Francis Bacon Research Trust

Truth

Right-hand section of the woodblock emblem on the title-page of Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, printed together with and as an appendix to Sylva Sylvarum, 1626 and 1627.

Truth is classically depicted as a naked woman, crowned. She is the personification of the Wisdom (Sophia) of the heart, in the sense that Wis-dom means ‘Knowledge of the Lord’. As Bacon pointed out: ‘The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth.’ Soul and mind are equated. The word man means ‘mind’, ‘the thinker’. The true soul is the fully illumined mind, set on fire with love and likened to Sol, the Sun. She is the light of truth—the wisdom of the heart which has to be discovered, awakened and developed (or ‘brought forth’). The crown which Truth wears symbolises her (i.e. the soul’s) illumination. She is the beloved, the bride of the Lord.

In the cave the soul is in the dark and knows nothing. Her virtue is hidden. Time draws her out into the light of day where she shines, illumined from within and without by the divine Wisdom known as the Lord or Word of God, which she knows. Since true knowledge is based on experience, and as the divine Wisdom or Word of God is Love, so the knower is the embodiment and practitioner of this love. Truth and Philanthropy are the same thing.

I take goodness in this sense, the affecting of the weal of men, which is that the Grecians call Philanthropia; and the word humanity (as it is used) is a little too light to express it. Goodness I call the habit, and Goodness of Nature the inclination. This of all virtues and dignities of the mind is the greatest; being the character of the Deity: and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing; no better than a kind of vermin. Goodness answers to the theological virtue Charity, and admits no excess, but error. The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it.

Francis Bacon, Essay Of Goodness and the Goodness of Nature.

The drawing forth from the darkness of the cave into the universal light of day signifies the journey of the human soul on its path of experience. This is still acted out symbolically in Mystery schools such as Freemasonry, wherein the candidate begins in darkness, being blindfolded and prepared in an anteroom, and is then led into the lodge to be initiated into the practice of charity, where he/she asks for light and the blindfold is removed upon taking the oath. Subsequent degrees of initiation increase the light.

Truth and her cave exactly occupy five of the twelve segments of the zodiacal clock. The number 5 is equated with the symbolism of the rose, an emblem of the human soul. Its geometric counterpart is the pentalpha, the five-pointed star, itself based upon the pentagram whose geometry contains the Golden Proportion of perfect harmony. In the Christian and Rosicrucian traditions she, Truth, is further represented by Venus, the Morning Star.