THE BOOK OF LIGHT
LIBER DE LUMINE
by Blessed Raymond Lull Doctor Illuminatus
and Martyr
Memorial Day 30 June
Profile: Seneschal, courtier and troubador
at the court of King James of Aragon
from
about 1246. Married Blanca Picany in
1257.
In 1263 he received a vision of Christ
crucified,
and was converted on the spot.
Franciscan tertiary. Friend of Raymond
of
Penyafort. Worked to convert Muslims
in the
Iberian peninsula, and then in north
Africa.
He tried to interest the Vatican and
assorted
European royal courts in this work,
travelling
throughout Italy, France, England and
Germany
in search of support, but received
little
help. Learned Arabic, founded a school
for
Arabic study in 1276 on Majorca, and
encouraged
the study of Arab language and culture.
Travelled
three times to Tunis to preach to the
Muslims,
but was forcibly deported.
He wrote over 300 works in Latin, Arabic
and Catalan on theology, logic, philosophy;
wrote fiction and poetry. Known as
a alchemist,
but had no training in occult arts,
and invented
his own Christian-based concepts to
try to
explain the alchemical mysteries. Reputed
to have solved the "lead-into-gold"
mystery; legend says he worked on it
to finance
missionary work. Had a small but devoted
band of followers known as Lullists
who continued
their work after his death, though
some of
them drifted away from the Church in
search
of alchemical knowledge. His work in
this
area has been the source of controversy
for
centuries, and non-Christian occult
groups
have seen him as a "master"
or
whatever term they use. Born c. 1234
at Palma,
Majorca Died c. 1315; some writers
indicate
he was martyred by stoning in Tunis,
but
there is no evidence for it; may have
died
of natural causes during the return
ocean
voyage from Tunis; buried at the church
of
San Francisco, Palma, Mallorca, Spain
Beatified
25 February 1750 by Pope Benedict XIV
(cultus
confirmed); 1847 by Pope Pius IX Canonized
pending.
Ramon Lull's Ars Magna - 1274 AD
Possibly the first person in the history
of formal logic to use a mechanical
device
to generate (so-called) logical proofs
was
the Spanish theologian Ramon Lull (see
also
logic diagrams and logic machines).
In 1274,
Lull climbed Mount Randa in Majorca
in search
of spiritual sustenance. a After fasting
and contemplating his navel for several
days,
Lull experienced what he believed to
be a
divine revelation, and he promptly
rushed
back down the mountain to pen his famous
Ars Magna. This magnum opus described
a number
of eccentric logical techniques, but
the
one of which Lull was most proud (and
which
received the most attention) was based
on
concentric disks of card, wood, or
metal
mounted on a central axis. Ramon Lull's
disks.
Lull's idea was that each disk should
contain
a number of different words or symbols,
which
could be combined in different ways
by rotating
the disks. In the case of our somewhat
jocular
example shown above, we can achieve
4 x 4
x 4 = 64 different sentences along
the lines
of "I love mice," "You
hate
cats," and "They eat frogs."
a Of course, Lull had a more serious
purpose
in mind, which was to prove the truth
of
everything contained within the Bible.
For
example, he used his disks to show
that "God's
mercy is infinite," "God's
mercy
is mysterious," "God's mercy
is
just," and so forth. Lull's devices
were far more complex than our simple
example
might suggest, with several containing
as
many as sixteen different words or
symbols
on each disk. His masterpiece was the
figura
universalis, which consisted of fourteen
concentric circles
(the mind boggles at the range of combinations
that could be generated by this device).
Strange as it may seem to us, Lull's
followers
(called Lullists) flourished in the
late
middle ages and the renaissance, and
Lullism
spread far and wide across Europe.
Why is all of this of interest to us?
Well
by some strange quirk of fate, Lull's
work
fired the imagination of several characters
with whom we are already familiar,
such as
Gottfried von Leibniz who invented
the mechanical
calculator called the Step Reckoner.
(See
also Jonathan Swift and Gulliver's
Travels.)
a Although Leibniz had little regard
for
Lull's work in general, he believed
there
was a chance it could be extended to
apply
to formal logic. In a rare flight of
fancy,
Leibniz conjectured that it might be
possible
to create a universal algebra that
could
represent just about everything under
the
sun, including (but not limited to)
moral
and metaphysical truths. In 1666, at
the
age of 19, Leibniz wrote his Dissertio
de
Arte Combinatoria, from which comes
a famous
quote describing the way in which he
believed
the world could be in the future:
|
Evans Experientialism 
