grgr (34): "the tower" (747)(rocks)

[s~Z]

>>>But my earlier question hangs out there: whose souls end up in all those
stones? As I read it "a soul in every stone" refers to some state of
damnation, rather than to an aprehension of a supernaturally animated
natural world.  What do you think?<<<

"God created Adam out of the mud of the Earth, wherein were inherent the
virtues of all the Elements, of the Earth and Water especially, which do
more constitute the sensible and corporeal heap: Into this Mass God breathed
the breath of Life, and enlivened it with the Sun of the Holy Spirit. He
gave Eve for a Wife to Adam, and blessing them he gave unto them a Precept
and the Faculty of multiplication. The generation of the Philosophers Stone,
is not unlike the Creation of Adam, for the Mud was made of a terrestrial
and ponderous Body dissolved by Water, which deserved the excellent name of
Terra Adamica, wherein all the virtues and qualities of the Elements are
placed. At length the heavenly Soul is infused thereinto by the medium of
the Quintessence and Solar influx, and by the Benediction and Dew of Heaven;
the virtue of multiplying ad infinitum by the intervening copulation of both
sexes is given it."

from: The Hermetic Arcanum

"This was a key work of 17th century alchemy. It was written in Latin by
Jean d'Espagnet as 'Enchiridion physicae restitutae...' and the first
edition was issued at Paris in 1623. A number of editions were issued over
the next decades and it was included in a number of alchemical compendia. An
English translation, translated by Elias Ashmole, was printed in 1650, in
Arthur Dee's 'Fasciculus chemicus: or chymical collections'."

online at: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/harcanum.html