Mysterium Magnum (An Exposition of the First Book of Moses, called Genesis)

1 Being, essence or substance. 29. In the fire-spirit we are to understand the angelical creation, where the will of the abyss introduceth itself into byss, and manifesteth the eternal speaking Word or life with the fiery birth, viz. with the first Principle, where the spiritual dominion is manifest by the fire-birth. In this spiritual fire all angels do take their original, viz. out of the forms to the fire-source; for no creature can be created out of the fire: for it is no essence; but out of the properties to the fire a creature may be apprehended in the desire, viz. in the Verbum Fiat, and introduced into a creatural form and property. 30. And therefore there are many and divers sorts of angels; also in many distinct offices. And as there are three forms to the firesource, so there are also three hierarchies; and therein their princely dominions. And likewise there are three worlds in one another as one, which make three Principles or beginnings, for each property of the eternal nature hath its degrees; for they do explicate and mutually unfold themselves in the fire-blaze; and out of those degrees the different distinction of spirits is created.

31. And we are to understand nothing else, by the creation of the angels and of all other spirits, but that the abyssal God hath intro¬ duced himself into his manifested properties, and out of those proper¬ ties into living creatures; by which he possesseth the degrees, and therewith playeth in the properties: they are his strings in the all¬ essential speaking; and are all of them tuned for the great harmony of his eternal speaking Word. So that in all degrees and properties the voice of the unsearchable God is manifest and made known : they are all created for the praise of God. 32. For, all whatsoever that liveth, liveth in the speaking Word; the angels in the eternal speaking, and the temporal spirits in the re-expression or echoing forth of the formings of time, out of the sound or breath of time; and the angels out of the sound of eternity, viz. out of the voice of the manifested Word of God. 33. And therefore they bear the names of the several degrees in the manifested voice of God; and one degree is more holy in the power than another. Therefore the angels also, in their choirs, are differenced in the power of the divine might; and one hath a more holy function to discharge than another. An example whereof we have by the priests in the Old Testament , in their ordinances ; which were instituted after an angelical manner.

34. Albeit earthly, yet there was even such an angelical under¬ standing and meaning couched therein; which God did represent uPon Jesus which was to come into the human property; and so alluded with Israel in the type, at the eternal which was to come, which Jesus out ofjehova did restore, and introduce into the human property; which the earthly reason hath neither apprehended nor understood: but seeing the time is born,1 and the beginning hath again found the end, it shall be manifest, for a witness unto all nations : sheweth the spirit of wonders. 1 Manifest or come about. Of the Fall of Lucifer with his Legions i. A lbeit self-reason might here cavil at us, and say, we were XAnot by when this was done 5 yet we say that we, in a magical manner, according to the right of eternity, were really there, and saw this. But not I, who am I, have seen it; for I was not as yet a creature. But we have seen it in the essence of the soul which God breathed into Adam. 2. Now then, if God dwelleth in this same essence, and hath from all eternity dwelt therein, and manifesteth himself in his own mirror, and looketh back through the essence of the soul into the beginning of all essences; what then hath reason to do, to taunt and cavil at me about that, wherein itself is blind? I must warn reason, that it would once behold itself in the looking-glass of the understanding, and con¬ sider what itself is; and leave off from the building of mad Babel; it will be time.

3. The fall of Lucifer came not to pass from God’s purpose or appointment; indeed it was known in the wrath of God, according to the property of the dark world, how it could or would come to pass; but in God’s holiness, viz. in the light, there was no such desire mani¬ fest in any such property; otherwise the holy God must have a devilish or hellish wrathful desire in his love; which is absolutely not so. But in the centre of the eternal nature, viz. in the forms to fire, there is verily such a property in the dark impression. 4. Every good angel hath the centre in him, and is manifest in a creatural property in one degree or other in the centre; whichever property is greatest1 in the creature, according to that it hath its office and dominion. 5. Yet the angels, which were created out of the degrees of the centre, were created for and to the light; the light was manifest in all; and they had free will from the manifested will of God’s will. 6. Lucifer had still been an angel, if his own will had not intro¬ duced him into the fire’s might, desiring to domineer in the strong fiery might, above and in all things, as an absolute sole god in dark¬ ness and light. Had he but continued in the harmony wherein God had created him [what would have cast him out of the light ?] .

1 Chief, most predominant or manifest. 40 7- Now reason saith, He could not. Then tell me, Who compelled him? Was he not, I prithee, the most glorious prince in heaven? Had he introduced his will into the divine meekness, then he could [have been able to stand]; but if he would not1 then he could not; for his own desire went into the centre : he would himself be God. He entered with his will into self;2 and in self is the centre of nature, viz. those properties wherein his will would be lord and master in the house. 8. But God created him for his harmony, to play with his lovespirit in him, as upon the musical instrument of his manifested and formed Word: and this the self-will would not. 9. Now saith reason, How came it that he would not? Did not he know the judgment of God, and the fall? Yea, he knew it well enough; but he had no sensible perceivance of the fall, but only as a bare knowledge.3 The fiery lubet, which was potent in him, did egg him on, for it would fain be manifest in the essence of the wrath, viz. in the root of fire. The darkness also eagerly desired to be creatural, which drew Lucifer, its craftmaster in the great potency of fire; indeed it drew him not from without;4 but in the property and will of his own fiery and dark essence. The original of the fall was within the creature and not without the creature: and so it was in Adam also. Self-will was the beginning of pride.

10. Thou askest, What was that which did cause it in himself? Answer, His great beauty and glory. Because the will beheld what itself was in the fiery mirror, this lustrous glance did move and affect him, so that he did eagerly reach after the properties of the centre; which forthwith began effectually to work: For the astringent austere desire, viz. the first form or property, did impress itself, and awakened the compunction and the anxious desire. Thus this beautiful star did overshadow its light; and made its essence wholly astringent, rigor¬ ous and harsh; and its meekness and true angelical property was turned into an essence wholly austere, harsh, rigorous and dark. And then this bright morning star was undone. And as he did, so did his legions. And this was his fall. 11. He should have been wholly resigned in the holy power of God; and hear what the Lord would speak and play by his own spirit in him. This, self-will would not do; and therefore he must now play in the dark; yea, his will is yet opposite; albeit now, after the fall, he 1 In his own will, which was from the eternal will, was both the possibility and the ability.

2 Selfhood, or selfness. 3 Or notional theory, in the mystery of his mind. 4 Outwardly. cannot will [viz. to resign to the divine will of the light] ; for his meekness, whence the love-will ariseth, is shut up and entered again into a nothing, viz. it is retired into its own original. 12. Now the creature still remaineth, but wholly out of the centre, viz. out of the eternal nature. The free lubet of God’s wisdom is de¬ parted from him; that is, it hath hid itself in itself; and letteth the wrathful fire- will stand: as happened to Adam also, when he imagined after evil and good, then the free lubet of the holy world’s essence did disappear in his essence. 13. This was the very death, of which God told him, that if he did eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he should die the very same day. Thus it was in Lucifer: he died to the holy divine world, and arose to the wrathful world of God’s anger. 14. Thou sayest, Wherefore did not God uphold him, and draw him from the evil inclination? I prithee tell me, wherewith? Should God have poured in more love and meekness into this fire-source? Then had his stately light been more manifest in him; and the look¬ ing-glass of his own knowledge had been the greater, and his own fiery self-will the stronger. I pray, was not his high light, and his own self-knowledge, the cause of his fall?

15. Should God then have drawn him with rebuke? Was it not Lucifer’s purpose aforehand to rule the magical ground as an artist? His aim and endeavour was for the art, that he would play with the centre of the transmutation of the properties; and would be and do all whatsoever he alone pleased. Had he not known this, he had still remained an angel in humility. 16. Therefore the children of darkness, and the children of this world also, are wiser than the children of the light, as the Scripture saith. Thou askest, Why? [Because] they have the magical root of the original of all essences manifest in them : and [to have] this was even the desire of Adam : However [it was] the devil [who] persuaded them that they should be wiser, and their eyes should be opened, and they should be as God himself. 17. This folly caused king Lucifer to aspire, desiring to be an artist, and an absolute lord, like the Creator. The water of meekness had been good for his fire- will; but he would none of that. Hence it is that the children of God must be the most plain, sincere and simple; as Esaias prophesied of Christ : Who is so simple as my servant the righteous one, who turneth many unto righteousness, viz. upon1 the way of humility.

1 8. All angels live in humility, and are resigned to the spirit of God, and are in the eternal speaking Word of God, as a well-tuned, pure-sounding instrument in the harmony of the kingdom of heaven; of which the Holy Ghost is chief master and ruler. 19- But the devil hath forged to himself a strange fool’s play, where he can act his gulleries with his sundry interludes and disguisments; and demean himself like an apish fool; and transform himself into monstrous, strange and hideous shapes and figures; and mock at the image of angelical simplicity and obedience. And this was his aim and intent, for which he departed from the harmony of the angelical choirs. For the Scripture saith, that he was a murderer and liar from the beginning. His juggling feats and fictions are mere strange figures and lies, which God never formed in him; but he brings them to forms and shapes in himself; and seeing that they are contrary to his crea¬ tion, they are lies and abominations. 20. He was an angel, and hath belied his angelical form and obedience; and is entered into the abomination of fictions, lies and mockeries; in his centre he hath awakened the envious hateful forms and properties of the dark world, whence wrath and iniquity springeth. He sat in heavenly pomp and glory, and introduced his hateful desire and malicious will into the essence, viz. into the water-source; and cast forth his streams of enmity and malignity.

21. His properties were as the venomous stings of serpents, which he put forth out of himself. When the love of God was withdrawn from him, he figured his image according to the property of the wrath¬ ful forms (wherein there are also evil beasts and worms, in the serpen¬ tine shape), and infected or awakened the Salniter of the centre of nature in the expressed essence, in the generation of the eternal nature; whence the combat arose, that the great prince Michael fought with him, and would no longer endure him in heaven among the fellowship of the holy angels. 22. For which cause the will of the abyss, viz. of the eternal Father moved itself, and swallowed him down, as a treacherous perjured wretch, into the gulf and sink of eternal darkness, viz. into another Principle: the heaven spewed him out of itself; he fell into the dark¬ ness as lightning, and he lost the mansion of God in the kingdom of heaven, in the holy power; and all his servants with him. There he hath the mother for his enchanting delusions; there he may play them juggling feats, and antic tricks. 23. Moreover, we are to know that he had his royal seat in the

place of this world: therefore Christ calleth him a prince of this world, viz. in the kingdom of darkness, in the wrath, in the place of this world. 24. His kingly throne is taken from him; and another hath posses¬ sion of it in the heavenly world’s property, in the place of this world : he shall not obtain it again. 25. Also (at the instant of the creation of the stars and four ele¬ ments) another king was established over him, in this place in the elements; which albeit we could mention; yet at present it remaineth in silence, by reason of the false magic. Also by reason of other super¬ stitions and idolatries we will not speak anything of it here: and yet hint enough unto our schoolfellows. Of the Creation of Heaven and the Outward World i. TT seems strange and wonderful to reason, to consider how God Xhath created the stars, and the four elements; especially when reason doth contemplate and consider of the earth, with its hard stones, and very rough, indigested, harsh substance; and seeth that there are great stones, rocks and cliffs created, which are in part use¬ less, and very hindersome to the employment of the creatures in this world. Then it thinks, whence may this compaction arise in so many forms and properties; for there are divers sorts of stones, divers metals, and divers kinds of earth whence manifold herbs and trees do grow.

2. Now when it doth thus muse and contemplate, it finds nothing, save only that it doth acknowledge that there must be a hidden power and might, which is abyssal, and unsearchable, which hath created all things so; and there it sticks, and runs to and fro in the creation, as a bird that flies up and down in the air; and looks upon all things, as an ox looks upon a new door of his stall; and never so much as considers what itself is; and seldom reacheth so far as to know that man is an image extracted out of this whole being or essence. It runneth up and down, as a beast void of understanding, which desireth only to eat and procreate; and when it comes to its highest degree, as to search out and learn something, then it searcheth in the outward fiction and artifice of the stars; or else in some carved work of outward nature. It will by no means simply and sincerely learn to know its Creator. And when it comes to pass that one attaineth so far as to teach the know¬ ledge of him, yet then it calleth such man a fool, and fantastic; and for¬ bids him the precious understanding of God, and imputes it to him for sin, and revileth him therein.

3 . Such mere animals are we, since the fall of Adam, that we do not so much as once consider that we were created in the image of God, and endued with the right, natural and genuine understanding, both of the eternal, and temporal nature; so as to mind and bethink our¬ selves, by great earnestness, to re-obtain that which we have lost; whereas we have yet that very first soul wherein the true understand¬ ing lieth; if we did but seriously labour to have that light which we have lost, to shine again in us; which yet is offered unto us out of grace. 4. Therefore there will be no excuse at the great day of the Lord, when God shall judge the secret and hidden things of mankind, be¬ cause we would not learn to know him, and obey his voice; which daily hath knocked amongst us, and in us; and resign up ourselves unto him; that so our understanding might be opened. And a very severe sentence shall he receive who will undertake to be called Master, and Rabbi;1 and yet neither knoweth the way of God, nor walketh therein, and that which is yet more heinous forbiddeth2 those that desire to know, and walk therein.

5. The creation of the outward world is a manifestation of the in¬ ward spiritual Mystery, viz. of the centre of the eternal nature, with the holy element: and was brought forth by the eternal-speaking Word through the motion of the inward world as a spiration; which eternal-speaking Word hath expressed the essence out of the inward spiritual worlds; and yet there was no such essence in the speaking, but was only as a breath or vaporous exhalation in reference to the internal, breathed forth, both from the property of the dark world, and also of the light world: and therefore the outward essence of this world is good and evil. 6. And we are with very entire and punctual exactness to consider of this motion of the eternal Mystery of the spiritual world. 1. How it came to pass that such a wrathful, rough, gross and very compunctive essence and dominion was brought forth and made manifest, as we see in the outward forms of nature, as well in the moving things, as in the stones and earth. 2. Whence such a wrath did arise, which hath compacted and introduced the powers of the properties into such a harsh nature [or rude quality] as we see in the earth and stones.

7. For we are not to think that there is the like in heaven, viz. in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world there are only the properties of possibility; but not at all manifest in such a harsh property; but are as it were swallowed up; as the light swalloweth up the darkness, and yet the darkness doth really dwell in the light, but not apprehended. 8. Now we are yet to search out how the desire of the darkness became manifest in the power of the light; that they both came mutu¬ ally into the compaction or coagulation. And yet it affordeth us a far greater and more profound consideration; that when man could not stand in the spiritual mystery of the paradisical property [and estate], 1 Sir. 2 Or hindreth. that God cursed this compaction, viz. the earth; and appointed an earnest judgment to sever the good in this compaction again from the evil; so that the good must thus stand in the curse, that is, in death. He that doth here see nothing is indeed blind. Why would God curse his good essence, if something were not come into it which was oppo¬ site to the good? Or is God at odds with himself? as reason would be ready to fancy. For it is written in Moses, that God looked upon all that he had made , and behold it was very good.

9. Now man, for whose sake the earth was accursed, had not intro¬ duced anything into the earth, whereby it was now made so evil, as to cause God to curse it, save only the false and faithless imagination of his desire to eat of the evil and good : so as to awaken the vanity, viz. the centre of nature in him, and to know evil and good. From which desire the hunger entered into the earth; whence the outward body was extracted as a mass; which set the hunger of its desire again upon its mother; and awakened the root of vanity out of the dark impres¬ sion of the centre of nature, whence the Tree of Temptation, viz. evil and good, grew manifest to him; and when he did eat thereof the earth was accursed for his sake. 10. Now if man, by his powerful desire, did awaken the wrath in the earth, what then might Lucifer [not] be able to do, who was like¬ wise an enthroned prince, and moreover had many legions? Lucifer had the will of the strong might and power of the centre of all essences in himself, as well as Adam [had]. Adam was only one creature, but Lucifer was a king, and had a kingdom in possession, viz. a hierarchy in the spiritual world, viz. in the heavenly Salniter in the generation of the manifested word. He was an enthroned prince in the manifested power of God: therefore Christ calleth him a prince of this world: for he sat in the essence (understand, in the spiritual essence) whence this world was breathed forth as a spiration.

11. He it is that by his false desire, which he introduced into the essence, did awaken the wrath in the internal, as Adam stirred up the curse. He raised the centre of nature with his dark wrathful property in the like wrathful properties; for he had first awakened the wrath of God in himself. And then this awakened wrath entered into its mother, viz. into the magical generation, out of which Lucifer was created to a creature : whereupon the generation was made proud and aspiring, contrary to the right [or law] of eternity. 12. Also he sat in his angelical form in the good holy essence, as to the generation of the divine meekness; and therein exalted himself to domineer in the will of his wrath above the meekness, as an absolute peculiar god, contrary to the right of eternity. 13. But when the speaking eternal Word in love and anger, for his malicious iniquity’s sake, did move itself in the properties, viz. in the essence wherein Lucifer sat, to cast this wicked guest out of his habi¬ tation into eternal darkness ; then the essence was compacted : for God would not permit or allow that he should any longer have these manifested powers, wherein he was a prince; but created them into a coagulation, and spewed him out of them.

14. And in this impression or conjunction the powers, viz. the watery and oily properties, were compacted; not that Lucifer did com¬ pact or create them; but [they were compacted by] the speaking Word of God, which dwelt in the manifested powers and properties : the same took away the disobedient child’s patrimony, and cast him out as a perjured wretch, out of his inheritance into an eternal prison, into the house of darkness and anger; wherein he desired to be master over the essence of God’s love, and rule therein as a juggler and en¬ chanter, and mix the holy with unholy, to act his juggling feats and proud pranks thereby. 15. And we see very clearly with quick-sighted eyes, that thus it is: for there is nothing in this world so evil but it hath a good in it: the good hath its rise originally out of the good or heavenly property, and the evil hath its descent from the property of the dark world; for both worlds, viz. light and darkness, are in each other as one. 16. And therefore they also went along together into the compac¬ tion or coagulation; and that from the degrees of the eternal nature, viz. from the properties to the fire-life, and also from the properties in the oily and spiritual watery light-essence.

17. For the metals are in themselves nothing else but a water and oil, which are held by the wrathful properties, viz. by the astringent austere desire; that is, by a Saturnine martial fiery property, in the compaction of Sulphur and Mercury, to be one body [or congealed bulk]. But if I wholly destroy this body, and severise each into its own property, then I clearly find therein the first creation. 18. As first, according to the astringent desire of the Fiat, viz. of the first form to nature, according to the property of the dark world, I find a hardness and coldness ; and further according to this astringent property, secondly a deadly baneful stinking water, from the astrin¬ gent impression; and thirdly, in this stinking water, a dead earth; and fourthly, a sharpness like to salt, from the native right and quality of the astringency. This is now the coagulated essence of the first form of nature, according to the dark world; and it is the stony substance (understand the grossness of the stones and of all metals); so likewise of the earth, wherein the mortal part (or the close-binding death) is understood. 19. Secondly, I find according to the second form and property of the dark nature and world essence, in the compaction of the metals and stones, a bitter compunctive raging essence, viz. a poison; which maketh a strong harsh noisome taste in the earth and stinking water; and it is the cause of growth, viz. the stirring life : its property is called Mercurius ; and in the first form the astringency is called Sal.

20. Thirdly, I find the third property, viz. the anguish, which is the sulphurous-source, in which consisteth the various dividing of the properties, viz. of the essence. 21. Fourthly, I find the fire or heat, which doth awaken the salniter in the sulphurous-source, which severiseth the compaction; and that is the flagrat. This is the original raiser of the salniter out of the brimstony, watery and earthy property; for it is the awakener of death, viz. [the awakener] in the mortal property, and the first original of the life in the fire : and even to the fire the property of the dark world reacheth, and no farther. 22. Fifthly, we find in the compaction of the metals and stones an oil, which is sweeter than any sugar can be; so far as it may be sepa¬ rated from the other properties. It is the first heavenly holy essence; which hath taken its original from the free lubet. It is pure and trans¬ parent; but if the fire-source be severed from it (albeit it is impossible wholly to separate it, for the band of the great triumphant joy con¬ sisteth therein) then it is whiter than anything can be in nature: But

by reason of the fire it continues of a rosy-red;1 which the light changeth into yellow, according to the mixture of red and white; by reason of the earthy property, and predominant influence of the sun. 23. But if the artist can unloose it, and free it from the fire of the wrath, and other properties, then he hath the pearl of the whole world, understand the tincture: for Virgin Venus hath her cabinet of treasure lying there: It is the Virgin with her fair attire [or crown of pearl] . 24. O thou earthly man hadst thou it yet ! Here Lucifer and Adam have negligently lost it! O man, didst thou but know what lay here, how wouldst thou seek after it! But it belongeth only unto those whom God hath chosen thereto. O precious pearl, how sweet art thou in the new birth, how fair, and surpassing excellent is thy lustre! 25. Sixthly, we find in this oily property a sovereign power from the original of the manifested powerful divine Word, which dwelleth in the heavenly property; in which power the sound or tone of metals is distinguished; and therein their growth consisteth. For here it is the holy Mercurius: that which in the second form of nature in the darkness is compunctive, harsh, rigid, and a poison, that is here, in the free lubet’s property (when the fire in the salnitral flagrat hath divided love and anger) a pleasant merry Mercury, wherein the joyfulness of the creature consisteth.

26. And here, ye philosophers, lieth the effectual virtue and power¬ ful operation of your Noble Stone: here it is called Tincture. This operation can tincture the disappeared water in Luna; for here your Jupiter is a prince; and Sol a king, and virgin Venus the king’s sweet¬ est spouse. But Mars must first lay down his sceptre; also the devil must first go into hell; for Christ must bind him; and tincture simple Luna, which he hath defiled, with the oil of his heavenly blood ; that the anger may be changed into joy. Thus the artist’s art is born: understood here, by the children of the Mystery. 27. Seventhly, we find in the separation of the compaction of the metals a white crystalline water; that is, the heavenly water, viz. the water above the firmament of heaven; which is severed from the 1 Or crimson purple-red. oil, as a body of the oily property. It gives a white crystalline lustre in the metals; and Venus with her property makes it wholly white; and that is a silver property; and Venus in Sol, a gold; and Mars in Venus, a copper; and again, Venus in Mars, an iron; Jupiter in Venus, a tin; Saturn in Venus, a lead: Mercurius in Venus, quicksilver; and without Venus there is no metal, neither fixed nor mineral.

28. Thus understand by Venus, heavenly essentiality, which consisteth in an oil and crystalline water, which giveth body unto all metals, understand the spiritual beautiful body; its own peculiar essence, without the influences of the other properties, is the great meekness and sweetness. Its real peculiar essence is a sweet pure water; but the power of the manifested Word doth separate the holiest through the fire into an oil; for in the oil the fire giveth a shine or lustre. When the fire tasteth the water in itself, then out of the taste it giveth an oil; thus the oil is spiritual, and the water corporeal. The oil is a body1 of the power; and the water a body1 of the properties, which are living in the oil, and do make or use the water for a mansion. In the water the elemental life consisteth, and in the oil the spiritual life;2 and in the power of oil the divine life, viz. the life of the expressed Word, as a manifestation of the Deity. 29. Now we see here, how, in the compaction of the Verbum Fiat, the holy entered along with the unholy into a coagulation. For in all things there is a deadly and also a living water; and also a mortal poisonful virtue, and a good vital virtue; a gross, and a subtile [power] ; one evil, the other good: all which is according to the nature of God’s love and anger.

30. The grossness of the stones, metals and earth proceed from the property of the dark world, all which are in a mortal [property], understand substance and not spirit: the spirit of the grossness is in the poison-life, in which Lucifer is a prince of this world. 31. But the heavenly [part] holds the grossness and poison-source captive; so that the devil is the poorest creature in the essence of this world; and hath nothing in this world for his own possession, save what he can cheat from the living creatures which have an eternal being; that they enter with the desire into the wrath of the eternal; viz. into his juggling incantations. 32. If we would rightly consider the creation, then we need no more than a divine light and contemplation : it is very easy unto the illuminated mind, and may very well be searched out. Let a man but 1 Text Corpus. 2 Or life of the spirit. consider the degrees of nature, and he seeth it very clearly in the sun, stars, and elements. The stars are nothing else but a crystalline waterspirit; yet not a material water, but powers of the salnitral flagrat in the fire.

33. For their orb, wherein they stand, is fiery; that is, a salnitral fire, a property of the matter of the earth, metals, trees, herbs and the three elements, fire, air and water. What the superior is, that also is the inferior; and that which I find in the compaction of the earth, that likewise is in the astrum;1 and they belong both together as body and soul. 34. The astrum1 betokeneth the spirit, and the earth the body; before the creation all was mutually in each other in the eternal generation; but in no coagulation or creature; but as a powerful wrestling love-play, without any such material substance. 35. But it was enkindled in the motion of the Word, viz. the Verbum Fiat: and therewith the inflammation in the salnitral flagrat, each property did divide itself in itself; and was amassed by the awakened astringent impression (viz. the first form of nature, which is called the Fiat), and so each became coagulated in its property; the subtile in its property, and the gross in its property; all according to the degrees; as the eternal generation of nature derives itself from the unity into an infinite multiplicity. 36. Good and evil is manifest in the astrum for the wrathful fiery power of the eternal nature, so also the power of the holy spiritual world, is manifest in the stars, as an essential spiration. Therefore there are many obscure stars, all which we see not, and many light stars, which we see.

37. We have a likeness of this in the matter of the earth, which is so manifold, whence divers sorts of fruit grow, viz. according to the properties of the superior spheres: for so likewise is the earth, being the grossest substance, where the mortal water is coagulated. 38. The earth was coagulated in the seventh form of nature, viz. in the essence; for it is that same essence which the other six proper¬ ties do make in their desire: it chiefly consisteth in seven properties, as is above mentioned; but the unfoldment or various explication of the properties is effected in the salnitral fire, where each property doth again explicate itself into seven; where the infiniteness and great possibility2 ariseth, that of one thing, another can be made, which it was not in the beginning. 1 Or constellation. 2 Or potency. 39. The being of all beings is only a magical birth [deriving itself], out of one only, into an infiniteness; the One is God, the infinite is time and eternity, and a manifestation of the One; where each thing may be reduced out of one into many, and again out of many into one. 40. The fire is the workmaster thereunto, which putteth forth from a small power a little sprout out of the earth, and displayeth it into a great tree with many boughs, branches and fruits; and doth again consume it, and reduceth it again to one thing, viz. to ashes and earth, whence it first proceeded : and so also all things of this world do enter again into the one whence they came.

41. The essence of this world may easily be searched out, but the centre or point of motion will remain dark unto reason, unless there be another light in it : it supposeth that it hath it in the circle, and can measure it j1 but it hath it not in the understanding. 42. When we consider the hierarchy and the kingly dominion in all the three Principles in the place of this world, so far as the Verbum Fiat reached forth itself to the creation of the outward world, with the stars, and elements, then we have the ground of the punctum2 of the royal throne, of which the whole creation is but a member. 43. For the stars and four elements, and all whatsoever is bred and engendered out of them, and live therein, doth hang [or appertain] unto one punctum; where the divine power hath manifested itself from itself in a form: and this punctum standeth in three Principles, viz. in three worlds : nothing can live in this world without this punc¬ tum, it is the only cause of the life and motion of all the powers; and without it all would be in the stillness3 without motion.

44. For if there were no light, then the elements would be motion¬ less: all would be an astringent harsh property, wholly raw and cold: the fire would remain hidden in the cold; and the water would be only a keen spirit, like to the property of the stars ; and the air would be hidden in the water-source, in the sulphur, and be a still, unmoving essence. 45. We see in very deed, that the light is the only cause of all stirring, motion and life; for every life desireth the power of the light, viz. the disclosed punctum: and yet the life is not the punctum, but the form of Nature. And if this punctum did not stand open, then the kingdom of darkness would be manifest in the place of this world; 1 Or mathematically describe and demonstrate it. 2 Central fire or radical heat; the point of motion, the virtue of the light. 3 Or eternal silence. in which [place of wrath] Lucifer is a prince, and possesseth the princely throne in the wrath of the eternal nature, in the place of this world. 4 6. Therefore, O man, consider with thyself, where [now] thou art at home, viz on one part1 in the stars and four elements; and on the other part2 in the dark world among the devils; and as to the third part3 in the divine power in heaven. That property which is master in thee, its servant thou art, pranck and vapour as stately and gloriously in the sun’s light as thou wilt; hast thou not the eternal [light], yet thy fountain shall be made manifest to thee.

47. By the two words Himmel und Erde (heaven and earth) we understand the whole ground of the creation; for, in the language of nature, the understanding is couched in those two words. For by the word Himmel (heaven) is understood the spiration of the Verbum Fiat, which created that essence (wherein Lucifer was enthroned) with the creative Word out of itself, that is, out of the spiritual holy world, into a time or beginning. And by the word Erde (earth) is understood the wrath in the essence, that the essence was amassed in the wrath; and reduced out of the properties of the dark Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, viz. out of the powers of the original of nature, and introduced into a compaction or coagulation. 48. This coagulation is the syllable Er, the other syllable, de or den, is the element. For the earth is not the element, but the [element is] the moving, viz. the power, whence it was coagulated; this is that element which is spiritual, and taketh its true original in the fire, where the nature, which is a senseless life, dieth in the fire; from which dying or mortification there proceedeth forth a living motion; and from that which is mortified [in the fire] a dead matter, viz. earth, and a dead water, and also a deadly fire, and venomous air, which maketh a dying source in the earthly bodies.

49. When nature was enkindled, the element did unfold [and dis¬ play] itself into four properties, which yet in itself is only one. The real element dwelleth in the essence which is mortified in the fire, otherwise the earth could bring forth no fruit. Those which now are called the four elements, are not elements, but only properties of the true element. The element is neither hot nor cold, neither dry nor this outward world, travelling in the vanity of time. 2 Viz. as to thy soul, in its own self and creatural being, without the divine light or regeneration, in the abyss of hell. 3 As to thy divine image, and spirit of love, in the eternal light. moist; it is the motion or life of the inward heaven, viz. the true angelical life as to the creature. It is the first divine manifestation out of the fire, through nature: when the properties of the eternal nature work therein; it is called Paradise. 50. By the word Himmel (heaven) is understood how the water, viz. the grossness in the mortal part, was coagulated, and separated from the holy crystalline water, which is spiritual. There, with the material, time began, as an essence expressed [or spirated] out of the spiritual water.

51. The spiritual water is living, and the spirated is dumb and un¬ feeling, void of understanding, and is dead in reference to the living water; of which Moses saith, God hath separated it from the water above the firmament. 52. The firmament is another Principle, viz. another beginning [or inchoation] of motion : the water above the firmament is the spiritual water, in which the Spirit of God ruleth and worketh : for Moses saith also, the Spirit of God moveth upon the water-, for the spiritual element moveth in the four elements; and in the spiritual element the Spirit of God moveth on the spiritual water: they are mutually in each other. 53. The heaven wherein God dwelleth is the holy element; and the firmament or gulf between God and the four elements is the death; for the inward heaven hath another birth (that is, another life) than the external elementary life hath. Indeed they are in one another, but the one doth not apprehend the other: as tin and silver never mix aright together; for each is from another [or sundry] Principle; albeit they resemble each other, and have very near affinity to each other, yet they are as the inward and outward water to one another; wherein also they are to be understood. For the inward and outward Venus are step-sisters; they come indeed from one father, but they have two mothers, the one whereof is a Virgin, the other deflowered; and there¬ fore they are separated till the judgment of God, who will purge away her reproach and shame, through the fire.

54. Moses writeth, that God created the heaven out of the midst of the waters ; [and] it is very right. The astrum1 is an external water-spirit, viz. powers of the outward water; and the material water is the body wherein the powers work. Now the fiery, airy and also earthly source is in the astrum; the like is also in the material water. The superior [astrum] is the life and dominion of the inferior; it enkindleth the properties, influences, and constellations, internal and external. inferior, whereby the inferior doth act, move and work. The inferior is the body or wife of the superior; indeed the superior is couched in the inferior, but as weak, and impotent. 55. And the superior were likewise as weak and impotent as the inferior, if it were not enkindled by the light of the sun: the same is the heart of all external powers; and it is the open punctum even to the tenth number. If we were not so blind as to contemn all that we see not with our calves’ eyes, it were right and requisite to reveal it; but seeing God hath hidden the pearl, and also himself, from the sight of the wicked, therefore we will let it alone. Yet hint enough to our school-fellows : we will not give our pearl unto beasts.

56. Thus we understand what the outward heaven is, namely the powers or conception of the water. The word or power Fiat, which began with the beginning of the world, is yet still a creating;1 it yet continually createth the heaven out of the water: and the spirit of God still moveth upon the water; and the holy water is yet continu¬ ally separated from the water under the firmament. 57. This holy water is that of which Christ told us, that be would give us it to drink ; that should spring up in us to a fountain of eternal life. The holy heavenly corporality doth consist therein; it is the body of Christ which he brought from heaven; and by the same, introduced heavenly paradisical essentiality into our dead or decayed body; and quickened ours in his; understand, in the aim2 of the covenant in the essence of Mary; as shall be mentioned hereafter. 58. In this heavenly essence the Testaments3 of Christ do consist; and this holy essence of the heavenly holy virginity, with the holy tincture, hath destroyed death; and bruised the head of the serpent’s might in the wrath of God; for the divine power is the highest life therein.

59. Thus we understand how the holy heaven, wherein God dwelleth, moveth in the Fiat or the created [heaven], and that God is really present in all places; and inhabiteth all things: but he is com¬ prehended of nothing. He is manifest in power in the inward heaven of the holy essentiality, viz. in the element. This holy element (in the beginning or inchoation of the four elements) did penetrate through the earth ; and sprang [or budded] forth in the holy power’s property, and bore fruits, of which man should have eaten in a heavenly manner. But when it did disappear in man, the curse entered into the earth, and so Paradise was quashed in the four elements; and continued 1 Or creating. 2 Mark or limit. 3 Baptism, and the Supper. retired in itself in the inward [element]. There it stands yet open unto man, if any will depart from this world’s essence and enter into it upon the path which Christ hath made open. 60. The punctum of the whole created earth belonged unto the centre of Sol,1 but [doth] not any more, at present: he is fallen, he who was a king: the earth is in the curse, and [hath] become a peculiar centre; whereunto all whatsoever is engendered in the vanity, in the four elements, doth tend and fall : all things fall unto the earth; for the Fiat2 is yet in the deep, and createth3 all earthly essence together unto the judgment of God, for separation.

61. We mean not that the earth came wholly4 from the place of the sun; but from the whole sphere, out of both the internal spiritual worlds; but it [i.e. our meaning] hath another A B C, in that the earth belongeth unto the judgment of God for separation; even then it shall be manifest wherefore it is said: it belongeth unto the punctum of Sol. 62. For the worst must be a cause of the best. The eternal joy con¬ sists in this : that we are delivered from pain. God hath not eternally rejected his holy essence; but only the iniquity which mixed itself therein. But when the crystalline earth shall appear, then will be ful¬ filled this Saying: it appertains to the punctum of Sol. Here we have hinted enough to the understanding of our school-fellows; further we must here be silent. 1 Ad centrum Solis, to the centre of the sun. 3 Or draweth or concreteth. The Eleventh Chapter Of the Mystery of the Creation I. epHE reason of the outward man saith: How is it that God hath _L not revealed the creation of the world unto man, that Moses and the children of God have written so little thereof, seeing it is the greatest and most principal work whereon the main depends ?

2. Yes, dear reason, smell into thy bosom, of what doth it savour? Contemplate thy mind, after what does it long? Likely, after the cunning delusions of the devil: Had the devil not known this ground, very like he had been yet an angel; had he not seen the magical birth in his high light, then he had not desired to be a selfish lord and maker in the essence. 3. Wherefore doth God hide his children, which now receive the spirit of knowledge with the cross, and cast them into tribulation and mire of vanity? For certain, therefore, that they might play the tune of The Miserere, and continue in humility; and not sport in this life1 with the light of nature; else, if they should espy and apprehend what the divine magic is, then they might also desire to imitate the devil, [and do] as Lucifer did: for which cause it is hidden from them. And neither Moses nor any other dare write clearer thereof; until the beginning of the creation beholdeth the end of the world in itself: And then it must stand open. 4. And therefore let none blame us; for the time is come about that Moses putteth away his veil from his eyes, which he hung before his face when he spake with Israel. After the Lord had spoken with him, Moses desired to see it, in that he said, Lord, if I have found grace in thy sight, let me see thy face. But the Lord would not, and said, Thou shalt see my back part, for none can see my face.

5. Now the eye of God was in Moses, and in the Saints ; they have seen and spoken in the spirit of God, and yet had not the intuition of the spiritual birth in them; save at times only, when God would work wonders; as by Moses, when he did the wonders in Egypt: then the divine magic was open unto him, in manner and wise as in the creation. 6. And this was even the fall of Lucifer: that he would be a god of nature, and live in the transmutation. And this was even the idolatry 1 Text, Time. 58 of the heathen: in that they understood the magical birth they fell from the only God unto the magical birth of nature, and chose unto themselves idols out of the powers of nature. 7. For which cause the creation hath remained so obscure; and God hath with tribulation covered his children in whom the true light shone, that they have not been manifest unto themselves. Seeing Adam also, according to the same lust, did imagine to know and prove the magic, and would be as God; so that God permitted him, that he defiled his heavenly image with the vanity of nature, and made it wholly dark and earthly; as Lucifer also did, with the centre of nature, when he of an angel became a devil.

8. Therefore I will seriously warn the Reader that he use the magic aright, viz. in true faith and humility towards God; and not meddle with turba magna in a magical manner: unless it conduceth to the honour of God, and to the salvation of mankind. 9. For we can say with truth, that the Verbum Fiat is yet a creat¬ ing. Albeit it doth not create stones and earth; yet it coagulateth, formeth and worketh still in the same property. All things are possible to nature as it was possible for it in the beginning to generate stones and earth, also the stars and four elements, and did produce them, or work them forth out of one only ground; so it is, still unto this day. By the strong desire (which is the magical ground) all things may be effected, if man use nature aright, in its order to the work. 10. All essences consist in the seven properties. Now he that knoweth the essence, he is able, by the same spirit of that essence, whence it is come to be an essence, to change it into another form, and likewise to introduce it into another essence; and so make of a good thing an evil, and of an evil thing a good.

11. The transmutation of all things must be effected by simility,1 viz. by its own native propriety : for the alienate is its enemy. Like as man must be regenerated again by the divine essentiality in the simility ; by the simility in his holiness of the divine essentiality which he lost. 12. And as the false Magus woundeth man through enchantment with the assimulate, and through the desire introduceth evil into his evil, viz. into the assimulate; and as the upright holy faith or divine desire also entereth into the assimulate, and forfendeth man so that the false desire takes no place. 13. Thus all things consist in the assimulate; every thing may be 1 Assimulation or likeness. introduced into its assimulate. And if it comes into its assimulate it rejoiceth in its property, be it good or evil, and beginneth effectually to work : as is to be seen both in good and in evil. 14. As for example: let a man take down a little poison: it will presently receive with great desire the poison in the body, which be¬ fore rested; and therein strengthen itself, and begin to work power¬ fully; and corrupt and destroy the contrary, viz. the good. And that now which the evil is able to do in its property, that likewise the good can do in its property; when it is freed from the wrath it may also introduce its assimulate into the real true joy.

15. The essence of this world consisteth in evil and good; and the one cannot be without the other. But this is the greatest iniquity of this world; that the evil overpowereth the good; that the anger is stronger therein than the love. And this by reason of the sin of the devil, and men; who have disturbed nature by the false desire, that it mightily and effectually worketh in the wrath, as a poison in the body. 16. Otherwise, if nature in its forms did stand in the property in equal weight, and in equal concord and harmony, then one property were not manifest above the other: heat and cold would be equally poised in the operation and qualification. And then Paradise would be still upon the earth; and though it were not outside man, yet it would be in man; if his properties were in equal weight [number and measure, if they did yet stand in the temperature], then he were incorruptible and immortal. 17. This is the death and misery of man and all creatures : that the properties are divided, and each aspiring in itself, and powerfully working and acting in its own will; whence sickness and pain ariseth. And all this is hence arisen : when the one element did manifest and put forth itself into four properties, then each property desired the assimulate, viz. an essence out of and according to itself; which the astringent Fiat did impress and coagulate; so that earth and stones were produced in the properties.

18. But now we are to consider of the greatest Mystery of the outward world between the elements and the astrum. The elemental spirit is severised from the astral spirit, and yet not parted asunder; they dwell in each other as body and soul; but the one is not the other. The astral spirit maketh its bodies as well as the elemental, and that in all creatures, in animals and vegetables. 19. All things of this world have a twofold body, viz. an elemental, from the fire, air, water and earth; and a spiritual body from the astrum. And likewise a twofold spirit, viz. one astral, the other elemental. 20. Man only (among all the earthly creatures) hath a threefold body and spirit. For he hath also the internal spiritual world in him; which is likewise twofold, viz. light and darkness; and [this] also corporally and spiritually. This spirit is the soul; but this body is from the water of the holy element, which died in Adam, that is, dis¬ appeared as to his life, when the divine power departed from him, and would not dwell in the awakened vanity. 21. Which holy body must be regenerated, if his spirit will see God; otherwise he cannot see him, except he be again born anew of the water of the holy element in the spirit of God (who hath mani¬ fested himself in Christ with this same water-source); that man’s disappeared body may be made alive in the holy water and spirit; else he hath no sense nor sight in the holy life of God.

22. This twofold outward body is now punctually to be pondered and considered of, if we would understand nature; and without this understanding let none call himself a master [or learned]. For in these (bodies) the dominion of all external creatures and essences is couched; they oftentimes are contrary one unto another, whence sickness, corruption and death ariseth in the body, that one severeth from the other. 23. The sidereal body is the highest excepting the divine in man; the elemental body is only its servant or dwellinghouse, as the four elements are only a body or habitation of the dominion of the stars. 24. The elemental spirit and body is inanimate and void of under¬ standing, it hath only lust and desire in it, vegetation is its right life; for the air hath no understanding without the astrum. The astrum giveth the distinct understanding of the knowledge of all essences in the elements. 25. But the inward light, and power of the light, giveth in man the right divine understanding; but there is no right divine appre¬ hension in the sidereal spirit; for the astrum hath another Principle. The Sidereal body dwelleth in the elemental, as the light-world in the darkness : it is the true rational life of all creatures.

26. The whole astrum is nothing else but the external expressed Word in the sound; it is the instrument whereby the holy eternal speaking Word speaketh and formeth externally; it is as a great har¬ mony of unsearchable manifold voices and tunes, of all manner of in¬ struments, which play and melodise before the holy God. 27. For they are mere powers, which enter into and mutually em¬ brace each other, whence ariseth the sound in the essence; and the desire, viz. the Fiat, receiveth this sound and maketh it substantial. This substance is a spirit of the stars, which the elements receive into themselves, and coagulate it in themselves, and hatch it, as a hen her eggs: therefrom is the true rational life in the elements. And thus also the Sidereal spirit is hatched and coagulated in all creatures. 28. For the male and female do mutually cast a seed into each other; which is only a sulphur of the astrum and four elements; after¬ wards it is hatched in the matrix, and coagulated to a living spirit. 29. For when the fire is enkindled in the seed which is sown in the matrix, the spirit severs itself again from the body, as a propriate; just as the light from the fire, according to the right of the eternal nature; and two become manifest in one, viz. a spiritual body from the astrum, and a fleshy body from the four elements.

30. And this sidereal spirit is the soul of the great world, which depends on Punctum Solis , and receiveth its light and life from it; as all the stars do take light and power from the sun, so likewise [they take] their spirit. 31. The sun is the centre of the astrum, and the earth the centre of the elements : they are to each other as spirit and body, or as man and wife; albeit the astrum hath another wife, where it hatcheth its essence, viz. the moon, which is the wife of all the stars (but especially of the sun). I mean it in the essence of the operation. 32. Not that we mean that the astrum is wholly arisen from the punctum of Sol, in that I call it the centre of the stars. It is the centre of the powers, the cause that the powers of the stars do act in the essence; it openeth their powers, and giveth its power into them, as a heart of the powers, and they mutually rejoice in its essence, that they are moved to act or desire in its essence. 33. And even here lieth the great Mystery of the creation, viz. that the internal, viz. God, hath thus manifested himself with his eternal speaking Word, which he himself is: the external is a type of the internal. God is not alienate: in him all things live and move , each in its Principle and degree.

34. The outward properties dwell in themselves in the external, viz. in the expressed Word, and are wholly external; they cannot in their own strength reach the powers of the holy world; the holy world alone penetrates them: it dwelleth also in itself. But in the punctum of Sol the eighth number is open, viz. the eternal nature, the eternal magical fire; and in the fire the eternal tincture, which is the ninth number; and in the tincture the cross, where the Deity mani¬ fested! itself, which is the tenth number: and beyond this manifesta¬ tion is the eternal understanding, viz. the ONE, that is, God, JEHOVAH, viz, the ABYSS. 35. Not that God is divided: we speak of his manifestation alone, from what ability and power the sun hath its shining lustre, that the same is immutable, so long as time endureth; namely, from the lustre of the fiery tincture of the eternal, spiritual, magical fire. 36. For its lustre or shining light hath a degree of a more deep original than the external world hath manifest in itself. This the wise heathen have observed, and adored it for God, seeing the true God, who dwelleth outside all nature in himself, was not known unto them.

Of the Six Days’ Works of the Creation i. rj^HAT God hath created heaven and earth and all things in six JL days, as Moses saith, is the greatest Mystery, wholly hidden from the external reason. There is neither night, morning, nor even¬ ing in the deep above the moon; but a continual day from the begin¬ ning of the outward world even to the end of the same. 2. And albeit the creation was finished in such a time as in the length of six days, yet the days’ works have a far more subtle [or abstruse] meaning: for the seven properties are also understood therewith, six whereof belong to the active dominion, to good and evil, and the seventh, viz. the essence, is the rest, wherein the other properties rest, which God hath expressed and made visible. 3. We have in the dominion of the planetic orb the figure, how the six properties of the active life (which rest in the seventh) have, in six days, out of the inward spiritual world, introduced and manifested themselves in an external visible world of four elements: For the planetic orb hath its rise from the punctum of Sol; for there was the royal place of the hierarchies, of which the whole circle (between the stars in the internal and external) is a member or Corpus.

4. But seeing the prince of the hierarchies (when he sat in the heavenly essence in the rest) did fall, and aspired to or for the centre of the eternal nature, he was cast into the darkness : and God by his motion created [for] him[-self] another prince out of this place (but without divine understanding) for a ruler of the essence; and that is the sun. 5. From this place proceeded, in the divine motion, the seven properties of nature (understand, the planets) which govern the essential being in good and evil (in which [essence] Lucifer sat, and whence he was cast, and lost his dominion in the essence); and as the seven properties have their dominion in the beginning of each day in the week, even so were the six days’ works of the creation. 6. For Lucifer forsook the rest of his hierarchies, and entered into the eternal disquietness. Now, God hath created all things of this world in six days, and rested on the seventh day from the creation, which is Saturday, according to the Scripture; that is, from the day of rest, understand from the eternal day of rest, he hath moved himself to the creation; and in the first form of nature he began the first day; that is, he hath brought it forth out of the impression, and moved himself with his Word: this was the most inward motion according to the speaking Word of power.

7. Then began, in the expressed Word, Sunday, that is, the true paradisical day, where the powers did mutually work in each other in great holiness and glory; for on Sunday the enkindled sulphur and salniter of the earthly property was created out of the great deep of the whole hierarchy, out of the spiritual worlds, into a mass (which is the terrestrial globe), and was put forth out of the austere property of the first form of nature. 8. Even then began the first hour of the first day: and the power of nature did mutually rule in great joy in the expressed Word, out of which power of joy the sun was created on the fourth day in the princely place: so that this power, whereout the sun was created, ruled the first hour of the beginning of the world; and so it began its dominion, which continueth even unto the end of the world: and therefore the sun ruleth the first hour on Sunday; and the day is rightly so called. 9. The words of Moses concerning the creation are exceedingly clear, yet unapprehensive to reason, for he writeth thus : In the begin¬ ning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void • and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Lay, and the darkness he called Night. And out of the evening and morning was the first day1 (Gen. i. 1-5).

10. The whole understanding is couched in these words: for the beginning is the first motion, which came to pass when prince Michael fought with the Dragon, when he was spewed out with the creation of the earth. For even then the enkindled essence, which with the en¬ kindling did coagulate itself into earth and stones, was cast out of the internal into the external. 11. And he, the Dragon, fell from heaven, viz. out of the holy world, upon the wrath of the earth, as lightning, as it is written : I saw Satan fall from heaven as lightning , saith Christ. Moreover, it was wholly dark in the deep above the earth, and the austere endkindled wrath was manifest. For hell was prepared for him, whereinto he fell, viz. into the great darkness of the first Principle, wherein he liveth. 1 The evening and morning were the first day. 12. Here now lieth the veil before reason, that it cannot look into the eyes of Moses, for he saith : And the earth was without form and void. Yea, without form indeed. Had not the Spirit of God moved upon the internal water (which was amassed with the Fiat in the heaven), and had not God said, Let there be light , the earth would have been yet without form and void.

13. With the Word, when God said, Let there be light , the essence of the ens did powerfully move itself in the light’s property, not only in the earth, but also in the whole deep: whence1 on the fourth day the sun was created, that is, enkindled in its place. And in this word Fiat the earth’s mass, and also the very power which is called heaven, amassed itself in the essence; all which before was only a spirit, a spiritual essence. 14. And with the speaking, as God spake, Let there be light , the holy power, which was amassed in the wrath, moved itself, and became light in the same essence in the power. And with this coming to be light, the devil’s might and strength was wholly withdrawn from him in the essence, for here the light shone in the now anew awakened power, in the darkness; which [light] the prince of wrath could not comprehend;2 it was also of no benefit to him, for it was the light of nature, which is useless to him. 15. And Moses said, God divided the light from the darkness, which is thus to be understood. The darkness remained in the wrathful pro¬ perty, not only in the earth, but also in the whole deep: but in the light’s essence the light of nature did arise [or spring forth] from heaven, viz. from the quintessence, whence the astrum was created; which essence is everywhere in the earth, and above the earth.

16. Thus the darkness remained in the wrath’s property in the essence of the earth, and also in the whole deep of this world. And the nature-light remained in the light’s essence, as a working life, through which the holy element did operate and work; in which operation Paradise budded3 through the earth, and bore fruit until the curse of God. And then the holy bloomings or growth ceased, and the holy element remained as an inward heaven, steadfast, retired in itself. And yet it doth diffuse its power through the light of nature, but not 1 Out of which power or virtue in the light’s property. 2 Receive or perceive. so powerfully as in the beginning, for the curse is the cause of its with¬ drawing; indeed there is no total departing, but yet it is nothing now as [compared with what it was] before the sin of the second created prince, Adam. 17. Thus in the first motion of the Verbum Fiat the heaven (that is, the circle, so far as the Verbum Fiat reached itself forth to the creation) was amassed or enclosed; and the earth was amassed with the Verbum Fiat, and created to the planetic orb. Thus by the separa¬ tion, viz. of the light and darkness, and by the expelling of prince Lucifer, we are to understand the creation of the first day.

18. Now the first day with the manifested Word did convey itself through the other five days, even into the day of rest; where the beginning entereth again into the end, and the end again into the beginning. For the first motion of the Word, where the light of nature hath enkindled itself in the essence, is the joy of the creation or crea¬ ture; which did open itself with the other days through all the properties of nature, where each property may be called a heaven : for it hath and bringeth also its peculiar operation and efficacy along in itself into the rest,1 and each day one property did move and manifest itself; wherein a peculiar sundry work was manifested and revealed. 19. The second day we call Monday, and therefore, because the moon ruleth the first hour of the day: and it is very likely that the ancient wise men have understood somewhat thereof in the light of nature, which they have kept secret and mystical, rather deciphering it by figures than clearly explaining it. And it is to be seen in the names of the seven planets, that they have for certain understood the same; in that they have given them names according to the seven properties of nature, which do so wholly agree and accord, as well with the creation as [with] nature, that methinks they have in part understood the ground of the creation aright, seeing the names of the planets have their rise and derivation so fully and punctually out of the language of Nature. But the reason why it hath not been made clear, plain and manifest is (as before mentioned) because of the false magic, that it might remain hidden unto the artists of juggling and collusion in nature, by reason of the great abuse. Wherefore we also shall still let it so remain, and yet hint enough to the understanding of our school-fellows.

1 Understand, into the rest of the properties or days. 20. Now of the second day Moses writeth thus: And God said, Let there be a firmament between the waters , and let it divide between the waters. Then God made the firmament, and divided the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament : and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And out ofi the evening and morning was the second day (Gen. i. 6-8). 21. Moses saith, that out ofi the evening and morning was the second day, that is, out of the manifestation of the first, the second manifestation proceeded and brake forth; and saith further, that on the second day God created the firmament ofi heaven, and separated the waters ,• the water under the firmament firom the water above the firmament. Here now lieth the hid¬ den veil, wherein we have hitherto been pointed and directed unto a heaven situate afar off above the stars, without the place of this world. So very blind is reason as to God that it understands nothing of him; and doth not consider that the Scripture saith of God: Am not I he which filleth all things: and, that time and place cannot divide him. Much less is it understood what the water above the firmament is, which they will flatly hold to be a place afar distant, viz. above the stars, whither also we have been shewn into heaven.

22. But seeing that God out of grace doth bestow upon us the understanding, therefore we will set it down for our fellow-scholars who are able to apprehend it; and yet herein we shall write nothing for the selfish wiselings of outward reason, for they have it already in the eyes of their reason, and cannot miss it, they can judge all things : what the Spirit of God revealeth, that must be a heresy unto them, albeit they do not understand it : so that they remain without, and do not so much as once know God. 23. The firmament is the gulf between time and eternity: but that God calleth it heaven and maketh a division of the waters, gives us to understand that the heaven is in the world, and the world is not in heaven. 24. The water above the firmament is in heaven, and the water under the firmament is the external material water. 25. Here we must understand the difference between the holy [water] and the outward element- water : the water above the firma¬ ment is spiritual in the birth of the holy element; and the water under the firmament is mortal, for it is apprehended in the dark impression; the curse and the awakened vanity is therein, and yet one water is not without the other.

26. When I look upon the external water then I must also say, Here is also the water above the firmament in the water under the firmament. But the firmament is the middle, and the gulf therein between time and eternity; so that they are distinct. And I see with the external eyes of this world only the water under the firmament: but the water above the firmament is that which God hath appointed in Christ to the Baptism of Regeneration, after that the Word of the divine power had moved itself therein. 27. Now the outward water is the instrument of the inward; and the inward water is understood [therein] ; for the moving Spirit in the Word is he which ruleth the inward water in the Baptism. Dear Chris¬ tians, let this be spoken to you; it is the real ground. 28. But that Moses saith, God created the firmament, and called it heaven, is the most intimate secret, of which the earthly man is not able to understand anything: the understanding is barely in the power of the water above the firmament, viz. in the heaven, or (as I might set it down) in the Spirit of God. If he be awaked in man in the water above the firmament, which disappeared in Adam, as to his life, that [man] seeth through all; otherwise there is no understanding here, but all is dumb.

29. The creating of the heaven is understood, first how the speaking Word hath amassed1 the manifested powers of the spiritual world, wherein it is manifest, worketh, and also ruleth. Secondly, it is understood of the manifested powers of the external world, which the spirit hath amassed into the essence of four elements, and closed into the external firmament, that the devil, viz. the prince of anger, cannot reach them ; by which he would work with the internal water : so that the powers of eternity do work through the powers of time, as the sun illumines the water, and the water comprehends it not, but feels it only; or as a fire doth through-heat an iron, and the iron remaineth iron. So likewise the outward heaven is passive, and the inward worketh through it, and draweth forth an external fruit out of the outward; whereas yet the inward heaven lieth hidden therein in the firmament : as God is hidden in the time. 30. And we are to understand with the second day’s work the manifestation of the internal heavenly and the external heavenly essence, viz. the manifestation of the water-source, understand, the essence of the seven properties, viz. the corporality, or the laboratory2 of the other six; wherein the soul or spirit of the outward world worketh and ruleth in the external. This working3 in the most exter¬ nal or inferior heaven next the earth is ascribed unto the moon, for it

1 Conceived or formed. 2 Operate or work-house. 3 Or operation. is the manifestation of the lunar property; not of the star1 which was first created into the external on the fourth day to be a governor there¬ in, but this same property [is] in the inanimate outward life, viz. in the vegetative life : the vegetative life was opened on the third day. 31. And when God had ordained the water into sundry places upon the earth, then he moved the external expressed word in the vegetative life. Now Moses saith, God spake, Let the earth put forth herbs, and grass yielding seed, and fruitful trees ' each bearing fruit according to his kind' and let each have its seed in itself: and when it came to pass, out of the evening and morning was the third day (Gen. i. 1 1, 12). 32. In the original of the eternal nature, which is an eternal origi¬ nal, the manifestation of the six days’ works is very clearly to be found; how the eternal Word hath unfolded them out of the invisible spiritual [property] and brought them into the visible : also the form thereof is to be found in the planetic orb, if any hath skill to apprehend it.

33. For in the eternal nature’s birth there is an eternal day. What¬ soever God hath manifested and made visible in six diversalls,2 which are called days’ works, that standeth in the eternal nature in six dis¬ tinct degrees in the essence, viz. in the seventh property, in which the six degrees of nature work, and yet also do eternally rest from work¬ ing; they are themselves the working, which they give in to the seventh, as into their own peculiar rest, wherein their perfection and manifestation consists. 34. And we are to understand nothing else by the creation, save that the Verbum Fiat hath amassed the spiritual birth, and introduced it into a visible external dominion and essence. For we see it very clearly in the writings of Moses (albeit we have a glass besides to see), that when God the first day had created the gross part into a mass, that he extracted the fine part out of the same first day’s work, and severed and amassed the waters, viz. the spiritual essence, and pro¬ duced it out of the first day, viz. out of the holy power, into a time; that is, out of the eternal day into an inchoative day.

35. Now the third accomplishment of the third day’s work is the moving growing life, in which on the first day the light of nature did shine in the essence of the ens, after an external manner: it shone 1 Star or planet called the moon. 2 Or distinctions. likewise now through the second day, viz. through the water and the heaven. And in this shining light the expressed Word did move itself in the essence, and wrought effectually; and even then the power of the expressed Word from the light of the inward nature did pullulate, and spring forth, through the external nature, out of the heaven through the earth. [And so] now the potentate who was a king and great prince hath lost his domination, for the essence of the wrath was captivated in the light of nature, and he with it. And so he lieth be¬ tween time and eternity, imprisoned in the darkness, until the judg¬ ment of God. 36. In the third day’s work the sulphureous, mercurial, and saltish life out of the centre was opened out of the anguish in the outward world’s property; and yet there is no anguish to be understood until the fire, but only a senseless forth-driving life, viz. a growth: for the fire-blaze ariseth out of the anguish, viz. out of the third form of nature : and this is the salnitral flagrat, which severiseth the powers in the properties, which was moved in the third day’s work, where the properties opened themselves, and were mutually unfolded in the salnitral flagrat, each out of itself;

which the impression did again receive into itself, and made them corporeal in the water. And thence arose and proceeded trees, herbs and grass: each property became excressive1 in the salniter, and did manifest itself with fruit : as we see plainly how the property of the dark world did mightily force itself along in the outward power: whereupon some herbs and plants are so venomous and malignant; for the earth proceeded out of both the inward worlds to a compaction.

37. Now Mars on Tuesday hath the first hour of the day in dominion, which day is the third in the creation. And this salnitral fire-flagrat is even the property of Mars : as he is wrathful and fiery, so likewise is this property in the sulphur, where we then do understand the salnitral flagrat for the poisonful Mars; which is the cause of motion and stirring and the compunction in the first impression in the eternal nature, viz. in the dark world. 38. In the third day’s work God moved the third property of nature, viz. the sulphurous source, in which the fire enkindled, and in the fire-flagrat is the division of the powers; where each property became manifest in itself: Now when God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, herb and trees , that is nothing else, but that when he moved the expressed Word of the powers in the properties, the properties 1 Or putting or budding forth. found and felt the light of nature in them; whereupon they became hungry, and were impressed, that is, amassed and compacted or coagulated. Now when as the light of nature found itself in a perceivance, and the nature did feel itself in the sweet light, thereby arose in the coagulation the dominion of joy, viz. the pullulation and growth. For all growth consisteth in the light and water; when the light penetrateth the Sulphur and water-source, then Mars springeth up for great joy in the Sulphur.

39. This opening began on the third day, and continueth unto the end of the world. On the first day the earth was without form and void, for the possibility1 to the growth was not yet opened. Here the earth was moved and the properties opened, and not only the earth, but the whole deep in the centre of the outward nature made itself external, and yet remained also internal. Of The Creation of the Fourth Day i. ry he fourth day Mercurius hath the first hour of the day, who JL causeth the sensitive life. Here we understand very fully and exactly the ground of the manifestation of the inward nature into the external; for on the fourth day the sun and stars were created, which are the right mercurial life. Here the fire’s property opened itself in the sulphurous-source through the water, and the first essence became manifest through the light of nature, which is a Mercurius Salnitri, an incentive Mercurius, a quick perceptive Mercurius. 2. In the third form of nature there is a senseless life in sulphur and Mercurius, but in the fourth there is a feeling life; for the properties are made painful in the fire; and in the oleous [life] they become meek, pleasant and full of joy : therefore now the motion in the oily is feeling from the painfulness.

3 . Here we now understand very fundamentally how the separa¬ tion in the fire of the eternal nature hath manifested itself in the essence of the outward world with form and shape; for in the en¬ kindling of the fire in the salnitral flagrat two essences do severise, viz. one watery from the devoration in the fire, where the fire devoureth the rough harsh source of the impression in itself; then out of the consuming there proceedeth a great meekness, which is morti¬ fied to the fire, and is insensible, and giveth the water-source. 4. Secondly, the fire-source doth sever itself [likewise into its Principle], viz. the properties to the fire-source, which now with the enkindling of the fire are full of pain and sense. This fire-source could not subsist, unless it did again devour [or take] the water into itself, whereby it doth strengthen itself; whence also the salnitral flagrat ariseth, where the wrath is dismayed at the essence of the water’s meekness ; whence ariseth the feeling, so also the lustre, of the fire. 5. For that water which is devoured in the fire is dissolved into a spiritual oil, in which the fire shineth; and out of the oil proceedeth the air, viz. the moving spirit of the fire which is motive in the fire.

6. The air is nothing else but the moving life, where the speaking Word doth diffuse itself in the water-source through nature, through the powers of nature, through the fire, in the oil of the nature of the light. It is the fire’s life : but it is mortified to the fire, and yet it is made manifest by the fire; it is the life of nature according to the property of meekness. 7. Thus in1 the enkindling of the fire in the light of the fire, which is the light of nature, four properties are to be understood, viz. a fiery, an airy, and an oily (wherein the light is manifest), and a watery; all which do originally spring forth out of the first desire to nature; in that the free lubet introduceth itself into a desire and nature; and they all display themselves through the fire into a moving life; and yet there is no intellective life, but only properties to the true life. The intellectual life is the spirited Word, which manifesteth itself through the properties. These properties are impressed in the Crea T, that is, in the Verbum Fiat, and brought into an essentiality; wherefrom is come a Sulphur Salnitri, that is, a magical astrum, in manner and mode as the mind of man is; which also hath thence its real original.

8. This salnitral and sulphureous property was brought forth out of the third day’s work, viz. out of the fire-flagrat; and thence the fourth motion is arisen, viz. the mercurial, which the Fiat hath amassed, and impressed it into it, and made it visible, which are the stars; which are nothing else but properties of the powers of nature. Whatsoever nature is in a little spark in itself, that the whole astrum is in its circle ; and what nature is in its hiddenness, and secretness, the same the astrum is, in an open working life. Understand it thus : 9. Each star hath the property of all stars in it, but hidden in nature, and the star is manifest only in one sole property; else, if the whole nature were manifest in each thing, then all things and essences would be but one thing and essence; and therefore God hath, by his sounding Word, moved the Sulphur Salnitri according to the pro¬ perties, that the distinct severation might be manifest: and this manifestation is a Mercurius; for the eternal-speaking Word, which is called God, hath manifested his voice or will through nature. 10. Therefore the whole astrum is a pronounced voice (or breathed tone) of the powers, an expressed Word, which doth again give forth from itself its spiration and speaking out of the properties. It is an echo out of God’s love and anger, out of the dark-and-Hght- world.

11. After the astrum2 are the four elements, which also have their original out of this fountain; which also have their spiration [or outbreathing] out of themselves; they also speak forth their properties out of themselves, and they are as a body of the stars. For they speak or breathe forth from themselves a corporeal essence; and the stars do 1 Or by, or with. 2 Next the stars. breathe forth a spiritual essence out of themselves : and this twofold essence ruleth mutually in the visible world, as body and soul. 12. And we give you this rightly to understand: In each element there lieth a whole astrum; the fire hath a whole astrum in itself, and also the air, water, and earth, but it is not manifest in them. Therefore God hath enclosed [or encircled] the place of this world with a manifest astrum, that it might enkindle the other astrum in the four elements, that the manifest astrum might work in the hidden mystery, viz. in the astrum of the four elements, and procreate wonders. For so a wonderful figure and property may be produced out of a thing, which otherwise is impossible for nature to do, in its own [naked] self.

13. Also we are to know, that there is an astrum in the divine magic, which is the fountain of the eternal mind of the abyss, whence nature and all essences are arisen. Likewise there is an astrum in the manifest heavenly world, and also an astrum in the dark hellish world. And these astrums1 are but one only astrum, but they are severised into distinct degrees and principles ; that which in the outward world is open and manifest in the figure, the same is manifest in power in the spiritual world, and not in forms. 14. And we understand, that the Verbum Fiat on the fourth day moved the fourth property of nature, viz. the fifth essence, and opened it out of the sulphureous property out of the fire-flagrat, viz. out of the third property. And thus an astrum became manifest in the air, which are the visible stars; and an astrum in the fire, which is the rational life of all creatures ; and an astrum in the water, which is the vegetative life; and an astrum in the earth, which is the wrathful earthly life. 15. The fiery [astrum] giveth soul; and the airy, spirit; the watery affordeth the mansion of the soul and the spirit, viz. blood, wherein the tincture of the fire and light dwelleth; and the earthly giveth flesh. And every of the four astrums giveth a spirit and body according to its property. Only, God hath thus associated one unto another, that the one might be manifest in the other, and be jointly together one body; like as all the four elements are only one element, but they divide themselves into four properties according to the centre of nature.

16. Therefore astrums do procreate out of themselves their officer, viz. the outward nature, that is, the soul of the outward world, as a constantly enduring mind; wherein lieth the omnipotency, as a manifest Great Mystery. In this officer God hath awakened and raised a king, or as I might set it down by way of similitude, a nature-god, with six councillors, which are his assistants; that is, the sun, with the other six planetic stars, which were spoken forth out of the seven properties out of the place of Sol; and in the speaking were introduced into a rolling sphere, according to the property of the eternal genera¬ tion in the centre of nature. And this was opened in seven degrees out of the birth ; where the first degree of the motion in the light of nature, (from the inward spiritual fire-and-light-world), was the sun, which receiveth its lustre from the tincture of the inward fire-and-lightworld: it standeth as an opened punctum to the fire-world. See Three¬ fold Life of Man , ch. 4 : pars. 16-49. 17. And with the spiration the sixfold life of the six degrees of the days’ works and forms of the centre came forth externally and severised itself, after the kind and nature of the eternal birth. As first, Venus which is the water-source out of the meekness out of the mortification in the fire, which is a desire of meekness from1 the fire, for the fire enkindleth the meekness whence it is desirous. This is now the lovedesire according to the spirit, and according to its essence it is water; which water in the metals affordeth the noble corpus solis.

18. This Venus, seeing she (as to her own natmal right) is mortified to the fire, is submissive, and giveth the holy water; under¬ stand, as to her own peculiar property; which [water] is holy in the spirit, and yet in the essence it is captivated in the wrath, where it giveth the material water according to the deadly property. It giveth body unto all the seven metals, and essence to all the six planets: which we see in the metals; for each planet maketh its essence in its property according to itself. As the Sun, in gold; the Moon in silver; Jupiter in tin; Saturn in lead; Mercurius in quicksilver; Mars in iron; and yet it is the essence of the Venus property alone: but they give their power and spirit into it, and hold the body for their own, seeing they rule the same. 19. This Venus property in the place of Sol sank downwards in the first egress; and the fire-source above it is Mars; and out of Venus property beneath, the heavy sound, and that is Mercurius, out of the Sulphur Salnitri through the water; and upwards out of Mars, the power of the fire and light, that is Jupiter; and beneath, from Mercurius, the essence of the desire, where Venus comprehends the essence in her fiery desire, as a body of the powers, that is Luna; and

1 By reason of. above Jupiter, Saturnus, viz. the expressed or spirated impression of the first form of nature. 20. These properties were spherated in the spiration, in manner as the birth of nature is in the essence, which the Verbum Fiat received and amassed into a body, and ordained it for dominion unto the four astrums, over which he hath appointed angelical rulers as a supreme council: which we give only a hint of here, seeing we have spoken thereof at large in another place. Of the Creation of the Fifth Day I. x tow when God had opened the astrum and four elements as a JL N| moving life, wherein the superior astrum gave the distinction in the moving life, and actuated the four astrums in the four elements, then he educed out of the essence of all the astrums and elements, through the motion of his speaking Word in the Verbum Fiat, the impress or express, as the power of that same life, which was free from the pain, and amassed it through the Verbum Fiat, and spake forth that same life, by the holy eternal-speaking Word through the Fiat, into forms and shapes, according to the properties of the astrums in the spiritual corpus, in which the Fiat or the desire attracted the elements according to the outward essence unto itself, as a body.

2. And thence were creatures produced in all the four elements; in each astrum according to its property: as birds in the astrum of the air; fishes in the astrum of the water; cattle and four-footed beasts out of the astrum of the earth and four elements; likewise spirits in the fire-astrum, which also is in the other elements. And we see very exactly in the difference of the creatures that the degrees of the astrum [or constellations] are so distinct and various. For the worms of the earth live in the third degree, viz. in the fire-flagrat, in the Sulphur, Mars, and Mercury, in the life devoid of understanding; and whereas they have an understanding [or instinct] by the enkindling of the superior astrum, in which third degree in the property also grass, herbs and trees do stand, and yet they receive assisting influence from the superior [astrum] in the enkindling, by which they are otherwise qualified. 3. And we see, that each kind hath a spirit and body according to the degree of its astrum; for we understand, that out of one astrum many kinds of creatures do proceed: the cause whereof is that each astrum hath again its degrees in itself. For there is in each astrum whatsoever all the astra have; but yet in sundry distinct degrees in the manifestation; and therefore the properties in each astrum are manifold: so also divers sorts of creatures are proceeded from each astrum. The spirit of each kind is from the astrum, but all kinds must use the four elements; for they arise out of that fountain whence all the astra do originally proceed.

4- On the fifth day Jupiter hath the dominion of the first hour of the day among the planets; and that, because he hath his original in the creation of the astrum out of the fifth degree of nature, viz. out of the power of the sulphureous and salnitral oil; and that on the fifth day this Jovial property was opened and educed, out of the fourth day’s property, as a pleasant powerful life out of all the constellations ; unto which life God created all creatures, except man, each out of the property of his constellation, out of his degree. So that they might all live in the soul of the outward nature, and be under the government of one officer; which is the outward constellation wherein the sun is chief regent. 5. Each constellation hath its compaction of Sulphur and Mercury; the Sulphur giveth essence, and Mercurius giveth spirit into the essence; and from both these Sal is generated, viz. out of the sharp Fiat according to the property of Sulphur and Mercury. And out of these three properties, viz. out of Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal, all creatures entered into a life and creatural being. And now such as the Sulphur was on each place in every punctum in the property, as was taken or conceived in the Fiat, in the motion of the fifth property, in all the elements, even such a creature was opened or brought forth. As the compaction was coagulated in each punctum, so each kind had its spirit and seed in itself, to generate and bring forth again.

6. The two sexes, viz. the male and its female, arise from the separation of the watery and fiery tincture in Sulphur. For the separation was in the Verbum Fiat, where, out of one sulphur, in one only punctum, two sexes came forth out of one essence, viz. the fiery property in itself to a male, and the light’s or water’s property to a female, where then both tinctures severed. 7. And as we see that the fire cannot burn without the water, and the water were a nothing without the fire, and they mutually beget one another, and also do again vehemently desire each other; and their right life consisteth in their conjunction, in that they have produced each other, and afterwards do enter into and mutually embrace each other as one; where also they are again changed in the fire into one; and yet do again proceed forth from the fire in one essence, viz. in an oleous property, in which they stand in the bond of the highest lovedesire; for their light shineth in the oil. And as the fire- world desireth the light-world, and the light-world the fire-world, as father and son, the like also is to be understood of the two sexes.

8. The female is from the male, as the tincture of the light and water is from the fire; and they jointly belong together in nature as one. Thus the one may not be without the other, and they have a very ardent longing after each other, for the tincture of the light, viz. Venus’s tincture desireth the fire’s tincture, and the fire the light’s, as its pleasing1 delight. 9. For Venus giveth essence, and the fire taketh the essence to its life, and yieldeth out of the received essence the light; and in the fiery light the oil, and out of the oil again the water and essence. And hence it is that all creatures do desire copulation, each with its own kind; and so they do generate a third, viz. an assimulate, according to two in one: every ens brings forth a similitude according to itself. 10. And we see very clearly that each kind is created out of a sundry ens, each out of a different degree; and how each kind liveth in its mother, whence it hath taken its original; and that it cannot live in another degree. As the beasts upon the earth, which are a limus of the earth and air: therein they live; and thence they take their food and nourishment; for the Fiat extracted them out of the earth s property and amassed them in the fifth manifestation of the essence, as a sulphur of the fifth ens, whereon the four depend.

11. The birds were created in the sulphur of the air, therefore they fly in their mother; also the fishes in the sulphur of the water; and the worms in the sulphur of the earth. Thus each thing liveth in its mother whence it was taken in the beginning, and the contrary is its death. 12. And the essence and life of this time is nothing else but a con¬ templation of the inward spiritual world; what the possibility of eternity hath in it, and what kind of spiritual play is in the ens of the inward spiritual world, accordingly it came forth into a creatural being, out of good and evil, into a time; and that, through the divine motion. 13. And hereby the kingdom and dominion of the prince of the place of this world was taken from him, for the ens hath introduced itself into another Principle, wherein he cannot be; for he was not made a creature in this Principle, and he hath no life therein, save only in the property of the awakened wrath in the vanity. Of the Sixth Day’s Work of the Creation i. rpHE sixth day in the creation is Friday, on which Venus ruleth JL the first hour of the day; which doth rightly signify unto us the order of the degrees, how the eternal-speaking Word hath manifested itself with nature, through the time; how the spirit hath brought forth the six properties of nature into six degrees or days into a working life, and yet hath introduced them all again into the seventh, viz.

into the rest, or into the mansion wherein they should work; denoting that all whatsoever that they should work, manifest and produce out of the wonders of the eternal wisdom should re-enter into the one, viz. into the rest; which is the seventh property, viz. a house of the working life, wherein it should stand as a figure to the contemplation of the great glory of God.

2. Now, when God had educed the five days of nature through five properties or degrees, into five constellations, (all which are not indeed constellations, but a fountain of an astral property), viz. into a sundry peculiar heaven, as it might be given and expressed to the understanding, then he did, on the sixth day, educe out of the Jovial property, viz. out of the fifth constellation, the sixth, viz. he produced out of the Jovial power the fiery love-desire; wherewith he ruleth through all the constellations. Whence it is that each life doth long after its likeness; that is, it again desireth such a creature as each life hath in it. 3. Each life desireth, in this Venus-property, to generate again such a creature as it is in itself. Hence ariseth the strong ardent imagination and fiery desire, that the properties do again desire into one, viz. into the fountain whence they proceeded; for in the same they may generate the assimulate of themselves. 4. Now when God had educed this fiery love-desire out of the centre through all the properties, then nature was now desirous (in this love-property) of the likeness of God, viz. [of] a similitude accord¬ ing to and in the generation of the holy love-desire; that so this holy constellation of the love-desire might also be creaturised and figurised.

5. And seeing this love-desire was educed out of all the properties of nature and the heavens, viz. out of the Verbum Fiat, wherein all the creatures lay from eternity in a Mystery, and [was] introduced into a separation, viz. into a sundry distinct degree, therefore now the property longed to be an image of all degrees and properties, viz. a living, rational and understanding image, according to the manifesta¬ tion of this manifested property. 6. Now said the speaking Word in the Verbum Fiat, Let us make marr. that is, out of the mesh1 of all essences, out of the property of all powers and constellations, the love-desire desired a limus out of all essences for a living image: An image that may be like and resemble Us: and let them have dominion over the fish ofi the sea, and over the fowl ofi the air ; over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every worm (or creeping thing) that creepeth upon the earth. 7. Understand this thus: The sixth property of nature (viz. the love-desire) was produced, expressed or breathed forth out of all the properties, and was the desirous life in the joy, viz. in the light of nature. This was not itself a limus, but it was the desire to the limus; for the speaking Word which God expressed moved therein, viz. the intellectual life. God was therein manifest.

8. This manifested word of God desired, in this love-desire, a limus out of the earth and all the created essences, out of all the constel¬ lations and degrees, for a body unto itself; therefore God said, an image that may rule over fish, fowl, beasts, worms, and over the earth, and all the essences of the constellations. Now, if it must have dominion therein, then it must be thereout ; for each spirit ruleth in its mother whence it is arisen and proceeded j and eateth ofi its mother. 9. But here we must rightly understand this love-desire in the expressed Word. The expressed Word had, in this Venus-desire, the desire of all heavens, that is, of all entities and properties in itself, viz. the properties of the inward spiritual holy heaven, which is the mansion of the power of God; and of the outward created heaven, with the heavens of all constellations and elements; yet not essentially [or in substance], but as a spiritual desire: and these properties desired, in the spiritual desire, to be essential. 10. Now the text in Moses speaketh very clearly and fully, where it saith, And God created man in his own image, in the image ofi God created he him. By the creating is understood the body, which is twofold, viz. a spiritual body and a corporeal; for the Venus-desire is a spiritual body; and that which it hath attracted unto itself in the Fiat into the desire of the spiritual body, that is a fleshly body. The Verbum Fiat itself did figurise and form it into a spiritual man, out of all the three

1 Mass or mixture. Principles, viz. according to the inward divine world, both according to the fiery-light- world and the outward world. 11. And the spiritual body is the image of God, which the Fiat clothed with the essence out of all the essences, viz. with the heavenly holy essence, the heavenly holy corporality of the inward holy lovedesire. And from the outward love-desire [it was clothed] with the limus of the earth and the other elements, together with the visible constellation of the third Principle. 12. The inward holy man was in the heaven of God, and the out¬ ward man was in the outward heaven, a limus of the outward heaven, and the inward man a limus of the holy spiritual heaven. Therefore saith Moses very rightly, God created man in his image, to the image of God: for in betokeneth that he was known by the spirit of God in this essence from eternity in the Mystery of wisdom as a constellation of magical power. Into this knowledge God introduced the essence, and created the essence to the image of the magical image of God. 13. Thus understand by the inward creating the true heavenly image, viz. a holy [spiritual] man out of all the properties of the angelical divine world. Understand the inward body for the one only element, whence the four were expressed; and understand the out¬ ward man for the outward world, with the stars and four elements, viz.

fire, air, water and earth, and also for the outward tincture, which is linked with the inward in the holy expressed Word, and is only severed by a Principle; where also the inward putteth forth an exter¬ nal life out of itself. The inward is holy, and the outward [life or Principle] in the tincture were likewise holy, if the curse were not come into it by reason of the awakened vanity; yet if the vanity be severed by1 the tincture, then it is holy, and a paradise, which shall open itself at the end of this world.

14. And Moses saith further, God breathed into man the breath of life , and he became a living soul: this signifieth the living, speaking, under¬ standing spirit, out of all the three Principles, viz. out of the inward fire- world, which is manifest through the dark world; and out of the holy light- world, and out of the outward aerial- world : this is the soul. 15. The inward fire-breath is the true eternal creatural soul; and the light-breath is the true understanding spirit of the soul, wherein it is an angel; and the outward air-breath is the rational soul in the vegetative bestial life, wherewith man ruleth over all the creatures of this world. That is one only soul in three Principles, according to the image or likeness of God. 16. As the only understanding of the abyssal unsearchable Deity hath manifested itself with three Principles, so likewise he hath breathed into the created image the same spirit, viz. the true life out of all the three Principles. The body is a limus of all essences, and the soul is the expressed Word, viz. the power and understanding of all essences, viz. the manifestation of the divine understanding.

17. The spirit of God hath inspired or given in itself, from the properties of all the three Principles, into the created image, viz. the Father of all essences hath breathed or spoken forth the spirit, through his eternal-speaking Word, out of all the three Principles, out of the whole essence of the powers; or, as I might set it down, he hath inspoken it, viz. the egressed sound or expressed voice of the understanding which, through the motion of God, did educe and manifest itself through the eternal and temporal nature. The same [spirit] God did again in-speak or, as the text in Moses hath it, breathed [itself] into this only image, for a ruler of the body and all other creatures. 18. And the soul, in its real life and understanding, consists in three kingdoms: the first is the eternal nature, viz. the potent might of eternity, the dark and fire- world, according to which God calleth himself a strong zealous angry God, and a consuming fire, in which Lucifer hath wholly diabolised himself. 19. The second is the holy light-world, where the eternal under¬ standing hath displayed itself through the fire’s-sharpness, in the light of the great fiery love-desire, and turned the wrathful dark-and-fiery propery to a kingdom of joy; which is the true manifestation of the Deity; and it is called the holy heaven of the angelical delight and bliss.

20. The third kingdom or world is the outward astral and ele¬ mental kingdom, viz. the air, with its domineering constellations, wherein all the five outward constellations rule, viz. the superior, and the inferior of the four elements, out of which the five senses take their original, wherein the vegetable and reasonable life consisteth. This is the animal soul, which ruleth in all the creatures of this world, so also in all the outward heavens or constellations, and in all the earth or essences of the outward world. 21. Understand it thus: the fire-breath out of the first Principle ruleth in its original, viz. in its own mother, whence the spirit of God amassed (or moulded) it, viz. in the centre of the eternal nature, in the might of the dark-and-fire-world. And it is the cause of the light-life; and also of the air-life: if that were not, then none of the others would be. 22. And the light-breath ruleth in the second Principle, viz. in the holy kingdom of the manifested power of God, which is the mansion of the holy spirit of God, the temple of God, viz. in the heavenly holy essence; understand, in the holy spiritual body of the holy pure element, which, with its properties, standeth in equal weight and measure, as a fit prepared instrument of the spirit; wherein he manifesteth God’s wonders out of the eternal wisdom, and introduceth them into the melody of joy, viz. into the holy harmony of the eternal-speaking Word of God, into the divine kingdom of joy, viz. into the manifestation of the divine powers; in which the holy spirit is the true musician.

23 . And the air-spirit ruleth also in its mother, whence it originally stood, viz in the outward world, in the figure and similitude of the inward world, viz. in the outward mystery of time; and manifesteth its mother, which is brought forth out of eternity into a time, to the contemplation of the wonders of the wisdom of God. 24. And yet there are not three souls, but only one. But the soul standeth in three Principles, viz. in the kingdom of God’s anger, and in the kingdom of God’s love, and in the kingdom of this world. And if this were not, then it could not be said, the soul went into heaven or hell, if they1 were not in it. When the air, viz. the outward kingdom of time doth leave the soul, then is the soul manifest either in the dark fire-kingdom of God, or in the holy kingdom of light, in the love-fire of the power of God; whereunto it hath given up itself in this life-time, therein it standeth when it foregoeth the outward life. 25. And we are in no wise to think that the soul is God himself, who is neither nature nor creature, also dwelleth in nothing, save only in himself; and yet dwelleth through all things, and is neither far off nor nigh unto any thing. But the soul is the expressed Word, the formed Word; it is the spirit and the life of the three Principles of divine manifestation. But if it were God, then it were immovable, and no judgment could pass upon it.

26. But a judgment may pass upon it, if it departeth out of that order wherein God introduced it in the beginning; if it goeth out of the divine harmony, out of the order of the manifested word of God’s 1 Heaven and hell. power, if it doth manifest or produce another will in itself, viz. other properties out of the strong might of the eternal nature. 27. The whole man with body and soul is threefold; and yet but one only man. The body is out of a threefold essence; and the soul is out of a threefold property of the spirit. An example thereof you have in the fire, light and air: the fire hath another property than the light and air have. The fiery body is the eternal constellation, viz. the magical constellation, the Great Mystery, out of which the outward constellation was produced, and brought into a creatural being or creation. 28. The fiery spirit, viz. the fiery soul, dwelleth in the fiery spiritual body; and in the light’s body (which is from the holy element, viz. from the true heavenly image, which consisteth in a spiritual Sulphur, Mercurius and Sal) dwelleth the holy soul, viz. the true spirit of the soul, which is a temple of God; and in the outward body (which is a limus of the earth and the other elements), viz. in the outward constellation of the five senses, the outward soul, viz. the real spirit of the outward world doth dwell.

29. Each property of the soul hath a corporeal property in itself, which may be called a heaven, viz. a sundry special magical astrum; as the fiery property of the soul hath a body from the inward con¬ stellation of the dark and fire- world, which is a spiritual body. 30. And the lucid1 property of the soul hath a spiritual, oleous and watery body, wherein the two properties of the highest tincture of the fire and light do open the lustre and beauty of the colours, wonders and virtue of the divine wisdom. This water is the water above the firmament, of which Moses speaketh; and this oil is the holy oil of the divine powers; and this was a usual type in the Old Testament, in that the real oily body of the heavenly property did disappear in Adam in the awakened vanity; so God ordained the type of the new Regeneration with an unction of oil, wherein he powerfully wrought through the promised Covenant, as in a type. 31. The third outward property of the soul hath likewise every way such a body of many constellations in it, as always the inward properties; all which multiplicity of properties may be called heavens. For each property of the outward body hath a magical constellation; as there is a body of the sulphurean constellation of the earth; also a body or constellation of the mercurial, poisonful life; also a body of the

salt-powers of bodies; also a body of the soul of the outward world, viz. of the upper created constellation; all according as the outward powers of the outward soul are. Thus each power hath a corporeal property in it: and thus also the inward powers of the spiritual property are to be understood with the inward body. Of the Difference of the Heavenly and Earthly Man i. 'T'T then we consider the image of God which God created in VV Paradise unto the eternal uncorruptible life, then we can in no wise say of the gross fleshy image, that the gross property of the earthliness is the image of God, which can possess the holy world: for it is not of the same essence and ens, whereof also Christ speaketh: The spirit is life; the flesh profiteth nothing: also, flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven. And yet verily the true body is couched in this bestial, gross property; as the gold in the ore. 2. All that is earthly on man, that is bestial and corruptible, and not man. Albeit God created man an external body out of the limus of the earth; yet it is not to be considered of us, as now it is. For the true human body, according to the inward world, is a spiritual Sulphur, a spiritual Mercurius, and a spiritual Sal: each property of the soul hath a corporeal or essential quality on it.

3. God created such a body as the soul was in its essence, viz. in the spirated Word of the understanding; and breathed the soul there¬ into for the understanding; also, the outward sulphurean body is in no wise the gross beast which passeth away and returneth not again. The true, real body, which is hidden in the grossness, is a spiritual body, in comparison to the grossness: it is created indeed in flesh and blood; but in a fixed, steadfast [uncorruptible flesh and blood]. 4. By the lust and imagination of Adam the grossness was mani¬ fest; the true outward body is a sulphureous, mercurial and saltish property; a pure essential power, according to the nature of the soul: That which the soul is in the spirit, the same is the true human body in the essence, as a mansion of the soul. 5. All the properties of the inward holy body, together with the outward, were (in the first man) composed in an equal harmony, none lived in self-desire, but they all gave up their desire unto the soul, in which the divine light was manifest, as in the holy heaven. The light shone through all the properties, and made an equal temperature in the properties; all the properties gave their desire into the light, viz. into the manifested sweetness of God, which penetrated all the properties; in which penetration they were all tinctured with the

sweet love; so that there was nothing but mere pleasing relish and love-desire and delight between them. 6. The inward holy corporality from1 the pure element pene¬ trated through the four elements, and held the limus of the earth (viz. the outward sulphureous body) in itself, as it were swallowed up; and it was really there, but in manner as the darkness dwelleth in the light, and yet its darkness cannot be manifest for the light; but if the light extinguisheth, then the darkness is manifest. 7. Thus the inward man held the outward captive in itself, and penetrated it, as a fire through-heats an iron, that it seems as if it were all fire; but when the fire goeth out, then the dark, swart iron is manifest. 8. Thus likewise was the first man when he stood in Paradise, in his fixed condition, in manner as time is before God, and God in the time; and they are distinct, but not parted asunder. As the time is a play before God, so also the outward life of man was a play unto2 the inward holy man, which was the real image of God. 9. The outward spirit and body was unto the inward as a wonder of divine manifestation, according to the fire-dark-and-light world, a mirror of the great omnipotence and omniscience of God: and the inward was given unto it for a ruler and guide.

10. As God playeth with the time of this outward world, so like¬ wise the inward divine man should play with the outward in the manifested wonders of God in this world, and open the divine wisdom in all creatures, each according to its property; so likewise in the earth, in stones and metals, in which also there is a twofold essence, viz. one from the original of the dark fire-world, and one from the original of the holy light-world. 11. All this was given him for his play: he had the knowledge of all tinctures: all was subject to him; he ruled in heaven and earth and over all the elements, so also over all the constellations; and that, because the divine power was manifest in him : no heat nor cold did annoy him. As a tincture penetrates a body and preserves it from sickness, and as the warmth of the sun defends the body from cold, so likewise the highest tincture of the fire and light, viz. the holy power of the inward spiritual body, penetrated the outward body of flesh and blood, and took every outward elemental property, as also the limus of the earth, into its preservation or protection.

12. For as there was a temperature in the body of the inward and 1 Of. 2 Before. outward man, so likewise there was nothing without the body that could either destroy or annoy this temperature. As gold endures in the fire, and as a tincture penetrates all things, and yields or gives way unto nothing, so likewise man was not subject unto any thing, save only and alone to the only God, who dwelt through him, and was manifest in him with the power of the holy essence: and this was an image and likeness of God, in whom the spirit of God inhabited. 13. Reasons will understand us amiss, and say, I speak of a two¬ fold man. But I say no! I speak only of one only man, who is a likeness according to God, viz. according to the manifested God, according to the expressed formed Word of the divine power, of divine under¬ standing. 14. As all things are in God essentially,1 and yet he himself is not that very essence; and yet that essence ruleth every essence according to its property; so likewise the inward spiritual man is an image of the formed Word of divine power, and the outward an image of the inward, viz. an instrument of the inward. As a master must have an instrument wherewith to finish and perform his work, so likewise the outward man from the limus of the earth and four elements, with its outward constellation, is only an instrument of the inward, where¬ with the inward frameth and maketh what the inward spirit of the soul willeth.

15. As we see that the will is the master in all purposes and under¬ takings; and [we] see further, that the inward man hath divine will and desire, but the outward [hath] only a bestial [will], which is so by reason of the fall. The whole man is but one only man, but his property lieth in sundry degrees, according to the inward and out¬ ward heavens, viz. according to the divine manifestation through the seven properties of nature. 16. God created all things in six days out of the seven properties, and introduced the six days’ works of the manifestation of his creature into the seventh, wherein every life should work as in one body; for the seventh day and the first belong mutually to one another as one. For the six properties of the eternal nature are all couched in the seventh, as in a structure2 of the other six; the seventh property is a 1 Text, in essence. 2 Operate or work- house. mystery or essence of all the others; and out of the seventh day the first day hath taken its original and beginning. 17. For on the seventh day, viz. Saturday, Saturn hath the first hour of the day [under] his dominion in the planetic orb; which is a figure of the sevenfold generation of the eternal nature. For like as the first form of the eternal nature is the astringent desire, viz. the Fiat, which in the desire impresseth the free lubet (which is as a thin nothing in the eternal will of God, in the divine understanding) and introduceth it into a spiritual essence, in which desire-essence all the properties do arise, as is above mentioned.

18. So likewise Saturn, or the seventh property of the seventh day, is the rest or mansion of the other six days works, wherein they work as a spirit in the body: the seventh property standeth still as a senseless life. 19. But that now Moses saith, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and sanctified the seventh day for rest : this hath a very peculiar emphatical deep meaning; and yet it were but plain and child-like, if we were in Paradise, and dwelt in the Sabbath. Understand it thus: 20. Out of the Verbum Fiat, viz. out of the divine Word, and out of the divine desire (which is the Fiat in the Word, wherewith the Word formeth itself, or introduceth itself in the spiritual essence to the dark fire-and-light-world), the six properties of the eternal and temporal nature proceeded; and each hath introduced itself into a sundry degree of a sundry property, which degree may be called a heaven, or a magical spiritual-constellation. 21. For each property is a spirated essence, viz. a heaven: for heaven1 doth properly and exactly denote and signify, in the Lan¬ guage of Nature, a spiration or formation, where the Fiat formeth what the Word speaketh or breatheth forth; and thus the spiration or speaking was introduced into six degrees or days’-works.

22. Each spiration continued [for] a time, viz. the length of a day and night in the formation and conception, and each property of a day was mutually spoken or breathed forth out of the other, even unto the sixth, in which the formed Word was manifest, which in the fifth form, viz. in the love-desire, did receive its aspect or illustration 1 Text, Himmel, expounded in the Language of Nature. through the fire from the light; and amassed or formed itself in the sixth form of nature; in which formation the image of God (man) was created, as an image of the formed Word, which God introduced into the Sabbath, viz. into the seventh day, understand, into the Verbum Fiat, viz. into the first divine desire to nature, wherein Paradise and the eternal day was. 23. For in the seventh property lieth the eternal day, whence the days of time are proceeded; and the ancients have called it Sonnabend j1 but it is rightly called Sonnabend ,2 wherein God’s love doth appease and atone the anger; as, when the six properties in the operate do enkindle themselves in the impression in the wrath’s property, they are atoned and reconciled in the seventh property, viz. in the mani¬ fested holy power of God in the love-desire; (which holy power manifesteth itself in the fifth and sixth property, and doth encircle the operate of all the rest as a holy heaven) and so are introduced into one only essence, wherein they rest, as in the Word of the Lord;3 which hath introduced itself with the seven properties into nature and essence; and thereof Moses speaketh rightly, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and hallowed the seventh day.

24. Understand it here aright: God rested with his formed Word (which he first introduceth into darkness and fire, viz. into the first Principle, according to which he is called a consuming fire), in the second Principle, viz. in the formed holy Word, where he educeth himself through the fire in the light in the love-desire, viz. in the holy Fiat: and resteth eternally with his manifested Word therein. His rest therein is a dominion ofjoy, where the anguish-source of God’s wrath, of the eternal nature, is changed into a divine kingdom ofjoy. 25. And this rest is the holy heaven in the natural heaven, where time worketh in itself, and setteth forth its operate for the day of rest, viz. the day of separation, where, at the end of the days of this world, the evil shall be separated from the good, and each thing shall possess its own heaven, viz. the property of its original [or sourcive] spirit, whence it was generated. 26. But in this time God’s love and anger must mutually work in one another, and manifest the wonders of God, both according to the fire-[world] and light-world, and the Verbum Domini resteth in the seventh manifestation of the properties, and shineth with its power

1 As to the word: Sun-evening, or the evening of the sun. In our English, Satur¬ day. 2 The Evening of reconciliation: or Saving-day. 3 Text, im Verbo Domini. and virtue into the operation of the six days, viz. into the six proper¬ ties; and affordeth aid and help to every life. 27. In the seventh property all things are brought into their end, viz. into the first day of the beginning of all essences. For the seventh day, viz. the seventh property of the eternal nature, is the transparent glassy sea before the throne of the Ancient , in the Revelation of St. John’s , whence, as out of the Grand Mystery,1 this world was created into sundry peculiar heavens and forms, and formed in the Verbum Fiat. The seventh day was from eternity without and beyond all time, for it is the formed Word of the divine understanding; in it the eternal wisdom of God is manifest, viz. the powers and wonders of the divine understanding, in which the Deity worketh. 1 Ex Mysterio Magno. i. Tfc /TOSES saith, that when God had made man, that he planted a JLVJL garden in Eden, and there he put man, to till and keep the same: and caused all manner of fruits to grow, pleasant for the sight and good for food: and planted the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the midst (Gen. ii. 8, 9).

2. Here lieth the veil before the face of Moses, in that he had a bright shining countenance, that sinful Israel cannot look him in the face. For the man of vanity is not worthy to know what Paradise is; and albeit it be given us to know it according to the hidden man, yet, by this description, we shall remain as dumb to the beast; but yet be sufficiently understood by our fellow-scholars. 3. The Garden Eden was a place upon the earth, where man was tempted; and the Paradise was in heaven; and yet was in the Garden Eden. For as Adam, before his Eve [was made out of him], before his sleep, was as to his inward man in heaven, and as to the outward upon the earth; and as the inward holy man penetrated the outward, as a fire through-heats an iron, so also the heavenly power out of the pure element penetrated the four elements, and sprang forth through the earth, and bore fruits, which were heavenly and earthly, and were qualified [sweetly tempered] of the divine power; and the vanity in the fruit was held as it were swallowed up, as the day hideth the night, and holdeth it captive in itself, that it is not known and manifest.

4. Paradise was nothing else but the seventh day’s property. The heavenly essentiality of the second Principle is couched or shut up in the earth, the curse of God hath hidden it; it budded (in the beginning of the world) through the earthly essentiality, as the eternity is in the time, and the divine power is through all things; and yet is neither comprehended nor understood of any earthly thing in selfhood. 5. But in Paradise the essence of the divine world penetrated the essence of time, as the sun penetrates the fruit upon a tree, and effectually works it into a pleasantness, that it is lovely to look upon and good to eat: the like also we are to understand of the garden in Eden. 6. The word Eden 1 is nothing else but what Moses saith of the 1 Eden, expounded according to the Language of Nature. earth: that it was void and empty; that is, it should not manifest its might according to the wrath of vanity, it should be still, as a mother to bring forth. For the internal would rule through the external, as the spiritual world through time, [and] heaven through the earth. The earth was empty without fruit; but the heaven was its husband, which made it fruitful, and bore fruit by it until the curse, where heaven did hide [disappear or withdraw] itself from the earth.

7. The whole world would have been a mere Paradise, if Lucifer had not corrupted it, who was in the beginning of his creation a hierarch in the place of this world. But seeing God knew well that Adam would fall, therefore Paradise sprang forth and budded only in one certain place, to introduce and confirm man therein; whom (albeit God saw that he would again depart thence), he would again introduce thereinto by Christ, and establish him anew in Christ, to eternity in Paradise. 8. For Lucifer poisoned the first Paradise with his false and wicked desire, therefore God promised to regenerate it anew in Christ; for the seventh day, which God appointed for rest, is nothing else but Paradise regenerate anew in the spirit of Christ, in the human property, wherein the poor soul shall rest eternally from the source of the six days’-works, viz. of the six properties of the life. 9. Also it is the seventh time or manifestation of God, in which the Mystery of God’s kingdom shall be finished, when it shall be again pure in the place of this world; when heaven shall be again manifest in the world, and the devil driven out with his wickedness d whereinto no unclean thing shall any more enter; for this world, in which Adam was, before his Eve, must again return, as it was before the curse, in which righteousness shall rule: but the vanity shall be purged away through the fire of God’s anger, and given to the dark world.