OF THE SIGNATURE, SHEWING HOW THE INTERNAL SIGNS THE EXTERNAL 1. The whole outward visible world with all its being is a signature, or figure of the inward spiritual world; whatever is internally, and however its operation is, so likewise it has its character externally; like as the spirit of each creature sets forth and manifests the internal form of its birth by its body, so does the Eternal Being also. 2. The Being of all beings is a wrestling power; for the kingdom of God consists in power, and also the outward world, and it stands especially in seven properties or forms, where the one causes and makes the other, and none of them is the first or last, but it is the eternal band; therefore God has appointed six days for man to work, and the seventh day is the perfection wherein the six do rest; it is the centre to which the desire of the six days tend; therefore God calls it the Sabbath or resting-day, for therein the six forms of the working power rest: It is the divine sound 1 in the power, or the kingdom of joy, wherein all the other forms are manifest; for it is the formed world, or divine corporality, by which all things are generated and come forth to a being. 2 3. This formed world has manifested itself with the motion of all forms with this visible world, as with a visible likeness, so that the spiritual being might be manifest in a corporeal comprehensive essence; as the desire of the inward forms has made itself external, and the internal being is in the external; the internal holds the external before it as a glass, wherein it beholds itself in the property of the generation of all forms; the external is its signature. 4. Thus everything which is generated out of the internal has its signature; the superior form, which is chief in the spirit of the working in the power, does most especially sign the body, and the other forms hang to it; as it is to be seen in all living creatures, in the shape and form of the body, and in the behaviour and deportment, also in the sound, voice, and speech;
6. Sickness had taken possession of them, and the poison of death had gotten the upper hand in Mercury; but now the form of life in the centre did set its hunger as a famished and mean property after the liberty to be freed from the abomination; but seeing the Mercury was revived in Christ the divine property, therefore the weak hunger entered into Christ's strong hunger after the salvation of man, and so the weak hunger received the strong in the power; and then the divine voice in Christ said, "Arise, lift up thyself, thy faith" (that is, thy desire which thou hast introduced into me) "hath saved thee." 7. Thus the life prevails over the death, the good over evil; and on the contrary, the evil over the good, as came to pass in Lucifer and Adam, and still daily comes to pass: And thus everything is signed; that form which is chief receives the taste, and also the sound in Mercury, and figures 2 the body after its property; the other forms hang to it as co-helpers, and also give their signature thereto, but very weakly. 8. There are especially seven forms in nature, both in the eternal and external nature; for the external proceed from the eternal: The ancient philosophers have given names to the seven planets according to the seven forms of nature; but they have understood thereby another thing, not only the seven stars, but the sevenfold properties in the generation of all essences: There is not anything in the Being of all beings, but it has the
10. In these two properties is pourtrayed and exactly deciphered God's kingdom, viz. the original, and also the kingdom of God's anger, viz. the dark abyss, which is a cause of the motion in Saturn, viz. in the impression; the impression, viz. Saturn, makes the nothing, viz. the free lubet movable and sensible, and also opposite, for it causes it to be essence; and Jupiter is the sensible power proceeding from the free lubet to manifestation out of the nothing into something, in the impression of Saturn; and they are two properties in the manifestation of God according to love and anger, viz. a model of the eternal form, and are as a wrestling combat, viz. an opposite desire against each other; one makes good, the other evil, and yet it is all good; only if we will speak of the anguish-source, and then also of the joyful source, then we must distinguish, that the cause of each source may be understood. 11. The third form is called Mars, which is the fiery property in the impression of Saturn, where the impression introduces itself into great anguish, viz. into a great hunger; it is the painfulness, or the cause of feeling, also the cause of the fire and consuming, also of enmity and malignity; but in Jupiter, viz. in the free lubet, in the nothing, it causes the fiery love-desire, that the liberty, viz. the nothing, is desirous, and introduces itself into sensibility, viz. into the kingdom of joy: In the darkness it is a devil, viz. God's wrath, and in the light it is an angel of joy, understand such a property; for when this source became dark in Lucifer, he was called a devil, but while he was in the light he was an angel; and thus also it is to be understood in man. 12. The fourth property or form is called Sol, viz. the light of
13. In these four forms the spirit's birth consists, viz. the true spirit both in the inward and outward being, viz. the spirit of power in the essence; and the essence or corporality of this spirit is Sulphur. 14. Ye rabbies and masters! that you could but understand, how faithfully that is given and revealed to you, which your predecessors have intended and aimed at, wherein you have been a long time blind, the cause of which is your pride: This God, the most high understanding, sets before you by mean, and heretofore ungrounded instruments, which he himself has grounded, if you would yet once see, and escape the tormenting source. 15. The fifth form is Venus, the beginning of all corporality, viz. of the water, which arises in the desire of Jupiter and Mars, viz. in the love-desire, out of the liberty, and out of nature, viz. out of the impression's desire in Saturn, in Mars, in the great anguish, to be freed from the anguish: And it carries two forms in the desire of its property, viz. a fiery from Mars, and a watery [property] from Jupiter, understand an heavenly and earthly desire; the heavenly arises from the heavenly impression of the union [or free effluence] of the Deity in nature to its own manifestation; and the earthly arises from the impression of the darkness in Mars, viz. in the wrathful fire's property; therefore the essence of this desire consists in two things, viz. in the water, from the original of the liberty, and in Sulphur from the original of nature according to the impression. 16. The outward similitude of the heavenly [Being] is water
22. But I understand here the virtual salt in the vegetable life: Saturn makes the common salt in the water: He 2 is an heavenly and an earthly labourer, and labours in each form according to the property of the form; as it is written, "With the holy thou art holy, and with the perverse thou art perverse." In the holy angels the heavenly Mercury is holy and divine, and in the devils he is the poison and wrath of the eternal nature according to the dark impression's property, and so on through all things, as the property of each thing is, so is its Mercury, viz. its life; in the angels he is the hymn of God's praise, and in the devils he is the cursing and awakening of the opposite will of the bitter poisonful enmity. 23. Thus likewise it is to be understood in men and all creatures, in all whatever lives and moves; for the outward Mercury is the outward word in the outward world: He 3 is the outward verbum, and Saturn with the impression is his fiat, which makes his word corporeal; and in the inward kingdom of the divine power he is the eternal word of the Father, whereby he has made all things in the outward [principle], understand, with the instrument of the outward Mercury. 24. The outward Mercury is the temporal word, the expressed word; and the inward [Mercury] is the eternal word, the speaking word; the inward word dwells in the outward, and makes through the outward all outward things; and with the inward, inward things: The inward Mercury is the life of the Deity, and all divine creatures; and the outward Mercury is the life of the outward world, and all external corporality in men and beasts, in vegetables and animals, and makes a peculiar principle, viz. a likeness of the divine world; and this is the manifestation of the divine wisdom. 25. The seventh form is called Luna, the amassed essence: What Mercury has comprised in Sulphur, that is a corporeal or substantial hunger of all forms; the property of all the six forms lies therein, and it is as a corporeal being of all the rest; this property is as a wife of all the other forms; for the other forms do all cast their desire through Sol into Luna; for in Sol they
27. Observe this, ye wise men! It is no fiction or fallacy; let the artist but understand us right; he must bring the jewel shut up in Saturn into the mother of generation, viz. into Sulphur, and take the faber, and divide all forms, and separate the variety of hungers, which the faber himself does, when the artist brings the work into the first mother, viz. into Sulphur: But he must first baptize the froward child with the philosophical baptism, lest he makes a bastard of Sol; and then let him lead him into the desert, and try whether Mercury will eat manna in the desert after the baptism; or whether he will make bread of stones; or whether he will aspire aloft as an haughty spirit, and precipitate himself from the Temple; or whether he will worship Saturn, in whom the devil sits hidden: This the artist must observe; whether Mercury, the wicked poisonful child, receives the baptism; whether he can feed of God's bread or no. 28. If he now does eat, and stands out in the temptation, then will the angels appear to him after forty days, and then let him go out of the desert, and eat his own food; and so the artist is ready and fit for his work; if not, then let him by all means leave it, and as yet account himself unworthy of it. 29. He must have the understanding of the generation of nature; else all his labour and pains are to no purpose, except the grace of the Most High has bestowed upon him some particular, that so he is able to tincture Venus and Mars, which is
32. Now in all this, as the property of each thing is internally, so it has externally its signature, both in animals and vegetables; and this you shall see in an herb, so likewise in trees and beasts, and in men also. 33. If the saturnine property be predominant, and chief in a thing, then it is of a black, greyish colour, hard and spare, sharp, sour, or salt in taste; it gets a long lean body, 2 grey in the eyes, 3 of a dark blue, of a very slender body, but of a hard touch, though the property of Saturn is very seldom alone master in a thing; for he soon awakens Mars with his hard impression, who makes his property bending and crooked, full of knots, and hinders the body from growing high, but is full of branches and rugged, as is to be seen in oak-shrubs, and the like trees. 34. But if Venus be next to Saturn 4 in any place in the sude or seething of the earth, then the sude in the Sulphur of Saturn causes a tall strong body; for it gives its sweetness into Saturn's impression, whereby Saturn becomes strong and lusty, and if Venus be not hindered by Mars, it grows a great, tall, slender tree, herb, beast, or man, or whatever it be. 35. But if Jupiter be next to him in the property of Venus,
45. If the physician administers Saturn only and by itself to a martial disease or hurt, then Mars is dismayed with death, and falls down with his force and strength into death's property; and now seeing he is the fire in the body, the life's fire becomes thereupon deadly in the elemental property; for he soon awakens Mercury in the property of cold: But yet the physician must have a care that he administers not in an hot disease the raw undigested hot Mars, in which Mercury is wholly inflamed and burning; for he enkindles the fire more vehemently in the body; he must first mollify Mars and Mercury, and put them into joy, 2 and then it is right and good. 46. The hotter an herb is, the better it is hereunto; yet its wrathful fire must be changed into love, and then he can also change the wrath in the body into joy; all according as the property of the disease is, that the disease be able to bear it; for to a weak fire in the body, which is tired and languished by reason of the heat, and rather inclines to cold, viz. to the poison of Mercury, where the life is in danger, there belongs a cure with a fine subtle heat, wherein Venus is strong, and Mars very tender and mild by reason of the power of Venus; Jupiter need not be strong there, lest he make Mars and Mercury too strong, so that the weak life, before it is quickened and refreshed, is overwhelmed, and brought into the mercurial poison. 47. An herb in this aforesaid property grows not high, it is somewhat rough in the touch; the rougher it is, the stronger is Mars therein; it is better to be used outwardly to wounds and sores, than inwardly: The fine and subtle part is to be taken into the body, and is expulsive; the more subtle it is, the nigher it is to the life in the body, which the physician may very well know by its salt; for no rough wild property is to be taken into the body, unless the body be inflamed with a sudden poison, where the life also is fresh and strong, then a vehement resistance must be used; yet Mercury and Mars must not be administered
52. The salt or power of Jupiter is of a pleasant good smell and taste from the inward original [of the property] of the liberty of the divine essence, and from the external [principle or original] of the property of the sun and Venus, but yet it is not alone of itself of sufficient power in nature; for the outward
53. `the salt of Mars is fiery, bitter, and austere, and the mercurial salt is anxious and raging, like a poison, inclined both to heat and cold; for it is the life in Sulphur, and unites [or assimilates] itself, according to each thing's property; for if it comes into Jupiter's salt, it causes joy and great power; but if it comes into Mars's salt, it makes bitter pangs, stitches, achings, and woe; but if it comes into Saturn's earthly salt, it makes swellings, anguish, and death, if it be not hindered by Jupiter and Venus: Venus and Jupiter are opposite to Mars and Mercury, that so they might temper them both; and without the power of Mars and Mercury there would be no life in Jupiter, Venus, and Sol, but only a stillness; "therefore the worst is as profitable as the best," and the one is the cause of the other. 54. But the physician is to heed and mind what he takes in hand, lest he inflame the mercurial poison more and more in his patient, or introduce it into another adverse source: He ought indeed to use the martial and mercurial salt for his cure, but he must first reconcile Mars and Mercury with Venus and Jupiter, that so both these angry adversaries may resign their will into Jupiter's will, so that Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury may all three obtain one will in the power, and then the cure is right, and the sun of life will again enkindle itself in this union and agreement, and also temper the nauseate of the disease in the contrariety in the salt of the disease, and turn Mercury's poison, and the bitter fire of Mars into a pleasant Jupiter. 55. This is now to be understood only concerning the vegetable soul, viz. concerning the outward man, which lives in the four elements, and concerning the sensible and feeling property. 56. Reason likewise is to be cured with its likeness; for as reason may be brought by words into a sensible sickness and disease, so that reason may vex, fret, and torment itself, and at last fall into an heavy sad sickness and death; so also it may be cured with the application of the same thing [with its own assimilate]. 57. As for example: An honest man falls into great debts, care, trouble and distress, which does even afflict him nigh to death; but if a good friend comes and pays his debt for him, then is the cure soon effected with its likeness: Even thus it is
66. But what shall Christ do with the evil man? Shall he cast him away? No. For he is in heaven, and does thereby
69. Thus the outward body must then have an outward cure; and though the inward man yet lives in God, yet whereas the soul has imagined into the outward wrath, so that the divine tincturation is no longer in the outward man, the outward Mercury, viz. the expressed 2 word, must have a tincturation
70. But now this herb is rarely to be found upon the earth; for men eat only of the forbidden tree; therefore the poison of the serpent does so spring up in them in the wrath of the eternal and external nature, so that they must also have an external cure for their serpent's poison in the outward Mercury. 71. It is indeed possible for a man to live without sickness, but he must bring the divine tincturation from the inward man through the outward, which is very difficult [to do] in the world; for the outward man lives among the thorns of God's wrath, which gall and sting him on every side, and blow up the wrath of God, so that it burns in the outward man, and then the tincturation of God's love may not continue there: It is indeed inhere, but not in the outward enkindled abominations, but it dwells in itself, like as the light dwells in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not, also knows nothing of it; but when the light is manifest in the darkness, then is the night changed into day. 72. Thus it is likewise with man; of what light man lives, of that also comes his cure; if he lives in the outward world, then the outward goodness and love, viz. the outward Jupiter and Venus with the sun must be his cure, or he remains in the angry Mars, and in the poisonful Mercury, in the earthly moon captivated in the impression of Saturn, viz. in the earthly Sulphur; which however is made manifest, and awakened in the outward man by Adam, for whose sake the outward man must die, putrify, and so enter again into the nothing, viz. into the end, or as I might better say and signify it, into the beginning of the creation, into the essence, out of which it went and departed with Adam.
91:1 Voice, or harmony. 91:2 Or essence. 92:1 Text, wrestling power. 92:2 Or shapes. 93:1 Or original. 94:1 Perception, or sensation. 94:2 Or breathing forth. 95:1 Or plays. 96:1 Or distinguishes the senses. 96:2 Viz. the Mercury. 96:3 Viz. Mercury. 97:1 Thicken, or curdle. 98:1 It gives a cursing or a blessing aspect. 98:2 Stalk, or blossom. 98:3 Or of whitish buds in vegetables. 98:4 In conjunction with Saturn. 101:1 Text, that he stirs. 101:2 Sublime them. 102:1 Working, powerful, or virtual. 103:1 The jovial virtue. 105:1 Or I am an enemy to. 106:1 Or water. 106:2 Outspoken. 107:1 Transformed. 107:2 The transforming light of God in the dark soul, such as shined in Enoch, Elijah, Paul, etc.
Footnotes
