Utriusque Cosmi Maioris scilicet et Minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica Historia.

First edition of Fludd's mystic masterpiece, richly illustrated with designs attributed to Johann Theodor de Bry, Matthaeus Merian, and Robert Fludd.

Fludd sought a new understanding of nature based on Christian principles and interpreted the Genesis as a divine alchemical process. He believed the eternal truths of the Scriptures and the mysteries of the ancient occultist carried far more weight than the evidence of the senses and that humans are linked to divinity through nature. The Cosmi Maioris is 'a presentation of Renaissance Magia and Cabala, with the addition of Alchymia as developed by Paracelsus and the developments introduced by John Dee into these traditions... [it is] a Rosicrucian philosophy, a Renaissance philosophy brought up to date' (Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p80).

The first part of Macrocosm presents 'an illustrated history of creation, from the void (represented by an engraving from an entirely blackened plate) through the process of distillation by which Fludd believes the world to have been created. The second tractate takes up, in turn, occult mathematics, occult harmonics and music theory, occult theories of vision and optics, and even, at great length and with numerous plates, the occult theory of fortification and military strategy. Horology, cosmology, and astrology, as well as other occult disciplines, are also expounded' (Alchemy: A Comprehensive Bibliography of The Manly P. Hall Collection, p80).

Microcosm was to have contained three tractates, but was completed as far as the first section of the second tractate. The present copy lacks this rare second tractate, De Praeternaturali utriusque mundi historia (Frankfurt, Erasmus Kempffer for de Bry, 1621), which is seldom found bound with the others.

First edition; 4 parts in 2 vols, folio (31 x 20 cm); folding engraved chronological table at beginning of volume one, numerous engravings throughout, many full-page, some double-page and folding, engraved title pages to each part, woodcut headpieces, tailpieces, and initials, a few marginal repairs to volume one, some damp-staining, leaves toned, occasional foxing, some leaves trimmed; later full brown morocco, spine gilt in compartments, gilt lettering to second and third compartments, corners slightly rubbed, all edges red, marbled endpapers, presented in a modern green cloth slipcase; [2], 206, [6], 788, [10]; [2], 277, 191, [12]pp.

Caillet 4042; Duveen p222; Emil Fischer and Gottlieb Haberlandt, pp47-48; Houzeau & Lancaster 2965, 2966; Wellcome 2324.