Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/187

called Speculum, doth not diſallow, without which all our works would never be brought into effect; Seeing a diſpoſition doth not cauſe an effect, but the act of the diſpoſition. We ſind alſo that the ſame kind of precepts was in uſe amongst the Ancients, as Virgil teſtifies, when he ſings,

———I walk aroundFirſt with theſe threads, in number which three are,'Bout th' Altars thrice I ſball thy Image bear.

And a little after.

Knots, Amaryllis tye! of Colours three,Then ſay, these bonds I knit, for Venus be.

And in the ſame place.

As with one fire this clay doth harder prove,The wax more ſoft; ſo Daphnis with our love.

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CHAP. LXXIV.

Of the proportion, correſpondency, reduction of Letters to the Celeſtiall Signs, and Planets, according to various tongues, With a Table ſhewing this.

GOD gave to man a mind, and ſpeech, which (as ſaith Mercurius Triſmegiſtus) are thought to be a gift of the ſame vertue, power, and immortality. The omnipotent God hath by his providence divided the ſpeech of men into divers languages; which languages have according to their diverſity received divers, and proper Characters of writing, conſiſting in their certain order, number, and figure, not ſo diſpoſed, and formed by hap, or chance, nor by the weak judgement of man, but from above, whereby they agree with the Celeſtiall, and divine bodies, and vertues. But before all notes of languages, the

writing