Dr. Browne's 'readie way to read the characters of Morpheus'.

                                                           
Thomas Browne's short tract On Dreams is exemplary of the seventeenth century physician-philosopher's deep learning and dedication to his medical profession. Furthermore, Browne's On Dreams  reveals him to be a pioneering psychologist, not least for anticipating concepts associated with the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung.

Its worthwhile reminding ourselves of the nature of dreams and the historical antecedents of their interpretation. Dreams can have a wide variety of moods and feelings, frightening or anxious, exciting and adventurous, sometimes with a magical content or empowering, sometimes with a sexual element and most often simply puzzling. Dreams can give a creative or inspiring thought, and in the past they've been viewed as a conduit of God-given revelation and prophecy. 

The ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia left evidence of dream interpretation dating back to at least 2100 BCE. In one of the world's oldest literary works The Epic of Gilgamesh the hero Gilgamesh escapes the vengeance of the gods by paying attention to dreams which warn and show him how to overcome his enemy.  The Greek physician Hippocrates (469–399 BCE) had a simple dream theory: during the day, the soul receives images; during the night, it produces images, similarly, the Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories, wrote, "The visions that occur to us in dreams are, more often than not, the things we have been concerned about during the day".

Thomas Browne (1605-82) demonstrates his familiarity with Hippocrates' theory to the causes of dreams stating in accordance to the ancient Greek physician, 'the thoughts or actions or the day are acted over and echoed in the night'. Browne himself had an intimate relationship to the world of dreams. Living in an age of grim living conditions and little entertainment, dreaming was a welcome diversion in seventeenth century England.  Browne confesses of his enjoyment of dreaming in  Religio Medici (1643) thus-

'There is surely a nearer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreams, than in our waked senses........I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness; and surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next, as the Phantasms of the night, to the conceit of the day'. [1]

Dreams were rich nourishment for Browne's imagination, not least because he was able to lucid dream, that is, to be conscious of oneself actually dreaming, and thus able to take an active instead of a passive role in the events occurring in a dream, effectively controlling the action of a dream. Browne  elucidates on  his rare gift in Religio Medici thus -

'yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof; were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions, but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed'. [2]

On Dreams opens with fleeting allusion to night and sleep, themes which, together with dreams inspired some of the greatest passages of Browne's literary art. Citing the Old Testament book of Genesis and its story of Jacob's dream, Joseph's interpretation of the Egyptian pharaoh's dreams and Nebuchadnezzar's demand not only for the interpretation of his dream but of his dream itself, Browne in common with other Renaissance thinkers viewed dreams as God-given communications and their interpretation sanctioned in the Bible. 

Even as late as the seventeenth century the little-understood psychic phenomena of the dream was believed to be of either divine or diabolical origin. Browne's remark that, 'We have little doubt there be demoniacal dreams' seems  to be an observation based upon personal, first-hand experience. If there are demonic dreams Browne argues -

'Why may there not be Angelical ? If there be Guardian spirits, they may not be unactively about us in sleep, but may sometimes order our dreams, and many strange hints, instigations, or discoveries which are so amazing unto us, may arise from such foundations'.

And in fact a belief in Guardian angels as well as witches was integral to Thomas Browne's spiritual hierarchy. Its unsurprising therefore that the Christian in Browne is concerned  in On Dreams about the possibility of sinning in one's dreams. In his short tract he also condemns those who have paid too close attention to their dreams at the expense of common sense, stating, 'Yet he that should order his affairs by dreams, or make the night a rule unto the day, might be ridiculously deluded'.

On Dreams includes examples of Browne's 'dimensional imagery' in which the very large and very small are juxtaposed, noting that in dreams -

'the phantastical objects seem greater than they are, and being beheld in the vaporous state of sleep, enlarge their dimensions unto us; whereby it may prove easier to dream of Giants than pygmies'.

The very same juxtaposition of giant and pygmies, Browne's 'dimensional imagery' is featured in his late work Christian morals, in moralizing highly relevant to our own day.

'without which, though Giants in Wealth and Dignity, we are but Dwarfs and Pygmies in Humanity, and may hold a pitiful rank in that triple division of mankind into Heroes, Men and Beasts'.  (C.M. 3:14)

In the painting The Gentleman's Dream or Disillusion with the World (1655) by the Spanish Baroque-era artist Antonio de Peruda (c.1611-1678) a courtier sleeps and dreams beside a table displaying various vanitas objects. A guardian angel unfurls a scroll with the words, "Eternally it stings, swiftly it flies and it kills", inscribed upon it, a waspish allusion to the sting of Time.

Browne references both ancient and modern philosophers in On Dreams including the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, a big influence upon Browne who declared in Religio Medici - 'I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras' and a creative influence of the discourse The Garden of Cyrus. [3]

In addition to Pythagoras, the Italian physician, mathematician and general polymath Jerome Cardan  is also mentioned twice in the tract. Jerome Cardan (1501-76) was highly influential in various disciplines, writing over 200 works on science. His interests included medicine, biology, engineering, chemistry, astrology and astronomy and he's credited with inventing several mechanical devices including the combination lock and the Cardan shaft with its universal joints which allow for the transmission of rotary motion at various angles and used in car-motors to the present day.  He was often short of money and kept himself solvent by being an accomplished gambler and chess player. Cardan had a reoccurring dream which ordered him to write De subtilitate rerum (1550) a book which Thomas Browne was critical of when assessing Cardan in his encyclopedic endeavour  Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-72) -

'We had almost forgot Jeronymus Cardanus that famous Physician of Milan, a great Enquirer of Truth, but too greedy a Receiver of it. He hath left many excellent Discourses, Medical, Natural, and Astrological; the most suspicious are those two he wrote by admonition in a dream, that is De Subtilitate & Varietate Rerum. Assuredly this learned man hath taken many things on trust, and although examined some, hath let slip many others. He is of singular use unto a prudent reader but to him that desireth hoties, or to replenish his head with varieties, like many others before related, either in the original or confirmation, he may become no small occasion of error'. [4]

Browne's judgement of Jerome Cardan didn't prevent him from acquiring sometime in 1663 or shortly after (he often purchased books upon notification of their publication by book-dealers) an edition of Jerome Cardan's complete works which included Somniorum Synesiorum, omnis generis insomnia explicantes, libri IIII (Synesian dreams, dreams of all kinds set forth, in four books). [5]

Jerome Cardan's work on the interpretation of dreams is partly inspired by Synesius of Cyrene (c.370-c.413 CE) a Greek bishop of ancient Libya and author of  De insomniis (On dreams). Cardan divided dreams into four categories based on their causes: digestive dreams caused by food and drink; humoural caused by imbalances in the four humours; anamnestic caused by passions or changes in emotion; and finally prophetic dreams of a supernatural or divine origin. Jerome Cardan viewed the first three categories as natural and ordinary bodily processes. Most of this work however, is devoted to a discussion of prophetic dreams which he views from a philosophical perspective.

Jerome Cardan is one of several independent-minded figures from Renaissance intellectual history whom Browne was highly critical of, yet read closely. Other notable candidates of similar critical influence upon Browne include Cardan's countryman, the polymath Giambattista della Porta (1538-1615) the Belgian scientist Van Helmont (1577-1644) the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1494-1541) and the German scholar of comparative religion Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). 

Browne sometimes wrote with his most recent reading in mind. From his mention of the Italian polymath and physician Jerome Cardan twice in On Dreams its possible to tentatively date On Dreams as written circa 1663 from two facts. According to the 1711 Auction Sales Catalogue an edition of Jerome Cardan's Opera (Complete works) dated 1663 is listed as once in Browne's library. [5]. Coincidentally, almost half of Browne's eldest son  Edward Browne's dissertation for his bachelor of medicine degree, on the use of dreams to the physician, was written in 1663.[6] Its therefore possible to speculate that Browne may have composed On Dreams to assist his son. In any event the short tract On Dreams isn't dissimilar in either its literary style or subject-matter to Browne's  A Letter to a Friend  (circa 1656) in which dreams as experienced by the dying are commented upon. As such On Dreams may be read as an appendage to A Letter to a Friend, Browne's major medical writing.

There's a fascinating relationship between Thomas Browne to the Swiss psychologist  Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). For example, both men were physicians who took their psychiatric responsibilities seriously, both studied comparative religion and alchemical literature in depth and both had a big  interest in their own and others' dreams. I've written at length about this fascinating relationship  elsewhere on this blog. [7] 

C.G.Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) like Browne's Religio Medici (1643) is an autobiographical account and spiritual testament which includes many philosophical digressions. The biggest difference between the two autobiographies being whilst Religio Medici was penned before its author embarked upon a medical career, C.G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections was written after a long medical career, shortly before the author's death. It includes recollections of some of the many dreams Jung had, of digging up the bones of prehistoric animals, of kneeling to hand a girl an umbrella, of a tree transformed by frost, of his father reading a fish-skin bound Bible and many equally bizarre others. According to Jung-

'The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness....All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of the more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. [8]

In On Dreams Browne declares- 'We owe unto dreams that Galen was a physician, Dion an historian, and that the world hath seen some notable pieces of Cardan' to which one might add we owe unto dreams that the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung embarked upon a long study of alchemy.

Jung's dream which heralded his encounter with alchemy occurred in 1926 when he dreamt he was travelling through the Lombardy plain in Northern Italy. Upon viewing a large manor house located near Verona he entered its courtyard. Suddenly its gates slammed shut and he thought to himself, 'Now, we are caught in the seventeenth century'. Only much later did Jung come to realize that his dream alluded to his many years of studying alchemy, the golden age of alchemy being the seventeenth century.

Amazingly, Memories, Dreams, Reflections includes an endorsement of Browne as a psychologist. Jung's autobiography is prefaced by a verse chosen by his secretary Aniela Jaffe to describe the psychologist, but the author of the verse, the English romantic poet Samuel Coleridge is eulogizing upon Thomas Browne, not C.G. Jung. This verse is notable for its early usage of the word 'consciousness' which the Oxford English Dictionary attributes to the poet William Wordsworth, Coleridge's sometime mentor as the first to use and in all probability was 'borrowed' from him. Coleridge's enthusiastic response to Browne focuses upon the self-analytical and mind-expanding qualities of the physician-philosopher.

He looked at his own Soul
With a Telescope. What seemed
all irregular he saw and
shewed to be beautiful
Constellations: and he added
to the Consciousness hidden
worlds within worlds.

Thomas Browne's anticipation of a Jungian interpretation of dreams is boldly declared in On Dreams -

Many dreams are made out by sagacious exposition from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamental sense & mysterie of similitude, whereby he that understands upon what natural fundamental every notional depends, may by symbolical adaptation hold a readie way to read the characters of Morpheus.

Browne's proposal of 'symbolical adaptation' as 'a readie way to read the characters of Morpheus' (the god of sleep is known as 'Fashioner' in Ancient Greek: μορφή meaning 'form, shape') requires elaboration.

Its worth remembering first that the word 'symbol'  derives from the Greek σύμβολον symbolon, meaning "token, watchword" from σύν syn "together" and βάλλω bállō " "I throw, put". The meaning of symbol as "something which stands for something else" was first recorded  in Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1596). 

According to C.G Jung - 'Symbols are never simple - only signs and allegories are simple. The symbol always covers a complicated situation which is so far beyond the grasp of language that it cannot be expressed at all in any unambiguous manner. [ 9]

'If symbols mean anything at all, they are tendencies which pursue a definite but not yet recognisable goal and consequently can express themselves only in analogies.' [10]

The Renaissance study of nature included the study of human nature. It was the radical 'Luther of Medicine' the Swiss physician-alchemist Paracelsus who first encouraged and urged the physician to take dreams and seriously, declaring-

"The interpretation of dreams is a great art. Dreams are not without meaning wherever they may come from - from fantasy, from the elements, or from another inspiration". [11]

Orthodox Christian theology did not however always possess a clear-cut view or answer to the new spiritual and psychological concerns experienced by many during the Renaissance, an age of great change. The effects of urbanization for example increased interaction between widely differing social, cultural, moral and religious perspectives and increased awareness of sexuality. 

From their close understanding of the human condition and dissatisfied with Christian dogma alchemist-physicians  as diverse as Paracelsus, John Dee, Van Helmont, Jerome Cardan and Thomas Browne either augmented concepts originating from the western esoteric traditions or coined home-grown neologisms and symbols in order to describe their understanding of the psyche.  Each of these aforenamed alchemist-physicians took their own dreams far more seriously than most in contemporary society today; each recognized their dream-lives to be of great importance to their self-development or individuation process in Jungian terms. From alchemist-physicians analysis of their dreams there emerged the beginnings of the modern-day science of psychology. Their rudimentary and tentative understanding of the self and unconscious psyche  several of whom C.G. Jung found confirmation of his psychology, in particular Gerard Dorn, were the fruits of the Renaissance spirit of enquiry into nature, which includes human nature. As C.G.Jung explains-

'the language of the alchemists is at first sight very different from our psychological terminology and way of thinking. But if we treat their symbols in the same way as we treat modern fantasies, they yield a meaning - even in the Middle Ages confessed alchemists interpreted their symbols in a moral and philosophical sense, their "philosophy" was, indeed, nothing but projected psychology'. [12]

Thomas Browne's fascination with symbols is writ large throughout his oeuvre. Allusion to symbolism involving the alphabets of various languages, numbers, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mercurial characters, kabbalistic signs and geometric symbols as well as metaphors, allegories, anagrams and  riddles can be found in his writings, not least in his highly hermetic discourse  The Garden of  Cyrus (1658) a literary work densely packed with symbolism. Not only is the ubiquity of the number five in art and nature prominent in The Garden of Cyrus but also its many closely-associated extensions including the V shape and the Latin numeral for 5, which by mirror doubling becomes the figure X, significant  to Christians as the first letter of the name of Christ in Greek, the ten commandments as well as the Pythagorean tetraktys, which by multiplication (X) becomes the reticulated network, as seen illustrated on the discourse's frontispiece. (Below)

The literary critic Peter Green recognized- 'there is nothing vague or woolly about Browne's mysticism...Every symbol is interrelated with the over-all pattern'. [13]

Crucially, in relation to Jungian psychology, Browne not only employs one of the earliest usages of the very word 'archetype' in The Garden of Cyrus  but even attempts to delineate the archetype of the 'wise ruler' through utilizing highly-original proper name symbolism, alluding to Solomon, Moses, Alexander the Great, Augustus and of course the titular hero of the discourse, Cyrus. Browne's proper-name symbolism also alludes to the archetypal figure of the ‘Great Mother' as a symbol of fertility and fruitfulness with mention of Sarah, Isis, Juno, Cleopatra and Venus. But if ever there were a sly, Royalist supporter's opposition to Cromwell's rule of England (1650-1658), its surely in Browne's repeated citing of examples of the 'Wise ruler' from history in  The Garden of Cyrus.

The religious mystic and symbol go together hand in glove. For most Christian mystics the inexhaustible symbolism of the Cross was sufficient for expression of their spiritual thought. The Elizabethan mathematician and hermetic philosopher John Dee (1527-1608) however devised his very own mystical symbol, the Monas Hieroglyphica a complex, metaphysical 'explanation' of the cosmos. Dee's Monas symbol became a printer's colophon which was avidly reproduced by various alchemystical philosophers in their publications. John Dee's eldest son Arthur Dee became a friend of Browne's upon his return from Russia and retirement to what was at the time, England's second city in terms of prosperity and population, Norwich.

Peter French  speculates- 'Little is known of this son of Dee's; one cannot help but wonder however, how much he may have influenced Browne, who was one of the seventeenth century's greatest literary exponents of the type of occult philosophy in which both the Dee's were immersed'.[14]

On Dreams is not Browne's only literary work in which the psychological is prominent. His two closely-related discourses of 1658 Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus are a portrait of the human condition and psyche, depicting humanity as simultaneously irrational and rational, fearful of death, yet forever with the future in mind, serious and merry, enduring pain and illness as well as enjoying health and pleasure. Imagery involving Light and Darkness permeates the diptych discourses, as does the dominant themes of Time (Urn-Burial) and Space (The Garden of Cyrus) the basic framework of  the Mandala. Most often a circular visual image, but conceivable as a literary structure, in Jungian psychology the meditative image of the mandala symbolically represents the dreamer's search for completeness and self-unity; its function is to assist with healing and to help transform ordinary minds into enlightened ones. Plexiformed in their polarity, themes and imagery, Browne's diptych discourses are capable of achieving such a transformation to the receptive mind.  By focusing his reader's attention to the discourses primary symbols of Urn and Quincunx, Thomas  Browne  -

'by concentrating, almost like a hypnotist, on this pair of unfamiliar symbols, paradoxically releases the reader's mind into an infinite number of associative levels of awareness, without preconception to give shape and substance to quite literally cosmic generalizations...............Mystical symbolism is woven throughout the texture of Browne's work and adds, often subconsciously, to its associative power of impact. [15]

C.G.Jung, recognizing the enduring continuity of symbolism in the collective unconscious psyche throughout long stretches of time perceptively observes-

'The symbolic statements of the old alchemists issue from the same unconscious as modern dreams and are just as much the voice of nature'. [16] 

Browne concludes his short tract On Dreams refuting that children don't dream under six months old, that men don't dream in some countries by supplying a footnote upon the difference between false and true dreams in the form of the Ivory gate and the polished horn gate as mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, in which Penelope the hero's wife says of dreams-

"Ah my friend," seasoned Penelope dissented
"dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things-
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass...
Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them. [17]

Conclusion

In addition to being a superb introduction to Browne's literary style, On Dreams includes a number of highly original speculations on the psyche's relationship to dreams, 'the Theatre of Ourselves', as the physician-philosopher memorably defines the psyche. 

Link to full text of  On Dreams

Books consulted

* Patrides C. A. ed. and with an introduction The Major Works of Sir Thomas Browne pub. Penguin  1977 includes On Dreams
* Finch J. S - A Catalogue of the Libraries of Sir Thomas Browne and Dr Edward Browne, his son. A Facsimile Reproduction with an Introduction, Notes and Index.  E. J .Brill    1986
* Jung C. G.  Memories, Dreams, Reflections trans. R & C Winston London 1979
* Jung C.G. Psychology and Religion Vol. 11 Collected works pub. RKP 1958
* Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne  pub. 1959 Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Work, No.108).
* The Odyssey Homer translated by Robert Fagles 1996 Viking Penguin

Notes

[1] Religio Medici Part 2  Section 11
[2] Ibid.
[3] R.M. Part 1:12
[4] Pseudodoxia Epidemica Bk 1:18 no.13
[5] Sales Catalogue p.19 no 96  Opera Omnia 10 vol. Lyon 1663
[6] I am indebted to Ms. A. Wyatt for information about Edward Browne's bachelor of medicine dissertation and indeed on all matters relating to Thomas Browne's eldest son, Edward Browne (1644-1708).
[7]  Carl Jung and Sir Thomas Browne
[8]  Glossary  of  Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
[9] Carl Jung Complete Works  Vol:11 paragraph 385
[10] CW 14: paragraph 667
[11] Paracelsus: Selected Writings edited by Jolande Jacobi pub. Princeton University Press 1951
[12] CW 14: paragraph 737
[13] Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne pub. 1959 Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Work, No.108)
[14] John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, by Peter J. French Pub. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1972
[15] Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne  pub. 1959 Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Work, No.108)
[16] Collected Works vol. 11: paragraph 105
[17] Book 19 lines 560-565 The Odyssey Homer by Robert Fagles pub. 1996 Viking Penguin

Paintings

'Before Waking'  40 x 50 cm. (2015) by Peter Rodulfo.









The Knight's Dream by Antonio de Peruda. (1655)









Henri Rousseau Le Rêve (The Dream) 1909. Rousseau's last painting.

'Dreaming Fisherman' by Peter Rodulfo

See  also-

Link to Peter Rodulfo's art 

See also -

Rodulfo's quadriptych of Loving-Kindness

Rodulfo's 'As the elephant laughed'. A panorama of evolution

Paracelsus on the interpretation of dreams

Paracelsus and Sir Thomas Browne

Carl Jung and Sir Thomas Browne

Mathematical Beehives and the Peacock Fountain

Listed as once in the library of  Thomas Browne (1605-82) Beehives of Universal Mathematical Philosophy by the Italian mathematician and astronomer Mario Bettini (1582-1657) is a compendium of mathematics, physics and optics. Each chapter of Apiaria Universae Philosophiae Mathematicae (its Latin title) is a self-contained 'Beehive' in which a proposition or topic of early modern science is discussed including Euclidean geometry, optics, acoustics, the camera obscura, mathematical discussion of the flight of projectiles, the art of navigation and the measurement of time. Some of the many studies and experiments in Bettini's Aparia are considered to be innovative contributions to the early scientific revolution. [1] 

Bettini's Aparia went through a number of editions from its first publication in 1642. Thomas Browne's edition is dated 1656, just two years before the publication of his discourse The Garden of Cyrus. If he acquired his edition of Bettini's 'Beehives' in 1656, then  potentially it influenced either consciously or unconsciously, his penning The Garden of Cyrus. Either way, Bettini's Aparia and Browne's The Garden of Cyrus are thematically united, both supplying evidence to their reader of how the principles of geometry pervade the world. In Browne's case this involves countless examples of the 'mathematics of nature' via the geometry of the quincunx pattern. 

Although the bulk of Browne's scientific writings are in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica,  many of the topics covered by Bettini in Aparia also feature in Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus. For example, in the second proposition or 'Beehive' in Bettini's 'Beehives of Universal Mathematical Philosophy' the Jesuit scientist examines the mathematics of the spider-web - 

The spider and its web-making ability feature twice in Browne's Garden of Cyrus, firstly in his observing - 'that the woof of the neat Retiarie Spider, which seems to weave without transversion, and by the union of right lines to make out a continued surface.' and secondly  - 'And no mean Observations hereof there is in the Mathematics of the neatest Retiary Spider, which concluding in forty four Circles, from five Semi-diameters beginneth that elegant texture'. [2]

Bees

Browne also shared with Bettini an interest in bees. From the time of the ancient Greek philosopher Pappus of Alexandria to the Renaissance-era various mathematicians and philosophers credited bees as Heaven-instructed mathematicians capable of 'geometrical forethought' and in possession of knowledge transcendent to humanity. 

Bee's important contributions to civilization consist of honey, a rare source of sweetness and wax, useful for many aspects of human life including candles for light. Honey and wax were both valuable contributions to the advancement of civilization until the advent of gas and electric lighting and the discovery of other sources of sugar. Evidence of human beekeeping, known as apiculture, can be found in Hindu, Hittite, Greek and ancient Egyptian civilizations and as such bees have fascinated poet, philosopher and scientist alike.  

From the Roman poet Virgil's verse on apiculture in his fourth Georgic to Bernard Mandeville's inverted theory of the relationship between morality and economics in The Fable of the Bees (1719) to the mysticism of Maurice Maeterlinck's  Life of the Bee (1900) bees are frequently associated with activity, diligence, and an industrious work-ethic order. The collective nature of the beehive has been used as evidence supporting both communal and monarchical forms of government.

Thomas Browne makes a beeline towards advocating the wisdom of the 'curious mathematics' of bees in his Religio Medici when proposing -

'Indeed what reason may not go to School to the wisdom of Bees, Ants, and Spiders ? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us?..... in these narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematics, and the civility of these little Citizens, more neatly set forth the wisdom of their Maker;  [3]

Centuries before the Czech author Franz Kafka (1883-1924) described the horror of  Gregor Samsa's transformation into a giant beetle in his short story Die Verwandlung (1915) Thomas Browne in Religio Medici (1643) imagined himself as a bee in flight -

'when homeward I shall drive
Rich with the spoils of nature to my hive,
There will I sit, like that industrious fly,
Buzzing thy praises'.....[4]

Browne's mystical awe in contemplation of the 'curious mathematics' of the bee in Religio Medici transforms into  sharp-eyed 'ocular observation' of nature in The Garden of Cyrus in which the geometry of the beehive is closely examined-

'The sexangular Cells in the Honeycombs of Bees, are disposeth after this order, much there is not of wonder in the confused Houses of Pismires, though much in their busy life and actions, more in the edificial Palaces of Bees and Monarchical spirits; who make their combs six-corner’d, declining a circle, whereof many stand not close together, and completely fill the area of the place; But rather affecting a six-sided figure, whereby every cell affords a common side unto six more, and also a fit receptacle for the Bee it self, which gathering into a Cylindrical Figure, aptly enters its sexangular house, more nearly approaching a circular Figure, then either doth the Square or Triangle. And the Combs themselves so regularly contrived, that their mutual intersections make three Lozenges at the bottom of every Cell; which severally regarded make three Rows of neat Rhomboidal Figures, connected at the angles, and so continue three several chains throughout the whole comb'. [5]

Its difficult to imagine the sheer profusion of natural life which existed in Browne's day. Bird and insect populations were considerably denser than today. Scientific evidence indicates there's been a 33% decline among the 130 plus species of pollinating insects in the past 13 years alone. This decline is closely related to world food security and even, potentially, to the extinction of present-day civilization. 

In modern times the Russian mathematician and esotericist, P.D. Ouspensky (1878-1947) speculated of bees-

'Having begun to alter their being, their life and their form, bees and ants, taken as individuals, severed their connection with the laws of  Nature, ceased to express these laws individually and began to express them only collectively. And then Nature raised her magic wand, and they became small insects, incapable of doing Nature any harm'.

'Ants and bees alike both call for our admiration by the wonderful completeness of their organisation, and at the same time repel and frighten us, and provoke a feeling of undefinable aversion by the invariably cold reasoning which dominates their life and by the absolute impossibility for an individual to escape from the wheel of life of the ant-hill or beehive. We are terrified at the thought we might resemble them'. [6]

Optics

In Bettini's Aparia the optical illusion of replicating the image of  one foot-soldier into a total of twelve foot-soldiers,  an illusion highly advantageous as strategy in military affairs, is demonstrated below.

A superb example of Browne's sharp sighted 'ocular observation' occurs in the learned doctor's declaration -

'He that would exactly discern the shape of a Bees mouth, need observing eyes, and good augmenting glasses; wherein is discoverable one of the neatest pieces in nature, and must have a more piercing eye then mine'. [7]

Thomas Browne's  interest in optics is celebrated in French artists Anne and Patrick Poirier's 'geometric garden' of twenty interconnecting sculptures in granite and two large-scale marble pieces, one of a brain, the other an eye were installed in 2007 close to the physician's 17th century home at Hay Hill, Norwich. The Italian marble block, approximately 1.5 metre square has on its obverse an eye and the word 'Memorabilia' on its reverse.

Of the many facets of optics such as reflection, refraction, magnification and perspective, it seems as if  the study and understanding of the workings of the camera obscura was the 'holy grail' of the 17th century European scientific revolution. Mario Bettini describes the workings of the camera obscura in his Aparia, and a rough description of its workings also occurs in The Garden of Cyrus. 

'wherein the pictures from objects are represented, answerable to the paper, or wall in the dark chamber; after the decussation of the rays at the hole of the hornycoat, and their refraction upon the Christalline humour, answering the foramen of the window, and the convex or burning-glasses, which refract the rays that enter it'.

The subject of acoustics is explored in the third volume of Bettini's Aparia ; a topic also included in The Garden of Cyrus -

'A like rule is observed in the reflection of the vocal and sonorous line in Echoes, which cannot therefore be heard in all stations. But happening in woody plantations, by waters, and able to return some words; if reached by a pleasant and well-dividing voice, there may be heard the softest notes in nature'. [9]

An authoritative Browne scholar perceptively notes of the geometric and mathematical content of The Garden of Cyrus -

'In long stretches of chapters 3 and 4 of Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus, the job of preserving the ubiquity of decussation (X) in nature is mathematical, the tapering cylindricality of trees, Archimedes on conic shapes, squaring the circle, and pyramids of light through the aperture of the eye. If The Garden of Cyrus is an almost mathematical work, suffused in the Euclidean pleasures of number and form, Browne also dwells in the near tactility and texture of his geometrical vocabulary, 'helicall or spirall roundles, volutas, conicall sections, circular Pyramids, and fustrums of Archimedes'. [10]

It was during the early scientific revolution (generally considered to begin with Nicolaus Copernicus's theological-challenging heliocentric universe, 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres' in 1543 and culminating in the abstract mathematics and physics of Isaac Newton's Principia in 1687) that the study of optics, along with astronomy and botany among other subjects became accessible to educated and leisured enquirers, in particular from the ranks of priest and physician, Mario Bettini and Thomas Browne's respective professions. 

Jesuits such as Bettini made many contributions to the development of science and have been described as "the single most important contributor to experimental physics in the seventeenth century." By the eighteenth century the Jesuits had "contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes and to scientific fields as varied as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, often before anyone else, the coloured bands of Jupiter, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood, the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light.

Above all other Jesuit scientists however it was books by the polymath Athanasius Kircher (1601-80) which were avidly collected by Browne. A near exact contemporary to Browne, Kircher has been described as 'the supreme representative of Hermeticism in post-Reformation Europe'  and was a favourite read of the physician-philosopher, as the contents of his library reveals. Browne often wrote with his most recent reading in mind; its hardly coincidental therefore that the antiquarian artefact known as the Bembine Tablet of Isis is mentioned not once, but twice, in The Garden of Cyrus for Browne had  recently acquired Kircher's vast work of comparative religion Oedipus Aegypticus (Rome 1650-1655) in which the Bembine Tablet, the Rosetta Stone of its age, is reproduced and 'interpreted' by Kircher. Although frequently misapprehending the true meaning of the antiquities, Egyptian hieroglyphs and world religion myth he encountered, nevertheless Kircher paved the way for future study in comparative religion.  [11] 

Although Browne often purchased books swiftly upon their publication there's no easy way of ascertaining whether or not he acquired an edition of Bettini’s Aparia in the year of 1656 and even though Browne's The Garden of Cyrus (1658) shares subject-matter with Bettini's Aparia, it also ranges into topics as diverse as - Architecture, Biblical scholarship, Egyptology, comparative religion, mythology, gardening and plantations in antiquity, geometry, the Archimedean solids, sculpture, numismatics, games and sports including backgammon, knuckle-stones, chess, archery and skittles as well as paving-stones, battle-formations, optics, the camera obscura, perspective, acoustics, music therapy, zoology, ornithology, the kabbalah, astrology, astronomy and not least, botany, including speculations upon the related topics of  germination, generation, longevity and heredity. All these topics are used by Browne in order to supply his reader with evidence of the archetypal quincunx pattern's  eternal existence.

In essence the subjects of mathematics and geometry were viewed  in tandem during the seventeenth century, from both a practical, utilitarian perspective as well as from an esoteric view-point. Discoveries of mathematical laws and geometrical principles, 'the higher geometry of nature' were interpreted by early scientific enquirers, all of whom were religious-minded, as evidence of the wisdom of God, 'the supreme geometrician' in Browne's personal, mystical vision in The Garden of Cyrus whilst Bettini's Aparia is in essence a Counter-Reformation attempt to harness the rapid development  of  science to Church teaching and authority.

Bettini's Aparia is related not only in  its subject-matter but also in its frontispiece art-work to Browne's discourse. New study of the frontispiece to Bettini's Aparia by the Bolognese artist Francesco Curti entitled The Garden of Mathematical Sciences reveals it to exhibit the self-same fusion of scientific enquiry and esoteric symbolism as encountered in Browne's Garden of Cyrus. Curti's early colour engraving as such may be considered a worthy  'alternative' candidate to the frontispiece of Browne's The Garden of Cyrus. This relationship between Browne's textual discourse to Curti's visual artwork is rewarding to explore in depth. 

The Garden of Mathematical Sciences

The colour engraving and frontispiece to Bettini's Aparia entitled The Garden of Mathematical Sciences (above) by the Bolognese artist Francesco Curti (1603-1670) conjures a garden in which mathematics is associated with nature. In what is a highly symmetrical and artificial composition combining art with nature, Curti's engraving depicts a Villa courtyard with an extensive background landscape. In its foreground stand ten antique vases, each of which has optical phenomena etched upon it,  a scientific instrument  growing from it as if a flower, and a stem with a geometric shape attached to it. Curti's ornate vases represent the vigorous growth of  mathematical science during the early scientific revolution in which understanding of geometry and mathematics advanced understanding in subjects as  diverse as architecture, navigation, art-perspective and optics. [12] 

Centre-stage in Curti's Garden of Mathematical Sciences there is a sculptured stone basin supported by two entwined water-nymphs or Naiads, female spirits once believed to preside over fountains, wells, streams and freshwater. A peacock alights upon the water basin's sculptured ornamentation with one foot upon a sphere its other mysteriously grasping a staff with a single eye at its tip. Water streams from its fanned feathers, creating a perpetual fountain. Two hedged gardens, rough pasture, bees in flight, a geometrical spider-web, two mystical statua and the figure of Mercurius holding an armillary sphere while standing upon a pyramid of six  beehives can also be seen.

A comparative study of Curti's engraving to Browne's discourse is assisted by the fact that The Garden of Cyrus  is itself a highly visual work in its abundance of  visual imagery; both 'Garden' art-works may loosely be defined as possessing characteristics associated with Mannerist art. 

The art-historian John Shearman noted that characteristics of  Mannerist art included - Hidden classical references, refinements, interlacing of forms and unexpected and departures from common usage. The Hungarian art-historian Arnold Hauser noted that Mannerist art delighted in symbols and hidden meanings and that it catered for an essentially international cultured class, was a refined and exclusive style, with an intellectual and even surrealistic outlook. He also noted that Mannerist art was inclined towards esoteric concepts in its symbolism. In words easily applicable to either 'Garden' art-work Hauser defined the qualities and excesses of Mannerist art thus -

'At one time it is the deepening and spiritualizing of religious experience and a vision of a new spiritual content in life; at another, an exaggerated intellectualism, consciously and deliberately deforming reality, with a tinge of the bizarre and the abstruse.' [13]

Thus, although differing in medium, both 'Garden' art-works with their utilization of multiplicity and variety, juxtaposition of art and nature, along with their fusion of scientific enquiry to esoteric symbolism, easily conform to the artistic style and objectives of Mannerist art. However, such is the stylistic contrast between Browne's two philosophical discourses that while the stoicism of Urn-Burial with its survey of human grief, passion and bereavement, couched in oratorical prose is utterly Baroque in theme and style; its diptych  companion, The Garden of Cyrus with its procession of examples from art and nature involving great variety and multiplicity and many esoteric allusions is exemplary of Mannerist artistic traits.

In Curti's Garden of Mathematical Sciences the superimposed symbols of fountain and peacock are worthwhile looking at closely.   

Victorian-era, Gothic-style fountain, Plantation Gardens, Norwich.

Fountains feature prominently in gardens from the Renaissance era onwards. The functional aspect of the fountain, to provide drinking-water, was superseded as a purely decorative and entertainment feature in gardens. In addition to creating health-inducing negative ions, fountains also camouflage conversation from prying ears in public, urban spaces. Many of Rome's famous fountains were constructed during the seventeenth century including Bernini's fountain of the Four Rivers, the  Trevi Fountain and the so-called Bee Fountain. 

Contemporary to the construction of such large-scale public fountains Jacob Dobrzenski (1623-97) a Professor of mathematics and medicine of Nigro Ponte, Ferrara, published a book in 1657 with the intriguing title of, 'New and More Pleasing Philosophy on the Wonderful Spirit of Fountains' (Nova et amenior de admirando fontium genio philosophia).

    

15th c. illustration from De Sphera, Modeni, Italy. 

The alchemical symbolism of the fountain was developed through Bernard of Treviso's story of a King who is rejuvenated after bathing in a fountain. Trevsio's story was included in the 17th century anthology known as the Theatrum Chemicum. A Fountain of Love is also mentioned on several occasions by the philosophical alchemist Gerard Dorn in Speculativa Philosophia  included in the first volume of the Theatrum Chemicum, a copy of which was once in Thomas Browne's library. [14]

'Approach the fountain here, Body, so that you may drink your fill with your Mind and not thirst any more for Vanities. O admirable efficacy of the fountain, which makes one from the two and brings peace between enemies ! The fountain of Love can make Mind from Spirit and Feeling Soul, but here it makes one man from Mind and Body. [15]

Alchemical literature and iconography frequently alludes to a fountain of Youth in which the magical powers of its waters restore and rejuvenate; like the philosophical bath the mercurial character of the fons mercuralis in which mercury is transformed  means it is dualistic, being poisonous as well as healing,  apt symbolism of the underlying unity of the trickster god of alchemy.

In his late work Mysterium Coniunctionis - An inquiry into the synthesis and separation of psychic opposites (1963) C.G.Jung likens the everlasting fountain to psychic processes, thus -

The ever-flowing fountain expresses a continual flow of interest towards the unconscious, a kind of constant attention or "religio" which might also be called devotion.....If attention is directed towards the unconscious, the unconscious will yield up its contents, and these in turn will fructify the conscious like a fountain of living water.   [16] 

The myth of how the peacock got its many 'eyes' and how it became a bird sacred to the goddess Juno is recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses, a source-book of inspiration to Renaissance painter, poet and sculptor alike. The Roman poet relates how the hundred eyes in the head of Argus took their rest two at a time while the others kept watch on guard. Wherever Argus stood he was looking at Io, and had Io in front of him even when his back was turned. Zeus ordered Hermes to assassinate Argus. The goddess Juno had the hundred eyes of Argus preserved forever, into a peacock's tail. [17]

The subject of Juno and the hundred eyes of Argus became a popular theme during the seventeenth century.  European artists including Rubens, Velasquez and many others  were inspired by the Greek myth. [18]

Avian symbolism often features in alchemical iconography in which the raven, swan, pelican, dove, owl and peacock are frequently encountered. Several symbolic attributes are associated with the peacock, these include it being, like the phoenix, a solar bird from its wheel-like fanned display of feathers, as a symbol of rebirth and immortality from its supposed incorruptible flesh, as a symbol of multiplication from the many 'eyes' upon its fanned feathers, while the optical effect of iridescence produced by its feathers is likened to the numinous experience of the alchemist engaged in experiment.

Symbols can endure paradox. Whilst the peacock, like the phoenix is a solar symbol from the way in which it spreads its tail in the shape of a wheel,  the many 'eyes' upon its fanned feathers are analogous to the starry night sky.

C.G. Jung notes - 'The peacock is an old emblem of rebirth and resurrection, quite frequently found on Christian sarcophagi' [19] a fact which Thomas Browne noted  in Urn-Burial when writing of early Christian funeral iconography depicting,  'the mystical figures of peacocks, doves and cocks'. 

Jung also states-

'The caudo pavonis announces the end of the work, just as Iris, its synonym, is the messenger of God. The exquisite display of colour's in the peacock's fan heralds the imminent synthesis of all qualities and elements, which are united in the  "rotundity" of the philosophical stone'. [20] 

Jung  likened the iridescence of peacock's feathers to alchemical experimentation stating - 'The chemical causes of the cauda pavonis are probably the iridescent skin on molten metals and the vivid colours of certain compounds of mercury'. [21]  

The optical effect of iridescence on silk may have been known  to Thomas Browne when very young for his father was a wealthy silk merchant. In  Pseudodoxia Epidemica he notes- 

'And from such salary irradiations may those wondrous varieties arise, which are observable in Animals, as Mallards heads, and Peacocks feathers, receiving intention or alteration according as they are presented unto the light'.[22]

The 19th century mythologist De Gubernatis stated-

'The serene and starry sky and the sun are peacocks. The deep-blue firmament shining with a thousand brilliant eyes, and the sun rich with the colours of the rainbow, present the appearance of a peacock in all the splendour of its eye-spangled feathers. .....It is commonly said of the peacock that it has an angel's feathers, a devil's voice, and a thief's walk'. [23]

On a mundane level the many eyes of the peacock's tail may be interpreted as symbolizing  the watchfulness of the observer during the alchemical  opus while at a higher level poly optics symbolizes the alchemical stage of Multiplication. Crucially, in Jung’s view the motif of the all-seeing 'eyes' of the peacock - polyophtalmia (many eyes) - is associated with ‘multiple consciousness’ that is, with the various quasi-conscious states  which exist in the unconscious. Multiple eyes symbolize what Jung calls 'multiple luminosities' of the unconscious. Particularly, polyophthalmia ‘indicates the observing consciousness is the observing agent of the psyche. Polyopthalmia can also symbolically illuminate the concept of foreknowledge, that is, not about knowing something in advance (‘fore’) but rather instead about being able to observe what is already in existence through a simultaneous multiplicity of perspectives. Thus, the many eyes of the displayed tail feathers of the peacock can be said to symbolize a non-linear multiplicity of perspectives. [24 ] 

In the richly coloured and detailed engraving for Salomon Trismosin's Splendor Solis by Jörg Breu the Elder (1480-1537) a peacock is depicted encased within an alchemical vessel (above).

The peacock's  fanned feather display exhibits the short-lived nature of all manifestation, since its forms appear and vanish as swiftly as the peacock displays and furls its tail. Indeed, to the present-day the sudden appearance of a rainbow (the peacock's close symbolic relation) caused by the optical effect of light refracted through water, retains a fragment of a once potent numinosity to those seeing it occur in nature. 

Although the goddess  Juno is named in The Garden of Cyrus, the bird sacred to her, the peacock is not; however, geese, ducks, cormorant, bittern, owls, swallows along with butterflies, bees, beavers, rattlesnakes, lambs and carp as well as elephants and whales are mentioned in the discourse.

Browne was in fact a keen bird-fancier, keeping at one time or another a cormorant, owl, bittern, golden eagle and even an ostrich so he may well have approved of a peacock on a frontispiece for his discourse,  stating in the dedicatory epistle of The Garden of Cyrus, ‘noble spirits contented not themselves with Trees, but by the attendance of Aviaries, Fish Ponds, and all variety of Animals’.

In many ways the symbols of peacock and fountain in Curti's engraving are near-identical in their symbolic meaning, that of a numinous and revivifying phenomena accompanying the alchemist and/or early scientist in their quest. The appearance of the cauda pavonis of the peacock is considered to be a dramatic indicator of success in the opus while the fountain is similarly associated with flourishing and growth in the alchemical opus.

In essence Curti's Garden of  Mathematical Sciences captures the moment of revelation. As such it depicts a 'Light-bulb' moment as experienced by the alchemist/scientist whilst engaged in experiment in the laboratory. The light-bulb did not of course exist during the 17th century, and a more natural, if at first, seemingly paradoxical imagery is employed by Curti to express the  short-lived psychic experience of revelation.  

In modern times the 'Light-bulb moment' can be traced in origin to a character in Max Fleischer's early Betty Boop cartoons (1935-1937). Grampy is an eccentric inventor who entertains his guests by building self-playing musical instruments out of household gadgets. Whenever presented with an unexpected new problem, Grampy puts on his thinking cap, a mortarboard with a light-bulb on top. When the light-bulb lights up Grampy is able to solve his problem and build a new gadget to solve the problem.

The two mid-seventeenth century 'Garden' art-works text and image are related to each other not only in title,  chronology and subject-matter,  but also, crucially, in their self-same fusion of scientific enquiry with esoteric symbolism. Juxtaposed to its depiction of scientific instruments in Curti's Garden of  Mathematical Sciences allusions to Pythagorean  number symbolism can be seen; the self-same fusion of nascent scientific enquiry to esoteric symbolism permeates Browne's mystical vision of the inter-connection of art and nature in The Garden of Cyrus. 

The Renaissance was an era in which  the 'Re-birth' or 'rediscovery' of various forms of knowledge occurred. Its useful to realise that this included the 'rediscovery' of esoteric writings such as the Corpus Hermeticum by so-called Gnostic authors, as well as 're-discovered' texts, foremost of which was the discourse known as the Timaeus by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.

Second only to the many myths included in the Judaeo-Christian Bible, Plato's discourse the Timaeus was the most frequently consulted hand-book which influenced and inspired hermetic philosopher and alchemist alike during the Renaissance.  In  what is his most Pythagorean work, Plato's  Timaeus recounts how the demiurge created the world in the geometric form of a globe. The round figure is proposed to be the most perfect one, because it comprehends  all other figures and  is therefore the most omnimorphic of all figures, each point on its surface being equidistant from its centre. The sphere is featured above all other shapes in the frontispiece engraving The Garden of Mathematical Sciences with no less than ten spheres in total around each of the two enclosed gardens of Curti's Neoplatonic landscape view from a courtyard villa. 

 In his highly influential Oration on the Dignity of Man (De hominis dignitate) of 1486 the Renaissance humanist scholar Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) famously justified the importance of the human quest for knowledge within a Neoplatonic framework. Pico della Mirandola is also credited with re-introducing the 'mystical mathematics'  of Pythagoras to Renaissance Europe. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras was worshipped and venerated as a god for almost one thousand years before institutions teaching his ideas were closed down at the Fall of the Roman empire. Pythagoras taught that -

'By number, a way is had, to the searching out and understanding of everything able to be known'. 

Pythagoreans believed the number ten to be the number of totality and perfection containing within it all other numbers. It was depicted in Pythagorean teachings in the form of the tetractys a pyramid of dots (1+2+3+4) representing universal principles. 

Pythagorean numerology and Platonic shapes abound in Curti's illustration The Garden of Mathematical Sciences. The sphere is featured in repeated groupings of  ten as well as ten bees in quincunx formation and in ten vases in a 2 x 5 arrangement in its foreground.  The  number of chapters  in Browne's diptych discourses total ten and the figure X along with citations from Plato's Timaeus loom large throughout the pages of The Garden of Cyrus from its very opening  to its Platonic meditation upon the figure X as a symbol of the soul.

      

Radiating from the centre of the tetkratys pattern the hexagon can be seen, believed by Bettini, among others, to be 'proof' of the transcendent mathematical ability of bees in their construction of hexagonal honeycomb cells. The quincunx pattern (four corner dots of a square with one at the centre as upon dice) celebrated for its ubiquity in art and nature in Browne's Garden of Cyrus can also be discerned at the centre of the tetkratys. 

Although the figure of quincunx  is mentioned in classical antiquity it was during the Renaissance  that the idea of it being a pattern which transcends the realm of the artificial originates. The idea can be found in book 4 of the Italian Renaissance scholar Giambattista Della Porta's agricultural encyclopedia Villa (1583-1592) in which Della Porta (1535-1615) asserts that the quincunx pattern in addition to featuring in gardens and plantations, 'is to be found in each and every single thing in nature'. An illustration of the quincunx pattern was 'lifted'  from Della Porta's agricultural encyclopaedia Villa by Thomas Browne for the frontispiece of his 'Garden' discourse  (below)

Magnification of Curti's frontispiece  reveals the very same  quincunx pattern occurs in the hedge panels surrounding the gardens of Curti's imaginary Villa, in the formation of bees in flight, as well as the double 2 + 1 + 2 arrangement  of the ornates vases in its courtyard foreground.

In conclusion, Curti's Garden of Mathematical Sciences features two quite different approaches and interpretations of number which  co-existed during the 17th century before going their separate ways. It alludes to Pythagorean numerology as well as promoting the new 'observational' sciences of optics and astronomy. Its therefore a strong candidate as an alternative frontispiece to Browne’s 'Garden' discourse as these two quite different interpretations of number, that of Pythagorean number symbolism and a utilitarian, early scientific approach to number occurs in Curti's Garden of Mathematical Sciences (circa 1660) as well as in Browne's  1658 discourse The Garden of Cyrus .  

Notes

[1] Mario Bettini's book is listed in the 1711 Sales Catalogue  of Thomas Browne's library on p. 28 no. 16 under Folio by its half-title Fucaria & Auctaria ad Apiaria Philosophiae Mathematicae 1656. 
[2]  The Garden of Cyrus chapter 2
[3] Religio Medici Part 1:13
[4] Religio Medici Part 1:15
[5] The Garden of Cyrus
[6] A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the psychological method in its application to problems of Science, Religion an Art. by P.D. Ouspensky RKP 1931
[7] The Garden of Cyrus
[8] Optic books in Browne's library include - Alhazen  - Opticae Thesaurus Libri X, Basle 1572 Francois d'Aguillon - Opticorum Libri 6, Antwerp 1613 Johannes Kepler - Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, Frankfurt 1604 Athanasius Kircher - Ars Magna Lucis & Umbrae, Rome 1646 Christoph Scheiner - Rosa Ursina sive Sol, Bracciano, 1630
[9] The Garden of Cyrus
[10]  Thomas Browne Selected Writings ed. Kevin Killeen OUP 2014 
[11] Oedipus Aegyptiacus  1711 Sales Catalogue page 8 no. 91
[12] Francesco Curti colour image courtesy of Getty Images, with thanks for fair usage. This image has been available online since December 31st 2016. The full size of Francesco's Curti's colour engraving is approximately 30 x 40 cm. There are in fact two different versions of the  frontispiece for The Garden of Mathematical Sciences. Early editions include a frontispiece by Matthiae Galasso/Matthias Galassus while later editions feature Francesco Curti's colour engraving.

The biggest difference between the two versions is the various ensigns, banners and disembodied armoury in Galassus's version being replaced in Curti's engraving by the figure of Mercurius holding a banner with Papal ensigns. Both versions depict an armillary sphere, symbolic in Mathias Gallius's version to the world-wide influence of the missionary Jesuit Order. In Curtius's version it is Mercurius, the messenger of revelation and guiding 'deity' of alchemy who is featured in the frontispiece's symbolism.
[13] John Shearman Mannerism London, Penguin/Baltimore, MD, 1967 
and Arnold Hauser Mannerism. The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art
[14] Theatrum Chemicum Sales Catalogue page 24 no. 124
[15] Ibid.
[16] CW 14: 193
[17] Ovid Metamorphoses  Book 1 500-746 Penguin 1955
[18] Artists inspired by the Greek myth of Juno and the peacock include - Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640) Juno and Argus, c. 1610, oil on canvas, 249 x 296 cm.  (Post illustration) Other seventeenth century paintings on the theme of Juno, Argus and the Peacock include- Claude Gellée ‘Mercury Lulling Argus to Sleep with the Sound of His Pipe’ (1662) - Cornelis Bisschop (1630-1674) Circle of Cornelius van Poelenburgh (circa 1650) - Govert Flinck (1615-60) circa 1635-45 - Jacob Jordaens circa 1620 - Carel Fabritius ( circa 1645 and circa 1647) Velázquez (1659) Hendrik Goltzius (1615) Antonio Balestra (1666-1740)
[19] C.W.  Vol. 9i: 686
[20]  C.W.  381 n. 2
[20]   C.W.  vol. 14 396
[21] CW 9i 581 n. 129
[22] Pseudodoxia Epidemica
[23] Angelo De Grubernatis Zoological Mythology II London 1872
[24] - Time and Timelessness: Temporality in the theory of Carl Jung By Angeliki Yiassemides

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The bee is considered to be the most important living creature on the planet

Recommended listening

Alchemical literature of the sixteenth and seventh centuries frequently alludes to  the transformative power of music, most notably in Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens (1617). The twentieth century musical genre of Jazz  - an art-form which thrives upon experiment and which has the meditative and melancholic music genre of the 'blues', almost equivalent to the Nigredo stage of the alchemical opus - is a worthy contender for representing certain prerequisites and templates of alchemy,  the musician in the studio or in performance expressing inner experience as much as the alchemist  in his laboratory engaged in the alchemical opus. 

A highly-stylized cry of the peacock can be heard in the legendary tenor saxophonist Stan Getz's interpretation of pianist/composer  Jimmy Rowles  The Peacocks (1975)    

John Coltrane (1926-67) and Stan Getz (1927-1991) were the two tenor saxophonists who dominated 20th century Jazz. Like chalk and cheese to each other, each possessed a unique technique and interpretative skill, as their respective performances and recordings demonstrate. If Stan Getz's The Peacocks may be considered as expressive of the nigredo stage of alchemy, John Coltrane's rendering of The Night has a Thousand Eyes is an albedo fountain of musical notes.

The English composer William Alwyn (1905-1985) in his autobiography Winged Chariot states of his 5th symphony  Hydriotaphia (1973) 'Browne's wonderful prose sets the mood of each section and is an expression of my personal indebtedness to a great man whose writings have been a life-long source of solace and inspiration'.  Alwyn's Naiades (1971)  a Fantasy Sonata for flute and Harp aurally depicts the water-nymphs of antiquity, as seen supporting a water-basin in Curti's colour engraving.