Holy Scriptures

Cramer, Daniel. The Rosicrucian emblems of Daniel Cramer the True Society of Jesus and the Rosy Cross here are forty sacred emblems from Holy Scripture concerning the most precious name and cross of Jesus Christ / by Daniel Cramer translated from the Latin by Fiona Tait introduction and commentary by Adam McLean. Edited by Adam McLean. Translated by Fiona Tait. Edinburgh Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, 1980. 77p. 

In the beginning, when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and as yet all was involved in darkness, Almighty and Eternal God, Whose beginning and wisdom are from everlasting, by His inscrutable counsel created heaven and earth, and all that in them is, both visible and invisible, out of nothing. How the act of creation was accomplished I will not attempt to explain. This is a matter which is set forth to us in Holy Scripture, and must be apprehended by faith. 

In 1624 the French chemist Etienne de Clave was arrested for heresy. De Clave s inadmissible ideas did not concern the interpretation of holy scripture. Nor were they of a political nature. They did not even challenge the place of man in the universe, as Galileo was doing so boldly. 

N icholas Gibbens, Questions and disputations concerning the holy scripture (1602), 39—42. 

Science is not holy scripture, nor do its practitioners consider themselves priests protecting a glittering grail, forever unchanging and pure. What drives scientists on is the thirst to understand more and to use nature, to build rather than to exploit a comprehensible universe. 

SEVEN — This is the Mysterious Number of Holy Scripture, and it is that also of the Great Work. The Philosophers speak of Seven Planets, Seven Kingdoms, Seven Operations, Seven Circles, Seven Metals. They say that their work resembles the creation of the world, which was accomplished in seven days. St. Thomas Aquinas in his Epistle to Brother Raynang, his friend, says that the work is performed in three times seven days and one day. 

He [Boerhaave] greatly regretted that the interpretation of Holy Scripture was sought for among the sects of the Sophists and that the metaphysical reflections of Plato, of Aristotle, of Thomas Aquinas, of Scotus, and — in his own time — of... 

Descartes, were considered as laws according to which the views of god expressed in the Holy Scriptures should be amended. He experienced bitter differences of opinion, and [understood] that from these are born and fostered the most passionate disputes, and the hatreds and ambitions, of the most acute minds, so much in contrast to peace with God and man. 

These people (...) defiled one and all with their commentaries (...) so much so that everything which may be read in the Holy Scripture, however clear, unambiguous, and plain, was distorted by these trifling fools into an inapposite meaning. Eventually they went to such lengths in their madness that — who would believe this — they ended up by converting the Sacred History itself, the very miracles by means of which the Holy Authors supported the truth of their teaching, into maxims of alchemy. 

As science is the product of rational brain activity, a scientific work, an analysis of a piece of reality, has essentially the same message for all who are blessed with the necessary prerequisite knowledge. In contrast to science, it is not the objective of fine art, literature, or music to describe or analyze objectively existing reality. On the contrary, real art deals with a nonexistent world that is indefinable in any material sense, with a universe created in the human cortex. The message of an artwork is therefore ambiguous, its effect is in essence emotionally based. Everyone enters in his own special way into the spirit of an artwork. This is also true for the Holy Scriptures, art products of the human brain that played the most important role in the spiritual organization of life in the rising phase of human society and served the maintenance and development of that society. 

The external, historical meaning of the word is like everything external in the World only an appearance or symbol It is so often contrary to reason, that no reasonable Human Being can take it for the truth Yes, the irrationality should be a protection against the literal word-for-word understanding of the Holy Scriptures. 

Robert Boyle, Essay of the holy Scriptures, in The Works of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis (London Pickering Chatto, 2000), 13 204—207. The same idea appears again in Boyle s Some Physico- Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection, in Works, 8 302—303, though expressed somewhat more cautiously. 

These two Sublime Virtues if they are passed over in silence in classical theology, and reduced to the rank of gifts of the Holy Spirit v/h ich would be infinitely betternamed otherwise), are sign ified in the Holy Scriptures, with complete preeminence ... 

For a millenium, after the conversion of Constantine s mother, thinking in the western world was dominated by the spread of Christianity, orchestrated by the philosopher-saints, Augustinus and Thomas Aquinas. Their main concern was to align the Ptolemaic system, Aristotelian philosophy and the practice of astrology with their holy scriptures. 

---