The Signature of All Things

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[88] him by[89] 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, according to his condition, knowledge, and desire, into the fiery byss; and Adam, according to his knowledge and desire, went into the cold byss into the impression, into the procreated watery property in the salniter, where both kingdoms stand separated: He desired to prove and taste the watery mercury, in which is the mortal poison; and Lucifer [desired] the fiery Mercury, which gives strength and might; from whence his pride arose, viz. out of the fiery Mercury: But both, viz. Lucifer, and also Adam, lost the oil of the meekness of the divine essentiality.

5. Now we are to consider of the serpent, which deceived Adam with its craft; how it was, and what its subtlety was after which Adam and Eve did imagine; why they did eat of the forbidden tree which was evil and good, and how they did eat death thereby; and what their salvation and restoration is naturally and properly; what evil and good are, what the property of the eternal life, and then the property of eternal death is; what the cure is, whereby the sickness introduced by Adam, and its death, may be healed, and restored both to the temporal and eternal life.

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 creature in the creature, goes out of itself,[92] that is, out of the eternal into time, viz. into the beginning of the creature; it desires its own self, that is, the beginning; and will be its own, or of a selfish property, and forsakes the eternity, into which it should be wholly confined, and resigned with its desire, and bring its hunger thereinto; and then its poison-source would not be manifest.

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,[93] 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,[94] the world outwardly,[95] as a similitude of the abyss, or a looking-glass of eternity; even there the inward wrath, from whence God is called an angry zealous God, and a consuming fire, manifested itself externally in figures, as in a similitude of the inward birth in the centre; like as the eternal lubet, which he is himself, stirs up [awakens] and causes the desire to the nature of the eternal manifestation, and gives in itself into the desire, and turns the wrath of the desire into joyfulness.

13. Thus it is also with the serpent’s craft:[96] In the highest Mercury is the highest sharpest proof of all things; the more poisonful a thing is, the more sharply it proves a thing; for the sharpest[97] taste and smell consists in the great poison, viz. in a dying source.

14. And the eternal light is generated[98] 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[99] 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[100] 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[101] the Father’s anger, viz. the form of the eternal nature, into the highest joyfulness, and to set forth the likeness of the eternal generation; and where the nature of the wrath was most elevated through the fiat, there also the desire did most incline itself towards the liberty, to be free from the wrath, and to bring it into the kingdom of joy,[102] from whence the great and deep knowledge is arisen, and also the most precious and highest tincture; understand the desire of the wrathful hunger received that into itself after which it hungered,[103] viz. the liberty; for all things were created good in the beginning; also the devil was good while he was an angel; so also the serpent [was good in its creation before the curse].

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[104] 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,[105] 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 water, viz. the cogastrish property, was manifest; and forthwith mercury, viz. the coldness in the death’s property, got the dominion, whereas before he was as it were swallowed up in the divine power: Thus Adam died unto God, and lived to death; here it was necessary that God should regenerate him; and therefore the serpent was cursed, because it had served, and willingly obeyed the devil.

21. Thus we understand what lies hid in the greatest anguish, viz. in the strongest mercury, viz. an oil, which cures and tinctures all diseases; but the cold poison, viz. the death’s source must be done away, and put into a fiery [property] which is desirous of the light; for God created all things good in the beginning, but through his cursing or withdrawing the evil came in: For when God’s love-desire dwelt in the outward world’s-source, and penetrated it, as the sun the water, or the fire an iron, then the outward world was a paradise, and the divine essence sprang forth and budded through the earthly, the eternal life through the mortal; but when God cursed it for man’s sake, the mortal [life [106]] was manifest in man, and also in the fruit of which man should eat, which property before was only manifest in the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” on which Adam and his wife were tempted, whether their desire would enter into the eternity, viz. into God’s essence, or into the essence of time, into the living or mortal oil, in which source the soul’s spirit would live, that is, burn.

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[107] 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,[108] 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 the serpent is God’s anger-fire, and the woman’s seed is God’s love-fire, which must be again awakened, and illustrate[109] the anger, and deprive the wrath of its might, and put it into the divine joyfulness, and then the dead soul, which lay immersed in God’s curse, does arise: When the poisonful Mercury, which resembles God’s anger, is tinctured with love, then the death’s anguish in Mercury is changed into the highest joyfulness and desire of love, which does again make a love-essence in itself, viz. an heavenly body out of the earthly: When Mercury is changed into an heavenly source, it desires no longer [or more] the earthly mortal life; [it desires] not the four elements, but only the one, wherein the four are contained, as it were swallowed up; as the light holds the darkness swallowed up in itself, and yet the darkness is in it, but not manifest in the light; as God dwells in time, and the time comprehends him not, unless it be translated and wrapped up into eternity, that the divine light does again shine in its source, and then the time is manifest with its wonders[110] in the eternity.

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;[111] 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:[112] What is it for Babel to have the stone, when it lies wholly shut up in Babel? It is as if a lord bestowed a country upon me, which indeed was mine, but I could not take possession of it, and remained still a poor man notwithstanding, and yet I boasted of the dominion, and so had the name, and not the power: Even thus it goes with Babel about the precious stone of the new-birth in Christ Jesus.

26. In the sweet name, Jesus Christ, the whole process is contained, what, and how the new-birth is out of death into life, which is very clearly understood in the language of nature: For the name Jesus is the property of the free lubet of eternity, which yields itself into the pregnant centre, viz. into the Father’s property, and figures itself in the centre in the Father’s property, viz. in the Father’s fire, to a word of eternal power.

27. Understand, the Father, viz. the Father’s fiery forms, do figure [shape] this divine voice essentially in itself in the lubet of the liberty; that is, the Father’s fiery property makes itself in the divine essence of the eternal love to a mercury of joyfulness; for the Father’s property is the fire-source, and the Son’s, viz. the eternal lubet’s property, is the love-source; and yet also there would be no desire of love, if the Father’s fire did not enkindle it, and make it movable, viz. desirous; from the fire arises the desire.

28. The Father of all essences begets this holy desire through his fire-source, which is now his heart of love, which gives in his fire the shining lustre and splendour; even there the wrath in the fire’s property dies from eternity to eternity, and is changed into a love-desire.

29. Thus observe it; the free lubet’s property is here in the fire’s property called Christ, which signifies in the language of nature a potent champion,[113] depriving the wrath of its power, a shining of the light in the darkness, a transmutation, where the love-lubet rules over the fire-lubet, viz. over the wrath, the light over the darkness: Here the seed of the woman (understand of the free lubet, in which there is no source) bruises the head of the wrath of the eternal nature, viz. of the eternal desire; for the fire’s property is rightly called the head, for it is the cause of the eternal life; and the liberty, viz. the free lubet, or the nothing, is rightly called the woman; for in the nothing, viz. in the liberty of all source,[114] consists the birth of the Holy Trinity of the Deity.

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 of the abyss in himself, that is, out of the abyss in himself into a byss; the Son is[115] the Father’s byss: Thus the Father remains in himself, as touching his own property only, the byss of the eternal nature; and the Son remains in the Father, the byss of the power and kingdom of joy; a resemblance whereof you see in the fire and light: And thus the Son tinctures the Father with the liberty, viz. with the nothing; and the Father tinctures (the Son) the nothing, that there is an eternal life therein, and no more a nothing, but a sound or voice of the manifestation of the eternity.

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;[116] 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[117] 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[118] 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,[119] for blindness to the wicked, and for light to the seeing.

34. Now we will come to the process of Christ, and go with him out of eternity into time, and out of time into eternity, and bring again the wonders of time into eternity, and openly set forth the pearl, for honour unto Christ, and scorn to the devil; he that sleeps is blind, but he that wakes sees what the May[120] brings.

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 night dwells in the day, but it is not manifest: Thus it went with man when the property and source of the night seized on him, then it domineered in him; and thus it went also with the earth when God cursed it.