Three Books of Occult Philosophy/Book 1/Chapter 73
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 find also that the same kind of precepts was in use amongst the Ancients, as Virgil testifies, when he sings,
----- I walk a round
First with these threads, in number which three are,
'Bout th' Altars thrice I shall 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.
Chapter lxxiv. Of the proportion, correspondency, reduction of Letters to the Celestiall Signs, and Planets, according to various tongues, and 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