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The Two Worlds of Robert Fludd

By the Embassy editorial team

Robert Fludd (1574–1637) imagined the cosmos as a single continuous chain — the macrocosm of the heavens mirrored, link for link, in the microcosm of the human body. To read his engravings is to watch a physician, mathematician, and Rosicrucian apologist insist that medicine, music, and theology were studies of one and the same harmony.

That conviction set him against the new mechanical philosophy. Where Kepler heard mathematics, Fludd heard a played instrument; where others measured, he correlated.

The diagram above is not decoration. Fludd meant the reader to trace the descent of light from the divine source through the planetary spheres and into matter — a literal map of emanation. Each band is a degree of being, and the eye is asked to read downward as the soul is asked to read upward.