Citations:fire philosopher

English citations of fire philosopher and fire philosophers

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• 1797, “Fire-Philosophers”, in Colin Macfarquhar, editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd edition, volume 7, Edinburgh: A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, →OCLC, page 253:

  Fire-Philosophers, or Philosophi per ignem, […] The distinguishing tenet from which they derived this appellation was, that the intimate essences of natural things were only to be known by the trying efforts of fire, directed in a chemical process. They were also called Theosophists, from their declaring against human reason as a dangerous and deceitful guide, and representing a divine and supernatural illumination as the only means of arriving at truth.

• 1834, James Rennie, Alphabet of scientific chemistry, for the use of beginners, New edition, London: Orr and Smith, →OCLC, page 1:

  Most of such experiments were made by means of fire, and hence, in Arabia, where they were at one time much pursued, the experimenters were termed Alchemists, meaning “The Firists,” or “The Fire Philosophers;” […]

• 1854, Joseph Ennemoser, edited by Mary Howitt, The history of magic, volume 1, London: Henry G. Bohn, translation of original by William Howitt, →OCLC, page 457:

  As they strove above all earthly knowledge, after the divine, and sought the divine light and fire, through which all men can acquire the true wisdom, they were called the Fire Philosophers (philosophi per ignem).

• 1854, James Murdock, “Theosophy”, in Noah Webster, Chauncey Goodrich, Noah Porter, Jr., editors, A dictionary of the English language, Rev. and enl. edition, London: Bogue, page 1144:

  Theosophy […] Supposed intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman knowledge, by physical processes; as by the theurgic operations of some ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German fire philosophers.

• 1865, Johann F. Blumenbach, The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, London: Published for the Anthropological Society, by Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, translation of original by Thomas Bendyshe, →OCLC, page 297:

  […] but not quite so straightforward a caprice-monger, the world-renowned fire-philosopher Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus, cannot comprehend how all men can belong to one and the same original stock, and contrived on paper for the solution of this difficulty his two Adams.

• 1870, Hargrave Jennings, The Rosicrucians : their rites and mysteries, with chapters on the ancient fire- and serpent-worshipers, and explanations of the mystic symbols represented in the monuments and talismans of the primeval philosophers, London: John Camden Hotten, →OCLC, page 77:

  This is the belief of the oldest Theosophists, the founders of magical knowledge in the East, and the discoverers of the Gods; also the doctrine of the Fire-Philosophers, and of the Rosicrucians, or Illuminati, who taught that all knowable things (both of the soul and of the body) were evolved out of Fire, […]

• 1874, Albert G. Mackey, “Fire Philosophers”, in An encyclopaedia of freemasonry and its kindred sciences : comprising the whole range of arts, sciences and literature as connected with the institution, volume 1, Philadelphia: Moss, →OCLC, page 277:

  Fire Philosophers See Theosophists.

• 1874, Albert G. Mackey, “Fire-Worship”, in An encyclopaedia of freemasonry and its kindred sciences : comprising the whole range of arts, sciences and literature as connected with the institution, volume 1, Philadelphia: Moss, →OCLC, page 278:

  In the Medieval ages there was a sect of "fire-philosophers" — philosophi per ignem — who were a branch or offshoot of Rosicrucianism, with which Freemasonry has so much in common. These fire-philosophers kept up the veneration for fire, and cultivated the "fire-secret," not as an idolatrous belief, but modified by their hermetic notions. They were also called "theosophists," and through them, or in reference to them, we find the theosophic degrees of Masonry, which sprang up in the eighteenth century.

• 1877, Helena P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, volume 1, New York: Bouton, →OCLC, page 171:

  The modern theory of General Pleasanton singularly coincides with the views of the fire-philosophers. His view of the positive and negative electricities of man and woman, and the mutual attraction and repulsion of everything in nature seems to be copied from that of Robert Fludd, the Grand Master of the Rosicrucians of England.

• 1877, Otto Zöckler, The Cross of Christ: Studies in the History of Religion and the Inner Life of the Church, London: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC, page 333:

  Like a genuine fire-philosopher (Philosophus per ignem) as he loves to designate himself, he explains the cross as the symbol of fire, inasmuch as this is the centre of the ternary of water, air, and earth.

• 1886, Denton Jaques Snider, Goethe's Faust: A Commentary, St. Louis: Sigma, →OCLC, page 236:

  Some historic mistake of Goethe's lies here, is our guess, like that of making Anaxagoras the fire-philosopher.

• 1898, Edward Berdoe, The Browning Cyclopaedia: a guide to the study of the works of Robert Browning, London, Swan: Sonnenschein, →OCLC, page 316:

  Mesmer, who lived nearly three hundred years after him, reaped the glory of a discovery made, as Lessing says, by the martyred fire-philosopher who died in Salzburg hospital.

• 1899 [1888], Hermann Peters, edited by William Netter, Pictorial history of ancient pharmacy : with sketches of early medical practice, 3rd edition, Chicago: G. P. Englehard, published 1902, →OCLC, page 182:

  The early alchemists assumed the trade practices and designations so common in the Middle Ages. The disciples were called "fire philosophers" or alchemists, answering to the apprentices of the various "crafts" or "mysteries," as all trades were then designated; while the "masters" of the trades became the "adepts" of the alchemist. In consonance with the spirit of the times these "adepts" assumed the […] concealed wisdom characteristic of those who had reached the height of a "master" of a "mystery" or "craft," and called themselves φιλόσοφος κατ' εξοχήν.

• 1920 [1905], Reuben Swinburne Clymer, The philosophy of fire, 3rd edition, Quakertown, PA: Philosophical Pub., →OCLC, page 160:

  Chaldean implies Sabaean.* […] *Another sect of Fire Worshippers or Fire Philosophers.

• 1920, Harry Houdini, Miracle mongers and their methods : a complete exposé ..., New York: E. P. Dutton, →OCLC, page 3:

  The worship of the fire itself had been a legacy from the earliest tribes; but it remained for the Rosicrucians and the fire philosophers of the Sixteenth Century under the lead of Paracelsus to establish a concrete religious belief on that basis, […]

• 1930, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Theosophy : a modern revival of ancient wisdom ((Ph.D.) Columbia University), New York: Holt, →OCLC, page 10:

  Theosophy, the Gnosis, having been […] rejected from Catholic theology, nevertheless did not disappear from history. It […] made its way through […] submerged channels down the centuries. Movements, sects, and individuals that embodied its […] principles […] include […] the Fire Philosophers; […]

• 1936, Joseph Jastrow, The story of human error‎^[1], New York, London: D. Appleton-Century, →OCLC, page 182:

  […] combustion, which had continually intrigued the attention of inquirers since the time of the old Greek fire-philosopher Heraclitus. Combustion, or calcination, according to the ancient philosophers and the later alchemists, was simply a conversion of heavy earthy substances into the lighter elements of water, air, and fire, […]

• 1974, A. J. Kuhn, “Nature spiritualized: aspects of anti-Newtonianism”, in Ronald Paulson, Arnold Sidney Stein, editors, ELH essays for Earl R. Wasserman, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 118:

  Fire philosophers of various sectarian convictions elaborated their theories on the origin, preservation, and final conflagration of the universe.

• 1994, Joscelyn Godwin, “Hargrave Jennings and the philosophy of fire”, in Jean Baptiste Martin, editor, Le défi magique, volume 1, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, →ISBN, page 166:

  Jennings gives much disorganized information on these and on other so-called "Fire-Philosophers," whom he calls a fanatical late sixteenth-century sect. […] he decided that the primordial Buddhists and the Rosicrucians were both "Philosophers of Fire."

• 2000, N. F. Brescia, “The stone, the elixir, and the royal art”, in Rosicrucian Digest, volume 80, number 4, San Jose, CA: Supreme Council of the Rosicrucian Order, →ISSN, page 4:

  Those ancient mystic predecessors of the Rosicrucian Order, the Mystery Schools, probably passed on to the Rosicrucians their fire philosophy. One authority on the history of Rosicrucians maintained that at one time "Fire-Philosopher" was a synonym for the word Rosicrucian.

• 2001, Gideon Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, translation of original by Peretz Kidron, →ISBN, pages 98–99:

  Derrida refrained on this occasion from the rather self-evident mention of the pre-Socratic "fire philosopher" Heraclitus, particularly as the latter frequently engaged the attention of a man to whose writings Derrida incessantly reverts: Martin Heidegger.