Appendix: Herbert's Philosophical Poems
Summary
Herbert can also be seen as a Renaissance magus. He spoke of nature labouring to free the soul from matter, referred to earth spirits and witches, and made naturalistic studies of astrology, augury and divination. He also possessed vast numbers of books on magic and occult philosophy. In addition, he envisaged a theosophical universe in which the soul expanded into the macrocosm at death and made a journey through the stars, he believed that men became ‘like gods’ when they left the body, and that there was nothing which they could not attain. The earthly life was only a prelude to man's real existence, and man passed through an eternal cycle of seminal, embryonic, earthly and heavenly lives.
The extent of Herbert's esoterism can be seen from two hitherto untranslated Latin poems:
A Philosophical Disquisition on Human Life
There was once the FIRST LIFE with generative seed, when Formative Power was eager to manage her gifts and to drench substance with enlivened juices and to compose well the marking signs by which here the human race is distinguished from every brute: to assign all functions to their classes: to set firm tracks for the state to come: to cultivate the implanted saplings of manifold life. But also (as she had foreknowledge of future fate) she restrained external form in wary seclusion, until conspiring Causes might be able to approach and it be allowed safely to bring forth all the fruit, all the time aware as she was that when perchance this fabric should totter declining, she could withdraw totally to her western abode, but that she could not perish in ruin under her own works: nay, while she remained thus and in order that she might survive entirely and understand the art and skill of composing body, she must at once, in the manner of the experienced Craftsman, use any material at all, then be able to form substance, then another, until she might fill up all the numbers which Fate might bring here or the ascending order of things give.
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- Information
- The English DeistsStudies in Early Enlightenment, pp. 121 - 126Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014