind apprehension but confirmation of the Biblical account of the Creation.
Browne reconciled the wisdom of antiquity to Christianity in exactly the same way as Renaissance scholars Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, by giving credence of a Pricia Theologia, that is a belief in a single, true theology threading through all religions, passed in a golden chain through a series of mystics and prophets, including Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Plato. In particular, the mythic Hermes Trismegistus was believed to be a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. Christianity appropriated hermetic teaching for their own purposes, proposing that Hermes Trismegistus or ‘thrice greatest’ on account of his being the greatest priest, philosopher and king, was a contemporary of Moses. Such imaginative comparative religion not only justified the study of philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato, but also sanctioned the antiquity, wisdom and superiority of the Bible to devout Christians.
Proceeding on from 'plainer descriptions' by 'pagan pens' Browne next acknowledges the primary source of another influential Creation myth, Plato's discourse the Timaeus.
Plainer Descriptions there are from Pagan pens, of the creatures of the fourth day; While the divine Philosopher unhappily omitteth the noblest part of the third;
With its myth of the lost civilization of Atlantis, description of the Eternal Forms and proposal that the world was a living being possessing a soul - the anima mundi or World-Soul, Plato’s Timaeus, first translated in 1462 by Marsilio Ficino, wielded a Bible-like authority amongst thinkers, artists and mystics throughout the Renaissance. The Timaeus was an enormous influence upon the imagination of alchemist and hermetic philosopher alike, in particular for its advocacy of a World-Soul or Universal Spirit in Nature. Browne speculated upon the existence of the anima mundi in Religio Medici thus-
'Now besides these particular and divided Spirits, there may be (for ought I know) an universal and common Spirit to the whole world. It was the opinion of Plato, and is yet of the Hermeticall philosophers; if there be a common nature that unites and ties the scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them all?' [3]
Throughout his literary diptych, Browne displays an uncommon familiarity with Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher’s writings being well-represented in his vast library. Browne even describes the 'father of western mysticism' with the self-same phrase as Ficino and John Dee, calling him the divine philosopher. (Divine pertaining to Plato’s theology rather than the modern term of adulation). The influence of Platonic thought looms large throughout The Garden of Cyrus, in particular the Greek philosopher’s advancing of the anima mundi or Universal Spirit permeating Nature.
According to C.G. Jung -
The alchemist thought he knew better than anyone else that, at the Creation, at least a little bit of divinity, the anima mundi, entered into material things and was caught there'. [4]
Just as the diptych companion discourse Urn-Burial depicts the human soul trapped within the corporeal body, so too in The Garden of Cyrus Browne endeavours to demonstrate that the anima mundi or World-Soul is imprisoned in nature, alluding to the anima mundi or World-Soul on several occasions.
In the 'Great Work' of alchemy the initial dark nigredo stage is followed by the albedo or whitening phase and the light of illumination. While Urn-Burial represents the nigredo, its antithesis The Garden of Cyrus represents the albedo and the growth of consciousness. According to Jung-
'By means of the opus which the adept likens to the creation of the world, the albedo or whitening is produced.' [5]
Starting from the Garden of Eden Browne traces the ubiquity of the Quincunx pattern, firstly as a method of planting to the ancients. The Garden of Eden was a favourite symbol in Christian iconography of Paradise. Its early appearance in The Garden of Cyrus as representing the albedo stage of Browne's literary mandala, is confirmed by Jung's observation that-
For the alchemists Paradise was a favourite symbol of the albedo, the regained state of innocence.[6]
Gardens are often mentioned in alchemical literature. At their highest level they symbolize civilization and man's mastery of Nature, as well as being symbolic of pleasure, Nature's beauty, Order and Rationality, themes highly relevant to Browne's discourse.
The densely-packed symbolism and imagery of the opening paragraph of The Garden of Cyrus also alludes to the potent symbol of the alchemical opus, the hierosgamos, or sacred wedding, or Conjunctio of Sol et Luna. Sun and moon are among the most psychologically potent of all symbols, encapsulating nature's greatest division (male and female) as well as the active and passive, light and dark, and consciousness and unconsciousness. Browne’s usage of this commonplace symbol is another strong clue to the alchemical nature of The Garden of Cyrus. Allusion to the alchemical conjunction occurs throughout the discourse in images and symbols drawn from nature, mythology and the esoteric.
There is also a Gnostic element in Browne’s literary mandala in its highly original usage of optical imagery of light and darkness.The basic mandala of Gnosticism and alchemy, the Ouroboros can also be detected as a template of the diptych. Throughout Urn-Burial imagery of shade and darkness abounds. As the nigredo stage of the alchemical opus, the discourse is 'lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing' as Browne succinctly defines it. In contradistinction, throughout The Garden of Cyrus imagery of light including starry, astral imagery is replete. At its apotheosis, the short revelatory rudebo phase of scientific certainty is ushered by the demiurge figure of Vulcan, before a final coda and a circular return of night, darkness and doubt which concludes the discourse.
Browne develops his theme of optical imagery in The Garden of Cyrus in a rapturous, cosmic outburst, concluding with a subtle, humorous observation.
Darkness and light hold interchangeable dominions, and alternately rule the seminal state of things. Light unto Pluto is darkness unto Jupiter. Legions of seminal Idea's lie in their second Chaos and Orcus of Hippocrates; till putting on the habits of their forms, they show themselves upon the stage of the world, and open dominion of Jove. They that held the Stars of heaven were but rays and flashing glimpses of the Empyreal light, through holes and perforations of the upper heaven, took of the natural shadows of stars, while according to better discovery the poor Inhabitants of the Moon have but a polary life, and must passe half their days in the shadow of that Luminary.
The concept of polarity (a word introduced by Browne into English language in its scientific context) is an essential component of much esoteric symbolism. The opposites and their union were a fundamental quest of Hermetic philosopher and alchemist alike. Browne’s literary diptych, like all good mandalas of any psychological depth, is a complex of opposites or complexio oppositorum in imagery, truths and symbols. It corresponds well to the polarity of the Micro-Macro schemata of Hermeticism in which the little world of man and his mortality (as in Urn-Burial ) is mirrored by the vast Macrocosm of the Eternal forms in The Garden of Cyrus. The alchemical maxim solve et coagula (decay and growth) also closely approximates the respective themes of the diptych. The Gnostic progression from darkness and unknowingness to Light and awareness using optical imagery has already been noted. The alchemical feat of palingenesis, the revivification of a plant from its ashes, as reputedly performed by the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus is another alchemical template upon which the Discourses may be considered to bear comparison. The funerary ashes of Urn-Burial burst into flower in the botanical delights of The Garden of Cyrus.
Browne’s hermetic vision of the interconnection of Nature via the closely related symbols of the Quincunx pattern, the number five and the figure X - identify The Garden of Cyrus, however much previously misunderstood, as a quintessential work of Hermeticism. The ambitious mission of its author is synonymous with the ultimate quest of alchemists and hermetic philosophers alike, to redeem mankind from the dark prison of ignorance and unknowingness (as portrayed in Urn-Burial) towards recognition of the wisdom of God in number, shape and archetype, all of which are somewhat breathlessly delineated in The Garden of Cyrus.
In an era of considerable psychological stress and uncertainty, the Quincunx pattern in The Garden of Cyrus assumes a spiritual, mandala-like significance, suggestive that Browne believed he had been permitted to glimpse into Nature's highest arcarna and thus acquire the wisdom of the Stone of the Philosophers no less. Browne’s fixation with the Quincunx pattern may therefore be interpreted as none other than his recognition of a symbol of totality and wholeness - the Unio mentalis or self-knowledge of the alchemists. As ever the foremost interpreter of alchemy in the 20th century, C.G.Jung places Sir Thomas Browne's creativity in clearer perspective, helpfully and tantalizingly Jung notes -
'The quinarius or Quino (in the form of 4 + 1 i.e. Quincunx) does occur as as symbol of wholeness (in china and occasionally in alchemy) but relatively rarely'.
Crucially, in words utterly apt to Browne's creativity in The Garden of Cyrus C.G.Jung observed-
Intellectual responsibility seems always to have been the alchemists weak spot... The less respect they showed for the bowed shoulders of the sweating reader, the greater was their debt.. to the unconscious. The alchemists were so steeped in their inner experiences, that their whole concern was to devise fitting images and expressions regardless whether they were intelligible or not. They performed the inestimable service of having constructed a phenomenology of the unconscious long before the advent of psychology. The alchemists did not really know what they were writing about, Whether we know today seems to me not altogether sure. [7]
Notes
[1] American academic Stephen Greenblatt's recent edition perpetuates this error.
[2] Section 140 in Hyginus Fabulae listed in 1711 Sales Catalogue page.13 no.35
[3] Religio Medici Part I Section 32
[4]CW 14 764
[5] CW 9 ii: 230
[6] CW 9 ii: 372.
[7] CW 16:497
Unsurprisingly, because of its esoteric theme, the reception and literary appreciation of The Garden of Cyrus over the past three hundred and fifty years, has been little more than a potted history of the many prejudices, misapprehensions and hostilities surrounding the hermetic arts. Within twenty years of its publication, the theologian Richard Baxter opposed Browne's Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic vision, declaring to newly-ordained priests in 1678 -
'You shall have more.. solid truth than those in their learned Network treatises'.
Though appreciative of the stoic gloom and doom of Urn-Burial, Victorians literary critics considered The Garden of Cyrus to be an aberration of the imagination, and the publishing practice began, utterly against Browne's creative intentions, of dissecting his literary diptych and printing Urn-Burial separately, an erroneous trend which persists to this day. [1] Even Walter Pater a leading literary critic of Victorian England complained of Browne’s Platonic inclinations -
'his fancy carries him off it into some kind of chimeric frivolousness here'.
Edmund Gosse was another who detested it, petulantly stating -
'gathering his forces it is Quincunx, Quincunx, all the way until the very sky itself is darkened with revolving Chess-boards'
Yet Gosse also conceded, - 'this radically bad book contains some of the most lovely paragraphs which passed from an English pen during the seventeenth Century'.
Literary critics however have rarely understood the pervasive influence of the hermetic arts, or the vitality of the esoteric, in particular during the 1650’s. The decade of the Protectorate of Cromwell saw a ‘boom-period’ in the publication of esoteric literature, encouraged by a relaxation in printing-laws and the psychological Endzeitpsychosis of the era. There can be as few readers now, as in 1658, who have any idea of the artistic motivation behind Browne's penning a Pythagorean hymn in praise of the number five and Quincunx pattern during England’s short-lived Republic. Only his contemporary, the solitary figure of the Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan (c.1621-65) may have been aware of the hermetic content of Browne's literary diptych. Alluding to the dominant symbol of each respective Discourse, Vaughan described alchemy’s elusive Mercurius as -
‘our true, hidden vessel, the Philosophical Garden, wherein our sun rises and sets'.
In many ways The Garden of Cyrus with its allusions to astrology, Egyptology, the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras, the cabbala, physiognomy and Paracelsus, is a condensed compendium of esoteric lore. Its central chapter also features Browne’s contribution to the emerging new science. Dozens of sharp-sighted, detailed and meticulously recorded botanical observations are recorded. Like other alchemist-physicians, Browne was fascinated with life's beginnings. Many observations and speculations upon embryology, germination and generation dominate the central chapter of the discourse.
The Garden of Cyrus opens with the Creation being likened to the alchemical opus - God operating as a demi-urge figure and cosmic alchemist.
'That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day; When the diffused light contracted into Orbs, and shooting rays, of those Luminaries.'
This extraordinary, literally cosmic, opening, besides naming the Roman god nominated by Paracelsus as representative of the alchemical art and introducing the important themes of Light and Space, also features Browne’s study of comparative religion. Browne detected that the ancient Greek myth which describes the god of fire Vulcan donating arrows, i.e. Light, to Apollo and Diana, as recorded in the Fabulae of Hyginus [2] was a Creation myth in which -just like in the Biblical account of the Creation - Light appears upon the fourth Day. (And God said Let there be Light. Genesis 1:3). The ancient Greek myth in Browne’s view was no blind apprehension but confirmation of the Biblical account of the Creation.
Browne reconciled the wisdom of antiquity to Christianity in exactly the same way as Renaissance scholars Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, by giving credence of a Pricia Theologia, that is a belief in a single, true theology threading through all religions, passed in a golden chain through a series of mystics and prophets, including Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Plato. In particular, the mythic Hermes Trismegistus was believed to be a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. Christianity appropriated hermetic teaching for their own purposes, proposing that Hermes Trismegistus or ‘thrice greatest’ on account of his being the greatest priest, philosopher and king, was a contemporary of Moses. Such imaginative comparative religion not only justified the study of philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato, but also sanctioned the antiquity, wisdom and superiority of the Bible to devout Christians.
Proceeding on from 'plainer descriptions' by 'pagan pens' Browne next acknowledges the primary source of another influential Creation myth, Plato's discourse the Timaeus.
Plainer Descriptions there are from Pagan pens, of the creatures of the fourth day; While the divine Philosopher unhappily omitteth the noblest part of the third;
With its myth of the lost civilization of Atlantis, description of the Eternal Forms and proposal that the world was a living being possessing a soul - the anima mundi or World-Soul, Plato’s Timaeus, first translated in 1462 by Marsilio Ficino, wielded a Bible-like authority amongst thinkers, artists and mystics throughout the Renaissance. The Timaeus was an enormous influence upon the imagination of alchemist and hermetic philosopher alike, in particular for its advocacy of a World-Soul or Universal Spirit in Nature. Browne speculated upon the existence of the anima mundi in Religio Medici thus-
'Now besides these particular and divided Spirits, there may be (for ought I know) an universal and common Spirit to the whole world. It was the opinion of Plato, and is yet of the Hermeticall philosophers; if there be a common nature that unites and ties the scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them all?' [3]
Throughout his literary diptych, Browne displays an uncommon familiarity with Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher’s writings being well-represented in his vast library. Browne even describes the 'father of western mysticism' with the self-same phrase as Ficino and John Dee, calling him the divine philosopher. (Divine pertaining to Plato’s theology rather than the modern term of adulation). The influence of Platonic thought looms large throughout The Garden of Cyrus, in particular the Greek philosopher’s advancing of the anima mundi or Universal Spirit permeating Nature.
According to C.G. Jung -
The alchemist thought he knew better than anyone else that, at the Creation, at least a little bit of divinity, the anima mundi, entered into material things and was caught there'. [4]
Just as the diptych companion discourse Urn-Burial depicts the human soul trapped within the corporeal body, so too in The Garden of Cyrus Browne endeavours to demonstrate that the anima mundi or World-Soul is imprisoned in nature, alluding to the anima mundi or World-Soul on several occasions.
In the 'Great Work' of alchemy the initial dark nigredo stage is followed by the albedo or whitening phase and the light of illumination. While Urn-Burial represents the nigredo, its antithesis The Garden of Cyrus represents the albedo and the growth of consciousness. According to Jung-
'By means of the opus which the adept likens to the creation of the world, the albedo or whitening is produced.' [5]
Starting from the Garden of Eden Browne traces the ubiquity of the Quincunx pattern, firstly as a method of planting to the ancients. The Garden of Eden was a favourite symbol in Christian iconography of Paradise. Its early appearance in The Garden of Cyrus as representing the albedo stage of Browne's literary mandala, is confirmed by Jung's observation that-
For the alchemists Paradise was a favourite symbol of the albedo, the regained state of innocence.[6]
Gardens are often mentioned in alchemical literature. At their highest level they symbolize civilization and man's mastery of Nature, as well as being symbolic of pleasure, Nature's beauty, Order and Rationality, themes highly relevant to Browne's discourse.
The densely-packed symbolism and imagery of the opening paragraph of The Garden of Cyrus also alludes to the potent symbol of the alchemical opus, the hierosgamos, or sacred wedding, or Conjunctio of Sol et Luna. Sun and moon are among the most psychologically potent of all symbols, encapsulating nature's greatest division (male and female) as well as the active and passive, light and dark, and consciousness and unconsciousness. Browne’s usage of this commonplace symbol is another strong clue to the alchemical nature of The Garden of Cyrus. Allusion to the alchemical conjunction occurs throughout the discourse in images and symbols drawn from nature, mythology and the esoteric.
There is also a Gnostic element in Browne’s literary mandala in its highly original usage of optical imagery of light and darkness.The basic mandala of Gnosticism and alchemy, the Ouroboros can also be detected as a template of the diptych. Throughout Urn-Burial imagery of shade and darkness abounds. As the nigredo stage of the alchemical opus, the discourse is 'lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing' as Browne succinctly defines it. In contradistinction, throughout The Garden of Cyrus imagery of light including starry, astral imagery is replete. At its apotheosis, the short revelatory rudebo phase of scientific certainty is ushered by the demiurge figure of Vulcan, before a final coda and a circular return of night, darkness and doubt which concludes the discourse.
Browne develops his theme of optical imagery in The Garden of Cyrus in a rapturous, cosmic outburst, concluding with a subtle, humorous observation.
Darkness and light hold interchangeable dominions, and alternately rule the seminal state of things. Light unto Pluto is darkness unto Jupiter. Legions of seminal Idea's lie in their second Chaos and Orcus of Hippocrates; till putting on the habits of their forms, they show themselves upon the stage of the world, and open dominion of Jove. They that held the Stars of heaven were but rays and flashing glimpses of the Empyreal light, through holes and perforations of the upper heaven, took of the natural shadows of stars, while according to better discovery the poor Inhabitants of the Moon have but a polary life, and must passe half their days in the shadow of that Luminary.
The concept of polarity (a word introduced by Browne into English language in its scientific context) is an essential component of much esoteric symbolism. The opposites and their union were a fundamental quest of Hermetic philosopher and alchemist alike. Browne’s literary diptych, like all good mandalas of any psychological depth, is a complex of opposites or complexio oppositorum in imagery, truths and symbols. It corresponds well to the polarity of the Micro-Macro schemata of Hermeticism in which the little world of man and his mortality (as in Urn-Burial ) is mirrored by the vast Macrocosm of the Eternal forms in The Garden of Cyrus. The alchemical maxim solve et coagula (decay and growth) also closely approximates the respective themes of the diptych. The Gnostic progression from darkness and unknowingness to Light and awareness using optical imagery has already been noted. The alchemical feat of palingenesis, the revivification of a plant from its ashes, as reputedly performed by the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus is another alchemical template upon which the Discourses may be considered to bear comparison. The funerary ashes of Urn-Burial burst into flower in the botanical delights of The Garden of Cyrus.
Browne’s hermetic vision of the interconnection of Nature via the closely related symbols of the Quincunx pattern, the number five and the figure X - identify The Garden of Cyrus, however much previously misunderstood, as a quintessential work of Hermeticism. The ambitious mission of its author is synonymous with the ultimate quest of alchemists and hermetic philosophers alike, to redeem mankind from the dark prison of ignorance and unknowingness (as portrayed in Urn-Burial) towards recognition of the wisdom of God in number, shape and archetype, all of which are somewhat breathlessly delineated in The Garden of Cyrus.
In an era of considerable psychological stress and uncertainty, the Quincunx pattern in The Garden of Cyrus assumes a spiritual, mandala-like significance, suggestive that Browne believed he had been permitted to glimpse into Nature's highest arcarna and thus acquire the wisdom of the Stone of the Philosophers no less. Browne’s fixation with the Quincunx pattern may therefore be interpreted as none other than his recognition of a symbol of totality and wholeness - the Unio mentalis or self-knowledge of the alchemists. As ever the foremost interpreter of alchemy in the 20th century, C.G.Jung places Sir Thomas Browne's creativity in clearer perspective, helpfully and tantalizingly Jung notes -
'The quinarius or Quino (in the form of 4 + 1 i.e. Quincunx) does occur as as symbol of wholeness (in china and occasionally in alchemy) but relatively rarely'.
Crucially, in words utterly apt to Browne's creativity in The Garden of Cyrus C.G.Jung observed-
Intellectual responsibility seems always to have been the alchemists weak spot... The less respect they showed for the bowed shoulders of the sweating reader, the greater was their debt.. to the unconscious. The alchemists were so steeped in their inner experiences, that their whole concern was to devise fitting images and expressions regardless whether they were intelligible or not. They performed the inestimable service of having constructed a phenomenology of the unconscious long before the advent of psychology. The alchemists did not really know what they were writing about, Whether we know today seems to me not altogether sure. [7]
Notes
[1] American academic Stephen Greenblatt's recent edition perpetuates this error.
[2] Section 140 in Hyginus Fabulae listed in 1711 Sales Catalogue page.13 no.35
[3] Religio Medici Part I Section 32
[4]CW 14 764
[5] CW 9 ii: 230
[6] CW 9 ii: 372.
[7] CW 16:497
March 31, 2020
"That bodies are first spirits Paracelsus could affirm, which in the maturation of Seeds and fruits, seems obscurely implied by Aristotle, when he delivereth, that the spirituous parts are converted into water, and the water into earth, and attested by observation in the maturative progresse of Seeds, wherein at first may be discerned a flatuous distension of the husk, afterwards a thin liquor, which longer time digesteth into a pulp or kernell observable in Almonds and large Nuts. And some way answered in the progressionall perfection of animall semination, in its spermaticall maturation, from crude pubescency unto perfection. And even that seeds themselves in their rudimentall discoveries, appear in foliaceous surcles, or sprouts within their coverings, in a diaphonous gellie, before deeper incrassation, is also visibly verified in Cherries, Acorns, Plums."
Of course there are the historical interests, of the emergence of empiricism and its strange intermingling with Christianity and classical scholarship. But really the pleasure is fantastical: to be in the company of a mad Renaissance magician, trying desperately to bottle his alchemical whirlwinds even as they envelop and overwhelm you.
'From crude pubescency unto perfection' is how I shall describe my emergence from teenagery when the time comes to write my autobiography.
Of course there are the historical interests, of the emergence of empiricism and its strange intermingling with Christianity and classical scholarship. But really the pleasure is fantastical: to be in the company of a mad Renaissance magician, trying desperately to bottle his alchemical whirlwinds even as they envelop and overwhelm you.
'From crude pubescency unto perfection' is how I shall describe my emergence from teenagery when the time comes to write my autobiography.
January 3, 2023
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.
April 2, 2017
Browne argues that we see the world or should see the world in terms of "X" -- the cross, the crucifixion. He goes through the ancients, botany, the stars and onwards to show the relation everything has to the XXXX. Between two X's lies a rhombus - trees, plants are all series of rhombi creating the Quincunx.
"Life it self is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name"
Perhaps my favorite sentence: Things entering upon the intellect by a Pyramid from without, and thence into memory by another within, the common decussation being in the understanding as is delivered by Bovillis. "
Two pyramids create a rhombus and thus the Quincunx.
No wonder Melville and Borges love Browne
"Life it self is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name"
Perhaps my favorite sentence: Things entering upon the intellect by a Pyramid from without, and thence into memory by another within, the common decussation being in the understanding as is delivered by Bovillis. "
Two pyramids create a rhombus and thus the Quincunx.
No wonder Melville and Borges love Browne
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