Robert Fludd Image part 3

At the top of the picture emerging from the cloud of unmanifested spirit there is a hand. This is where the One commits its first act that will lead to the creation of the universe and the generation of the many. 

Pure spirit (the Tetragrammaton inside the cloud) is completely homogeneous, absolute, with no shape, boundaries or dimensions. But a cloud of itself cannot act and the emerging hand is the concrete symbol of its power of agency, direction and execution. A hand gives but it can also hold and enclose, all qualities needed to make a universe. The hand signifies the Logos in action and the point where the formless Supreme Masculine Principle purposefully steps down its own infinite frequency to create the dualistic universe. It is the unmanifested Father projecting an active instrument of Will so that the cosmic plan can be executed.

The hand acts as the initial stepping-stone into form. While it is fully part of the divine cloud, it possesses a distinct shape. By reaching out of the formless void to grip the chain that is the link to the lower worlds, the hand demonstrates that the higher planes must take on the clothing of form to govern the lower worlds. 

In the image the process goes like this. The Hand of God binds formless spirit into the chain of manifested being and sends it down the vertical axis to the Anima Mundi who uses it, the life in it, to form the worlds.

The descending hand is a refutation of the position of the Gnostics, strict non-dualists and advaita enthusiasts because it shows that form, maya, is not an illusion or aberration but the instrument of God through which he works to bring about the multiplication of his being and the expression of his glory in the worlds of time and space.

I said in the previous post that we would explore how Fludd depicts the Trinity in his image. We should now be able to see that this hand represents Christ as the Logos, the first manifestation of form emerging from the formless Father.

The opening of St John's Gospel states that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through Him." Fludd’s engraving translates this text into visual form showing Christ as the Hand of the Father. For creation to happen, the Hidden God of the cloud must project an active, relational and creative aspect of himself. This is the Son, and the hand emerging from the cloud depicts the action of the Logos. Christ is referred to as the Right Hand of the Father, the instrument of Divine Will, and that is precisely what we see here.

But, Christ is not just the hand. He is also that which the hand holds, the vertical chain that descends from the hand down to the wrist of the Anima Mundi, and then from her down to the Earth. Christ, the Son, is the universal Mediator and the bridge that links the absolute of unmanifested Spirit, the Father, to the dense matrix of physical matter, the Mother.

The perverted ideology of modernity with its rejection of transcendence and collapse of everything to the horizontal reduces Christ, when it bothers with him at all, to an egalitarian social teacher. Fludd’s map shows the much deeper reality. Christ stands for and is the peak of the sacred hierarchy. He is the begotten not created Son of God who enters the world of matter acting as the vertical axis that upholds the entire cosmos.

Two far we have seen in this picture the presence of the Father as the cloud and the Son as the hand. The Magna Mater, who is the divine form of the Virgin Mary and Queen of Heaven, is obviously present and it just remains to show how the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is depicted.

In Christian theology, the Holy Spirit is the divine breath that spreads through all creation from the transcendent above to the immanent below. When we examine Fludd's cosmological map, we see it revealed in the great burst of light radiating outward from the cloud in all directions. This is God as the Divine Fire and Light acting as the immediate agent of creation. The Father wills the plan, the Son acts as the Logos or structural blueprint and the Holy Spirit is the active, vibrating light energy that carries that down into the planetary spheres where it takes a secondary manifestation as the radiation of the sun which has converted divine light into physical heat, life and vitality for the kingdoms below. Note the similarity of the light from the sun positioned in the planetary spheres with the light radiating from the cloud.

Thus, the Father is the hidden source that wills creation, the Son imagines it so that it can be given form by the Anima Mundi and the Holy Spirit is the radiant light-breath that fills the Anima Mundi from her starry crown down to the elemental earth with divine life. The Trinity does not passively sit outside of creation watching it. It surrounds and animates the entire structure of the world, all of which is shown by the light spreading down through the chain into the Anima Mundi and thence further down to the world. The hierarchical nature of creation is plainly on display, and each of the principal actors in the drama are shown performing their special tasks.

Is all this true? Yes and no. It is symbolically true but the reality will go far beyond what is captured here. Nonetheless, the basic pattern is here and meditation on Fludd's image should prove instructive, especially in its colorised version which I feel sure would have been approved of by Fludd had he known of its possibility.