Scooped!

And some sixty years before I got the idea, even. Drat. I was hoping to work on a talk for Kalamazoo discussing how Bernardus Silvestris's Cosmographia was influenced by the Asclepius. Last night I came across a reference to an article entitled "Bernard Silvester and the Hermetic Asclepius," by Robert B. Woolsey, published in 1948. The opening paragraph reads thus:

"Examination of the De universitate mundi¹ by Bernard Silvester and the Hermetic Latin Asclepius proves that Bernard had studied the Hermteticist's work. It is the intent of this paper to report not only that proof, but as well to explain to what extent Bernard applied his own composition what he had learned from his study."²

Yeah. So I will still comb through those works necessary, but it looks like my topic may have been covered rather directly, as that is exactly what I wanted to study, some thirty-seven years before I was even born.

In slightly brighter news, Mr. Woolsey has given me something further to investigate. When discussing the usage of the figure of Oyarses in both the Asclepius and the Cosmographia, he says that instead of being the governor of each celestial sphere, as per the Asclepius, "he has discarded the sense of rule; in Oyarses he employs only the notion of essence or true quality."³ For anyone who has read C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, the name Oyarses calls rapidly to mind the figure of Oyarsa (pl. Oyarses), the ruler of Malacandra, and indeed the name and role given to the rulers of all the celestial spheres. This being is similar to a spirit, and might be called the spirit or essence of the planet itself, and is the ruler of that planet. This suggests that Lewis either merely expanded upon the notion of Oyarses as the essence of the celestial spheres into it also being the ruler of the celestial spheres, or he acquired the notion elsewhere -- perhaps even from the Asclepius. So now I have that which I can investigate. It may be an isolated case, or perhaps Lewis did read and borrow from the Asclepius. Now for me to check up and see if anyone has already written on this...

1 Another name for the Cosmographia.
2 Robert B. Woolsey, "Bernard Silvester and the Hermetic Asclepius," Traditio 6 (1948), 340.
3 Ibid. 343.