The Signature of All Things

38. Now wilt thou be a magus? Then thou must understand how to change the night again into the day; for the source of the night, viz. of the darkness, is the anguish-source of death; and the source of the day, viz. of the light, is the life, and the lustre in the life; now Christ has again enkindled this shining in the humanity, and quickened man again in himself: Now if thou wilt tincture, then thou must change that which is shut up, and closed in the death of the night again into the day, for the day is the tincture, and yet the day and night lie in each other as one essence.

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 the combat of this trial, when the human essence was to enter again with its desire into the Deity, and eat of God’s bread, that is, of the divine essentiality? He went to Jordan, and was baptized of John. With what? With the water in Jordan, and with the water in the word of life, viz. the divine essence, which must tincture our mortal essence in the outward humanity of Christ, from whence the divine hunger arose in the human essence, that he desired to eat of God’s bread: Therefore the Spirit of God took him and carried him into the wilderness, and there the Father’s property in the wrath did oppose him through the prince in the wrath; and there God’s bread, and also the bread of God’s anger according to the death’s desire, was tendered to him; now it was tried, whether the soul, which was generated and created out of the Father’s property, would after this tincturation of baptism enter again into the love-desire, viz. into the nothing out of all source.

43. What is hereby intimated to the magus? A mystery is hinted to him: If .he will do wonders with Christ, and tincture the corrupt body to the new-birth, he must first be baptized, and then he gets an hunger after God’s bread, and this hunger has in it the verbum fiat, viz. the archeus[122] to the new generation, that is, the Mercury: But I do not speak here of a priest’s baptism; the artist must understand it magically; God and man must first come together ere thou baptizest, as it came to pass in Christ: The Deity first entered into the humanity, but the humanity could not presently comprehend it, till it was quickened through baptism, and the hunger, viz. the dead Mercury in the human essence, was again stirred up in the heavenly part.

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 only the baptism, that thou baptizest the dead Mercury, which lies in the heavenly essentiality, enclosed and shut up in impotency with its own baptism, [and mark] of what essence he is in a thing;[123] but thou must have this divine water, and also the earthly; for the earthly Mercury cannot else receive the divine [Being] except the divine Mercury receives of its power, whereupon it stirs and hungers: Then the heavenly [Mercury] seeks, but yet finds not divine essence about it for its food; thereupon it brings its will through the desire of death into itself, viz. into the verbum fiat, which has made and produced it, and sets its hunger upon the same; whereupon the divine essence inclines itself to it, and will become joyfulness in him; even then arises the beginning of the new body out of the divine essentiality, which the desire nourishes and brings up; and when the new life is born, viz. the day, then the four elements die: And then the new body is shut up in the dark death, and on the third day it rises again from death; for the night is swallowed up in the grave, and the morning rises.

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[124] 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 only his own know him: He walks about in heavenly form, and sometimes in his own [form which he had here] until the Feast of Pentecost, for now here is tried in him the highest perfection, whether he will persist in the angel’s form, and eat only of the divine essence; and then comes the Holy Ghost, and proceeds with his power out of the whole corpus, viz. out of the body and soul, which then tinctures the dead and broken being; as it may be seen in the Day of Pentecost, where Saint Peter tinctured three thousand souls at once with his heavenly Mercury, and delivered them out of death.

49. Dear seekers, herein lies the pearl; had you the universal, then you could also tincture as Saint Peter did, but your covetous death withholds you and shuts you up; for you seek only covetousness and temporal honour in the pleasure of the flesh, to generate yourselves in the night’s property; therefore the pearl hides itself from you; yet the day shall again appear when the wrathful anger of God is fulfilled, satisfied and appeased in the blood of the saints, and turned to a love-life; and the time is near.

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; for he is their foe and friend, that so they both in their marriage bed of love might lift up their desire to God, and so with their desire God’s essence may be pregnant in their desire, and then in their copulation they shall beget such a child, which they[125] (understand the mother, viz. the female) shall nourish in their belly, till it be ripe.

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[126] 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.

56. But perhaps some rude clownish sophister might meet with this treatise, and draw a strange understanding from it, in that I write of a soul in the vegetative life; but let him know that we do not understand the image of God, which was formed into a likeness according to God [to be] in metals, stones, and herbs; but we understand the magical soul, how the eternity, viz. the Deity, imprints and pourtrays itself into its likeness, according to the model of its wisdom in all things, and how God fills all in all; we understand the summum bonum, the good treasure which lies hidden in the outward world’s essence as a paradise.

57. When Christ in his childhood grew up in human and divine property till he was twelve years old, he went with his mother Mary to the feast at Jerusalem, and went into the Temple among the Scribes, asked them, and hearkened to them, and gave answer to the questions of the teachers; but when his parents returned home, supposing him to be among the company, he remained purposely behind among the doctors, and followed not the intent of his parents, but the divine will, till they came back again, and sought him; and then his mother said to him, “My son, why hast thou dealt so with us? Lo! thy father and I have been seeking thee sorrowing. Then he said unto them, How is it that you have sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And he went home with them, and was subject unto them.”

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.

60. Secondly, it shews him the twofold working and will in all things; and if he will be a magus, and according to his will turn the will and essence of the good property out of the inward into the outward, then he must be first capable of the inward, viz. of the divine will, otherwise he cannot change the inward will into the outward; as Christ was not obedient to the external will of his mother till she sought him with grief and sorrow of heart, and turned her will into God’s will, and wrestled in his compassion with God’s will, as Jacob the whole night, till the Lord blessed him, and God said unto him, Thou hast wrestled with God and man, and hast overcome, or got the victory.

61. Also let the magus know, that he need not go about to implant the right will to perfection from without into his purpose; it is already in all things; only he must introduce a divine desirous will according to the thing’s property into that thing which he takes in hand, which wrestles with the divine will as Jacob, and blesses the will introduced to God’s will, that the divine will yields itself freely into the hunger, or inclines itself to the desire, and makes the imperfect will (which earnestly presses into his compassion) perfect, and then it is rightly said, Thou hast wrestled with God, and hast overcome; then thy purpose obtains a transformed body, which is heavenly and earthly.

62. Observe it! It is the first beginning to baptism, and so you are fit and prepared to the baptism, and not otherwise, else you baptize only with the water of the outward world; but the true magus baptizes with the outward and inward water: If he has a right divine desire in him, then God’s will in his baptism is the first glimmering tinder in Mercury, so that the life enkindles death, viz. the Mercury shut up in death, and he gets divine desire; even then Mercury begins to hunger after divine essence, and does his first miracle, and turns the water into wine, as Christ did after his baptism: This is the first tincturation in the dead corpus in the power of baptism, that the vegitta, or working energetical life, obtains another property, viz. an hunger of love, wherewith she embraces her bridegroom, viz. the fire-source, that he is enkindled in her love, and changes his cold deadly wrath and will into a fiery love-will: Then the mortal water turns into wine (a sharpness of a fire and water-taste), out of which at last comes an oil to another baptism, after the manner and disposition of the artist, viz. according as he intends and begins; after the magus has joined the virgin and young man together, then Christ, viz. the bridegroom, is led with his bride into the desert, and tempted of the devil.

63. Here is the trial whereby the artist is proved by God what he seeks with his baptism; for here is the proof in paradise to try whether the bridegroom be not too bad; for the virgin casts her love upon him, and invites him; if he receives it with desire, and gives his will thereinto, then she gives him her heart and will wholly: This is the heavenly tincture, which gives itself into the enkindled anger of God (viz. into the curse of the earth when God cursed it), that is, into the Mercury enclosed in death, which is the bridegroom, for the seed of the woman, viz. the heavenly tincture, must bruise the head of the serpent, viz. the poisonful Mercury, in the property of death, and change his poison into wine, and then the virgin receives the seed of the bridegroom, and not before.

64. The desert is the earthly outward body, where Mercury is tempted; when the devil appears to Mercury, and plagues him, and assaults him in his fiery essence, then must the virgin come to help him, and give him her love: Now if the Mercury eats of the virgin-like love, that is, of God’s bread, then he may stand before the devil; and at last the angels come to him, and serve him; the illuminated magus will well understand what is meant by the devil.

65. Hereby let the magus in the temptation (seeing the whole marriage stands in the devil’s temptation) have a careful eye upon his purpose; and if the angels do not appear in forty days’ space, then is his purpose in vain; therefore let him look, that he suffer not too fierce a devil to tempt, and also not too weak, lest Mercury become light, and desire to continue in his own poisonful death’s property, and devour the baptism as a wolf, and the old one remains.

66. As soon as he espies the forms of angels, let him bring Christ out of the desert, and let the bridegroom eat again his own food, and dismiss the devil, that he may no longer plague him, and then Christ will do many wonders and signs, at which the artist will wonder and rejoice: Then he has nothing to do, the bride is in the bridegroom, they are already married,[127] he need only make their bed ready, they will warm it well enough themselves; the bridegroom embraces the bride, and the bride the bridegroom; and this is their food and pastime till they beget a child.

67. But if the artist will needs be so diligent as to warm the married couple’s bed, then let him have a care he do not anger and enrage them in their love; what he begins he must go on with; only the bridegroom is wonderful: He has continually two wills, viz. an earthly hunger after God’s anger, and an hunger after his bride; therefore he must always have his own earthly food given him, but not into his belly, but magically, that so he may satisfy only his own will’s-hunger; his food is his mother that begets him, as it is before mentioned.

68. In brief, the whole work which men speak so much and wonderfully of consists in two things, in an heavenly and in an earthly; the heavenly must make the earthly in it to an heavenly: The eternity must make time in it to eternity: The artist seeks paradise; if he finds it, he has the great treasure upon the earth: But one dead man does not raise another; the artist must be living, if he will say to the mountain, Arise, and cast thyself into the sea.

69. When the incarnation of the child begins, then first of all Saturn takes it, and then it is dark and disesteemed, and is contemned and derided, that such a mystery should lie hid in such a mean form; there Christ walks in a poor simple form upon the earth, as a pilgrim, and has not so much room and propriety in Saturn as to lay his head: He goes as a stranger, as if he were not there at home.

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 enkindled, and the right life is born, and stands in the pure element; no anger nor death can destroy it.

72. It seems strange in the eyes of reason, that God has kept such a process with the restoring of man in Christ, that he appeared in such a poor disesteemed form in the human property, and was reviled, mocked, scorned, scourged, crucified and slain; and that he was buried, and rose again out of the grave, and walked forty days upon the earth before he entered into his invisible kingdom. Reason is so blind, that it understands nothing of the eternal birth, it knows nothing of paradise, how Adam was in paradise, and how he fell, and what the curse of the earth is: If it understood this, the whole process were manifest to it: As the eternal birth is in itself, so is also the process with the restoration after the Fall, and so likewise is the process of the wise men with their philosopher’s stone, there is not the least tittle of difference betwixt them; for all things originally arise out of the eternal birth, and all must have one restoration in one and the same manner.

73. Therefore if the magus will seek paradise in the curse of the earth, and find it, then must he first walk in the person of Christ; God must be manifest in him, understand in the internal man, that he may have the magical sight: He must deal with his purpose as the world did with Christ, and then he may find paradise, wherein is no death.

74. But if he be not in this birth of restoration, and walks not himself in the way wherein Christ walked upon the earth, if he steps not forth into the will and spirit of Christ, then let him give over and leave off his seeking; he finds nothing but death, and the curse of God. I tell him plainly and faithfully, for the pearl of which I write is paradisical, which God does not cast before swine, but gives it to his children for their play and delight.

75. And though much might be mentioned here, that even reason might obtain open eyes, yet it is not to be done; for the wicked would grow worse, and more full of pride; therefore seeing he is not worthy of paradise, and also cannot enter thereinto, no heavenly jewel shall be given him: And therefore God hides it, and permits him to whom he reveals it, to speak of it no otherwise than magically; therefore no one attains it, unless he himself be a magus in Christ, unless paradise be manifest in his internal man; and then he may find, if he be born to it, and chosen by God.