They rendered visible the invisible, and were concerned with possessing the world.

Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

Hermetic quote Manguel Library rendered

Consider also:

  1. Making the Invisible Visible
  2. “It is well to emphasize then, at the outset, that Masonry is a sacramental system possessing, like all sacraments, an outward and visible side consisting; of its ceremonial, its doctrine and its symbols which we can see and hear, and an inward, intellectual, and spiritual side, which is concealed behind the ceremonial, the doctrine and the symbols, and which is available only to the Mason who has learned to use his spiritual imagination and who can appreciate the reality that lies behind the veil of outward symbol.”
  3. “And yet these lessons will prove fruitless. Human libraries, the monster will learn, contain for him only alien literature.”
  4. “The past is the cosmopolitan’s mother country, the universal fatherland, an endless library.”
  5. “It seems probable that this earlier genre of angelical classification is the source of Paul’s reference in Colossians. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: Colossians 1:16 (KJV) It is from this reference by St. Paul that all subsequent Christian theological discussions on the subject base their authority.”