ABSTRACT
In a previous article in this Journal, 1 I drew attention to the fact that elemental theory plays some very important part in the thought and in the Art of Ramon Lull. According to ancient physical theory, the four elements of Fire, Air, Water, Earth form, through the inter-relation of their qualities of Heat, Moisture, Coldness, and Dryness, the essential pattern underlying the physical world. I showed that in his Tractatus de astronomia, Lull worked out a system of ‘elemental astrology’, or a way of calculating the influences of the stars through their influences on the elements, using the letters ABCD to designate the elements and the elemental qualities. 2 In the same work he also insisted that the divine ‘principles’ of Bonitas, Magnitudo, Eternitas, Potestas, Sapientia, Voluntas, Virtus, Veritas, Gloria, formed the true ‘proper qualities’ of the elements. This immediately associates the elemental theory with Lull’s Art, in the ‘nine’ forms of which – that is the forms based on nine principles or Dignitates Dei – he designates the Bonitas to Gloria series by the nine letters BCDEFGHIK (Pl. 14b).
