Spiritus Mundi [Archive]

Tiassa

03-20-01, 09:20 PM

I'm having some trouble finding any truly helpful information. Aside from the eBay advert at the top of the list, a Google search of "Spiritus Mundi" and "medieval" produces interesting, yet unhelpful links.

The first link I got after the eBay advert was http://www.gci-net.com/~users/w/wolfsoul/poetry/yeats/yeats5.html
This leads Yeats to propose that perhaps the Second Coming (of Christ) is near at hand: Judgement Day . . . . the end of the world. Spiritus Mundi is a Medieval text for Christians, to inform them what they need to do to die in the grace of God. It is essentially "the art of dying well."
Strangely, the author of the analysis offers no reference to the source text of SM. Well, not particularly strangely. I think the analysis is actually quite a simplistic and shallow one, and so I'm willing to consider that it simply didn't occur to the author to include some better mention of the volume instead of just raising it as his introduction to the idea of the Christianity. Not that the Christian mythos isn't a huge factor of the poem, but, frankly, it almost seems a cursory, format-inspired mention of Spiritus Mundi.

An English-language translation of an abstract for a French doctoral dissertation gives us a minor reference: In the Renaissance period, Marsilio Ficino of the Platonic Academy of Florence first formulated a metaphysical system incorporating the idea of invisible spiritual seeds diffused throughout Nature. For this theory, he combined the Stoic theory of logoi spermatikoi, transmitted by such Neoplatonic thinkers as Plotinus and Proclus, with Lucretius’ atomistic idea of semina rerum. For Ficino, these seeds, which generate the forms of natural things in informed prime matter, are sent from the heaven by the spiritus mundi, the uniting bond of the World-Soul and its corporeal body (machina mundi). Agrippa of Nettesheim is one of the earliest followers of this Ficinian concept and the French physician Jean Fernel introduced it into the learned medical milieu through his very popular book On the Hidden Causes of Things (Paris, 1548). But Paracelsian chemical philosophers played a decisive role. For Paracelsus himself, every natural being is generated form its invisible seed, which contains its own three principles, Salt, Sulphur and Mercury. The seed of each natural being is the prime state of its development, "predestined" by God the Creator to arrive at its ultimate end for the use of man.
http://www.livinghistory.co.uk/homepages/hermes/zurich.html

In fact, the Google search provides a little more on Marsilio Ficino: http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/hermgnos-31.html ... Man imbibes his own spiritus from that astral flow: the instrument of the unbodily soul for perception, imagination and movement; the connection between body and soul. The condition of the spiritus determines phenomena as furor and melancholia. The spiritus can be kept healthy by means of certain plants, odours, colours and music which are associated with the influence of the more benign planets.
I am reminded by chance, here, that such ideas have, under Christian pretense (see Yeats analysis above) been ruled heretical, sorcerous, and so forth; but I digress.

A modern take onthe idea of spiritus mundi comes from a page I can't quite discern, but ... http://www.redrival.com/dmorgados/milkyway.html
Spiritus Mundi is a personal journey he or she begins at any of the four sacred circles of tellurian forces, chosen by sage druids during the 5th or 6th century in France. By the 11th century, Christianity had replaced the druid's shrines by re-building cathedrals on the sacred circles, thus respecting the chosen lieu of energy. These sacred spaces follow the westward direction of the Milky Way.

I include this link for reference only. It mentions spiritus mundi, but offers nothing we haven't seen in the prior links; I like the page, though. ;)

There are translations of spiritus mundi as living spirit (e.g.--the Holy Spirit), and also as Spirit of the World.

I modified the search to "Spiritus Mundi" and "Christian", and received a host of links all referring to the poem you've mentioned. Each seems to treat SM as a higher concept; I have seen no mention of a text by that title of any antiquity whatsoever. Such as this analysis of the poem, http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/eldana/yeats.html :
In the second stanza, the speaker believes something is revealed to the world, and it must be the second coming of Christ, or Judgment Day. The speaker sees a sight "out of Spiritus Mundi," or out of the Christian beliefs. He sees a sphinx, the "shape with lion body and head of a man" awake from 2000 years of "stony sleep" while the human race lived with their wars and technology and evolution. Yeats uses imagery to show the sphinx slowly coming to bring the end of the world, while "desert birds," or people who try to stop the sphinx fail. The first line, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" tells of Yeats' belief that the world is set in a circular pattern of ways, and the gyre widening means it is time for the next phase: the coming of Christ. The very last line, "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" leaves readers with the image of the sphinx heading towards the birthplace of Jesus, and the fear of the end of the world.
But I cannot provide any information on any specific text of that name which would suit your description; I'm sure I can find two fantasy and four science-fiction novels by variants of that name, but nothing of value relevant to the topic at hand.

And please remember that this is a cursory Google search, and hardly definitive.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool: