OF THE GRAND MYSTERY OF ALL BEINGS 1. Courteous reader, observe the meaning right; we understand not by this description a beginning of the Deity, but we shew you the manifestation of the Deity through nature; for God is without beginning, and has an eternal beginning, and an eternal end, which he is himself, and the nature of the inward world is in the like essence from eternity. 2. We give you to understand this of the divine essence; without nature God is a mystery, 1 understand in the nothing, for without nature is the nothing, which is an eye of eternity, an abyssal eye, that stands or sees in the nothing, for it is the abyss; and this same eye is a will, understand a longing after manifestation, to find the nothing; but now there is nothing before the will, where it might find something, where it might have a place to rest, therefore it enters into itself, and finds itself through nature. 3. And we understand in the mystery without nature in the first will two forms; one to nature, to the manifestation of the wonder-eye; and the second form is produced out of the first, which is a desire after virtue and power, and is the first will's son, its desire of joyfulness. And understand us thus; the desire is egressive, and that which proceeds is the spirit of the will and desire, for it is a moving, and the desire makes a form 2 in the spirit, viz. formings of the infinity of the mystery. 4. And this form [or likeness] is the eternal wisdom of the Deity; and we understand herein the Trinity of the only Deity, whose ground we must not know, how the first will arises in the abyss from eternity, which is called Father; only we know the eternal birth, and distinguish the Deity, viz. what purely and merely concerns the Deity, or the good, from nature, and shew you the arcanum of the greatest secret mystery; namely, how the abyss, or the Deity, manifests itself with this eternal generation; for God is a spirit, and as subtle as a thought or will, and nature is his corporeal essence, understand the eternal nature; and the outward nature of this visible comprehensible 3 world is a manifestation or external birth of the inward spirit
7. Therefore we will set down the generation of all essences out of all mothers and beginnings, how one generation proceeds from another, and how one is the cause of another, and this we will do from the eyesight of all the three mothers. 8. Let none account it impossible, seeing man is a likeness according to and in God, an image of the Being of all beings; and yet it stands not in the power of the creature, but in the might of God; for the sight and science of all essences consist alone in the clearest light. 9. We have made mention before how the external birth, viz. the essence of this world, consists in three things, viz. in Sulphur, Mercury, and Sal: Now we must set down and declare what it is, seeing that all things arise from one original, and then how its inward separation is effected, that out of one beginning many beginnings are produced; this is now to be understood, as is before mentioned, concerning the centre of all essences. 10. For Sulphur in the eternal beginning consists in two forms, and so also in the outward beginning of this world: viz. in the internal the first form, viz. the Sul consists 2 in the eternal liberty; it is the lubet of the eternal abyss, viz. a will or an original to the desire; and the other original is the desire, which is the first motion, viz. an hunger to the something; and in this same hunger is the eternal beginning to the pregnant nature, 3 and it is called Sulphur, viz. a conception of the liberty, viz. of the good, and a conception or comprehension of the desire, viz. of the austere attraction in the desire.
13. For Mercury is generated in Sulphur: It is the severing, viz. of light and darkness from one another, the breaking wheel, and cause of the various division or multiplicity: it separates the dark essentiality from the essentiality of the light, viz. the metals from the gross, astringent, dark, stony, and earthly property; for the property of the desire gives and makes dark essence, and the property of the free lubet makes light essence, viz. metals, and all of the same kind and resemblance. 14. Mercury has in the beginning of his birth three properties, viz. the trembling in the austereness, and anguish from the hard impressing of the astringent hard desire, and the expulsion of the multiplicity, viz. the essential life; for the desire attracts very hard to itself, and the attraction makes the motion, or sting of trembling [or horrible compunction], and that which is impressed is the anguish; but if the liberty be therein comprehended, it refuses it, and there arises the original of enmity, and the severing, that one form separates from another, and a twofold will arises.
16. The essence remains in the impression, and becomes material; that is not God, but gold, or any other metal, according to the property of the first conception in the Sulphur, or stone, or earth, out of the desire's own peculiar property, all according to the first sude 2 or seething in Mercury; for no metal can be generated without salniter, which is the flagrat in Mercury; which also becomes material in the astringent impression, and divides itself in the separation, one part into brimstone, another into salniter, and a third into a salt sharpness; whereas yet there cannot be any corporeal essence in all these, but only the spirit of the essence; the essence proceeds wholly out of the death through mortification, which is effected in the great anguish of the impressure, where there is a dying source, which is the mercurial life, where the salnitral flagrat arises as an opening, displaying flash: For the liberty, viz. the property of the eternal lubet, does there separate itself, 3 and yet the attracted essence out of the lubet of the liberty continues all along in the comprehension of the attraction in the astringent austere dark anguish: Now if the wrath enters so vehemently into itself as to raise up the salnitral flagrat, then it apprehends the essentiality of the free lubet in itself, from whence arises the flagrat; for the wrath there apprehends the meekness, which is even as if water were poured into fire, which gives a flagrat; and then the wrath of the great anguish dies, and with the flagrat the joy ascends, and the flagrat is out of mercury, or out of the anguish of death, and becomes also material, but by reason of the liberty it changes itself into white, which is salniter: Now if the fire, viz. the horrible anxious sharpness, does again come into it, then the salniter is dismayed, and gives a repulse; 4 for the first property [which was] before the death is again enkindled with the brimstone spirit; a sufficient resemblance of
18. But seeing this water does also separate itself in the salnitral flagrat, and before the salniter was all mutually enwrapt together, thereupon it obtains different properties in the separation, and there is a diversity of water; and this various diversity of properties gives in each property also a bodily or corporeal essence, all according to the first separation of mercury in sulphur, for in the mortification in the salnitral flagrat two things are effected and come forth, viz. a life, and a body of the life; understand an essential, and a lifeless senseless body, whose materia is mortified in the flagrat: Thus there is a diversity of water, and a diversity of the life, and a diversity of the body, 2 or of the materia; as each body is, so is also its essential spirit. 19. Now we must consider this from the first original; as (1) from the lubet of the liberty; and (2) from the desire to nature, or the manifestation of the abyss. 20. First, in the salnitral flagrat there is produced through the anxious mortification a sulphureous water from the anguish, which affords a brimstone, as we plainly see, and all whatever is of the like sort and resemblance. 21. Secondly, there is generated from the astringent, austere, attractive property, which draws in to itself, a salt water; its materia is salt; if it be again impressed through the fire or heat, then it turns into salt; and all whatever is sharp and attractive, be it either in herbs or trees, proceeds from thence; for there is
22. Thirdly, there is brought forth through the salnitral flagrat out of the property of the bitter compunctive attraction, in the first impression in the spirit, an earthly property of water; its materia is earth; for the same arises from the dark essentiality, where the darkness impresses itself in the first desire, wherein the darkness arises, as is before mentioned: Thus it begets out of its property in the impression a mist, smoaky steam, or vapour, which the flagrat in the salniter apprehends, and its essence is dismayed or dies, and falls downwards; this is the materia of the earth, though the earth is not of one only sort, but has in it all whatever became corporeal in the flagrat, all which springs through the death of the earth, according as it was wrapt and driven together in the creation into a lump, as we plainly see. 23. Further, we are to consider of the highest arcanum, viz. of the heavenly essentiality, and then of the precious stones and metals, from whence they all take their rise and original; seeing that all things come out of one mother, which is the lubet and desire of eternity to its own manifestation. 24. Now concerning the incorruptible essence of corporality, the same arises also in the first desire to nature, yet in the impression of the free lubet, and goes all along through all the forms even into the highest sharpness, where it retires again into itself, as a life out of the fire: The eternal fire is magical, and a spirit, and dies not; the liberty is its enkindler, but the eternal nature is its sharpness; this same essence loses the wrath's property in the light; it is in the same fire as a dying, yet there is no dying, but an entrance into another source, viz. out of a painful desire into a love-desire; it yields also spirit and essence from the fire-spirit, and the essence of meekness from the light. 25. For that which dies to the fire, or sinks through death, that is divine essence; and it is effected likewise through the salnitral flagrat of the divine joyfulness, where the property trembles in the joy of meekness, and immerses itself through the death of the fire, which is called God's anger, and quenches it,
26. The properties of the first mother in the lubet and desire do also divide themselves in the salnitral flagrat of joyfulness into distinct parts, as is to be seen in this outward world; it yields also water, but of a very sovereign essence, and it resembles only a spirit of a pleasant lovely desire: This is the water of which Christ told us that he would "give us to drink," and "whosoever should drink the same, it should spring up in him to a fountain of eternal life." 27. It retains also in the flagrat of the disclosure the fiery property which is called heaven, in which the wonders of the divine kingdom of joy are known and manifest; and in the watery property [it retains] the pleasant spring, or paradise; for in the fiery [property] the eternal element arises, and it is the real essence of the divine corporality, wherein consists all whatever may be known in God, as is sufficiently and in order cleared at large in our other writings of the Divine revelation, treating of the Divine wisdom, and of the Divine eternal abyssal birth: And now we will turn us to the essence of the outward world, viz. to the manifestation of the eternal, viz. to metals, herbs, and trees; so also to men and beasts. 28. We see that the metals have another manner of body than the living creatures, or are otherwise than the earth and stones are: Now reason asks, How is the original of everything, seeing that in the beginning all arose out of one mother, and yet the eternity has no temporal beginning? Here we must again consider the mother of the first pregnatrix, where, and how one essence separates itself from another, viz. the inchoative from the eternal, time from eternity, and yet they stand mutually in each other, but are severed into two principles, viz. into the kingdom of God, and of this world; and yet all is God's: But seeing Christ calls the devil "a prince of this world," and we also are able to declare how far, and in what he is a prince, and that this world is not his own, 2 but he is the poorest creature in this world, and also not at all in this world; now therefore look upon the first ground, upon the mother which has thus generated all creatures. 29. So also as to the earth, stones, and all metals, the earth's property, consists in a spiritual Sulphur, Mercury, and Sal, and all whatever has had beginning is arisen in and out of her
36. But concerning the precious stones, with their radiant lustre and great virtue, the same have their original in the flash of the fire, where life and death separate; as when one part by reason of the dark essentiality descends, and the other by reason of the liberty ascends, and yet all is brought into essence in the flagrat; so that the same flash or glance becomes also material in the flagrat; and therefore they are hard, and of a blinking glance, like an eye; for so also is the original of the eye or sight in the womb, 2 when the life enkindles; all according to the right of eternity. 37. And therefore they are of so great power, efficacy, and virtue, in that they are so nigh to the Deity, and bear the
38. Further, we are also to consider of the other metals and minerals, which in like manner do thus take their original; but in the salnitral flagrat each property is separated; as we see that the property of the fire and light is different, and all from the first impression; where before the impression the lubet and desire of the liberty stand mutually in each other, as a chaos, a complexion of great wonders, where all colours, powers, and virtues are contained in this only Chaos, or wonder-eye; which Chaos is God himself, viz. the Being of all beings, who thus manifests himself in particular beings with the eyes of eternity; each materia is an essence according to the spirit from whence it was generated; and if it be enkindled in the fire, it yields likewise such a light as the spirit is in the essence. 39. And thus also we are to consider of the metals; what kind of spirit each of them has, such a glance and lustre it yields, and also such a body 2 it has. 40. As the mind acts and moves the thoughts and senses from the highest to the lowest, and comprehends and commands by the thoughts from the highest to the lowest; so the eternal mind has manifested itself from the highest majesty, even to the lowest [meanest, or outermost thing], viz. to the greatest darkness; and this world, with the sun, stars, and elements, and with every creaturely being, is nothing else but a manifestation of the eternity of the eternal will and mind; and as it was in the beginning, so it still stands in its seething and vegetation, 3 and so it still puts forward to light and darkness, to evil and good. And all things consist in these first three forms, viz. in Sulphur, Mercury, and Sal, as one degree in order after another; for so likewise are the quires of the spirits, as also of the stars, trees, herbs, and of all kinds whatever which have been, and are; so also are the inward heavenly quires with their distinction.
22:1 Mysterium. 22:2 Similitude, likeness, or signature. 22:3 Palpable. 23:1 Or apprehends, or conceives. 23:2 Or stands. 23:3 Or to the nature of the pregnatrix. 24:1 Stars. 25:1 Or substance. 25:2 Boiling. 25:3 Or separates itself in itself. 25:4 Report, clash. 26:1 Sinks. 26:2 Corpus. 27:1 Corpus. 28:1 Gives, or affords. 28:2 Or propriety. 29:1 Or until. 30:1 Or the highest or chiefest of the metals. 30:2 Body. 31:1 Liquid. 31:2 Corpus. 31:3 Boiling, growing, and waxing.
Footnotes
