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Antonio Persio’s Trattato intorno all’Ingegno dell’Huomo

By Iulia Millesima

Methods for Genius to multiply himself.

The woman has the most tenuous and subtle spirit [ she is the solvent, indeed] in fact it is no wonder that the child resembles his mother more than his father. In fact many women when they lie with a man other than their husband think intently to her husband and focus on his image and thus give birth to a son like her husband and not her lover, in fact this results from genius. For this reason, animals born children like them, because they are focused only on that. Plato said that the mathematical sciences, such as geometry and arithmetic, enhance the spirit [divisions and proportions of Mercurius in Alchemy].

Love between geniuses as remote control and synchrony.

The nurse is also important, as is she who will breastfeed [ in Alchemy the nurse stands for Mercurius divisions in order to be used as nourishment]. And important is love, that’s why often bastard children have more talent, because there was attraction and ardor between parents. Titian the painter once told me that when painting a human real life subject, he/she often kept moving according to their figures on the canvas in the frame the painter was painting them. This is called love.

Genius loves smells as they subject him to the same laws of air.

Aristotle said that things that smell are warm, because hot is the nature of smell. And indeed smells do move and tend to go upward. it is because physicians use to prepare smelled compositions. In short, genius is subjected to the same laws of air. Souls have to return to their primary nature, which is air. Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit purpureo, solemque suum, his sidera norunt, or here a more copious air clothes the fields (the Elysian Fields) with purple light, and they know their own sun and their own stars – Virgil, Aeneid.

As Brunetto Latini, vulgarizing Aristotle, said: “ then use good ointments, because the soul loves to sniff and the sweetest smell are its food. And when it comes to smell, here is Venus, friend of pleasure. Approaching to our spirit she multiplies and makes them born again and said well they who greeted her in the following way: Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis: te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubile caeli adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti placatumque nitet diffuse lumine caelum….. O mother of the Roman race, delight of men and gods, Venus, most bountiful, you who beneath the gliding signs of heaven fill with yourself the sea, bedecked with ships and earth, great crop-bearer, since by your power creatures of every kind are brought to birth and rising up behold the light of sun; From you, sweet goddess, you, and at your coming the winds and clouds of heaven flee all away; For you the earth well skilled puts forth sweet flowers For you the seas’ horizons smile and sky, All peaceful now, shines clear with light outpoured – Lucretius, De rer. nat.

What the Eden apple is for and on the drink described in Plato’s Phaedo.

From that is easy to understand why people of genius are said to love ardently, and what the Eden apple is for, which is not very different from the drink described by Plato in his Phaedo and why Pliny writes of some people who are said to live on odor. That’s why in tropical countries there is more spirit. And because of this, we understand how genius and love are cause and effect of each other.

To more deeply explain the synchrony of love. The mirror.

As we said, our spirit is of the nature of fire, shiny, moving, simile to the light daughter of the heat, and gently moved by smells, motions, art, and nature. In fact therefore we are attracted by beauty, because beauty is actually grace. And the same is with love, because the thing loved is imprinted so deeply within us that moves us from ourselves, as if we went out by ourselves and we were to put in front of ourselves. Like that guy, that being away from his woman and having all his thoughts in her, took one day a mirror in his hands to look himself, and instead saw the face of his beloved woman and not his. And he began to speak to his image thinking to talk to her. Nam is ab est, quod ames, Praesto simulacra tamen sunt illius, et nomen dulce observatur ad auris, or for if he is the object of your love, even pictures of him are, and his name is sweet to your ears – Lucretius, De rer. nat.

To extol the beauty turning on the sleeping geniuses.

From beautiful person depart rays of genius and they pass through the eyes as through windows and go to hurt the gazer so moves his spirit, and the rays of genius make him like them because in habentibus symbolum facilis est transitus, or for those who have the symbol, the passage is easy – Iamblicus – And because of this similarity the loving spirit want to embrace the spirit of the lover, in fact all the natural things like joining as much as they can. And in this way they can increase their genius. Love turns on the asleep geniuses, said Petrarch.

One should start in time the practice of becoming heavenly.

Might we become heavenly? Sure we might, worthy spirits are called stars, sun, moon, sky, so we could too. In fact, we could become angels, beginning in time the practice to deify us and make us heavenly. All love begins with a looking, aiming phase. A spirit moves another spirit and pierces him. He lights him on. Plato says that beauty generates and multiplies those two divine images, not only to the soul, but up to the body. He also says that once one rises to sublime, love is to his side. It facilitates the road to heaven by the sun.

Persio Trattato intorno allIngegno dellHuomo ode al soleHymn to the Sun.

O clear, unique and trine Sun, who offers to your worshipers on earth to return to their heavenly home. With the stairs of terrestrial human suns, step by step, allow us to get to the heavenly, intellectual Sun. Towards you Father of lights, wholesomely divided splendor, the way of beauty shall lead us. Your light pierces everything, as through glass among the various colors and thus with variation of light, in a circular way. That brings us to another Sun, who was called ‘the world’s eternal eye’, who looks at all things and deserves to be called ‘heavenly light’ or laughing sky rising from the joy of the heavenly spirits, or celestial Sun and legitimate master of all things that are under the lunar circle, as well as those who draw life from the air and are fed by father ocean and mother earth, soul of the world, propagate rays and make them rain to guide the spirits and infuse life, meaning and motion throughout the universe. The king of the animal represents you well, o Sun. And, like the first Sun, you infuse science and love. First, you turn on the two loves, purging and converting, and then give the intelligence of divine things. In the beginning, you warm, light, thin and then illuminate to lead to heaven. Your light generates the gold in the bowels of the earth and in the same way the spirit within men. The highest Sun promises as reward to those who embark on the wisdom to shine in the image of the stars in perpetual space of time and similar to the pure and beautiful Lady dressed of Sun and crowned with stars. You Sun hides your light into her, and now you are raised from corporal Suns, which are only pictures of you, true Sun. With the spirit you have given us, like eagles, we keep staring at you.

The term Sun might traditionally appear to the reader as God, but if they mentally replace the term Sun with Mercurius, and here I mean the ineffable substance of alchemist, a fresh vision might appear before their eyes.

See also Dionysus, Universal Dissolvent and Kykeon , Albrecht Dürer and the Backwards Apollo , Rossetti and the Mystery of Platonic Love. Part 1 Corrected , Pompeii Mysteries Villa: a Gentle Flowing with Mystica Vannus , Arturo Reghini and the last two Pythagoras Golden Verses , Elias Ashmole and the Prophetic Red Stone , Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis. Part 1 , Rodanius and the Rotation of Elements Part 1 , Stoll, the Lacinius Translator on Male and Female Elements , Cesare Ripa & the Hot Frozen Ouroboros World Machine , Hans Memling’s Altarpiece with Boar and January 17 , Louis de Broglie and the Memory of an Immortal Particle , The Last Lady of Rennes , Fortunio Liceti and the Cranial OMO .

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Filed Under: Alchemy & Philosophy Tagged With: Persio Antonio, Telesio Bernardino

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