He sees the sign of the Macrocosm.
The macrocosm is a Greek word signifying the big world, the universe, as contrasted with the little world, the microcosm or man, made in the likeness of God, and therefore in the likeness of his great manifestation, the universe. The terms were in familiar use with the theosophists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; as may be seen from the title-page of a great physico-metaphysical book by our countryman, Robert Fludd, printed at Oppenheim 1617-19, “Utriusque Cosmi, majoris scilicet et minoris, Metaphysica, Physica atque technica Historia, in duo volumina, secundum Cosmi differentiam divisa; auctore Roberto Fludd, alias de Fluctibus, Armigero, et in Medicina Doctore Oxoniensi,” etc. The book is rare; but the curious may find a beautiful copy in the Library of the Writers to the Signet, Edinburgh.
The key of Solomon the wise
Is surest spell to exorcise.
Solomon was a magician among the Jews, for the same reason that Roger Bacon has acquired that reputation amongst us—on account of his great wisdom. The Jewish exorcists, of whom mention is made in several passages of the New Testament (Matthew xii. 27), used to invoke the evil spirit by the name of Solomon (Joseph. Antiq. 8, 2, 5, apud Bretschneider Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 764), and the cabalistic talmudists were, of course, not negligent in taking advantage of this popular belief for giving authority to their occult science of numbers. Accordingly, we find Solomon, in the Middle Ages, looked upon as the patriarch and patron-saint of the Magic Art; and many curious books, under his name, were in common circulation among its Professors. It is to the title of these books that the text alludes, “Clavicula Solomonis,” or Key of Solomon, supposed to be of supreme power in compelling spirits to obey the will of man. They are now become exceedingly rare, but some notice of them will be found in Reichard’s work von Geistern, and in Horst’s Zauber-Bibliothek.
Let the Salamander glow,
Undene twine her crested wave,
Silphe into ether flow,