Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/288



Chap. xxvii. Of the proportion, measure, and Harmony of mans body. Seeing man is the most beautifull and perfectest work of God, and his Image, and also the lesser world; therefore he by a more perfect composition, and sweet Harmony, and more sublime dignity doth contain and maintain in himself all numbers, measures, weights, motions, Elements, and all other things which are of his composition; and in him as it were in the supreme workmanship, all things obtain a certain high condition, beyond the ordinary consonancy which they have in other compounds. From hence all the Ancients in time past did number by their fingers, and shewed all numbers by them; and they seem to prove that from the very joynts of mans body all numbers measures, proportions, and Harmonies were invented; Hence according to this measure of the body, they framed, and contrived their temples, pallaces, houses, Theaters; also their ships, engins, and every kind of Artifice, and every part and member of their edifices, and buildings, as columnes, chapiters of pillars, bases, buttresses, feet of pillars, and all of this kind. Moreover God himself taught Noah to build the Arke according to the measure of mans body, and he made the whole fabrick of the world proportionable to mans body; from whence it is called the great world, mans body the less; Therefore some who have written of the Microcosme or of man, measure the body by six feet, a foot by ten degrees, every degree by five minutes; from hence are numbred sixty degrees, which make three hundred minutes, to the which are compared so many Geometrical cubits, by which Moses describes the Arke; for as the body of man is in length three hundred minutes, in breath fifty, in hight thirty; so the length of the Arke was three hundred cubits, the breadth fifty, and the height thirty; that the proportion of the length to the breadth be six fold, to the heighth ten fold, and the proportion of the breadth to the height about two thirds. In like manner the