A Great Fludd of Truth From a Wonderful Mind with Marty Leeds and Steven Young
Marty Leeds (Gnostic Academy) and Steven Young (Hedflux) have something in common: they're both fascinated and inspired by the 16th-17th century Alchemist, Robert Fludd. In this episode, we explore the natural philosophy, musical cosmology, and metaphysics and divine sciences of one of history's greatest minds. Some topics include the infinite and indivisible God, Jesus: the light of the mind, Fludd's beef with Johannes Kepler, and the History of the Macrocosm.
This conversation explores Robert Fludd's legendary debate with Johannes Kepler over quality versus quantity in science, his model of the cosmos as a divine monochord, the macrocosm and microcosm, the esoteric Christ as the light of the mind, Cabala and gematria, the philosopher's stone, memory palaces, and why Fludd's vision of consciousness as an indivisible emanation from God anticipated the modern hard problem of consciousness.
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In this episode
Core themes
The Polymath the Textbooks Skipped
Steven Young recounts finding Robert Fludd by working backwards from the alchemical engravings he was trying to decode, then recognizing his own biography in Fludd's: university, years touring as a musician, a return home to Scotland, and a plunge into alchemy. Both guests dwell on Fludd as physician, alchemist, artist, writer and man of God at once, a combination Young says the modern age no longer produces because we are all put in our own pigeon holes. They note the claim that William Harvey's account of blood circulation may owe something to Fludd's metaphysics, and that Fludd's ripples are still felt four centuries on.
Fludd Versus Kepler on Quantity and Quality
The conversation returns repeatedly to Fludd's printed quarrel with Johannes Kepler, described here as a gentlemanly rap battle fought through books. Chance Garton reads Fludd's rebuke of the vulgar mathematicians who measure the shadows instead of the substance, and his famous burn, he has hold of the tail, I grasp the head, I perceive the first cause, he is its effects. Garton frames the fight through Rene Guenon's The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times, arguing the Iron Age is defined by obsession with quantity. Steven Young adds that music is where quantity becomes quality, since ratios are felt as feelings.
The Macrocosm as a Two Octave Monochord
Fludd's history of the macrocosm gets the closest reading of the episode. Young lays out the three heavens, Empyrean, Ethereal and Elemental, running from pure form to unformed matter with a perfect balance between. The talk then turns to Fludd's monochord model, a single string with God's hand on the tuning peg, fourteen divisions across the three worlds, four elemental, seven planetary and three empyrean, making two octaves. Marty Leeds hears 314 in that ordering as a reference to pi, and connects Fludd's defense of the quaternary number to the Tetragrammaton and the tetractys, where one, two, three and four sum to ten and the four contains everything.
The Light of the Mind and Healing at a Distance
Garton reads Fludd's claim that the mind is in no ways divided from the essence of God, but bound up with him as light is with the body of the sun, all souls holding a continuous relation to the one world soul or metatron. Fludd also places the Trinity in the sun itself, face as Father, light as Son, heat as Holy Spirit. Garton relates this to his own biofield tuning practice, saying remote sessions make sense only if life force energy is one indivisible continuum, and that so called psychic ability is a birthright rather than a special power. He describes people as peepholes for God.
Secret Societies, the Stone, and the Road Back to Christ
Fludd defended the Rosicrucians publicly yet, as Young understands it, was never admitted and never met a single brother, which prompts speculation that the order may have begun as a hoax. Young relays a 32nd degree correspondent's account of Freemasonry as ritual theater nobody is required to understand, and Leeds agrees the mysteries have been watered down. Young points to Adam McLean's list of roughly two hundred names for the philosopher's stone, one of them blood of Christ. Leeds cites Carl Jung reading the stone as the completion of the Christos, and both men describe science and number as their own path to Christ.
Quotes
“He was a man of God, an alchemist and a scientist, but also a brilliant artist, a brilliant writer. He seemed to be all these things together.”
“As far as we know, he actually wasn't a Rosicrucian, yet he was willing to openly defend it because as far as we could tell, he absolutely knew what it was actually about.”
“Music is where quantity becomes quality because the frequencies and ratios are felt as feelings.”
“It seems that Fludd actually created his cosmology on his own to a large degree, in terms of the order of it and the greater pattern of it as a musical harmony of sorts.”
“Flux is actually a substance that extracts impurities when you're working with metals. So it completely changed the meaning of the term Head Flux now. So it's like extracting impurities from the head.”
“There's no actual separation between the light that's hitting us here and its source up there. And in the same way, the light of the mind is a continuous stream from God.”
“Carl Jung specifically said that when they were referring to the philosopher's stone, it wasn't a replacement. It was just another name for the completion of the Christos, or that great work through Christ.”
“I was like looking for scientific understanding. And the deeper I went, the closer I got to Christ until I realized that everything's just pointing to that anyway.”
“You just keep going. You keep searching and keep searching and keep your nose to the grindstone. That's when the magic happens and you'll end up at the top of the mountain.”
“There's one life and that one life is the spirit that animates all life. So the plurality is a quantitative illusion of matter and the qualitative essential truth is that there's only the one life.”
Marty Leeds is a gematria researcher, author and preacher who founded The Gnostic Church and Academy of Lord Jesus Christ in 2022, where he serves as head teacher and spiritual leader. A working minister since 2011, he is the author of more than ten books, among them the Pi & The English Alphabet series, Scripture in the Stars, The Keys to the Tarot and Gnosticism Defined: The Tenets of The Order, built around a mathematical cipher he says is hidden beneath the English alphabet. His teaching centers on Prisca Theologia, the idea of a single wisdom underlying the world's religions, drawing together gematria, Kabbalah, astrology and comparative mythology. He streams weekly sermons free through the Gnostic Academy's YouTube and Rumble channels.
See all Marty episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
