FLUDD, ROBERT. - English physician and philosopher, born at Milgate House (Kent) in 1574, died in London on 8 Sept. 1637. He was a member of the Rosicrucian sect.
Under the influence of Niccolò di Cusa and Paracelso, he adhered to a pantheistic conception in which theosophy, occultism, and the natural sciences of the time converged. God, in whom contradictions coincide, is the “complicatio” of the universe, and the world the “explicatio” of God. God is wisdom and light and, as such, in unfolding Himself in the world, is the source and cause of all positive values (warmth, love, good, beauty, the repulsive force that expands). But, on the other hand, God is at once hidden, enveloped in darkness, and, as such, is the cause of every negative value (cold, hatred, evil, deformity, the attractive force that contracts). The world, therefore, the “explicatio” of God, is composed of light and darkness, warmth and cold, etc. These oppositions are also found in the human microcosm, in which the macrocosm rises to consciousness of itself.
