The Garden of Cyrus

The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered, is a discourse by the English polymath Thomas Browne concerned with the quincunx—a pattern of five points arranged in an X (⁙), as on a die —in art and nature. First published in 1658, along with its companion Urn-Burial, in modern times it has been recognised as Browne's major literary contribution to Hermetic wisdom.

The book draws its primary influences from the Book of Genesis and Plato's Timaeus, initially covering Browne's speculation about the location of the mythical Garden of Eden. Browne proceeds to explore the role of the number 5 and the quincunx in art and human design, in natural patters, in botany, and in mysticism. He offers Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean arguments about the interconnection of art and nature. Browne was concerned with finding evidence of intelligent design in nature. The book uses a number of neologisms from Browne's era, including the then-new terms prototype and archetype.

The literary critic Edmund Gosse considered this mystical text to be a "radically bad book", but argued that it contains a number of high-quality paragraphs.