HOW ADAM IN PARADISE, AND HOW LUCIFER WAS A FAIR ANGEL, AND HOW THEY WERE CORRUPTED AND SPOILED THROUGH IMAGINATION AND PRIDE 1. We will give an occasion of consideration to the earnest searcher and seeker, and if he apprehends our meaning he shall indeed be able to find the noble philosopher's stone, but so that he be chosen thereto by God, and his life also stands in the heavenly Mercury, otherwise we are a mystery to him; and we will represent it to him in similitudes, in the most manifest, and yet mystical manner. 2. When Adam was created in paradise, the heavenly Mercury did then lead him; his life burned in a pure oil, therefore his eyes were heavenly; and his understanding did excel nature, for his light shined in the oil of the divine essentiality; the external waterish property was not manifest in his oil; he was iliastrich, that is, angelical, and became in the Fall cogastrish, that is, the watery nature in the mortal property was manifest in his oil, and penetrated, so that the mercury in him became an anxious poison, which before in his oil was an exaltation of joyfulness. 3. For the salnitral flagrat in the impression in the coldness, viz. according to the saturnine property, was thereby elevated, and got the dominion, as a cold poison, which arises in the impression of death, from whence the darkness was generated in the oil, and Adam died to the divine light; to which the devil persuaded 1 him by 2 the serpent, that is, by the essence and property of the serpent; for the kingdom of wrath, and also the outward kingdom was manifest in the serpent; for it was more subtle than any beast of the field, and this subtlety Eve desired; for the serpent persuaded her that her eyes should be opened, and she should be as God, and know good and evil. 4. Which also was the will of the devil, that he would know evil: And in the enkindling to the knowledge in Mercury he became corrupt and dark; for he entered with the imagination,
7. The devil was a fair angel, and the serpent the subtle beast, and man the likeness of the Deity; now all three were corrupted 2 by imagination and pride, and got the curse of God for their false lust [or cunning]. 8. All whatever is eternal proceeds originally from one ground, as angels and souls; but the serpent is not out of the eternal ground, but out of the beginning, as we have before given you to understand, how with the enkindling of the fire in the salnitral flagrat two kingdoms separate, viz. eternity and time; and how the eternity dwells in the time, but yet only in itself; but yet so nigh to the time, as fire and light which are in one another, and yet make two kingdoms; or as darkness and light dwell in each other, and the one is not the other. The like we are to consider of the inchoative poisonful mercury in the devil, and in man, and in the serpent also; how an oil corrupts, and yet the essence or being of God is not hereby at all corrupted, but enters into itself, viz. into the nothing; and the creaturely mercury, which arises, or is begotten with the beginning of the
9. For whatever hungers after the eternal nothing, viz. after the quiet meek liberty of God, that is not manifest to itself, but it is manifest in the still liberty, viz. in God; for as the hunger is, such is also the essence in the hunger; each hunger or desire makes itself an essence according to the property of the hunger or desire. 10. Thus the devil makes [or causes] in himself his darkness; for he went with his desire into himself, into the property of the centre to the desire, and forsook the eternity, viz. the nothing, that is, the lubet of love; so that he enkindled himself in his poisonful mercury, that is, in the forms to life in himself, and became an anxious fire-source in the darkness; as wood that is burnt to a coal, which only glows, and has no more any true light in it, also no oil or water; so it went with him. Now in his own property, viz. in his life's forms, there springs forth nothing but a stinging envious property, where one form hates and annoys the other, and yet they so beget each other. 11. And so was the serpent likewise, yet not by its own aspiring haughtiness; but when God said; Let all sorts of beasts come forth, each according to his property [or kind], then came forth beasts out of every property of nature, as it was manifest in the separation, when God moved himself to the creation; for the devil would domineer over the love and meekness of God, and put his desire also into the anger, 2 that is, into the austere might, where the poison-life arises, viz. into the fiat of the wrathful property, out of which form are proceeded vipers, serpents, toads, and other venomous worms; not that the devil has made them, that he cannot; only as the desire was in the impression of the fiat, such also was the creature in the evil and good. 12. For in the impression of the fiat, in the original of the outward Mercury, viz. of the life, which is manifest to itself internally, was the separation, where God and the world separate, viz. God inwardly, 3 the world outwardly, 4 as a similitude
14. And the eternal light is generated 3 out of the Father's sharpness, that it attains the shining, and goes forth with its own source through the sharpness out of the anguish-source again into the liberty, viz. into the nothing, where the light, by reason of the fire's-source and property, becomes also a desire, which is the desire of the divine love and joyfulness; in which desire Mercurius, the eternal word, or the understanding of eternity, or deity, is rightly considered and named: And this efflux from the fire (understand from the eternal magical spiritual fire) is a procreation, viz. of the word of the power, colours, and virtue: And this desire of the same mercury, or word, does also modelise 4 the power into its own desire, and makes it essential; which is the meekness and the love, which quenches the wrath of the Eternal Father, viz. of the eternal nature's desire with love, and changes it into joyfulness, where the name of God has its original from eternity. This immassed essentiality causes 5 two properties, viz. one oleous, which is heavenly essence, a cause of the shining of the light; and also a powerful [property] from the motion of the eternal impression, or desire of the Father after the birth of the Son; from whence the divine air (as the power through the shining of the light) proceeds forth out of this love-fire, which is the Spirit of God. 15. In like manner know this, that the eternal love (understand the essence, viz. the heavenly essentiality) has given itself forth into the creation with the verbum fiat, to set 6 the Father's anger, viz. the form of the eternal nature, into the highest joyfulness, and to set forth the likeness of the eternal
16. But seeing the devil went into the highest fire's desire, God departed from him, as a light that is put out, or extinguished in a candle; and afterwards he lived according to his own desire. 17. But seeing he knew that there was such a tincture in the serpent, and the serpent being created out of the beginning of time, therefore he insinuated 3 with his desire into the serpent, and took possession of the serpent's tincture, and wrought forth his desire through the serpent against man, to introduce him to long after the serpent's property: For the serpent's tincture was from both originals, viz. out of the deadly mercury from the dying in the fire, viz. from the coldness in the impression; and then also from the wrathful [fiery property in the impression]. The cold impression is earthly, which arises from the wrath, viz. from the dying in the wrath, in the impression; and the fiery [impression] arises from the quick poison of mercury, in which property the spirit's life consists. 18. Thus Adam and Eve were infected with the devil's desire through the serpent, viz. through the earthly, deadly property of the serpent; and also [through] the wrathful poisonful living property of God's wrath according to the devil's own property; and was inflamed in his divine oil, that is, in the heavenly essentiality. 19. Even then the divine light, which shined out of the divine body of the heavenly essentiality, was extinct to him; for the curse seized upon the soul. Now God's cursing is a withdrawing, 4 viz. the divine power, which was in the body, departed into its own principle; and his holy oil (wherein the power of God dwelt, and had made a kingdom of joy, viz. the paradise) became a poison. 20. For the earthly part according to the mortifying of the
22. Thus by God's curse, or withdrawing, the heavenly body was shut up, and the anger-source set open, and so [the heavenly body] lies still shut up: But seeing man by the eternal mercury, that is, by the word of divine power, was in one part formed out of eternity into body and soul, none could disclose 2 the poison-death, and destroy the mortal mercury, and change it again into the light's-source, viz. into the source of the divine joyfulness, but only the very divine Mercury, viz. the power and the word of life itself: For the serpent's poisonful earthly property was manifest and stirred up in man; therefore when God's word did pity the corruption of man, and did again embrace him, 3 he said, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head," and thou (understand the serpent's poison or fire) shalt sting him in the heel. 23. Herein now lies the philosopher's stone, [to know] how the seed of the woman bruises the serpent's head, which is done in the spirit and essence temporally and eternally; the sting of
24. In this manner also is the process of the wise men with the precious stone: There is no nearer consideration of the same than to consider [and know] how the eternal word, viz. the heavenly divine Mercury in the divine power, is become man, and has slain death, and the anger in man, viz. changed the Mercury into the divine joyfulness, whereby the human Mercury, which before lay shut up in God's anger, viz. in the source of death, does with its new enkindled desire, which now is called faith in the Holy Ghost, attract divine essentiality, viz. Christ's body to itself, and sets itself in divine power and light above the anger of God, and the poison of the serpent, and bruise the head of the anger, viz. the poison of death with the life of divine joyfulness: That is, the anger was master, but in the light it became a servant, which now must be a cause of the joyfulness, as it is most plain, clear, and manifestly made known and shewn to us in the mercurial life. 25. Now observe the process, and meditate on it, ye dear children of wisdom, and then you shall have enough temporally and eternally; 3 do not as Babel does, which amuses and comforts itself with the philosopher's stone, and boasts of it, but keeps only a gross mason's stone shut up in poison and death, instead of the precious philosopher's stone: 4 What is it for Babel to have the stone, when it lies wholly shut up in Babel? It is as if a
30. Now the fire gives life, and the free lubet gives essence into the life, and in the essence is the birth, where the Father, viz. the eternal ground, begets his essence, viz. his heart out
31. Thus, dear philosophers, observe here the ground how you should tincture; seek not the Son without the Father to tincture therewith: It must be one body; 2 the serpent-bruiser lies therein beforehand; for the seed of the woman has not bruised the serpent's head without the humanity, but in the humanity: The source of the divine lubet (understand of the love) manifested itself through a resurrection 3 in the human essence, and became manifest in the human life, and tinctured the wrath of death with the blood of the divine tincture, and there the wrath of death was changed into a source of divine love and joyfulness: Thus the love bruised the head of the anger and the oleous poison in Mercury, and deprived the wrath of its dominion, and sublimed the wrath into the highest joyfulness; even there the anger, and the astringent cold death, were made open shew of 4 in a fiery love: Then it was said, "Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory? God be thanked who has given us victory." 32. Now it behoves the wise seeker to consider the whole process with the humanity of Christ from his opening in the womb of his mother Mary, even to his resurrection and ascension; and so he may well find the Feast of Pentecost with the joyful spirit, wherewith he may tincture, cure, and heal whatever is broken and destroyed: We declare it in the ground of truth, as we have highly known it; for the rose in the time of the lily shall blossom in May when the winter is past, 5 for blindness to the wicked, and for light to the seeing. 33. God be for ever praised, who has granted us eyes to see through the poisonful heart of the basilisk, and see the day of restitution of all whatever Adam lost.
35. Christ said, "Seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: "You know that Christ signifies in a parable concerning the wounded Samaritan, that he fell among murtherers, who beat him and wounded him, and pulled off his clothes, and went away, and left him half dead, till the Samaritan came, and took pity on him, dressed him, and poured oil into his wounds, and brought him into the inn: This is a manifest and lively representation of the corruption of man in paradise, and also of the corruption of the earth in the curse of God, when paradise departed from it. 36. Now wilt thou be a magus? Then thou must become the Samaritan, otherwise thou canst not heal the wounded and decayed; for the body which thou must heal is half dead, and sorely wounded; also its right garment is torn off, so that it is very hard for thee to know the man whom thou wilt heal, unless thou hast the eyes and will of the Samaritan, and seekest nothing else thereby but to restore the loss of the wounded. 37. Now consider! The eternal word manifested itself in Adam with divine living essentiality, with the heavenly Mercury, but when the soul's-fire in Adam, by the infection of the devil, poisoned the will's spirit in Adam, and introduced it through the property of the serpent into earthly deadly lust, then the heavenly Mercury of the heavenly essence withdrew, that is, the soul's will departed from it with its desire, and introduced its hunger into the earthly mortal essence, viz. into the property of the cold Mercury, which had made stones and earth. Adam's spirit would prove this [Mercury], and have the knowledge in evil and good, and so this Mercury of the four elements immediately drew him into its poison, and effectually wrought in him, and robbed him of the divine property, stung, and wounded him with heat and cold, and made him half dead, and stripped him of his angelical rayment, viz. the garment in the pure element, where the heavenly source penetrates the four elements, and tinctured them in Adam's body: Then he needed no other garment, for heat and cold were as it were swallowed up in him; as the day holds the night swallowed up in itself, and yet the
40. Christ came into this world in the shut-up human form, and brought into the enclosed fortress of death the tincture of life, viz. the Deity; he came into the world as a pilgrim in our poor form; he became ours, that he might tincture us in himself: But what did he do? Did he live in joy? Did he behave and carry himself as a lord? No; he entered into death, and died, and put away the night's-source in him through us: But how did he do it? He assumed the essence of our soul and body unto the divine essence, and quickened our essence with the divine, that our essence entered again with its will and desire into the divine essence, and then the heavenly fiat was moved again in the humanity; for the humanity inclined itself again into the liberty, viz. into the free lubet of the Deity. 41. This being done, the man Christ was tempted forty days, so Iona as the first Adam was alone in paradise, and was tempted: Then the outward earthly food was taken from him, and the humanity must eat with its desire of God's essence; there was represented unto him all whatever the first Adam had amused himself in, and whereinto he imagined, and wherein he was captivated, as in the death of the night. This the devil, being a prince of this world, now represented unto him in the property of death, as he had represented it to Adam through the serpent, whereon Adam and his wife did amuse themselves, and entered thereinto with the imagination. 42. Now behold! What did Christ do when he was to undergo
44. And here began again the human eating; viz. the Mercury received again divine property and will; and then the inward Mercury (understand man's property) did eat in the taste of the divine word of God's essence: And the four elemental properties did eat of the night's property so long, till the human Mercury sublimed its life, and changed the four elements into one: And the life tinctured death, which was done on the cross: Then the four elements departed from him; that is, he died to time, viz. to the night, that is, to the four elements, and arose in the pure element, and lived to eternity. 45. The magus must keep and observe this process also with his alchymy. Dost thou ask how? I will not put it into thy mouth by reason of the wicked, who is not worthy of it: Observe
46. If thou didst understand this, then hadst thou the pearl: But my intent and purpose is otherwise; I will shew thee Christ along with it, and also this pearl; therefore none shall find it but he that loves Christ. 47. Thou sayest, Tell me the baptism? and I have already told it thee. Every hunger is a desire after its property; now if thou givest again the property of death to the hunger of death, then death encreases; but if thou givest him heavenly property, then death receives it not, for hell is against heaven; therefore thou must give death and the anger of God to death, and in this anger give him heavenly essence, viz. the baptism, and so the baptism will swallow up the death into itself, and then the anger dies in the death through the baptism, but not presently; thou must first keep the process of Christ, and suffer the baptized to preach, that is, appear in his divine form and colours; exceedingly persecute and plague him, and give him no rest; for so the right Mercury becomes working and active; and when he has shewn all his wonders through the old Adam, then thou must cast the old and new man into God's great anger, and slay the old man, ventilate him, and hang him naked 2 on the cross, and again take him thence, and lay him into the putrefaction, viz. into the grave. 48. And then Christ will arise from death, and appear; but
50. Every creature keeps in its generation and propagation to its own kind; the male to the female, and the female to the male: Now God said to Adam and Eve after the Fall, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head;" he said not [the seed] of the man: Herein lies the baptism of nature: The male has the fire-spirit, and the female the water-spirit to the tincture; now the Mercury is a fire-life, and makes himself a body according to his hunger and desire; now the chief of the work is in the beginning to give the fire-hunger a love-virgin out of its kind for its consort, that so his wrathful hunger may be changed into a love, and then they sleep together in their own marriage bed: Now the devil is an enemy of this wedlock, who soon comes with a strange desire, and tempts these married people, but dares not lay an hand of violence on them, but only afflicts and plagues them with a false strange desire; now if they yield their desire to his will, and his desire overcomes them, then they become enemies to one another, and bring forth a false child; for Christ said, "An evil tree bringeth forth evil fruits, and a good tree good fruits." 51. Therefore the artist must beware, and keep himself from such anger, and yet must prepare a cross for this married couple; 52. In the meantime let the mother take heed she bear no love to any other besides her consort, and also not imagine after strange things, else she will imprint a spot or mark on the child; she must continue simply in one love, till the child be perfect as to its body, which comes to pass in the fourth month; yet according as the parents are of one or other property, so strife and contrariety will arise in the essence in the child, when the child is to receive its soul's life. 53. But when the essence is in its wresting combat, the artist must assist the soulish, viz. the fiery property, till the soul's spirit attains its life, then he appears in the woman's form and lustre: Now the artist supposes that he has the child that is born, but there belongs a further time to it, till the soul grows strong, and then it appears and shews itself in its red and white coat. 54. But there is yet a wonderful process behind; when the soul's life is born, then the new soul casts away the vegetable life of the parents (which is propagated and inherited to the body from the parents’ vegitta, wherein the body of the child congealed 2 and grew till the time of the soul), and the life of the four elements dies, and the life in the one element arises; the child is hidden in the dark death, and the artist supposes it to be dead, but he must have patience till the child be born. 55. The course of Christ upon the earth is a real type how the new child is nourished in the mother's womb after its conception, as is before mentioned, and attains a vegetable life, and grows up to the time of its right soul's and spirit's life; and how the child arises from the parents’ essence; and how in the enkindling of its right, viz. of its own life, it casts away the parents’ vegitta and working; and how a new plant, viz. a new peculiar operation, does now arise according to the new enkindled spirit's property, whereby the child is more noble than its parents, understand as to its outward life.
58. In this figure we have the type of the wills of the inward and outward world, how they are in one another, and against one another, and yet are but one: Even as in Christ there were two kingdoms manifest; one which was wrought unto God's will, and broke the outward world's will of its parents, in that Christ tarried behind contrary to the will of his parents, at which they were troubled, which the divine will in Christ knew well enough; and the other kingdom, viz. of his parents’ will, broke the divine will, that he went home with them, and was obedient to them according to their will. 59. This figure shews the magus, that he shall find two wills in his purpose, which he thinks to carry on; one will not be obedient and subject unto him, viz. the divine will; and yet if its own peculiar external will shall rightly apply itself thereunto, and only seek the dear child Jesus with Mary, with desire and earnest sorrow, and not earthly pleasure of the flesh, then the divine will will be obedient to him, and go home with him, and be used according to his good pleasure. 67. But if the artist will needs be so diligent as to warm the
71. After the moon Jupiter takes it, who makes an understanding in Mercury, viz. a pleasant habitation, and gives him its good will; and in Jupiter his enclosed life, viz. Mercury is quickened, who takes it with its orb, and forces it into the highest anguish: And then Mars apprehends it, and gives the fire-soul to Mercury; and in the flagrat of Mars the highest life enkindles itself, and separates itself into two essences, viz. out of the love into a body, and out of the fire into a spirit; then the life of love in the fiery flagrat sinks downwards, and appears beautiful, but it is Venus, a woman: Then the artist supposes that he has the treasure, but the hungry Mercury devours Venus, and the child turns to a black raven; then Mars afflicts Mercury in himself, till he grows faint, and yields himself to death: Then the four elements depart from him, and the sun receives the child into its property, and sets it forth in a virgin-like body in the pure element; for in the property of Mars the light is
56:1 Or led. 56:2 Or through. 57:1 Or the riddle. 57:2 Spoiled, undone. 58:1 Or outwards. 58:2 Or set his desire upon the anger. 58:3 Text, into himself. 58:4 Out of itself. 59:1 Or wit, or subtlety. 59:2 Quickest, keenest. 59:3 Or begets itself. 59:4 Or form, or immass. 59:5 Affords, yields, produces 59:6 Bring, turn, or sublime. 60:1 Or joyfulness. 60:2 Or receives that which it hungers after. 60:3 Crept. 60:4 Or is a banishing. 61:1 Part or property. 61:2 Open, or exclude. 61:3 Or took his part. 62:1 Shine through, irradiate. 62:2 Or works and effects. 62:3 Here and for ever. 62:4 Or noble stone of the wise men. 63:1 One that breaks through irresistibly. 63:2 Or void of all source. 64:1 Or becomes. 64:2 Corpus. 64:3 Or awakening, or stirring itself up. 64:4 Or victoriously triumphed over. 64:5 Or the blooming spring of the paradisical new-birth in man. 65:1 Or pleasant spring. 66:1 Or what shall I first do to effect it? 67:1 Work-master, or faber. 68:1 Or whose essence is in everything. 68:2 Or openly. Text, in the air. 70:1 Or she shall. 70:2 Curdled. 73:1 Or in wedlock. 74:1 Blended.PROCESS
THE PECULIAR PROCESS IN THE SHAPING OF THE MAGICAL CHILD
