The
Incarnation
of
Jesus Christ
Set out in three parts. viz.:
1. How the eternal Word has become man;
and of Mary the Virgin, who she was from her first beginning, and what sort of
mother she became by conception of her son Jesus Christ.
II. How we must enter into the suffering,
dying and death of Christ; and out of his death rise again with him and through
him, and become like his image, and live eternally in him.
III. The tree of Christian faith. A true
instruction, showing how many may be one spirit with God, and what he has to do
to work the works of God.
Written according to divine illumination.
by
Jacob Böhme
in the year 1620
Translated from the German by
John Rolleston Earle, M.A.
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER II. Manifestation of the Deity by the creation of angels and men
from divine essence
CHAPTER III. The gate of the creation of man
CHAPTER IV. Of the paradisaic sphere and dominion
CHAPTER V. Of the lamentable fall of man
CHAPTER VII. Of the promised seed of the woman
CHAPTER VIII. Of the Virgin Mary, etc.
CHAPTER IX. Of the virginity of Mary
CHAPTER X. Of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God
CHAPTER XI. On the practical application
CHAPTER XII. Of the pure virginity
CHAPTER XIII. Of the twofold man
PART II
CHAPTER I. Of the origin of life from fine
CHAPTER II. The tree and highly precious gate of the
Holy Trinity
CHAPTER III. The very earnest gate
CHAPTER IV. Of the origin of the world of fire
CHAPTER V. Of the Principle in itself
CHAPTER VII. Of spiritual seeing
CHAPTER VIII. The pilgrim's path from death unto life
CHAPTER IX. Further particulars regarding the third
citation
CHAPTER X. Of the image of God which is man
PART III
CHAPTER I. What faith is, and how it is one Spirit
with God
CHAPTER II. Of
the origin of faith, and why faith and doubt dwell together
CHAPTER IV. What the work of faith is and how the will may walk therein and
concerning its guide
CHAPTER VIII. In what manner God forgives sin, and how you
become a child of God
PART I
HOW THE ETERNAL WORD HAS BECOME MAN, ETC.
CHAPTER
I
THAT THE PERSON OF CHRIST, AS WELL AS HIS
INCARNATION, CANNOT BE KNOWN BY THE NATURAL UNDERSTANDING OR THE LETTER OF THE
HOLY SCRIPTURE, WITHOUT DIVINE ILLUMINATION. ITEM, OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ETERNAL
DIVINE BEING
1. WHEN Christ asked his disciples: Whom
do men say that the Son of man is? they said: Some say that thou art Elias,
some that thou art John the baptist or one of the prophets. He said to them But
whom say ye that I am? Then answered Simon Peter and said: Thou art Christ, the
Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him: Of a truth flesh
and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
Thereafter he announced to them his sufferings, death and resurrection (Matt.
xvi. 13-21). By this he meant to indicate that individual reason in the
knowledge and wisdom of this world could not in its own reason know or
comprehend the person who was God and man; but that he would be known rightly
only of those who would give themselves up wholly to him, and for his Name
would endure the cross, tribulation and persecution, and would cleave with
earnestness to him. And such in fact was the case, so that he, while yet living
visibly among us in this world, was known in least measure by the wise in
reason. And though he walked in Divine wonders, yet outward reason was so blind
and foolish that those great wonders or miracles were attributed by the wisest
in the art of reason to the devil. And as at the time when he lived visibly in
this world, he remained unknown of individual reason and knowledge, so he is
and remains even now unrecognized and unknown of outward reason.
2. From thence has arisen so much
wrangling and dispute about his person, as outward reason always believed it
fathomed what God and man is, and how God and man can be one person. This
dispute has filled the earth, for individual reason always supposed it had
grasped the pearl, and did not reflect that God's kingdom is not of this world
and that flesh and blood cannot know or comprehend it, much less fathom it.
3. Accordingly it behoves everyone who
would speak of the Divine mysteries or teach them, that he have the Spirit of
God, and that he know in the Divine light what he would give out as true; and
not suck it from his own reason, nor take his stand upon the mere letter
without Divine knowledge and drag in Scripture by the hair, as reason does.
Wherefrom a great deal of error has arisen, because men have sought for Divine
knowledge in their own understanding and art, and have thus passed from the
truth of God into individual reason, and regarded the incarnation of Christ as
something strange and remote, whereas we must all be born again of God in this
incarnation, if we will escape the wrath of the Eternal Nature.
4. Seeing then it is for the children of
God an intimate and indigenous work, with which they should daily and hourly be
occupied, and enter continually into the incarnation of Christ, go out from the
earthly reason, and thus during this life of sorrow be born in the birth and
incarnation of Christ, if they wish to be God's children in Christ: I have
proposed to write this high mystery according to my knowledge and gifts, for a
memorial, in order that I may thus have an occasion to recreate and to refresh
myself cordially with my Immanuel,-for I am also along with other children of
Christ in this birth,-that I might have a memorial and support, in case the
dark and earthly flesh and blood would put upon me the poison of the devil and
obscure my image. I proposed it as an exercise of faith, whereby my soul may
thus, as a twig in its tree Jesus Christ, refresh itself from his sap and
power. And this, not with sage and high discourses of art, or springing from
the reason of this world, but according to the knowledge that I have of my tree
which is Christ, that my twig also may bud and grow beside others in the tree
and life of God. And though I ground highly and deeply, and shall expound it
clearly, this nevertheless must be told the reader, that without the spirit of
God it will be to him a mystery, and unapprehended. Therefore let everyone take
heed what judgment he passes, lest he fall into the judgment of God and be seized
by his own turba, and his own reason overthrow him. This I say from a good
intent and affection, and give it to the reader to consider of.
5. If we will write of the incarnation and
birth of Jesus Christ the Son of God, and speak of it correctly, we must
reflect upon the cause, and consider what moved God to become man, seeing that
He was not in need of this for the realization of his being. And it can by no
means be said that God's own being was changed in the incarnation. For God is
un
changeable, and yet has become what He was
not; but his proprium has at the same time remained immutable. It was only for
the sake of the salvation of fallen man, that He might bring him again into
6. We know what Moses says, that God
created man in his likeness, in an image according to him (Gen. i. 27).
Understand, then, that God, who is a Spirit, beheld himself in an image, as in
a likeness. Not the less has he created also this world, that thus he might
manifest the Eternal Nature in essence and substance as well as in living
creatures and figures, that all this might be a likeness and outbirth from the
Eternal Nature of the first Principle. Which likeness, before the times of the
world, stood in the wisdom of God as a hidden magia, and was seen in the wisdom
by the Spirit of God, who at the beginning of this world moved the Eternal
Nature and brought forth and disclosed the likeness of the hidden divine world.
For the fiery world was just as if swallowed up and hidden in the light of God,
the light of Majesty ruling alone in itself. We are not, however, to think that
the fiery world existed not. It did exist; but it separated into its own
principle, and was not manifest in the light of God's Majesty. As we may
conceive of this in fire and light, that fire is indeed a cause of light, and
the light dwells in the fire, but without being laid hold of by it, and has
another life than the fire. For fire is fierceness and consumes, and light is
gentleness, and from its power arises substantiality, as the water or sulphur
of a thing, which the fire draws into itself and uses for its strength and
life, and thus forms an eternal bond.
7. This fire and divine light have from
eternity stood still in themselves, each in its order, in its principle, and
have neither ground nor beginning. For the fire has in itself its own form for
its source, namely Desire, from and in which all the forms of nature are
generated, one being a cause of another, as has been told in detail in the
other writings. And we find in the light of nature that the fire in its own
essence, in the sour desiring source in itself, was a darkness, and was as if
swallowed up in the gentleness of God, without enkindling; and though it
burned, yet as a special principle of its own was in itself only perceptible.
For there have been from eternity only two principles: one in itself, the fiery
world, and the other similarly in itself, the lightflaming world; although they
were not separated, as fire and light are not separated, the light dwelling in
the fire, without being laid hold of by it.
8. We are thus to understand two kinds of
spirit united in one another, namely, a fiery spirit, in conformity with the
essence of the sour and severe nature proceeding from the hot and cold fierce
essential fire, which is regarded as God's spirit of wrath, and belongs to the
Father's property, according to which he calls himself an angry, jealous God and
a consuming fire, whereby is understood the first Principle. And, secondly, a
gentle light-flaming spirit, which from eternity receives its transformation in
the centre of the light; for in the first Principle, in the Father's property,
it is a fiery spirit, and in the second Principle, in the light, a gentle
light-flaming spirit, which from eternity is generated in this way, and is one,
not two. But it is understood in a twofold source, viz. in fire and light
according to the property of each source, as may be understood sufficiently in
any outward fire, that the fire's source gives a fierce consuming spirit, and
the light's source furnishes a gentle lovely spirit, and yet originally there
is but one spirit.
9. In like manner we are to consider of
the Being of eternity or the Holy Trinity, which in the light of Majesty we
recognize to be the Deity, and in the fire to be the Eternal Nature. For the
all-powerful Spirit of God with the two Principles has from eternity been
itself All; there is nothing prior to it, it is itself the ground and unground.
And yet the holy divine Being is regarded specially as a single existence in
itself, and dwells out of the fiery nature and property in the light's
property, and is called God; not from the fire's property, but from the light's
property, though the two properties are unseparated. As we see in this world,
that a hidden fire lies concealed in the deep of nature and in all beings, else
no outward fire could be produced. And we see how the gentleness of the water keeps
this hidden fire imprisoned in itself, so that it cannot be revealed; for it is
as it were swallowed up in the water, and nevertheless is, not indeed
substantially but essentially, and at its awakening comes to be known and
qualifying; and all were a nothing and a groundlessness without fire.
10. Thus, we understand also that the
third Principle, or the source and the spirit of this world, has from eternity
been hidden in the Eternal Nature of the Father's property, and was seen by the
lightflaming Spirit in the holy Magia, in God's wisdom and the divine tincture.
Consequently the Deity has moved itself according to the nature of the
genetrix, and brought forth the great mystery, wherein lay all that the Eternal
Nature can do. It was, however, only a mysterium, and resembled no creature,
but there was in it everything as in a chaos together. The fierce wrathful
nature has generated a dark chaos, and the light-flaming nature in its proprium
has generated flames in the Majesty and the gentleness, which from eternity has
been the water-fountain and cause of the holy divine essentiality. It was power
and spirit only, without parallel, nor was anything discerned there but the
Spirit of God in a twofold source and form, viz. the hot and cold severe source
of fire, and the gentle source of love, after the manner of fire and light.
11. This has like a mystery entered one
into the other, and yet one has not comprehended the other, but has at the same
time remained in two principles. Here then the sourness or the father of nature
has always seized the essence in the mystery, where this then has been formed
as it were into an image, and yet there was no image, but as a shadow of an
image. All this in the mystery has indeed thus always had an eternal beginning,
as it cannot be said that something has arisen which has not had its figure as
a shadow in the great eternal Magia; but there was no being, but only a
spiritual play one in another, and it is the Magia of the great wonders of God,
where always there has been origination where
there was nothing but an ungrounded
existence. This nothing has in the nature of the fire and the light advanced
into a ground, and yet issues from nothing but the spirit of the source, which is
not a being either, but a source which gives birth to itself in itself in two
properties, and likewise separates into two principles. It has no separator or
maker, nor any cause of its own creativeness, but is itself the cause.
12. Thus, we are now able to recognize the
creation of this world, including both the creation of angels, and also of man
and all creatures. It has all been created out of the great mystery. For the
third Principle stood before God as a magia, and was not made wholly manifest.
Hence God has not had any likeness, in which he might have beheld his own
being, but the wisdom only. That has been his longing, and was there in his
will with his spirit as a great wonder in the light-flaming divine magia of the
Spirit of God. For it was the dwelling of the Spirit of God, and was not a
genetrix, but the revelation of God, a virgin, and a cause of the divine
essentiality, for in it lay the light-flaming divine tincture for the heart of
God, as for the Word of life of the Deity, and it was the revelation of the
Holy Trinity. Not that it has manifested God by its own power and productivity,
but the divine centre, viz. God's heart or being, manifests itself in it. It is
like a mirror of the Deity; for every mirror keeps still and produces no image,
but it receives the image. Accordingly this virgin of wisdom is a mirror of the
Deity, in which the Spirit of God beholds itself, as well as all the wonders of
the magia, which have come into being with the creation of the third Principle.
All has been created from the great mystery, and this virgin of the wisdom of
God stood in the mystery, and in it has the Spirit of God seen the forms of the
creatures. For it is that which is uttered, what the Father utters by the Holy
Spirit out of his centre of the light-flaming divine property, out of the
centre of his heart, out of the Word of the Deity. It stands before the Deity
as a reflection or mirror of the Deity, wherein the Deity beholds itself, and
in it lies the divine kingdom of joy of the divine will, i.e. the great wonders
of eternity, which have neither beginning nor end, nor number, but all is an
eternal beginning and an eternal end, and together resembles an eye which sees,
where however there is nothing in the seeing, and yet the seeing does spring from
the essence of the fire and light.
13. Thus, understand in the fire's essence
the Father's proprium and the first Principle, and in the light's source and
property the Son's nature or the second Principle, and the ruling Spirit which
proceeds from these two properties understand as the Spirit of God, which in
the first Principle is wrathful, severe, sour, bitter, cold and fiery, and is
the impelling spirit in the wrath. And therefore it rests not in the wrath and
fierceness, but goes forth and blows up the essential fire, uniting itself
again to the essence of the fire, for the fiery essences draw it again into
themselves, as it is their source and life; and again in the enkindled fire in
the light it proceeds from the Father and Son, and reveals the fiery essences
in the source of the light, whereby the fiery essences burn in a great desire
of love, and the rigorous austere source is not known in the source of the
light, so that the severity of the fire is only a cause of the light-flaming
majesty and the desiring love.
14. And thus we are to understand the
Being of the Deity and also of the Eternal Nature. And we understand always the
divine Being in the light of majesty, for the gentle light makes the Father's
severe nature gentle, lovely and merciful, by which God is called a Father of
mercy in accordance with his heart or Son. For the Father's proprium stands in
fire and in light. He is himself the Being of all beings. He is the unground
and the ground, and in the eternal birth divides into three properties, or into
three persons, or into three principles, although in eternity there are but two
in being, and the third is as a mirror of the first two, from which this world
has been created as a palpable existence in a beginning and end.
CHAPTER
II
MANIFESTATION OF THE DEITY BY THE CREATION OF ANGELS AND MEN FROM DIVINE
ESSENCE
1. SEEING then there has thus been a
mystery from eternity, we are now to consider its manifestation. We can speak
of eternity only as of a spirit, for the whole has been spirit only; and yet
from eternity has generated itself into substance by desire and longing. We can
in no wise say that in eternity there has not been substance, for no fire
exists without substance. So also there is no gentleness without the production
of substance. For the gentleness produces water, and the fire swallows this up
and transforms it in itself, one part into heavens and firmament, and the other
part into sulphur, wherein the fire-spirit with its wheel of essences makes a
mercury, then awakens Vulcan (that is, strikes fire), by which the third spirit
or air is generated. In the middle is found the noble tincture, as a lustre
with colours, and has its rise originally from the wisdom of God. Every colour
remains with its essence in the gentleness of the waterfountain, black
excepted, which has its origin from the sour fierceness.
2. Each form longs after the other, and by
the desirous longing one form is impregnated from the other, and one brings the
other to being, in such a way that eternity stands in a perpetual magia, where
nature is in process of growth and struggle, and the fire consumes this and
gives it as well, and thus forms an eternal bond. But the light of the Majesty
and Trinity of God is immutable; for the fire cannot seize it, it lives free in
itself.
3. We recognize and find, however, that
the light of the love is desirous, viz. of the wonders and figures in wisdom,
and in such desire this world as a model [mirrored form] has been perceived
from eternity in wisdom, in the deep and hidden magia of God; for the desire of
the love searches the ground and the unground. And here likewise from eternity
has been intermixed the desire of the wrath, that is, of the sour severe source
in the nature and proprium of the Father. And hence the image of angels and men
in the divine property, as also in the wrath's property the devils, have been
seen in God's wisdom from eternity: yet not in any being, but only after the
manner in which a thought arises in the depth of the mind, and is brought
before its own mirror of the soul, where often an object appears which has no
being.
4. Thus the two genetrixes, that of the
wrath in fire and that of the love in light, have brought their form into
wisdom, where then the heart of God has longed in the love to make this
mirrored form into an angelic image composed of divine essence, so that they
should be a likeness and image of the Deity and dwell in the wisdom of God, in
order to fulfil the longing of the Deity and for the eternal delight of the
divine kingdom of joy.
5. And now we are to consider the* verbum
fiat, which has grasped them and brought them into a substance and corporeal
being, for the will to this image has arisen from the Father, out of the
Father's proprium in, the Word or heart of God from eternity, as a desiring
will to the creature and for the manifestation of the Deity. Because, however,
from eternity God has not put himself in motion till the creation of the
angels, so no creation has taken place till the creation of the angels. But the
reason and cause of this we are not to know; God has reserved in his might as
to how it was that he put himself in motion once, since he is indeed an
unchangeable God. We must explore no further here, for it confuses us.
6. But of the creation we have power to speak,
for it is a work in the being of God. And we understand that the will of the
Word or heart of God has laid hold of the sour fiat in the centre of the nature
of the Father, with its seven spirits and forms of the eternal Nature, and that
in the form of a throne, whereby the sour fiat has appeared not as a maker, but
as an agent in the property of every essence, that is, in the great wonders of
wisdom. As the figures had been beheld from eternity in wisdom, they were now
grasped by the fiat in the Will-spirit of God, and not taken from alien matter,
but from God's essence, or from the nature of the Father. And they were with
God's Will-spirit introduced into the light of Majesty, where they were then
children of God and not strangers, and were born and created from the Father's
nature and property, and the spirit of their will was directed to the Son's
nature and property. They could eat and were to eat of God's love and
essentiality in the light of Majesty, whereby their fierce property which
proceeds from the Father's nature was transformed into love and joy. And this
they all did with the exception of one throne and kingdom, which turned itself
away from the light of love, and wished in the severe fire-nature to rule over
God's gentleness and love. And therefore it was driven out of the proprium of
the Father, out of its creaturely proper place into the eternal darkness, into
the abyss of the harsh fiat; there it must remain in its own eternity; and thus
the wrath of the Eternal Nature has also been satisfied.
7. But it must not be thought that King
Lucifer, could not have stood firm. He had the light of Majesty before him just
as the other throne-angels. If he had imaginated thereinto, he would have
remained an angel; but he withdrew himself from God's love into the wrath, and
accordingly he is an enemy of the love of God and of all the holy angels.
8. Further, we are to consider here the
hostile enkindling of the expelled spirits, when as yet they were in the
proprium of the Father, how they have kindled by their imagination the nature
of the essentiality, so that from the heavenly Essence earth and stones were
produced, and the gentle spirit of water in the qualification of fire became
the burning firmament. Thereupon ensued the creation of this world as the third
Principle; and to the place of this world another light was given, viz. the
sun, and thus the devil was deprived of his pomp, and he was shut up in
darkness as a prisoner between the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of this
world, so that his dominion in this world extends no further than the turba,
where the wrath and anger of God is awakened, and there he is an executioner.
He is a perpetual liar, calumniator and deceiver of the creatures; he turns all
that is good into what is bad, so far as opportunity is afforded him. Whatever
is terrible and resplendent, in it he exhibits -his might, and is wishing
always to be above God. But the heaven which is created out of the midst of the
waters as a gentle firmament abates his pomp and pride, so that he is not
sovereign prince in this world, but prince of wrath.
9. But seeing the devil was cast out from
his place, this place or throne (destitute of its angelic host) was in great
desire for its prince; but he had been cast out. God then created for it another
prince, viz. Adam, the first man, who was also a throne-prince before God. And
here we are to consider aright his creation, as well as his fall, on account of
which the heart of God moved itself and became man.
10. It is not a trivial matter, then, the
creation of man, on account of whose fall God became man, that He might restore
him. And hence his fall does not consist in the mere act of biting an apple;
nor was his creation accomplished in the way outward reason supposes, as it
understands the first Adam in his creation to be a mere clod of earth. No, my
dear soul, God did not become man for the sake of a clod of earth; neither was
it a question merely of a disobedience, at which God was so angry that his
anger could not have been appeased unless he revenged himself upon his Son and
slew him.
11. To us men, after the loss of our
paradisaic image, this is a mystery and has remained hidden, except to some who
have again attained the heavenly mystery; to these has something of it been
disclosed according to the inner man. For in Adam we are dead to
12. But seeing the divine Mystery will
henceforth uncover itself entirely, and is thus presented comprehensibly to
man, so that he comprehends the secret quite clearly, there is need to reflect
well on what that signifies,-nothing else than the harvest of this world. For
the beginning has found the end, and the middle is put into separation. Let
this be told you, ye children, who would inherit the
13. If we will speak of man, rightly
understand him, and understand from what he has been made, we must consider the
Deity with the Being of all beings, for man was created in the likeness of God
from all the three Principles, a complete image and likeness as regards every
sphere of existence. He was not to be only an image of this world, for the
image of this world is animal, and for the sake of no animal image has God
become man. Nor did God create man to live thus in the animal property, as we
now live after the fall, but He created him in
14. Therefore we must consider man aright.
It is not a matter of sophisticating or imagining, but of knowing and
understanding in the spirit of God. It is said: Ye must be new-born, if ye will
see again the
CHAPTER
III
THE GATE OF THE CREATION OF MAN
1. THOUGH we have explained this almost
sufficiently in the other books, as everyone has them not at hand, it is necessary
to give a short summary description of the creation of man, in order that the
incarnation of Christ may afterwards be better understood. Also because of the
pearls which in the course of his seeking fall more and more to man, are
imparted and disclosed to him. And it affords me a special joy to recreate
myself thus with God.
2. The creation of man has been carried
out in all the three Principles, that is, in the Father's eternal nature and
property, in the Son's eternal nature and property, and in this world's nature
and property. There was breathed into man, whom the verbum fiat created, the
threefold spirit for his life, from three principles and sources. By a triple
fiat was he created, understand what is corporeal and essential; and the will of
the heart of God introduced into him the spirit according to all the three
Principles. Understand this as follows
3. Man was created entirely in the
likeness of God. God manifested himself in humanity in an image which was to be
as himself. For God is all, and all has arisen from him; and because all is not
good, all, therefore, is not called God. For, as regards the pure Deity, God is
a light-flaming spirit, and dwells in nothing but in himself only; there is
nothing like unto him. But as regards the property of fire, wherefrom light is
generated, we know the property of fire to be nature, which is a cause of life,
movement and spirit, else there were no spirit, no light, nor any being, but an
eternal stillness; neither colours nor virtues, but only a groundlessness
without being.
4. And though the light of Majesty dwells
in the unground (groundlessness) and is not laid hold of by the fiery nature
and property, we are to consider the fire and light withal in the following way
The fire has and makes a terrible and consuming source. Now, there is in the
source a sinking down, like a dying, or freely giving itself up. And this free
surrendering falls into freedom out of the source, as into death, and yet there
is no death; but it descends thus a degree deeper into itself and is delivered
from the torment of the fire's anguish, and yet holds in keeping the sharpness
of the fire,-not indeed in anguish, but in freedom.
5. And now the freedom and unground is a
life, and becomes in itself a light; for the freedom receives the flash of the
anguishful source and becomes desirous of substantiality, and the desire makes
itself pregnant with substantiality from out of the freedom and gentleness. For
that which sinks down or turns away from the source of anguish, rejoices that
it is free from the anguish and draws the joy into itself, and passes with its
will out of itself, and this the life and spirit of joy. To express which we
should require an angelic tongue. But in this connection we will give to the
reader that loveth God a short intimation to reflect upon, in order to
understand the heavenly substantiality.
6. For in God all is power, spirit and
life; but what is substance is not spirit. That which sinks down from fire, as
in powerlessness, that is substance. For spirit stands in fire, but separates
into two sources, namely one in fire, and one in the sinking down into freedom
in the light. The latter is called God, for it is gentle and lovely, and has
within it the kingdom of joy. And the angelic world is understood in the
delapsing freedom of the substantiality.
7. And because we were gone out from the
freedom of the angelic world into the dark source, with fire as its abyss,
there was no remedy for us unless the power and Word of the light, as a Word of
the divine Life, became a man, and brought us out of the darkness through the
torment of fire, through the death in fire, again into the freedom of the
divine Life, into the divine essentiality. Therefore Christ had to die, and
with the soul's spirit pass through the fire of the eternal Nature, that is,
through the hell and wrath of the eternal Nature, into the divine essentiality,
and make our soul a way through death and wrath, in which path we might with
him and in him enter through death into the eternal divine Life.
8. But regarding the divine essentiality,
that is, regarding the divine corporeity, we are to understand as follows: The
light gives gentleness as a love; now the fire's anguish desires gentleness
that it may allay its great thirst; for the fire is desiring and the gentleness
is giving, for it gives itself. Thus in the desire of the gentleness being is
produced, as a substantial essentiality which has escaped from the fierceness,
which freely gives its own life: such is corporeity. For through the power in
the gentleness it becomes substantial, and is attracted and retained by the
sourness, viz. by the eternal fiat. And it is therefore called substantiality
or corporeity because it is fallen down to the fire-source and spirit, and is
relatively to spirit as dumb, dead or powerless, although it is an essential
life.
9. You must understand us aright. When God
created the angels, two Principles only were manifest and in being, viz. the
existence in fire and light, to wit, as involving the fierce essentiality in
the severe, sour fiat, along with the forms of the fiery nature, and, secondly,
as involving the heavenly essentiality from the holy power along with the
water-fountain of gentleness of the life of joy, in which, as in love and
gentleness, the divine sulphur was generated; its flat was God's desiring will.
10. From this divine Essence, as from
God's nature, the angels as creatures were created. Their spirit or source of
life stands in fire; for without fire no spirit exists. But it passed out of
the fire into the light; there it received the source of love. And the fire was
only a cause of its life; but the fire's fierceness was extinguished by the
love in the light.
11. Lucifer despised this, and remained a
spirit of fire. Thus, he elevated himself and kindled in his locus the
essentiality, from which earth and stones were produced; and he was cast out.
Here commenced the third corporeity and the third Principle, along with the
kingdom of this world.
12. As the devil was cast out of the third
Principle into the darkness, God created another image in his likeness for this
region. But if it was to be God's likeness according to all the three
Principles, it had to be taken from all three, and from every entity of this
region, so far as the fiat had at the creation put itself forth in the ether in
connection with Lucifer's princely throne. For man came in Lucifer's place; and
hence the great envy of the devils, that they
beteem not man that honour, but lead him
continually by the evil corrupt way, in order that they may augment their
kingdom. And they do this in defiance of gentleness or God's love. Further,
they suppose, because they live in the fierceness of the strong might, they are
higher than God's Spirit, which consists in love and gentleness.
13. Thus the Will-spirit of God or the
holy Spirit has disposed the twofold fiat into two principles, namely, the
inner in the angelic world and the external in this outer world, and has
created man (Mesch or Mensch) as a mixed person. For he was to be an image of the
outer and inner world, and was to rule by the inner quality over the outer in
this way he would have been God's likeness; for the outer nature was suspended
to the inner.
14. And we are further to consider the
coming and origin of man. God created his body from the matrix of the earth,
from which the earth was created. All was mixed up, and yet was divided into
three Principles coextensive with three kinds of essence, and nevertheless that
in the fierce wrath was not known. If Adam had but remained in innocency, he
would have lived all the time of this world in two Principles only, and would
have ruled by one over all; the fierce wrathful kingdom would never have been
known or manifest in him, although he had in himself this kingdom.
15. Adam's body was created by the inner
fiat from the inner element, wherein lies the inner firmament and heaven with
the heavenly essences; and, secondly, it was created by the outer fiat from the
four elements of the external nature and from the stars. For in the matrix of
the earth this was mixed up.
Of the insufflation of soul and spirit
16. The body is a likeness according to
the substantiality of God, and the soul and spirit is a likeness according to
the Holy Trinity. God gave to the body his substantiality from the three
Principles, and spirit and soul from the fountain of the threefold Spirit of
the omnipresent Deity. And we are to understand that the soul with its image
and its outward spirit has come from three principles, and. has been inbreathed
and introduced into the body, as Moses attests: God breathed into man's
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul (Gen. ii. 7).
17. Now the breath and spirit of God
includes three kinds of sources. In the first Principle it is a fire-breath or
spirit, which is the true cause of life and stands in the Father's quality, as
in the centre of the fiery nature. In the second Principle God's breath or
spirit is the light-flaming love-spirit, the true spirit of the very Godhead,
which spirit is called God the Holy Spirit. In the third Principle, as in the
similitude of God, God's breath is the air-spirit, upon which the Holy Spirit
sweeps along, as David says: The Lord walketh upon the wings of the wind (Ps.
civ. 3); and Moses says: The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,
upon the gulf where the air [spiritus mundi] arises (Gen. i. 2).
18. This threefold spirit has the total
God inbreathed and introduced into the created image from all the three
Principles. First, the fire-spirit, which He introduced into man from within,
not by the nostrils, but into the heart, into the twofold tincture of the inner
and outer blood, although the outer was not known, but was mystery. The inner,
however, was in evidence and had two tinctures, one derived from fire and the
other from light. This fire-spirit is the true essential soul, for it has the
centrum naturae with its four forms as its fire-power. It kindles itself the
fire, and makes itself the wheel of the essences.
19. It is not indeed the true image
according to the Deity, but a magical everlasting fire, which has never had any
beginning, neither will it have any end. Understand that God has introduced the
eternal unoriginated fire (which from eternity has existed in itself, in the
eternal Magia, viz. in the will of God, in the desire of the eternal Nature, as
an eternal parturient centre); for this image was to be a likeness according to
Him.
20. Secondly, at the same time as the
soul's essential fire the Holy Spirit introduced the light-
flaming love-spirit out of itself into
man, moreover in the second Principle only, wherein the Deity is understood;
not at the nostrils, but as fire and light are suspended to one another and are
one, although in two sources. Thus the good love-spirit was introduced into his
heart with the essential fire-spirit, and each source brought with it its own
tincture as a special life of its own. And in the love-tincture is understood
the true spirit, which is the image of God, a likeness according to the clear
true Deity, and resembles the whole man, likewise fills the whole man, but in
its Principle.
21. The soul is in and by itself an eye of
fire or a mirror of fire, in which the Deity has manifested itself according to
the first Principle, that is, according to nature; for it is a creature, yet
not created into a likeness. But its image, which it generates out of its eye
of fire into light, is the true creature, for the sake of which God became man
and brought it again into the holy Ternary out of the wrath of the eternal
Nature.
22. The soul and its image are certainly
together one spirit; but the soul is a hungry fire and must have substance,
else it becomes a hungry dark abyss, as the devils are become such. The soul
makes fire and life, and the gentleness of the image makes love and heavenly
essentiality. Thus the soul's fire is attempered and filled with love; for the
image has water from God's fountain, and it flows forth into life eternal; this
water is love and gentleness, and it draws it out of the Majesty of God. As may
be seen in a kindled fire, that the fire in itself has a fierce fervent
quality, and the light a gentle gracious quality; and as in the deep of this
world water is produced from light and air, so in like manner also here.
23. Thirdly, God had breathed into man's
nostrils at the same time and at once the spirit of this world with the source
of the stars and elements, that is, the air [spiritus mundi]. He was to be a
ruler in the outer kingdom and open up the wonders of the outer world, to which
end God created man also unto the outward life. But the outward spirit was not
to encroach upon the image of God, nor was the image of God' to lodge within it
the outward spirit and suffer that to rule over it, for its aliment was from
God's Word and power. And the outer body had paradisaic food,-not taken into
the worm-bag or carcass, for this appendage he had not. Further, he had neither
masculine nor feminine form, for he was them both, and had both tinctures, viz.
of soul and spirit, of fire and light, and was to produce another man from
himself according to his likeness. He was a chaste virgin in pure love; he
loved himself and made himself pregnant by imagination, and in such wise was
his reproduction. He was a lord over the stars and elements, a likeness,
according to God. As God dwells in the stars and elements, and nothing seizes
Him, He rules over everything: so was man created. The earthly source was not
fully active in him. He had indeed the air-spirit, but heat and cold were not
to affect him, for God's essentiality penetrated all. As
24. Fourthly, by the introduction of his
fair heavenly image into the Spirit of God, Adam received also the living Word of
God, and this was the nutriment of his soul and image. The same living Word was
surrounded with the divine Virgin of wisdom; and the soul's image stood in the
virgin image which in the Deity had been seen from eternity. The pure image of
Adam came from the wisdom of God. For God willed to see and manifest himself
thus in an image, and that was the likeness according to God's Spirit,
according to the Triad, an image entirely chaste, like the angels of God. In
this image Adam was the child of God,-not only a likeness, but a child, born of
God, of the Being of all beings.
25. Thus it has been briefly stated what
kind of image Adam was before his fall and how God has created him, in order to
attain a better understanding why God's Word became man, how that has come to
pass and what it has brought about.
CHAPTER
IV
OF THE PARADISAIC SPHERE AND DOMINION, SHOWING HOW IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IF
MAN HAD REMAINED IN INNOCENCY
1. THE devil has many objections whereby
he seeks to excuse himself, saying that God has created him thus, although his
primitive angelic form, his source and his image always convict him of being a
liar. And so is he also to poor fallen man: he continually introduces into him
the earthly kingdom with its power and faculty, that he may have a permanent
mirror before him and also accuse God of having created him earthly and evil.
But he leaves out of view what is best, namely
2. Seeing then this is so much concealed
to us poor children of Eve, and indeed the earthly wretch is not worthy of
knowing it, and yet such knowledge is very necessary to our minds; it is highly
needful for us to flee to the true janitor (who has the key to open), to
supplicate him, and give ourselves up wholly to him, that he be willing to open
to us the gate of Paradise in the inner centre of our image, so that the
paradisiacal light may shine upon us in our minds and that we may thus become
desirous to dwell again with our Immanuel according to the inner and new man in
Paradise; for without this opening we should understand nothing of Paradise and
of our primitive image in innocence.
3. But as Christ, the Son of God, has
generated us again to the paradisaic form, we ought not to be so indolent as to
rely upon art and earthly reason. We shall not find
everyone who is born again of God knows
his mother, not with earthly eyes, but with divine eyes, and with the eyes of
the mother of whom he is born. We give in all sincerity to the reader to
reflect as to what he is to do, and from what spirit and understanding we will
write.
4. The reason of the outer world insists
on maintaining that God has created man unto, the outer dominion, unto the
source of the stars and four elements. If that were, he would have been created
unto anguish and death, for the astral heaven has its term; when it reaches
that, it abandons the creature of which it was the leader. Then the dominion
and being of the creature, who is subject to the outer heaven, passes away; and
we see indeed how we decay and die when the outer heaven with the elements
abandons us, so that even a child in the womb is already old enough to die,
moreover often perishes while it is yet without life and in the fiat of the
outer dominion, in the process of growth of body, before the centrum naturae
kindles the fire of the soul. We undoubtedly know death and dying through the
fall of Adam, that Adam (as soon as he became earthly) died to
5. But because God did forbid Adam to
touch the earthly fruit, which was mixed, and besides did create but one man,
with masculine and feminine property, with the two tinctures, viz. of fire and
light in love, and brought him at once into Paradise (yea, he was created in
Paradise), we cannot admit the conclusions of Reason which, in consequence of
the devil's infection, says that man has been created earthly. For whatever is
created solely and alone from the earthly life or source is animal, has
beginning and end, and attains not eternity, for it issues not from thence.
Now, that which issues not from the Eternal is transitory, and a mere mirror,
in which the eternal wisdom has beheld itself as in a figure and likeness.
There remains of it nothing but a shadow without life or being; it passes like
a wind, which has risen and again subsides. For the sake of such a creature the
Word of God did not become man; the Eternal has not entered into the perishable
nature on account of what is transitory. Neither has it entered into what is
earthly on the ground that it will raise and introduce the earthly and
perishable into the power of Majesty; but for the sake of that which had arisen
from the power of Majesty, but had become evil and earthly, and as it were
eclipsed in death, that it might again quicken, awaken and raise it into the
power of Majesty, into the abode in which it was, before it was a creature.
6. We must understand man differently than
we have done hitherto in regarding him as an animal. He has indeed become
animal, according to the property of this world; by dying in Adam, he lives
thereafter to this world and not to God. But if he entered with the spirit of
his will into God, the willspirit would obtain again the noble image and would
live according to this image in God, and according to the animal property in
this world. Thus he was in death and yet was alive. And so then the Word of God
became man in order that it might unite him again to God, that he might be
entirely born again in God, and that
7. Thus, we are to consider the paradisaic
image. We say and know that Adam was created good, pure and without blemish, as
well as Lucifer with his hosts. He had pure eyes, and that doubly. For he had
both kingdoms in himself, viz. God's kingdom and the kingdom of this world. As
God is Lord of all, so also was man, in the power of God, to be lord of this
world. As God has rule over everything and passes through everything,
imperceptibly to the thing;
so was the hidden divine man able to pass
into and see into all things. The external man was indeed in the external, but
lord of the external; it was subject to him and restricted him not. He could
without effort have broken rocks. The tincture of the earth was discernible to
him; he would have found out all the marvels of the earth. For to this end Adam
was created also unto the outward life, that he should manifest in figures and
carry into works what had been seen in the eternal wisdom; for he had virgin
Wisdom in him.
8. Gold, silver and the precious metals
have indeed also, passing out of the heavenly magia, been shut up in this way
by the enkindling. What we have here is something different from the earth. Man
loves it well and employs it for his support, but he knows not its ground and
origin. It is not for nothing that it is loved by the mind; it has a high
origin, if we reflect on it. But we properly say nothing of it in this place,
because without that man loves it too much, and thereby withdraws himself from
the Spirit of God. One ought not to love the body more than the spirit, for the
spirit is the life.
9. But know that it was given to man for
his sport and ornament, he had -it by right of nature; it belonged to him,
namely to the outer body, for the outer body with its tincture and the
metalline tincture are near akin. But when the tincture of the outer body was
corrupted by the evil desire of the devil, the metalline tincture also became
concealed from the human tincture and was hostile to it; for it is purer than
the corrupted tincture in the outer man.
10. And let this be plain to you, ye
seekers of the metalline tincture: If you would find the lapis philosophorum,
set yourselves to attain the new birth in Christ, else it will be difficult for
you to apprehend it. For it has considerable fellowship with the heavenly
substantiality, which would be well seen if it were released from the fierce
wrath. Its lustre indicates something which we should certainly recognize, if
we had paradisaic eyes. The affective foundation (das Gemüth) shows us that
indeed, but the understanding and full cognition are dead as to
11. Man was created to be a lord of the
tincture, and it was subject to him; but he became its servant, and moreover
alien to it. Thus, he seeks only for gold and finds earth. Because he abandoned
the spirit and went with his spirit into substance, substance has taken him
prisoner and shut him up in death. As the tincture of the earth is shut up in
the wrath till the judgment of God, so also is the spirit of man shut up in the
wrath, unless he go out and be born in God. For the devil wished to be
sovereign prince with his wrath in the heavenly Essentiality; therefore it
became closed to him and took the form of earth and stones, so that he is not a
prince, but a prisoner in the wrath, and the Essentiality profits him nothing.
For he is spirit and despised the heavenly Essentiality, and kindled the mother
of nature, which forthwith made all corporeal; and this the Spirit of God
brought together into an amassment. It could however be known to man. He had
power to disclose the tincture and bring forth the noble pearl for his sport
and joy, as well as to the honour and mirificence of God, if he had remained in
innocency.
1 Bury in his translation, in a note on
the word Gemilth, says: ' St-Martin n'a rien trouve de mieux pour le rendre en
français que 1'expression base affective. C'est en effet la base, le centre
d'ou emanent nos pensees, et, dans l'ordre inferieur de notre etre, la base de
nos inclinations; en elle aussi se produisent les sensations morales et s'opbre
la regeneration.'
12. As regards man's eating and drinking,
by which he was to furnish substance and aliment to his fire, it was thus: He
had two kinds of fire in himself, the soul's fire and the outer fire of the sun
and stars. Now, every fire must have sulphur or substance, else it does not
subsist, that is, it burns not. We have sufficient of this to understand the
divine nature which would have been man's food. For, as stated above,, the
soul's fire is fed with God's love, gentleness and essentiality, with all that
the Word as the divine centre brings forth. For the soul comes from the eternal
magical fire; it must have also magical food, that is, by the imagination. If
it has God's image, it imaginates into God's love, into the divine
essentiality, and eats of God's food, of the food of the angels. But if not,
then it eats of that into which its imagination enters, viz. of the earthly or
hellish source. And into this matrix it also falls, not with itself as a
substance, but it is filled with such, and the same begins to operate in it
like a poison does in the flesh.
13. We know also sufficiently the
alimentation of the outer body. The outer man indeed was; yet he was as it were
half swallowed up by the inner man. The inner ruled through and through, like
fire in glowing iron, and each life took its food from its property. The image
of God, or the soul's spirit, ate of the heavenly divine essentiality, and the
outer body ate paradisaic fruit in the mouth and not in the belly. For as the
outer body was as it were half swallowed up in the inner, so in like manner was
the fruit of
14. And we are to understand further how
God dwells in this world, and the world is as it were swallowed up in Him. It
is in Him unpowerful and He himself all-powerful. So was man, and so did he
eat: his earthly eating was heavenly. Just as we know that we must be born
again, so was the paradisaic fruit born from the wrath again in heavenly
essence; or as we see that from the bitter earth grows a good sweet herb, which
the sun qualifies in a different manner than the earth has qualified it. In
such a way did the holy man qualify the paradisaic fruit in his mouth, so that
the earthliness was swallowed up as a nothing, and touched not man; or as we
know that in the end the earth will be swallowed up, and no longer be a
palpable body.
15. Thus was even man's external eating.
He ate the fruit with his mouth, and required no teeth to do that, for at this
point appeared the separation of power. There were two centres of power in
Adam's mouth, each of them took its due. What was earthly became transformed
into heavenly quality, as we, know that we shall in our body be changed, and be
made a body of heavenly power. So likewise was the transmutation in the mouth;
and the body received the power, for the
16. His work in
17. In like manner with regard to his
drinking. The inner man drank the water of eternal life from God's nature, and
the outer man drank water on the earth. But as the sun and the air absorb water
and yet are not filled therewith, so it was in the mouth of man: such
absorption separated into mystery. All that was earthly had by man's mouth to
enter again into that which it was before the creation of the world. The spirit
and virtue thereof pertain to man, and not an earthly body; for God created for
him once for all a body, which was eternal. He needed not another creative act.
He was a princely throne (understand Adam), made out of heaven, earth, stars
and elements, as well as out of God's essence, a lord of the world and a child
of God.
18. Observe it, ye Philosophers i It is
the true ground and highly known. Mix no verbiage of the schools with it, it is
clear enough. Opinion will not do; but the true spirit, born of God, knows it
aright. All opinion without knowledge is a terrestrial fool, understanding
earth and four elements; but the Spirit of God understands but one element,
wherein four lie hidden. Not four were to rule in Adam, but one over four; the
heavenly element over the four elements of this world. Accordingly we must
rebegin to be if we would possess
19. Let it be told you, ye academic
disputers: you walk round the circle and enter not, like a cat, which fears the
heat, walks round the hot broth; thus are ye afraid and ashamed before the fire
of God. And as little as the cat enjoys the broth by smelling only round the
rim, so little also does man enjoy the paradisaic fruit, unless he go out from
Adam's skin, which the devil has soiled, and enter into the new birth of
Christ. He must enter into the circle, and cast off the skin of reason; then he
obtains human understanding and divine knowledge; no learning will avail, but
only being born.
CHAPTER
V
OF THE LAMENTABLE AND MISERABLE FALL OF MAN
1. IF we are to describe clearly the
incarnation of Jesus Christ, it will be necessary to expound to you the causes
for which God has become man. It is not a small thing or a nothing as the Jews
and Turks regard it, and even with the Christians is half meaningless; it
cannot but be a very considerable cause, for which the immutable God put
himself in motion. Mark then this, we will expound to you the causes.
2. Adam was a man, and an image of God, a
complete likeness according to God, although God is no image. He is the kingdom
and the power, also the glory and eternity, all in all. But the ungrounded deep
desired to manifest itself in similitudes; and indeed such a manifestation has
taken place from eternity in the wisdom of God, as in a virgin figure, which
however was not a genetrix, but a mirror of the Deity and eternity as present
in the ground and unground, an eye of the glory of God. And according to the
same eye and in it were created the thrones of princes as angels, and lastly
man, who had again the throne in himself; just as he had been created from the
eternal magia, from God's Essence, from nothing into something, from spirit
into body. And as the eternal magia had generated him out of itself, in the eye
of the wonders and wisdom of God, so likewise he could and was to bring forth
out of himself another man in a magical way, without dilaceration of his body;
for he was conceived in God's longing, and had been generated and brought to
light by the desiring of God. And consequently he had the same longing in
himself for his own gravidation. For the tincture of Venus is the matrix, and
it becomes pregnant with substance, as with sulphur in the fire, which yet
attains to substance in, the water of Venus. The tincture of fire gives soul,
and the tincture of light gives spirit, and water or substance gives body, and
Mercury or the centrum naturae gives the wheel of the essences and the great
life in fire and water, heavenly and earthly; and Salt, heavenly and earthly,
maintains this in being, for it (Salt) is the fiat.
3. For as man has in himself the external
constellation, which is his wheel of essences of the outer world and the cause
of the affective foundation (Gemuth); so also he has the internal
constellation, of the centre of the fiery essences, and, in the second
Principle, that of the light-flaming Divine essences. He had the whole magia of
the Being of all beings in himself. The possibility was in him: he was able to
beget in a magical way, for he loved himself, and in turn from out of his
centre desired likeness. As he had been conceived from God's desiring, and
brought to light by the genetrix in the fiat, so likewise was he to bring to
light his angelic or human host.
4. But whether all were to be generated
from one, i.e. from the princely throne, or one from another, it is not
necessary to know, for the purpose is broken. It suffices us to know what we
are and what our kingdom is. I find, however, in the deep, in the centre, that
one was to arise from another; for the heavenly centre as well as the earthly
has its minutes, which are always striking, since the wheel with the essences
in all the three Principles is ever going, and discloses continually one wonder
after another. Thus was constructed and composed the image of man in the wisdom
of God, wherein lie innumerable wonders; these were to be opened up by the
human host. And undoubtedly in the course of time a greater wonder would have
been revealed in one than in another, all according to the wonderful variations
of the heavenly and earthly begetting; as indeed is the case even to-day, so
that more art and understanding of the wonders is found in one individual than
in another. Therefore I conclude that one man was to have arisen and been born
from another, in connection with the great wonders and for man's joy and
delight, as each man would have brought forth the fellow of himself.
Accordingly the human race would have remained in process of birth till God had
placed the third Principle of this world in its ether again, for it is a globe
with beginning and end. When the beginning reaches the end, so that the last
comes into the first, all is finished and complete. Then will the middle be
repurified and enter again into that which it was before the times of this
world, except the wonders which persist in God's wisdom, in the great magia, as
a shadow of this world.
5. Seeing then Adam was such a glorious
image, and moreover, in the place of Lucifer who had been cast out, the devil
grudged him this position, was violently envious of him, and set his mark and
craving continually before Adam, slipped with his craving into the earthliness
of the fruit, and made Adam believe that great glory resided in his enkindled
earthliness. Albeit Adam knew him not; for he did not come in his own form, but
in that of the serpent, as in the form of an artful beast; he practised apish
tricks like a fowler, who beguiles birds and catches them. He had moreover with
his itch of pride infected and half killed the earthly kingdom, by which it
became so thoroughly tainted and vain, though it would gladly have been
delivered from vanity. And as it felt that Adam was a child of God and
possessed glory and power, it longed vehemently after him. The enkindled wrath
of God also longed after Adam, in order to delectate itself in this living
image.
6. Thus all drew Adam and desired to have
him. The kingdom of heaven desired to have him, for he was created for it. In
like manner the earthly kingdom desired to have him, for it had a part in him;
it wanted to be his master, because he was but a creature. So likewise the
fierce wrath opened wide its jaws, and wished to be creaturely and essential,
in order to satisfy its great and fierce hunger. Adam, then, was tried forty
days, as long as Christ was tempted in the wilderness, and Israel at mount
Sinai, when God gave them the law, to see whether it were possible that this
people could stand firm in the qualification of the Father, in the law, before
God; whether man could remain in obedience, in such a sense that he would place
his imagination in God, so that God would not need to become man: on which
account God did such wonders in Egypt, that man should see that there is a God,
and should love and fear Him. But the devil was a liar and deceiver,
7. Reason says: Had then the devil such
power? Yes, dear man, and man has it too; he can overturn mountains, if he
enter strongly with his imagination. The devil has issued from the great magia
of God and was a prince or king of this throne. He entered into the strongest
might of fire, with the intention to be lord over all the host of heaven. Thus
the magia became enkindled and the great turba generated, which struggled with
Adam to see if he would be strong enough to possess the devil's kingdom and
rule there in another source. Adam's spirit of reason, it is true, did not
understand this; but the magical essences, from whence desire and will arise,
contended one against another, till Adam began to imaginate after earthliness
and wished to have earthly fruit. So it was done. For his noble image, which
was to eat only of the Word of God, became infected and obscured: the earthly
tree of temptation grew up at once, for Adam's lust had desired and permitted
this. He had to be tempted, to see if he could stand firm. Then came the severe
command from God, and said to Adam: Thou shalt eat of every tree in Paradise,
but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil shalt thou not eat, for in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die the death, that is to say, die to
the kingdom of heaven and become earthly (Gen. ii. 16, 17). Adam knew the
command well, ate not thereof, but he imaginated thereinto and was taken
prisoner in his imagination, and wholly without vigour, feeble and weak, he was
vanquished; then he dropped down into sleep.
8. Thus he fell to the magia and his glory
was lost. For sleep indicates death and a subjugation. The earthly kingdom had
subjugated him, it wished to rule over him. The sidereal kingdom desired to
have Adam and accomplish its wonders by him, for no other creature had been so
highly elevated as man, who was able to attain the sidereal kingdom. Therefore
Adam was drawn and duly tempted, to try whether he could be a lord and king of
the stars and elements. The devil was at work and thought also to overthrow man
and bring him into his power, in order that this throne might remain finally
his kingdom; for he knew well that if man would go out from God's will, he
would become earthly. He also knew well that the abyss of hell lay in the
earthly kingdom; therefore he was now so busy. For if Adam had brought forth
magically,
9. Thus the fall of Adam lay entirely in
the earthly essence. He lost the heavenly essence, from which springs Divine
love, and acquired earthly essence, from which springs anger, malice, poison,
disease and misery; and also lost the heavenly eyes. Further, he could no longer
eat in the paradisaic way, but imaginated after the forbidden fruit, in which
evil and good are mixed, as are still in the present day all the fruits on
earth. And hence the four elements became active and effectually operative in
him, for his will by imagination took in the earthly kingdom to lodge in the
soul's fire. Thus he went out from God's Spirit into the spirit of the stars
and elements; these received him and rejoiced in him, for they came to be
living and powerful in him. Previously they were compelled to be submissive and
in constraint; now they obtained the dominion.
10. Whereupon the devil will have laughed
and mocked at God; but he knew not what was behind; he knew as yet nothing of
the serpent-bruiser, who was to take away his throne and destroy his kingdom.
And so Adam sank down into sleep, into the magia, for God saw that he could not
stand firm. Therefore he said: It is not good that man should be alone. We will
make him an help, to bear him company (Gen. ii. 18), through whom he may raise
up offspring and propagate himself. For he saw the fall and came to his aid in
another way, as he did not wish that his image should perish.
11. Reason says: Why did God let the tree
grow, by which Adam was tempted? It must thus have been His will that Adam was
tempted. Reason will, then, refer also the fall to God's will, and thinks that
God willed that Adam should fall. God, according to it, willed to have a
certain number of individuals in heaven and a certain number in hell, else he
would have prevented the evil and have preserved Adam, so that he would have
remained good and in Paradise. Thus the present world judges. For, it says, if
God had made nothing that was bad, there would be nothing bad, since all comes
from him, and he alone is the creator, who has made all. Accordingly, he has
made what is bad and what is good, else this could not be so. Reason insists on
maintaining this position absolutely. It thinks also that if there had been
nothing with which the devil and also man had been captivated, and come to be
evil, the devil would have remained an angel and man in
12. Answer: Yes, dear Reason, now you have
hit the mark; you cannot, then, fail of success if you are not blind. Hearken:
why sayest thou not to the light, wherefore sufferest thou the fire? how
delightful thou wouldst be, if thou didst not dwell in the fire. I would set up
my tent with thee, but thou dwellest in the fire; I cannot. Do but say to the
light: go out from the fire, then thou wilt be excellent and delightful. And if
the light obey you, you will find a great treasure. How you will rejoice if you
can dwell in the light, so that the fire does not burn you. Thus far goes
Reason.
13. But see aright with magical eyes,
understand with divine and also with natural eyes, then shall it be shown to
you, if you are not quite blind and dead. Behold, I give you this to understand
by similitude, seeing that Reason is a fool and understands nothing of the
Spirit of God. I suppose, then, that I have the power to take away the light from
the fire (which however cannot be) and see what would follow upon it. Consider!
If I take away the light from the fire, (1) the light loses its essence, by
which it shines; (2) it loses its life and becomes a powerlessness; (3) it is
seized and overcome by the darkness, extinguished in itself and becomes a
nothingness, for it is the eternal freedom and a groundlessness; while it
shines, it is good, and when it is extinguished, it is nothing.
14. Consider further! What have I
remaining of the fire if I take away the light and lustre from it? Nothing but
a dry hunger and a darkness. It loses essence and life, is anhungered and
becomes likewise a nothingness. Its former sulphur is a death; it consumes
itself as long as the essence exists. When the essence is no more, there is a
nothingness or
groundlessness, where no vestige remains.
15. And so, dear seeking soul, meditate
thereon thus: God is the eternal light, and his power and source dwell in the
light. The light produces gentleness, and from the gentleness being is
produced; this being is God's being, and the source of the light is the Spirit
of God, which is the origin. There is no other God than this very God. In the
light is the power, and the power is the kingdom. But now the light and the
power have only a love-will, which desires nothing bad; it desires indeed
being, but from its own essence, understand from love and sweetness, for that
is like the light. But now the light arises from fire, and without the fire it
would be nothing, it would have no essence without fire. Fire causes life and
movement and is nature, but has a different will from the light. For it is a
rage or greed, and desires only to consume. It takes only, and mounts in pride;
whereas the light takes not, but gives, so that the fire is preserved. The
source of fire is fierceness, its essences are bitter, its sting is hostile and
disagreeable. It is an enmity in itself, it consumes itself; and if the light
comes not to its aid, it devours itself, so that it becomes a nothing.
16. Therefore, dear seeking soul, consider
this, and thou wilt soon attain to peace and to the goal. God is from eternity
the power and the light, and is called God according to the light and according
to the power of the light, according to the spirit of light and not according
to the spirit of fire. For the spirit of fire is called his wrath, anger, and
is not denominated God, but a consuming fire of the might of God. The fire is
called nature and the light is not called nature; it has indeed the fire's
property, but transmuted, from wrath into love, from devouring and consuming
into bringing forth, from enmity and bitter woe into gentle beneficence,
amiable desire and 'sempiternal fulness; for the love-desire draws the
gentleness of the light into itself, and is a pregnant virgin, that is,
pregnant with the understanding and wisdom of the power of the Deity.
17. Thus, we are able highly to recognize
what is God and nature, the ground and the unground, and also the deep of
eternity. We recognize, then, that the eternal fire is magical and is generated
in the desiring will. If then the eternal and unfathomable is magical, that
also is magical which is born from the eternal, for from desire all things have
arisen. Heaven and earth are magical, likewise the mind with the senses; if we
would but once know ourselves.
18. Now what can the light do if the fire
lays hold of and swallows up something, when, however, the object laid hold of
by the fire is also magical? If it has a life and the power and understanding
of the light, why does it then run into the fire? The devil was an angel and
Adam an image of God; they both had the fire and the light, moreover, the
divine understanding in them. Why did the devil imaginate into the fire and
Adam after the earth? They were free. The light and power of God drew not the
devil into fire, but the wrath of nature. Why did his spirit consent? What
Magic has made for itself, that it has had. The devil made for himself hell,
and that he had. Adam made himself earthly, and that he is. God is not a
creature nor a maker, but a Spirit and a Revealer. On creation taking place,
the position may be considered and apprehended thus: Fire and light have at the
same time awakened in desire, and have desired a mirror or image according to
eternity; yet we find by real knowledge that fierceness or the fire's nature is
not a maker; it has made nothing substantial from itself, for that cannot
possibly be; but it has made spirit and source. Now, no creature has its
subsistence in essence only. If a creature is to exist, it must be by means of
substance, as by power or sulphur, it must consist of spiritual salt; and then
from the fire-source arises a mercury and a true essential life; it must
besides have lustre, if intelligence and cognition are to be found within.
19. Thus, we know that every creature has
its subsistence in spiritual sulphur, mercury and salt, but spirit alone does
not accomplish this; there must be sulphur, wherein is the fiat, viz. the sour
matrix for the centrum naturae, in which the spirit is upheld, that is, there
must be substance. For where there is no substance, there is no shaping. A
creaturely spirit is not a comprehensible being; it must draw substance into
itself by its imagination, else it would not subsist.
20. If the devil drew fierceness into his
spirit, and man earthliness, what could the love of the essentiality of God do
to that? For the love and gentleness of God with the divine essence was
presented and offered to the devil, as well as to man. Who shall accuse God?
That the wrathful essence was too strong in the devil, so that it vanquished
the loveessence: what can God do to that? If a good tree be planted, and yet
perishes, what can the earth do? It imparts to it nevertheless sap and energy.
Why does the tree not draw them to itself? Thou wilt say: Its essences are too
feeble. But what can the earth do, or even he who planted the tree? His will is
only that he wishes to raise for his pleasure a good tree, and thinks to enjoy
its fruit. If he knew that the tree would perish, he would never plant it.
21. We are then to recognize that the
angels were created, not as a tree that is planted, but from the motion of God,
from both principles, viz. light and darkness, in which darkness fire lay
hidden. Fire burned not at creation and in the motion, as it burns not at this
day, for it has its own principle. Why did Lucifer awaken it? The will arose
from his creaturely being, and not outside of him. He wished to be a lord over
fire and light; he wished to extinguish the light, and despised gentleness; he
wished to be a fire-lord. Seeing then he despised the light and his birth in
gentleness, he was justly cast out. Thus he lost fire and light, and has to
dwell in the abyss in darkness. If he will have fire, he must kindle it for himself,
and inflame it with his malice in the imagination. Yet such fire does not
properly burn for him, but only in the fierce essential source, according as
the four forms in the centrum naturae furnish it in themselves. The first form
is sour, hard, rough and cold; the second form in the centre is bitter,
stinging, hostile; the third form is anxiety, pain and torment; and with the
anxiety, as in movement and life, he [Lucifer] strikes fire in, the hard
sourness, between the hardness and bitter sting, so that it shines forth like a
flash of lightning, which is the fourth form. And if there be no gentleness or
essence of gentleness, it gives no light, but only a flash; for the anguish
will have freedom, but is too sharp, and attains it only as a flash, that is to
say, fire, yet possesses no stability or foundation. Hence the devil must dwell
in darkness, and has only the fiery flash in himself; moreover the whole figure
of his dwelling is like a fiery flash, as if there were thunder pealing: thus
does the hellish proprium present itself in the source.
22. In like manner we are to understand
regarding the tree of temptation which Adam awakened by his imagination: he
desired, and the matrix naturae presented to him what he desired. God forbad him
to touch it; but the earthly matrix would have Adam, for it recognized in him
the divine power. Because it had become earthly by the devil's enkindling,
although not quite dead, it longed after that which it was before, viz. after
Freedom, to be delivered from vanity; and in Adam was freedom.
23. Accordingly it drew Adam, so that he
began to imaginate; and thus Adam lusted against God's command and will, as
Paul says: The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh
(Gal. v. 17). Adam's flesh was half heavenly and half earthly, and thus Adam's
spirit had also brought by imagination a power into the earth, and so the
matrix naturae gave him what he wished. He had to be tempted, to see whether he
would stand steadfast as an angel in the place of Lucifer. Therefore God
created him not merely as an angel, so that, if he should fall and not remain
firm, He might help him, that he might not perish in the fierce wrath like
Lucifer. On this account Adam was created from
matter, and his spirit was introduced into
matter, viz. into a sulphur of water and fire, that God might be able to
ingenerate in him a new life again: as a fair sweet-smelling flower grows from
the earth. Hence also the purpose of God, because He knew that Adam would not
stand. Therefore Paul also says: We are foreordained in Christ Jesus before
says
the foundation of the world; that is, when
Lucifer fell, the foundation of the world was not yet laid, and yet man was
already seen in the wisdom of God. If, however, he was to be created from the
three Principles, there was already danger, on account of the enkindled sulphur
of the materials. And though he was created above the earth, yet the sulphur
was extracted from out of the matrix of the earth, as a fair blossom out of the
earth, and danger already existed. And here the sweet name Jesus has
formatively introduced itself as a saviour and regenerator; for man is the
greatest mystery that God has produced. He has the figure in which it is shown
how the Divine Nature has from eternity progenerated itself out of the
fierceness, out of fire, by sinking down, by dying, into another principle of
another source. So also is he rebegotten out of death, and grows up out of
death in another principle of another source and power, where he is wholly
freed from earthliness.
24. And it is very beneficial to us that
we have as regards the earthly part fallen to the share of the earth, if at the
same time, however, we obtain the divine part. For thus we are made quite pure,
and come again into God's kingdom wholly perfect, apart from any craving of the
devil. We are a much greater mystery than the angels. We shall also surpass
them in heavenly essence. For they are flames of fire, illustrate with the
light; but we attain the great
fountain of gentleness and love which
springs in God's holy Essence.
25. Therefore they deal falsely and
wrongly who say, that God willeth not to have all men in heaven. He willeth
that all should be saved; it is the fault of man himself, in that he will not
suffer himself to be saved. And though many a one be of evil tendency, this is
not from God, but from the matrix naturae. Wouldest thou accuse God? Thou
liest; God's Spirit withdraws itself from no one. Cast thy wickedness away, and
enter into gentleness, into truth, into love, and give thyself up to God; then
thou wilt be saved; for Jesus is therefore born, because he willeth to save.
Thou sayest: I am held, so that I cannot. Yes forsooth! thou dost will to have
it so; likewise did the devil will to have it. If thou art a Knight, why
fightest thou not against evil? But if thou fightest against the good, thou art
an enemy of God. Dost thou suppose that God will put an angelic crown upon the
devil? If thou art an enemy, thou art not a friend. If thou wilt be a friend, abandon
enmity and go to the Father, then thou art a son. Wherefore whoever accuses God
is a liar and murderer like the devil. Thou art in fact thine own maker, why
dost thou make thyself bad? Even though thou be a bad kind of material, God
hath given thee his heart and spirit. Use these gifts for the making of
thyself, and thou wilt make thyself good. But if thou usest covetousness and
pride, and also the pleasure of the earthly life, what can God do to that?
Shall God moreover seat himself in thy contemptible pride? No, that is not his
source. But thou wilt say: I am an evil source, and cannot, I am held. Well
now, let the evil source alone, and enter with thy will-spirit into the
love-spirit of God, give thyself up to his mercy; thou shalt certainly be delivered
one day from the evil source. The evil source is born of the earth. When the
earth receives the body, it can take to itself the badness belonging to it; but
thou art and remainest a spirit in the will of God, in his love. Let the evil
Adam die; a new and good one will bud forth to thee from the old, as a fair
flower grows forth out of stinking dung. Only have a care to maintain the
spirit in God. There need be no great concern for the evil body, which is full
of evil effects. If it be wickedly inclined, do it so much the less good; give
it not occasion to exercise lewdness. To keep it in restraint is a good remedy;
but to be high with drink and full of high feeding is to cast the evil ass up
to the neck into the mire, whereas it befouls itself sufficiently in the mud,
like a swine. To be sober, to lead a temperate life, is an excellent purgative
for the evil ass; not to give it what it longs for, to let it fast often, so
that it does not hinder prayer, is beneficial to it. It refuses indeed; but the
Understanding must be lord and master, for it bears God's image.
26. This in truth is not relished by the
world of Reason in the sphere of carnal pleasure. But because it relishes it
not, and instead thereof draws in and drinks up naught but evil earthly sensuality,
the wrath stirs within it, constantly makes it pass with Adam out of
27. It is a great misery that man is so
blind that he cannot recognize what God is, though he lives in God. There are
men again who forbid this, saying that inquiry should not be made as to what
God is, and would at the same time be regarded as teachers from God. Such are
indeed teachers from the devil, that he and his kingdom of hypocritical
falseness may not be revealed and known.
CHAPTER
VI
OF ADAM'S SLEEP, SHOWING HOW GOD DID MAKE OUT OF HIM A WOMAN, AND HOW HE
BECAME ENTIRELY EARTHLY, AND HOW GOD BY THE CURSE WITHDREW
1. WHEN man is weary and tired, he falls
into a sleep as into the magia. It is as if he were not in this world, for all
his sense-perceptions cease, the wheel of the essences enters into a state of
repose, it is as if he were essential and not substantial. He resembles only
the magia, for he knows nothing of his body; he lies as it were dead, and yet
is not dead; but the spirit stands still. Then the essences have their
fulfilment, and the spirit of the soul alone sees. Then is represented in the
sidereal spirit all that the astral heaven brings about, and is set magically
in the mind as a mirror, in which the spirit of the great world is taken much
with beholding, and conducts what it sees in the mirror into the essences, and
the essences spring therein, as if they accomplished the work in the spirit;
they pourtray moreover that in the spirit, as dreams and prefigurements.
2. We are tp recognize, then, that when
earthliness struggled with Adam and he imaginated into it, he was at once
infected thereby, and became in his soul dark and fierce; for the earthliness
began to be operative like a water that begins to seethe, the astral source was
aroused and was now lord of the body. Moses says then quite correctly: God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. That is, seeing that his will-spirit
longed after earthliness, God let him fall. For with the longing he introduced
earthliness into the heavenly essentiality, and that, the Spirit of God, which
is a Spirit of light, would not have. For Adam's spirit was a creature, and
went out from God's love-spirit. Certainly He abandoned him not willingly, but
earthliness had already caught him. And when He abandoned him, he sank down
into a powerlessness, and fell into the power of the third Principle, viz. to
the stars and to the four elements; thus he was involved in the earthly magia.
Yet he became not wholly earthly; he lay in mystery, hidden between God's
kingdom and the kingdom of this world, since the two fiats, the divine and the
earthly, were active in him; and the two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the
kingdom of hell, were now for the first time in conflict respecting man. If now
the precious name Jesus had not been imprinted in Adam, even prior to his
creation, as in the essentiality of God, wherein was the Virgin of the wisdom
of God, and in which Adam was created, he would assuredly still be sleeping and
be in the earthly death.
3. And this is the reason why the second
Adam, Christ, had to rest till the third day in the earth in the sleep of the
first Adam, and raise up again the first Adam out of earthliness. For Christ
had also a soul and spirit from Adam, and the precious Word of the Deity with
the Spirit of God raised up again in Christ's flesh the dead essentiality of
the sulphur, or the body which in Adam was dead, and restored it into the power
of the Majesty of God, and therewith us all.
4. All who by their faith and desire enter
into Christ's flesh and blood, into his death and rest in the earth, all these
bud forth with their spirit and will in the divine Essentiality, and are a fair
flower in the Majesty of God. And God, the eternal Word and the power, will at
the last day raise up in himself, by his Spirit, the dead body, which in Adam
has fallen into the power of the earth. For Christ's soul and flesh, which is
also our soul and flesh, that is, the part which Adam received from the divine
Essentiality, has God through and in the death of Christ separated from the
earthly nature, and raised it up and again introduced it into the divine
Essentiality, as it was before the times of the world, and us in and by Him.
And with us at present there is a lack of
surrender or submission, in that we allow ourselves to be held by the devil;
for our death is broken, our sleep has become a life, and that in Christ, and
through Christ in God, and through God into eternity, with our ground removed
into the unground, that is, into the Majesty without the nature of fire.
5. Ah blindness, that we know not
ourselves! O thou noble Man! if thou knewest thyself, who thou art, how wouldst
thou rejoice! How wouldst thou turn the dark devil out, who day and night
strives to make our mind earthly, so that we should not recognize our true
native land from which we have gone out! O miserable corrupt Reason, if thou
perceivedst but a spark of thy former glory, how wouldst thou long after it!
How gracious is the aspect of the divine Essence! How sweet is the water of
eternal life that springs from God's Majesty! O most worthy Light, bring us
back again, we are now with Adam fallen asleep in the earthly source! O come,
thou most worthy Word, and awaken us in Christ! O most worthy Light, since thou
hast shone forth, destroy the power of the devil, who holds us captive! Break
the power of Antichrist and covetousness, and deliver us from evil! Awaken us,
Lord; for we have slept long in the devil's net, in the earthly source! Let us
once again see thy salvation, bring forth the new Jerusalem! It is day, why
should we sleep in the day? Come then, thou breaker through of death, thou
powerful hero and champion, and destroy the devil's kingdom on earth! Give us
(thy sick Adam) a further cordial from
6. Now, when Adam had fallen asleep, he
lay in mystery as in God's wonders; what He did with him was done. Thus, the
imprinted name Jesus put the fiat in motion yet again in two forms, that is, in
both tinctures of fire and water. For this first image had fallen under the
power of the name Jesus in the Word of life, and now the Word of life was the
second creator (understand with the imprinted name Jesus, which was to become
man). This second creator separated the two tinctures of fire and light from
each other, yet not wholly in power, but only in essence; for in the essence of
the tincture of light was the sulphur veneris of love, in which Adam was
destined and was able to make himself pregnant. The tincture of fire gave soul,
and the light's tincture gave spirit, as an image according to the outer image.
The fire-life longed after the light-life, and the light-life after the
fire-life, that is, after the essential power from which the light shines; such
a position was in Adam one, for he was man and woman. And the Word of life took
the tincture of Venus with the heavenly and earthly fiat from Adam, also a rib
from his side, and the half-cross T in the head, which is the mark of the Holy
Trinity, stamped with the Word of life, as with the severe name of God, which
has such a characterization. T indicates the cross of Christ, on which he was
to suffer death, and generate Adam anew, and in the name Jesus introduce him
into the Holy Ternary. All this did the fiat take into itself, with all the
essences of human quality, though likewise the proprium of the soul's fire, but
in the tincture of Venus, not according to the might of the centre; and divided
into the entire form of man.
7. Thus was the woman made, with all the
members and feminine properties, as she still has them; for the spirit majoris
mundi had now the strongest fiat, and figurized the woman according to such a
form as this could be. For the angelic form had departed; generation had to be
carried out now in an animal way. Hence also there was given to Adam, seeing
that he had fallen into the power of the earthly magia, an animal form and
figure of masculine members; and Adam's begetting was assigned to the fiat, and
it made out of him a likeness according to itself. If he had remained heavenly
minded, he would have begotten himself in a heavenly way. It was done then by
the earthly fiat, and his outer body became an animal; he lost also the
heavenly understanding and the virtue of the All-power.
8. Thus, dear reader, thou must know that
Christ, the second Adam, has not in vain suffered himself to be crucified and
pierced in his side with a spear, nor has his blood been shed in vain. Here we
have the key. Adam was broken open in his side in connection with the rib for
the formation of the woman. Into this same side must come the spear of Longinus
with God's wrath, for it had entered into Adam and through Mary's earthliness
also into the side of Christ, and the blood of Christ had to drown the wrath
and take it away from the first Adam; for the second Adam had also heavenly
blood, and it had to drown the earthly turba, in order that the first Adam
might be made whole again.
9. Let this be told you, ye children of
men, for it has been known in the Holy Ternary, and not in opinions or
conceits. Your soul and body are at stake. Take heed what you do.
10. Human reproduction began then in an
animal way. For Adam retained the limbus, and his Eve the matrix of Venus, as
the tinctures had separated. Now, each tincture is a complete magic, as a
desirous craving, in which the centrum naturae is born, and that in sulphur. So
then the desiring magic with the tincture is to be found again in sulphur, and
yet cannot attain to life unless the tincture of fire enter into the tincture
of Venus. The tincture of Venus is unable to awaken a fire, it is too feeble.
And seeing such cannot be in it, and at the same time both the tinctures desire
life, the violent longing of the man and woman begins, so that the one desires
to mingle with the other; for the force of the essences wishes to be vital, and
the tincture impels thereunto and also desires that. For the tincture belongs
to the eternal Life, but is shut up with substance. Thus, it desires to live as
it has done from eternity; and therefore the man longs for the matrix of the
woman and the woman for the limbus of the man.
11. The woman has a watery tincture, and
the man a fiery tincture. The man sows soul, and the woman spirit, and both sow
flesh, that is, sulphur. Accordingly man and woman are one body, and the two
make one child; and therefore they ought to remain together, if they once
commix, for they have become one body. But he who commixes with others, or
separates, he breaks the order of nature, resembles a brute beast, and
considers not that in his seed lies the eternal tincture, wherein is hidden the
divine essentiality, which hereafter will be awakened in the wrathful part.
Further, this [viz. fornication] is a work which follows the shadow of man, and
in the end awakens its pang in the conscience. For the tincture in the seed has
its origin from eternity; it is imperishable, appears in the form of spirit and
enters into man's magic, from whence man has produced it and poured it forth.
12. Mark this, ye strumpets and
libertines: what you pursue in secret, often with great duplicity, enters into
your conscience and becomes for you an evil gnawing worm. The tincture is an
eternal being, and would fain live in God's love. But if, under the impulse of
the astral region through infection of the devil, you pour it into a false and
foul vessel in abomination and disorder, it will hardly attain God's love; but
rather passes by longing again into the first place, viz. into you. If it has
become false in a false vessel, so that it cannot rest, then it will gnaw you
and come in the hellish abyss into the conscience. This is neither fiction nor
jest. Be not then wholly animal; for an animal gets its tincture only from this
world, but you get it from eternity. What is eternal dies not. Though you
corrupt the sulphur, yet the will-spirit in the sulphur enters with the noble
tincture into the mystery, and each mystery takes what belongs to it. And at
the last day, when the Spirit of God will move itself in all the three
Principles, the mystery shall be revealed: there you will see your fine works.
13. Thus the great mercy of God in regard
to the human race is highly recognizable by us; for God has willed to help man
thus. Otherwise, if God had desired the animal property, he would have created at
once in the beginning a male and a female; he would not have made one alone,
furnished with both tinctures. But God did well know the fall of man, as also
the fraud of the devil, which thus through Eve was turned into derision. When
Adam fell down into sleep, the devil thought: Now am I lord and prince on the
earth; but the woman's seed was to him an hindrance of that.
14. We are to understand the awakening of
Adam out of his sleep. He fell asleep to the heavenly world, and woke up to the
earthly world. The spirit of the great world awakened him. Then he saw the
woman, and knew that she was his flesh and his bone, for the Virgin of the
wisdom of God was still in him. And he looked upon her and carried his
imagination or desire into her, for she had his matrix, moreover the tincture
of Venus, and straightway by desire one tincture seized the other. Therefore
Adam took her unto him and said: She shall be called woman, because she was
taken out of man. Eve is not to be regarded as a pure virgin, nor any of her
daughters either. The turba has destroyed the virginity, and made the pure love
earthly; the earthly desire destroys the true virginity. For God's wisdom is a
pure Virgin, in which Christ was conceived and in a true virgin vessel became
man, as will be seen later.
15. Accordingly the earthly virgin could
not remain in
16. We are to recognize that the devil is
the cause that man was created in his place, and. that he is to blame for man's
fall, although Adam and his Eve, when God had divided Adam, could not stand
firm. They were indeed in
17. Thus, we know sufficiently Adam's fall
and why he could not remain in
18. Let this be a pearl to you, ye
children of men; for it is the true foundation. He who seeks and finds it, hath
utter delight in it. It is the pearl that lies hid in the field, of which
Christ says, that a man sold all his goods and bought the pearl (Matt. xiii.
45, 46).
19. And we are to regard the Cherubin,
which drove Adam and Eve out of
20. We know indeed that Adam and Eve had
been driven forth from the place where the tree of temptation stood, for
paradisaic fruit was there; this they were no more to see nor eat, for what is
heavenly belongs not to the earthly. The animals also were driven forth on
account of the evil tree; they were besides not capable of enjoying paradisaic
fruit; but any animal could eat of this tree, for it was earthly. Thus Adam and
Eve were compelled to leave Paradise, for God had, through the spirit of the
great world, clothed them with the skins of beasts in lieu of the heavenly robe
of brightness, and had pronounced to them sentence as to what should be their
doings in this world, what they should henceforth eat, and how they should get
their bread in sorrow and misery, till they should return unto earth, from
which as regards one part they were extracted.
CHAPTER
VII
OF THE PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN AND BRUISER
OF THE SERPENT
1. ADAM and Eve being in
2. Such was the morsel whereby Heaven and
3. When this sword was to be broken in the
death of Christ, the earth did quake and the sun was darkened; and the rocks
were rent before the strong might of God, who thus broke death to pieces. And
the graves of the saints were opened, and their bodies arose again from death;
for the sword was broken and the angel who guarded
4.When Adam and Eve ate here of the
earthly fruit, they fell among murderers, who beat them and stripped them, and
left them half dead. Their going out from Paradise is the going from Jerusalem
to Jericho, for they went out of heaven into this evil corrupt world, into the
house of sin, where forthwith in their soul, in the centrum naturae, the wheel
of the senses began to qualify in the earthly source; where each sense was
adverse to the other, where envy, pride, covetousness, anger and repugnancy
sprang in profusion; for extinguished was the noble light of love, which made
the fierce source pleasant, friendly and gentle, in which the Spirit of God
worked and the fair Virgin of the wisdom of God rested: they went out from fair
wisdom.
5. God had created Adam in and unto the
chaste Virgin of His wisdom. But he got instead an evil, contrarious, earthly
spouse, with whom he had to live in an animal form, in constant sorrow, anxiety
and distress. And from his fair garden of delight, which he had in himself,
there arose to him an adverse garden of thorns and thistles, where yet in a way
he sought for the virgin fruit. It was with him as with a thief, who was in a
fair garden to keep and preserve it, but was on account of theft driven out of
it, and nevertheless would fain eat of the fruit in question, yet cannot get
in, but walks round outside, stretches forth his hand to seize the fruit, which
the gardener however snatches from him, and he is forced to go off in an ill
humour, and cannot satisfy his desire. So it is with man in regard to the
woman.
6. When Adam was yet in God's love, and
the woman was in him a chaste virgin, in God's sweetness and wisdom, he ate the
fruits of her, and could certainly delight himself with his own love in the
matrix of Venus. For the tincture of fire has a great joyous delectation in the
tincture of light, and Adam had such in himself: he was man and woman. Now he
must walk round this garden on the outside and touch the tincture of Venus with
one member only; the internal tinctures then receive one another in the seed,
and work so as to produce a life. But the outer body is not worthy to enjoy the
inqualifying or assimulating of the internal kingdom of joy, in which the
soul's life is sown. Only the internal essences have enjoyment of that, for
they are of the Eternal. But the outer animal man accomplishes only a bestial
desire. He knows not of the joy of the essences, when one tincture enters into
the other; which takes place where there is yet something of Paradise; but the
earthly essence intermeddles immediately, and it is only a joyous glance or
lustre wherein is generated the will to life, which keeps on in that direction
and becomes pregnant with sulphur, till it can reach the Principle and strike
fire in the centre: then it amounts to a true life, and another soul is born.
7. Now when the fair image withdrew thus
from God's love, it knew itself, that it had passed into a different state.
Then began fear and terror of the wrath of God, which commenced to make itself
felt in them. They looked upon each other and became aware of their animal
form, and that they were naked. The devil will have danced then, and mocked at
God. They were afraid and hid themselves among the trees, took fig leaves, wove
them together, and held them before their shame; for the heavenly Virgin was
gone. They recognized the fall and were ashamed; that is, the soul, which is of
the Eternal, was ashamed of the bestial nature: as is the case still in the
present day, that we are ashamed of the bestial members. And hence it is that
the woman covers her shame with a white cloth, that the spirit of the soul,
which shows in the eyes, be not troubled, for it knows the matrix of Venus and
begins at once in the male to imaginate regarding it; which, if the woman
clothed herself in black and veiled her eyes, would not easily happen, save
only by imagination; whereas the two tinctures of the man and the woman seize
one another immediately at the eyes, where the spirit shows.
8. Now when Adam and Eve stood thus in
terror before the wrath of God, God called Adam and said unto him: Where art
thou? And he said: Here I am; I am afraid, because I am naked. And He said: Who
told thee that thou art naked? Hast thou not eaten of the tree, whereof I
commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said: The woman gave me
of the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said unto the woman: Wherefore hast
thou done this? And the woman said: The serpent deceived me, so that I ate
(Gen. iii. 9-13).
9. In this connection we understand the
great love of God, that God recalled Adam, so that he should know, seek and
find himself, and turn again to God. For Adam had been in God, but had gone out
from God's love, from the second Principle, from the holy paradise of God into
the outer earthly kingdom of this world of the stars and elements, into the
third Principle. Therefore God said: Where art thou, Adam? Seest thou not that
thou art no longer in heaven? He turned His gracious countenance again to one
part in Adam, namely, to the part which he had received from the heavenly
essentiality, and aspected it again with His spirit, and said to the serpent,
unto the old devil: Because thou hast done this, be thou accursed. And to the
creaturely serpent, which now had to be a creature (for the devil had changed
himself into the form of a serpent, and so it is that the serpent had to
remain), He said Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat.
Because the serpent had seduced man, so that he had become earthly, the devil's
image had also to be earthly and eat the wrathful earthly quality, viz. poison:
that was to be its characteristic.
10. And here we are to know that the devil
formed for himself the image of the serpent from the stars and elements by his
imagination, for he had great power until the Lord cursed him utterly, and
placed the precious name Jesus as separating mark: then his great power fell.
For God said to Adam and Eve: The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's
head, and thou, the serpent, shalt sting him in the heel (Gen. iii. 15); that
is, in the wrath of God thou shalt slay him, but he will bud forth out of death
and bruise thy head, that is, will take away thy power and overcome the wrath
with love. And in this place the Word of the promise of the woman's seed, that
is, the highly precious name Jesus, has imprinted itself with its sign in the
vital light; and in this same sign the highly precious Virgin of the wisdom of
God, in which Christ, as the breaker down of death, was to become a true man,
deprive death of its power and destroy the devil's sting; he was to tread the
winepress of the fierceness and wrath, and enter into the wrath as into the centre
of fire, and extinguish the fire with his heavenly blood and with the water of
meekness which springs from the fountain of the Spirit of God.
11. And know for a certainty if the Word
of promise had not imprinted itself in the life's light, when Adam and Eve fell
into the earthly source, the spirit of the soul would have become a fierce
devil and the body an evil beast, as it also indeed is. If the [holy]
elementary water did not abate the pride of the fierceness, we should see well
enough how many a one would be a ferocious devil.
12. Now we are to consider that the world,
before the incarnation of Christ, was saved in this imprinted Word and name
Jesus. Those who have inclined their will into God, they have received the Word
of promise, and the soul was taken thereinto. For the whole law of Moses
regarding sacrifice is absolutely nothing but a type of the humanity of Christ.
What Christ in his humanity did by his sacrifice, in drowning with his blood
and his love the wrath of God, that Moses did by his sacrifice with the blood
of beasts. For the Word of promise was in the covenant, and God meanwhile set
before himself the figure and allowed himself to be reconciled in the covenant
by a similitude. The name Jesus was in the covenant, and it reconciled through
desire the anger and wrath in the nature of the Father. The Jews certainly did
not understand this, but the covenant understood it; for the animal man was not
worthy to know it, till Christ was born. Then went forth the sound, which
however after a short time was covered up again by Antichrist in Babel, for the
animal man of iniquity is not worthy of the precious name Jesus; neither does
it belong to the animal part, but only to the divine part. The animal must
remain on the wild earth, and at the last day be consumed by the fire of God.
But the heavenly part ought to be introduced into the divine power; hence it is
an abomination before God that man thus proudly pranks with the animal. The
animal is not God's image, even as the sacrifice of Moses was not the
reconciliation, nor is there any but the covenant of grace and the Word of life
in the covenant.
13. The circumcision of the Jews, it being
obligatory on them to circumcise male children only, contained this law in itself
as follows: Adam was the one man that God created, and in him was God's image.
Eve, as his wife, God did not will to create; the image was to be born from one
only. But seeing that he fell, and that God had to make the woman for him, the
covenant with the promise passed again upon one, so that all should be
regenerated and new-born from one, viz. from the second Adam; not from the
woman Mary, but from Christ as the heavenly Adam. For the first man's or Adam's
first blood, which he received from God's essentiality, was to avail, and not
the woman's earthly blood, in which Adam became earthly and a woman had to be
contrived for him. And therefore also only the male kind was circumcised, and
in the same member that is an abomination before God and a shame of the soul,
for impregnation was not destined to be bestial. Circumcision was thus a sign
and figure, intimating that this member should be cut off from man and not
appear with him in eternity. And Christ had to take on him the form of a man,
though inwardly he stood in a virgin image, that the purpose of God might
stand. For the man's or the fire's property must rule, and the woman's or the
light's property must soften his fire and bring it into the gentle image of
God.
14. The woman's blood would not have
reconciled the wrath of God, it was necessary that the man's blood only should
do this. For the woman belongs to the man, and will in the
15. The woman also is to understand that
she is saved in the [first, virgin] man's covenant and blood, and that she is
Adam's and the man's rib and tincture, and is proper to the man. She ought to
be humble. As a member serves the body, so should the woman serve the man and
love him as herself. She should cast her love unto him absolutely, for thus she
obtains the heavenly Virgin with divine Wisdom, and the spirit of the covenant.
16. But to unmarried virgins and wifeless
men, as well as to widows, it is said that they have the covenant of Christ as
spouse: before it they ought to be chaste and humble. For Christ is the bride
of the man, his chaste virgin, which Adam lost; and He is also the bridegroom
of the virgins and widows His masculinity is their masculinity, so that they
appear accordingly before God as a masculine virgin. For our image is being
generated now in will and faith. Where then our heart and will is, there also
is our treasure and image.
17. Therefore guard yourselves from
whoredom and false love, for the true image is thereby destroyed. Whoredom is
the greatest wickedness that man works in himself. Other sins pass out of him
into a figure; but the whore remains in him; for he [she] produces a false
image in which the Virgin of God is not known, but only a bestial form. Let it
be told thee, thou man: There is so great a horror behind, that heaven shudders
at it, as one who enters not easily into the bestial imagination.
CHAPTER
VIII
OF THE VIRGIN MARY, AND THE INCARNATION OF
JESUS CHRIST THE SON OF GOD
1. MANY have taken upon themselves to
write of the Virgin Mary, and have believed that she was not a daughter of the
earth. To them indeed has been presented a reflection of the eternal Virginity,
but they have come short of the true mark. Some have simply supposed that she
was not the daughter of Joachim and Anna, for Christ is called the seed of the
woman, and indeed is, and he himself attests that he came from above, from
heaven; he must therefore, according to them, be born of a wholly heavenly
Virgin. But this would profit little to us poor children of Eve, who have
become earthly and carry our souls in an earthly vessel. Where were our poor
soul, if the Word of eternal life had not taken it into itself? If Christ had
brought a soul from heaven, where were our soul and the covenant with Adam and
Eve, by which the woman's seed was to bruise the head of the serpent? If Christ
had willed to come and to be born wholly from heaven, he would not have needed
to be born a man upon earth. But where were the covenant, in which the name of
promise, viz. Jesus, incorporated itself in the light of life, in the tincture
of the soul, immediately in
2. We are to understand that Mary, in whom
Christ became man, was by the outer flesh truly the daughter of Joachim and
Anna, and was begotten from the seed of Joachim and Anna according to the outer
man; but by the will she was the daughter of the covenant of promise, for she
was the goal to which the covenant pointed. In her lay the centre of the
covenant; therefore she was highly known of the Holy Spirit in the covenant,
and highly blessed before and among all women, even from Eve; for the covenant
disclosed itself in her.
3. You must understand us in a very high
and lofty way: The Word with the promise, which with the Jews stood in
prefigure, as in a mirror, into which God the angry Father imaginated and
thereby extinguished his wrath, this Word and promise now moved itself in an
essential manner, which had not happened from eternity. For when Gabriel
brought Mary the message, that she should become pregnant, and she consented
and said: Be it unto me according to thy word, then the centre of the Holy
Trinity moved itself and disclosed the covenant, that is, disclosed within her
in the Word of life the eternal virginity which Adam had lost. For the Virgin
of the wisdom of God surrounded the Word of life or the centre of the Holy
Trinity. Thus the centre was moved, and the heavenly Vulcan kindled the fire of
love, so that the principle of the flame
of love was generated.
4. Understand it aright. In Mary's
essence, in the virgin essence, corrupted in Adam and from which he was to have
produced a virgin image according to the wisdom of God, divine fire was struck
and the principle of love enkindled; thou must understand, in the seed of Mary,
when she became pregnant with the soul's spirit or with the tincture of Venus,
for in the tincture of Venus, that is, in the source of love, Adam's first fire
was kindled in the Word of life, and in the child Jesus both tinctures were
perfect as in Adam; and ' the Word of life in the covenant, understand the Holy
Trinity, was the centre, and the principle appeared in the sphere of the
Father. Christ became man in God and also in Mary and herewith at the same time
in the earthly world, that is, in all the three Principles. He took upon him
the form of a servant that he might get the upper hand of death and the devil,
for he was to be a prince in the locus of this world, in the angelic princely
throne, in the seat and authority of the erstwhile angel and prince Lucifer,
over all the three Principles. If then (1) he was to be lord of the external
world, he must also dwell in the external world, and have its nature and
property; if (2) he was to be God's Son, he must necessarily also be born of
God; if (3) he was to extinguish the wrath of the Father, he must also be in
the Father; if (4) he was to be the Son of Man, he must also be of the essence
and nature of man, and have a human soul and body, as we all have.
5. And it is recognizable that Mary, his
mother, as well as Christ through his mother, were both of them of human
essence, in body, soul and spirit, and that Christ received a soul from Mary's
essence, but without the intervention of man's seed. The great mystery of God
was there revealed. The first man in his hiddenness, who fell into death, was
here begotten again vitally, understand in God's principle. For on this account
the Deity put itself in motion and kindled fire in the Father's principle; thus
the dead sulphur, which had died in Adam, was again quickened; for the Word
possessed heavenly essentiality in itself, and revealed itself in heavenly essentiality
in the virgin image of the Deity. The same is the pure chaste Virgin, in which
the Word of life became man; and thus the outer Mary was adorned with the
highly blessed heavenly Virgin, and was blessed among all the women of this
world. In her was again revived what was dead and shut up in humanity; and
therefore she was exalted highly, like the first man before the fall, and
became mother of the Royal Prince. This however occurred to her not by her own
power, but by God's power. If the centre of God had not put itself in motion
within her, she would have been in no way different from all the daughters of
Eve. But the Word of life had set up the goal in this place, in connection with
the covenant of promise; therefore is she blessed among all women and above all
the children of Eve. Not that she is a goddess, whom we should honour as God,
for she is not the goal; and indeed she said: How shall this be," seeing I
know not a man? But the Word of life in the centre of the Father, which by the
motion of the Deity gave itself to humanity and was disclosed in human essence,
is the goal: that is the goal toward which we must run for the attainment of
the new birth.
6. This is a greater wonder than was done
in the case of the first Adam. For the first Adam was created from three
principles, and his spirit was introduced into him by the Spirit of God: in
this case the Heart of God needed not to move specially; the Spirit of God from
God's Heart only moved. But now was put in motion the centre or the Heart of God,
which had rested from eternity, and the divine fire became kindled and
inflamed.
The precious Gate
7. We must understand aright the
incarnation of Christ, the Son of God. He has not become man in the Virgin Mary
only, as if his deity or divine nature sat cooped up there. As little as God
dwells in one place only, but is to be regarded as the fulness of the whole of
things, so little also has God moved himself in one separate part only; for he
is not divisible, but everywhere entire, and where he manifests himself, there
he is wholly manifest. So in like manner God is not measurable, nor is any
place found for him, unless he make for himself a place in a creature; but thus
he would be at the same time along with the creature and outside of the
creature.
8. When the Word put itself in motion for
the revelation of life, it revealed itself in the divine essentiality, in the
water of eternal life; it entered into it and became sulphur, that is, flesh
and blood; it made heavenly tincture, which surrounds and fills the Deity, in
which the wisdom of God stands eternally with the divine magia. Understand it
aright: The Deity has longed to become flesh and blood; and although the pure
clear Godhead remains spirit, it has become the spirit and life of the flesh,
and works in the flesh; so that when we enter by our desire into God and give
ourselves up wholly to him, we may say that we enter into God's flesh and blood
and live in God, for the Word has become man, and God is the Word.
9. We do not thus abolish the creature of
Christ, as if he was to be supposed not a creature. We may compare the sun to
the creature of Christ, and the whole deep of the world to the eternal Word in
the Father. We see indeed that the sun shines in the whole deep, and gives it
heat and power; yet we cannot say that in the deep, independent of the body of
the sun, the sun's power and lustre does not exist. For if it did not exist,
neither would it seize the sun's power and lustre, since only one power and
lustre seizes another. The deep is as to its lustre merely hidden; but if God
pleased, the whole deep would be nothing but sun. It were but to kindle it, so
that the water would be swallowed up and become a spirit, then would the sun's
brightness shine everywhere; and, accordingly, the centre of fire would have to
inflame itself, as in the locus of the sun.
10. Further, know this: We understand that
the heart of God has rested from eternity; but by motion and entrance into
essence it has become manifest in all places, though in God there is no place
nor limit, except in the creature of Christ. There the entire holy Trinity has
manifested itself in a creature, and thus through the creature also in the
whole of the heavens. He has gone hence and prepared for us the place where we
shall see in his light, live in his essentiality and eat of it; his
essentiality fills the heavens and
11. He has really taken earthly nature on
him; but in his death, when he vanquished death, the divine nature swallowed up
the earthly and took away its dominion. Not that Christ has laid aside
something, but the external nature was overcome and as it were swallowed up;
and the life which he now lives, he lives in God. So also was Adam to have
been, but he resisted not. Therefore the Word had to be born man and give
itself to substance, in order that we might receive power, so that we might be
able to live in God.
12. Christ has then brought again what
Adam had lost, yea and much more. For the Word has become man everywhere, that
is, it is revealed everywhere in the divine essentiality, in which lies our
eternal humanity. For in eternity we shall live in the same corporeal essence
in which the Virgin of God stands; and we must put on God's Virgin, for Christ
has put her on. He has become man in the eternal Virgin and also in the earthly
virgin, although the latter was not a right virgin. But the heavenly divine
Virgin made her a virgin in the blessing, that is, in the disclosing of the
Word and covenant. That part in Mary which she had inherited from Adam out of
the heavenly essentiality, which Adam however made earthly, that part was
blessed. Thus the earthly element only died in her, the other lived eternally
and became again a chaste Virgin, not in death, but in the blessing. When God
revealed himself in her, she put on the fair Virgin of God, and became a virile
virgin by the heavenly part.
13. Thus Christ was born of a right, pure,
chaste, heavenly Virgin, for in the blessing she received the limbus of God
into her matrix, into her seed. Nothing foreign indeed, but the limbus of God
opened itself within her, in God's power. This limbus in Adam was dead, and it
was made living by God's motion. In the Word of life God's essence entered into
her and opened the centre of the soul, so that Mary became pregnant with a soul
and also with a spirit, both of them heavenly and earthly. And that was a true
image of God, a likeness according to and founded on the Holy Trinity on all
the three Principles.
CHAPTER
IX
OF THE VIRGINITY OF INIARY, SHOWING WHAT SHE WAS BEFORE THE BLESSING,
AND WHAT SHE BECAME BY THE BLESSING
1. IT is very necessary for us poor children
of Eve to know this, as in it lies our eternal salvation. For it is the gate of
Emanuel; the whole Christian faith rests upon it, and it is the gate of the
greatest mystery. For here lies hidden the secret of man, in which he is the
likeness and image of God.
2. Our whole religion consists in three
points, which we cultivate and teach. First, as to the creation, of what
essence, nature and property man is; whether he be eternal or not eternal, and
how that is possible; from whence he came in the beginning and what property
the origin of man is.
3. Secondly, what his fall has been, on
account of which we are mortal and subject to malignity and the source of
wrath.
4. Thirdly, what the new birth is, seeing
that God is willing to receive us again into grace; and on that account He has
given laws and doctrine, and confirmed them with great miracles. In what power
and spirit we may be new-born and rise again from death.
5. We find all this represented in two
figures, viz. in the eternal, holy Virginity, and in the earthly, perishable
virginity; while the new birth is found in the figure of Christ quite plain and
clear. For in the eternal Virginity, in the essentiality of God, where the
image and likeness of God has been seen as in a mirror from eternity and known
of the Spirit of God, was Adam the first man created. He had the Virginity for
a possession as the true love-tincture in the light, which desires the fire's
tincture or the property of the essences, that it may become a burning life in
power and glory, and be in the fire's essence a genetrix, which is not possible
in the light's essence without fire.
6. We recognize then a Virginity in the
wisdom of God, in the desiring will of the divine Essence, from eternity. Not a
woman who brings forth, but a figure in the mirror of the wisdom of God, a pure
chaste image without being, and yet in essence; though not manifest in the
fire's essence, but in the source of the light.
7. This image God created into a being,
and that from all the three Principles, that it might be a likeness according
to the Deity and eternity, as a complete mirror of the ground and unground, of
the spirit and also of the essence; and it was created from the Eternal, not
for a fragile existence. But because the earthly and fragile was suspended to
the Eternal, the earthly desire has introduced itself into the eternal heavenly
desire and infected the heavenly property; for it wished to dwell in the
eternal desire, and yet was corrupted in the wrath of God.
8. Thus the earthly quality corrupted the
heavenly, and became the turba of the latter, as is to be recognized in earth
and stones, which indeed have their origin from the Eternal, but have
deteriorated in the wrath and in the source of fire: the fiat has made from the
eternal Essence earth and stones. And on that account a day of separation is
fixed, in which every individual thing shall enter again into its ether and be
tried by fire.
9. So it is likewise with man. He was
created in the Virginity in God's wisdom, but was laid hold of by the wrath and
anger of God; hence he became at once corrupt and earthly. And as the earth
passes and must be tried by fire, and enter again into that which it was, so
also man: he must enter again into the virginity in which he was created. But
as it was not possible to man to rise again from the fierce wrathful death and
enter into a new birth (for his virginity was shut up with him in death, and
for that reason God made for man a woman taken from him), the Deity had to put
itself in motion, and disclose and make alive again what was shut up.
10. And this was done in Mary, the shut up
virgin; that is, in the virginity which Adam inherited from God's wisdom; not
from the earthly part of the third Principle, but from the heavenly holy part
of the second Principle, which by earthly imagination and suggestion had been
shut up in the earthly death in the wrath of God, and was as it were dead, as
the earth appeared to be dead. Therefore the heart of God has moved itself, has
broken death on the cross and generated life again.
11. The birth and incarnation of Christ is
for us a thing mighty in operation, in that the whole unfathomable heart of God
has moved itself, and thus the heavenly essentiality, which was shut up in
death, has become again alive, so that now it may be said with reason: God
himself has resisted his wrath, since by the centre of his heart, which has
filled the eternity without ground or limit, he has again revealed himself, has
taken away the power of death and broken the sting of the anger and fierce
wrath, seeing that love and gentleness have been revealed in the wrath and have
extinguished the power of fire.
12. And still more is it for us men a
great joy that God has in our dead and mort virginity revealed himself, and
withal through everything. And that the Word, which is the power of the life of
God, has given itself again to humanity, to the dead and as it were abandoned
virginity, and has reopened the virgin life, at that we rejoice; and we enter
by our imagination into the centre in which God has revealed himself in
humanity, that is, into the incarnation of his Son, and become thus in our
imagination, which we introduce into his incarnation, pregnant with his
revealed Word and the power of the heavenly divine essentiality,-not indeed anything
that is alien, but at the same time alien to what is earthly. The Word has
revealed itself everywhere, and in every man's vital light; and there is
nothing wanting but that the Spirit of the soul give itself up to it. And then
the soul's spirit puts on again the eternal Virginity, not as a garment, but
from its own essence God is born in it. For Mary along with all the daughters
of Eve was born earthly, but the covenant of the love of God evinced in her
essence that God would there in her open again the life.
13. And as regards Mary's virginity,
according to the earthly life prior to the blessing, before the heart of God
moved itself, we can by no means say that she was a completely perfect virgin
in accordance with the first virgin before the fall; on the contrary, she was a
natural daughter of Eve. But it may be said with reason, that in Mary, as well
as in all Adam's children, the eternal Virginity in the covenant of promise lay
shut up just as if in death, and yet not amort in God. For the name Jesus,
passing out of the centre or heart of God, has from eternity imprinted itself
as a mirror in the Virgin of God's wisdom, and has opposed the centre of the
Father, that is, the centre of fire and fierceness, not in fierceness in the
fire, in the fire's essence, but in love in the light, in the light's essence.
And man moreover was foreseen in this same essence in the name Jesus, before
the foundation of the world was laid, when Adam still existed in the form of
heavenly essence, without a natural or creaturely being. For the fall was known
in wisdom before man became a creature, and that according to the property of
fire, not in the property of light, but according to the first Principle.
14. And so then from our deep knowledge we
say of Mary, that before the time of the angel's revelation and message she was
a virgin like Eve, when she went out of
15. We say, therefore, with good grounds
that Mary was Joachim's daughter, born of Anna, and, by the earthly part,
contained their essence essentially in her. And then, secondly, we say that she
was the daughter of the covenant of God, that God set up in her the goal of the
new birth, that the whole of the Old Testament has looked to this goal, and
that all the prophets have prophesied of the same goal (to the effect that God
would again reveal the eternal Virginity). And this goal was blessed; for, in
accordance with his mercy, God incorporated himself in this goal by the
covenant of promise, and the Word of promise stood in the covenant, and
confronted the wrath in the light of life. The first world, before and after
the flood, was saved in that covenant which God set before himself as a mirror.
For the eternal Virginity appeared in the covenant as in the mirror of God, and
God had satisfaction therein. When
16. Thus the works of the law were before
God in the mirror, till the life was born again from the covenant and the
fulfilment came. Then the works in the mirror ceased, and the works of the
fulfilment in flesh and blood, in the heavenly essentiality, began again; for
in Mary was the beginning. When the angel brought her the message, and she
said: Be it unto me as thou hast said (Luke i. 38), the centre of life in the
Word of God, that is, the heart of God, forthwith moved in her dead heavenly
seed, quickened it again, and gestation commenced. For all the three Principles
of the Deity were stirred, and the divine tincture took hold in the dead
heavenly essentiality. We are not to imagine that God has been without essence,
but man was dead to heavenly essence. And now did the heart of God enter with
living divine essentiality into death, and awaken the dead essentiality. This
divine essentiality took not away the earthly nature, but entered into it as
its master and vanquisher. For the true life had to be ushered in by death and
God's wrath, which was accomplished on the cross, when death was broken to
pieces and wrath taken captive, and overcome and extinguished by love.
17. Thus we understand now what Mary by
the conception came to be, namely, a true pure virgin according to the heavenly
part. For when the heart of God moved itself, and day dawned in her, the light
of the clearness and pureness of God shone in her; for her dead Virginity or
God's wisdom was disclosed and became living, for she was filled with the
divine Virginity, that is, with God's wisdom. And in this same wisdom and
divine essentiality, as well as in the dead and now living essentiality, the
Word became flesh in sulphur by the centrum naturae, by means of the Father's
essences and the essences of Mary; from out of death a life, a fruit with the
two tinctures in their perfection, since the two tinctures formed but one. And
because Adam had become a man, Christ also became a man according to the outer
world; for it was not Eve's image in the woman's tincture that was destined to
remain, but Adam's image when he was man and woman. As then one of the signs
must appear in consequence of the power of the external fiat, and that the
champion in combat was to be established again in all the three Principles, the
champion in combat got the masculine sign; for the man has the fire's tincture
or the property of the Father. Thus, the Father is the strength and might of
all things, and the Son is his love. Accordingly the Word became man in the
feminine essence-but became, however, a manthat his love might extinguish the
anger and wrath in the Father; for the tincture of Venus has the
water-fountain, and the woman has the tincture of Venus. Consequently the fire
had to be quenched by the water of eternal life, and the Father's burning
essences in the fire again extinguished.
18. We know then Mary, the mother of
Christ, in flesh, soul and spirit, by the blessing, to be a pure chaste virgin;
for this constitutes her blessing, that God has revealed himself in her. She
has carried in her body the Word of life, and it has moved within her. Mary has
not moved the Word, but the Word has moved Mary, both the fruit which she bore,
and also her soul along with the part of the dead essentiality, so that her
soul was at once surrounded with divine living essentiality: not according to
the earthly part or the third Principle, but according to the heavenly part or
the second Principle, so that thus the earthly nature did but hang unto her.
For her soul had also with the Word of life, which became man in her, to enter
by death and the wrath of the Father into the heavenly divine quality. It was
necessary that her outer man should die to the earthly quality, in order that
such outer man might live to God. And because she was blessed and has carried
the goal in the covenant, her body has not evanished, for the heavenly nature
has swallowed up the earthly and keeps it eternally a prisoner, to the honour
and mirificence of God. It must never be forgotten that God has become man in
her.
19. But that some say she has remained
entirely in death and passed into corruption, these should envisage their
Reason in another way, for what is highly blessed is incorruptible. Her
heavenly part of the divine Essentiality, which has blessed her, is
incorruptible; else God's essentiality in the blessing would once more have
fallen and died, as happened in Adam; on account of which death, however, God
became man, that He might bring back life again. She has, indeed, died as
regards the outer life or earthly quality, but she lives as regards the
blessing in God's essentiality and also in her own essentiality: not in the
four elements, but in their root, that is, in one Element which keeps the four
shut up in itself, in Paradise and the pure element, in the divine
Essentiality, in the life of God.
20. Therefore we say that Mary is greater
than any daughter of Adam, because God has placed the goal of the covenant in
her and she alone among all the daughters of Eve has obtained the blessing,
namely, the pure virgin chastity which was destroyed in all Eve's daughters.
But in her case the Virginity lay in the covenant till the Word of life highly
blessed her: then she became a true pure chaste Virgin, in whom God was born.
For Christ said also to the Jews: I am from above, but ye are from beneath; I
am not of this world, but ye are of this world (John viii. 23). If he had
become man in an earthly vessel, and not in a pure, heavenly, chaste Virgin, he
would have been of this world; whereas thus he became man in the heavenly
Virgin, and the earthly quality did but hang unto him. For the essence of the
soul had been infected in us poor children of men by the earthly quality, and
he was to introduce our soul in the form of heavenly essence, in him, through
the fire of God into the Holy Ternary. For the soul was of chief importance
because it had been taken out of the Eternal, and hence it was God's will not
to abandon it.
21. So then, if it be asked, what sort of
matter it was to which the Word and heart of God has given itself and made for
itself a body, whether it were a strange matter come from heaven, or whether it
were the essence and seed of Mary: our answer is that God's heart was never
without essence, for its dwelling is from eternity in the light, and the power
in the light is the heart or Word which God has spoken from eternity. And the
speaking is the Holy Spirit of God, which with the speaking goes out from the
power of the light, from the spoken Word, into what is spoken forth. And what
is spoken forth is God's wonder and wisdom; this contains in itself the divine
mirror of wisdom, wherein the Spirit of God sees, and in which he reveals the
wonders.
22. Therefore understand that the Word,
from out of the heart of God the Father (surrounded with the heavenly and
chaste Virgin of wisdom, dwelling in the heavenly essentiality), has revealed
itself in Mary's essence and essentiality, in her own seed, that is, in the
seed of man, and has taken into itself the seed of Mary, dead and blind as to
God, and awakened it to life. The living essentiality came into the halfkilled
essence of Mary, and took the half-killed essence as a body,-not as a
corruptible body which would disappear, but as an eternal body which would
remain eternally, for here the eternal life was reborn.
23. Thus the essentiality of the eternity
in God in his whole ungrounded deep, and the essentiality of the dead Adam in
humanity, became one essentiality, an entirely single being, so that the
creature Christ with his essentiality filled at once the whole Father, who is
without limit or ground. But the creaturely soul has remained, and is a
creature. And according to the third Principle, as applying to the creature,
this very Christ is a creature and a king of men, as well as also according to
the second Principle, as being a child of the unfathomable Father. What the
Father is in his unfathomable deep, that the Son is in his
creature. For the power in the creature
forms with the power out of the creature one power, one essentiality, in which dwell
the angels and men. It gives
24. Thus, when our soul finds Him, it
says: This is my Virgin, whom I had lost in Adam, when she was changed into an
earthly woman. Now I have found again my dear Virgin who sprang from my body,
and I will no more let her go; she is mine, my flesh and blood, my strength and
power, whom I lost in Adam: her I will retain. Oh, a friendly retaining!
friendly inqualifying, beauty, fruit, power and virtue.
25. Accordingly the poor soul finds the
tincture of its lost light, and its dear Virgin. In the woman is found the
noble bridegroom, for which the matrix of Venus has always longed, but has
found only an earthly masculine sulphur, and has been obliged to let itself be
made pregnant with earthly seed. Here it gets the tincture of the right fire
and right man, so that it becomes also a true masculine virgin, as Adam was in
his innocence.
CHAPTER
X
OF THE BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD; AND HOW HE LAY NINE MONTHS
SHUT UP IN THE WOMB, LIKE ALL THE CHILDREN OF MEN; AND WHAT PROPERLY HIS
INCARNATION IS
1. THERE has been a great deal of dispute
about the incarnation of Jesus Christ, but carried on almost blindly; and
therefrom have been formed manifold opinions, so as to turn men about with
these and leave untouched the true incarnation, in which lies our eternal
salvation. The cause of all this was that it was sought for in outward
understanding and art, and not in connection with the right goal. If they had
entered into the incarnation of Christ and had been born of God, no dispute
would have become requisite; for the Spirit of God reveals the incarnation of
Christ to everyone in his own self, and without this Spirit there is no
finding. For how shall we find in the reason of this world what is not in this
world? We find in outward reason hardly a reflection thereof; but in God's
Spirit is the true finding.
2. The incarnation of Christ is such a
mystery that outward reason knows nothing of it; for it has been carried out in
all the three Principles, and cannot be fathomed, unless we know fully the
first man in his creation before the fall; for Adam was to beget from himself
the second man in accordance with the character of the Holy Trinity, in which
the name Jesus was incorporated, but this was not able to be. Therefore another
Adam had to come, to whom this was possible; for Christ is the virgin image in
accordance with the character of the Holy Trinity. Adam was conceived in God's
love, and born into this world. He had divine essentiality, and his soul was
from the first Principle, from the proprium of the Father. It was to be
directed by the imagination to the Father's heart, that is, to the Word and
spirit of love and purity, and was to eat of the essentiality of love; then it
would have preserved in itself God's nature in the Word of life, and would have
been made pregnant by the power springing from the heart of God; whereby then
it would of itself have imaginated into its essence, and would have itself made
its essence pregnant, so that a complete likeness according to the first image
would have arisen through imagination and the surrender of the soul's will, and
would have been conceived in the power of the essence.
3. But because this could not be in Adam,
on account of the earthliness attached to him, it was brought to pass in the
second Adam, which is Christ. He was conceived in such a way through God's
imaginating and entering into the image of the first Adam.
4. And we are able to recognize, that, as
the first Adam put his imagination into earthliness and became earthly, and did
this moreover contrary to the purpose of God, the purpose of God had
nevertheless to stand. For now God established his purpose in Adam's child, and
introduced his imagination into the corrupt image, and made it pregnant with
his divine power and essentiality, and turned the soul's will round from
earthliness to God; so that Mary became pregnant with such a child as Adam was
to become pregnant with. This the individual's own power could not accomplish,
but sank down into sleep as into the magia; whereupon out of Adam was made the
woman, who should not have been made, but Adam should have made himself
pregnant in the matrix of Venus, and brought forth magically. As, however, this
could not be, Adam was divided, and his own will of great power was broken and
shut up in death. As he would not place his imagination in the Spirit of God,
his great power had to come to a standstill in death and suffer the Spirit of
God to place His imagination in it, and do with him what He pleased.
5. Therefore the Spirit of God raised up
to him life out of this death, and became the spirit of this life, in order
that the image and likeness of God (which from eternity had been known in God's
wisdom) might at last be born and endure. For it stood before the times of the
world and even from eternity in the virgin mirror in the wisdom of God, and
that in two forms: namely, according to the first Principle of the Father in
fire, and in the second Principle of the Son in light, and yet was only
manifest in the light, and in the fire just as if in a magia, that is, in a
possibility. As the astral heaven imprints by its power a figure in the mind of
man, in his sleep so was represented the image in the centre of the nature of
fire, quite invisibly; but in wisdom, in the mirror of the Deity, it has
appeared as a figure, like a shadow, yet without material being, but has had
being in the essence of the spirit. Which spirit, by beholding itself in the
mirror of wisdom, has known and seen this image, and set its will to bring it
into substance, in order that God might have an image or likeness in
substantial being, and should no more need to behold himself as in a mirror,
but find him self in substance. Therefore, when the first image imaginated into
the severe might and in consequence became earthly and dead, the Spirit of God
led its will and life into death, and retook from death the first life into
himself, in order that the first life might stand in complete obedience before
Him, and He alone be the willing and also the doing.
6. Thus, we know that God has entered into
the half-dead image, that is, into Mary, and into the very same virgin form
which was shut up in death, in which Adam was to become pregnant and bring
forth an image according to himself in virgin chastity. In this shut up and
half-dead virgin matrix, the Word or heart of God, viz. the centre of the Holy
Trinity, has, without infringement of its being, become an image of man. And
seeing the first living virgin matrix in Adam would not be obedient to God, it
became thus, when raised again from death, obedient to him, and gave itself up
humbly and willingly to God's will. Thus was again presented in figure the true
virgin image in obedience to God; for the first
will had to remain in death, as one which
imaginated contrary to God's will, and a pure obedient will was raised up,
which remained in the heavenly gentleness and being, and no more suffered the
image in the fire, in the sphere of the Father, to flame up in it, but remained
in one source; as indeed the Deity lives only in one source, viz. in the light,
in the Holy Spirit, and yet holds its sway over all the three Principles.
7. And so are we to understand regarding
the incarnation of Christ. When God's Spirit raised up again in Mary the virgin
life, which in the earthly essence lay shut up in death and wrath, then this
life turned itself only unto God's will and love, and gave itself up to the
Spirit of God. Thus it became pregnant with a true virgin image, which was to
have been in the case of Adam, but was not realized; for one imagination
received the other. God's imagination received the imagination in death and
brought it back to life; and this life imaginated again into God and became
pregnant with God, and from the Deity and humanity sprang one Person. The Deity
was suspended to the heavenly Essence, which from eternity had existed with
kingdom, power, and glory, viz. as the
8. Now says Reason: What then did take
place in this incarnation? Was the life aroused immediately at the moment of
conception in transcendence of the natural course, so that the part from Mary,
that is, the woman's seed, did at once have life? No, for it was an essential
seed, and was moved at its proper natural time, with soul and spirit, like all
the children of Adam; but the part from the Deity, surrounded with divine essentiality
and wisdom, has had life from eternity to eternity. Nothing went to nor from
the Deity; what it was, that it remained, and what it was not, that it came to
be. It gave itself with heavenly divine essence to the essence and substance of
Mary, and Mary's essence and God's essence became one person. But Mary's
essence was mortal, and God's essence immortal. Therefore Mary's essences had
to die on the cross and pass through death into life. To this God's essences
contributed, else it would not have been possible. Thus God's essence helped
us, and still helps us by the death of Christ into God's essence and life.
9. We understand, then, the incarnation of
Christ in a natural way, like that of all the children of men. For the
heavenly, divine essence has given itself with its life to the earthly
half-killed essence. The master has submitted himself under the servant, in
order that the servant might be made alive. Thus Christ in nine months became a
perfect man and at the same time remained a true God, and was born into this
world in the manner and mode of all Adam's children, by the same way as all
men. And that, not that He needed it-He could have been born magically-but He
desired and was destined to remedy our impure, animal birth and entrance into
this life. He was to enter into this world by our entrance, and lead us out of
this world into God's entrance, and bring us out of the earthly quality.
10. For if He had been born magically in a
divine manner, then He would not by nature have been in this world. For the
heavenly essence would necessarily have swallowed up the earthly quality; hence
He would not have been like us. How then would He have willed to suffer death,
and to enter into death and break death to pieces? But it is not so. He is
truly the woman's seed, and He entered into this world the natural way, like
all men; but went out by death the divine way, in the divine power and
essentiality. It is His divine living essentiality which stood firm in death,
which has broken down death and cast derision on it, and led the wounded
halfdead humanity through death into the life eternal. For the earthly part,
which He received from His mother Mary into Himself, into the divine nature,
died on the cross to the earthly nature. The soul was thus in the essentiality
of God, and descended as a conqueror into the hell of the devil, that is, into
the fierce wrath of God, and quenched it with God's love and gentleness that
characterize the divine loveessentiality. For the fire of love entered into the
fire of wrath and drowned the wrath, in which the devil desired to be God.
Hence the devil was taken captive by the darkness and lost his dominion. The
sting or sword of the Cherubin or destroying angel was here broken. And this
was the reason that God became man, in order that He might lead us out of death
into the life eternal, and quench with His love the wrath which burned within
us.
11. Further, you must understand us
rightly as to how the wrath of God was quenched. It was not quenched by the
mortal blood of Christ, which he shed, and in regard to which the Jews mocked
him, but by the blood of the eternal life from God's essence, which was
immortal and had in it the fountain of the water of eternal life. This was shed
on the cross along with the outer blood; and when the latter sank into death,
the heavenly blood sank too, and yet it was immortal.
12. Thus the earth received the blood of
Christ, whereby it trembled and quaked; for the wrath of God was now vanquished
in it, and there entered into it now the living blood which had come from
heaven, from God's essence. This heavenly blood opened the graves of the
saints, and also opened death. It made a way through death, so that death was
made an open show of. For when Christ's body rose from death, he made in his body
an open show of death; for its power was broken.
CHAPTER XI
ON THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION: OF WHAT USE TO US POOR CHILDREN OF EVE IS
THE INCARNATION AND BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD?
The Gate fullest of loving-kindness
1. WE poor children of Eve were all dead
in Adam; and even though we did live, yet we lived only to this world, and
death waited for us, and swallowed up one after another. There was no remedy
for us, if God had not begotten us again from his being; we should not have
reappeared in body in eternity, and our soul would have abided eternally in
God's source of wrath with all the devils. But the incarnation of Jesus Christ
is become for us a thing mighty in operation; for God became man for our sakes,
in order that he might bring our humanity back again out of death into himself,
and deliver our souls from the fire of the wrath of God. For the soul is in
itself a fire-source, and contains in itself the first Principle, the sour
austereness, which in itself labours only unto fire. But if the gentleness and
love of God be withdrawn from such soulic generation, or if it be mixed up with
hard unyielding matter, then it remains a source in the darkness, an acerb
stringent harshness, which devours itself, and yet at the same time is always
generating in the will fresh hunger. For an existence which has no beginning
nor ground, has likewise no end; but itself is its ground, it produces itself.
2. We do not, however, mean that the soul
has not a beginning. It has a beginning, but only as regards the creature, not
as regards the essence. Its essence is from eternity, for the divine fiat has
grasped it in the centre of the Eternal Nature, and brought it into a
substantial being, moreover with the entire + according to the character of the
Holy Trinity, as a likeness of the threefold spirit of the Deity, in which God
dwells. Now, let it be done either in love or wrath, that is, in light or fire,
the one into which the soul imaginates, with that does it become pregnant; for
it is a magical spirit, a source in itself. It is the centre of eternity, a
fire of the Deity in the Father, yet not in the freedom of the Father, but in
the Eternal Nature. It is not prior to being, but in being; whereas the freedom
of God is independent of being, but dwells in being. For in being is God made
manifest. And there would be no God without being, but an eternal stillness
without source. But in the source or fountain-principle fire is generated, and
from fire light. Here then two beings separate and carry two kinds of quality,
viz. a fierce, hungry, thirsty one in the fire, and a gentle, lovely, giving
one in the light, for the light gives and the fire takes. The light gives
gentleness, and from the gentleness arises substantiality, and this is the
fire's food; else it were a fierce, dark hunger in itself, as indeed a spirit
is if it have not the nature of the light; like unto a famished poison. But if
it attain to the substance of the gentleness, it draws this into itself and
dwells therein, and uses it as food and also as a body, for it becomes
permeated and impregnated therewith; for its substantial being is its
satisfying or appeasing, so that the hunger is stilled.
3. We have thus to consider the human soul
It was taken out of the centrum naturae, not out of the mirror of the Eternal,
as out of the source of this world, but out of the eternal essence of the
Spirit of God, out of the first Principle, out of the Father's property in
accordance with Nature. Not from substance or from something; but the Spirit of
the Deity has itself breathed life unto him, understand into the image in Adam,
from all the three Principles. It has breathed into him the centrum naturae, as
the fire-source to life, and also the gentleness of love from the being of the
Deity, that is, the second Principle with divine heavenly essentiality, as well
as the spirit of this world, as the mirror and model of the wisdom of God with
the wonders.
4. But the spirit of this world is
corrupted by the enkindling of the devil and the poison which he has cast into
it; for the devil dwells in this world, and is a constant infector of the outer
nature and property, although he is powerful only in the wrath or the sour
desiring. But he puts his imagination and his false tincture even into the
love, and poisons the soul's best jewel; and has infected Adam's soul with his
imagination or craving, with his evil hunger-spirit, so that Adam's soul lusted
after earthly quality, and by this desire it became impregnated with earthly
quality, so that the outer kingdom was introduced into the inner, whereby the
light in the fire of the first Principle was extinguished, and his divine
essentiality, in which he was to live eternally, was shut up in earthly death.
5. Thus, for this image and human soul there
was no longer any remedy unless the Deity put itself in motion according to the
second Principle, that is, according to the light of eternal life in it, and
kindled again with the brightness of love the essentiality that was shut up in
death. This was done in the incarnation of Christ. And this is the greatest
marvel which God has wrought, that He has put himself in motion in the woman's
seed by means of the centre of the Holy Trinity. For not in fire, i.e. in the
man's tincture, was God's heart to reveal itself, but in the spirit's tincture,
in the love of the life; in order that the fire in the man's tincture should be
laid hold of by the gentleness and love of God. For eternal life was and had to
bud forth again from close shut up death: here has the root of Jesse and the
true rod of Aaron budded, and borne fair fruit. For in Adam Paradise was shut
up in death, when he became earthly; but in Christ it budded again from death.
6. From Adam we have all inherited death;
from Christ we inherit eternal life. Christ is the virgin image, which Adam was
to have generated from himself, with both tinctures. But as he could not, he
was divided, and had to generate by two bodies, till
7. Thus we know that God is a Spirit, and
his eternal will is magical or desiring. He doth out of nothing continually
make being, and that in a twofold source, viz. according to fire and light.
From fire arises fierceness, elevation, pride, the refusing to be united to the
light, a wrathful stern will, according to which he is not called God, but a
fierce consuming fire. This fire is not manifest in the pure Deity, for the
light has swallowed up the fire into itself, and gives to the fire its love,
its essentiality, its water, so that in God's nature there is only love, joy
and bliss, and no fire is known. But fire is only a cause of the desiring will
and of love, as also of light and of majesty; else there would be no being.
8. We can now recognize wherein lies our
new birth (seeing indeed we are covered in this world with the earthly
tabernacle, and subjected unto the earthly life), namely, in the imagination
alone: that we enter with our will into God's will, and wholly unite and give
up ourselves to him, which is called faith. For the word faith is not
historical; but it is a taking out of God's nature, the eating of God's nature,
the introducing of God's nature by the imagination into the fire of one's soul,
to appease its hunger thereby, and thus putting on God's nature, not as a
garment, but as a body of the soul. The soul must have God's nature in its
fire; it must eat of God's bread, if it would be God's child.
9. It will in this way also be new-born in
God's nature, who has grafted it from the field of the fierceness and wrath
into the field of the love, gentleness and humility of God; and it blossoms
forth with a new flower, which grows in God's love, in God's field. This
flower, which grows in God's love, is the true real image of God, which God
desired when he created Adam in his likeness; this then has Jesus Christ, Son
of God and of man, generated again for us. For his new birth from God's and our
nature is our new birth; his power, life and spirit is all ours; and we need do
nothing more to effect this, except that solely with our will-spirit we enter
by him into God's nature; then our will is newborn in God's will, and receives
divine power and essence. Not strange essence, but our primal essence, with
which we in Adam entered into death: it is awakened again to us by the
firstborn from the dead, which is Christ. He is God, but was born from us, that
he might revive us from death: not in the form of a strange life which we
should not have had here in this world, but in the form of our own life. For
God's purpose must stand, the fair flower and image must grow from the corrupt
field; and not only that, but also from the pure field.
10. From the virgin we were to be reborn
and not from the man of wrath, from the fire's tincture, but from the virgin of
love, from the light's tincture. By our resignation or self-surrender we put on
the virgin of Christ, and thereby become the virgin of modesty, chastity and
purity in the Ternarius Sanctus, in the angelic world, in the mirror of the
Holy Trinity, in which God beholds himself, and this virgin he has taken to
himself for a spouse. He is our husband, to whom we are in Christ espoused,
betrothed and incorporated. We are thus Mary in the covenant of grace, from whom
God and man is born. Mary was the first in the high benediction, for in her was
the goal to which the covenant pointed; she was known in God in the precious
name Jesus, before the foundation of the world was laid. Not that she is to be
regarded as bringing life out of death, but God willed in her to bring life out
of death. Therefore she was highly blessed, and the pure virgin, chastity was
put on her. And from the same virginity from which Christ was born, we must all
be born. For we must become virgins and follow the Lamb of God, else we shall
not see God. For Christ saith: Ye must be born anew by water and the Holy
Spirit, if ye will see the
CHAPTER
XII
OF THE PURE VIRGINITY. How WE POOR CHILDREN OF EVE MUST, STARTING FROM
THE PURE VIRGIN CHASTITY, BE CONCEIVED IN THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST, AND BE
NEW-BORN IN GOD; OTHERWISE WE SHALL NOT SEE GOD
1. WE poor children of Eve find in
ourselves no pure chaste virgin thought; for mother Eve, who was a woman, has
made us all feminine and masculine. We have in Adam and Eve all become men and
women, unless we enter with our desiring will into the heavenly virginity, in
which God has begotten us from Christ to be virgins again. Not according to the
earthly life, in which there is no chastity nor purity, but according to the life
of the heavenly virgin, in which Christ became man, which was put on Mary by
the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, which is without ground, limit and end,
which stands everywhere before the Deity, and is a mirror and image of the
Deity. Into this virgin, in which the Holy Trinity. dwells, wherein we were
seen before the times of the world by the Spirit of God, and were known in the
name Jesus, we must enter with our willspirit. For our true image, in which we
are the likeness of God, has through Adam and Eve faded for us and become
earthly. This -came about by desire or imagination; and accordingly God's clear
countenance was hidden to us, for we lost the heavenly chastity.
2. But seeing that God by his favour and
love towards us has again disclosed to us his clear countenance in the
incarnation of Christ, the matter lies solely in this, that as in Adam we have
imaginated into the earthly craving, and thereby have become earthly, we now
put our desiring will again into the heavenly virgin, and bring our longing
thereinto; then our image goes out from the earthly woman and receives virgin
essence and property, in which God dwells, where the soul's image may again
attain the countenance of God.
3. Outward Reason says: How can it happen
that we should be born again of the virgin from which Christ was born? It
understands Mary as such; but we understand not Mary who is a creaturely
virgin, even as we become creaturely virgins in the immaterial virgin chastity.
Now we enter into the incarnation of Christ, not according to the outer life in
the four elements, but according to the inner life in the one element, where
the fire of God swallows up the four elements into itself; and, again, in its
light, viz. in the second Principle, in which the outer man and woman must
enter by death into Christ's resurrection, we bud forth in the true virgin
wisdom of God, a virgin in the one element, wherein all the four lie hidden. We
must die to the man and the woman, and crucify the corrupt Adam. He must die
with Christ and be cast into the Father's wrath. This swallows up the earthly
man and woman, and gives to the soul through the incarnation of Christ a virgin
image, in which the man and woman is but one image, with its own love. The man
now places his love in the woman, and the woman in the man; but if the two
loves be transformed into one, there is no longer any desire
of commingling in the one image, but the
image loves itself.
4. Now the image was created in the
beginning in the virgin wisdom of God, from divine essence. Seeing then the
essence has become earthly and fallen into death, the Word which became man
awakens it again. Thus the earthly nature remains to death in the wrath, and
what is awakened remains in the Word of life, in the virgin chastity.
Accordingly here in this world we carry a twofold man in one person, viz. a
virgin image born of the incarnation of Christ, and an earthly image, masculine
or feminine, shut up in death and in the wrath of God. The earthly must bear
the cross, suffer itself to be reviled, persecuted and tormented in the wrath,
and is at length given to death; then the wrath swallows it up in the
qualificative fire of God. And if the Word of life, which in Mary became man,
is included in the earthly image, then Christ, who brought from God the Word of
life, rises from death, and leads the essence of the qualificative fire, i.e.
the human essence, out of death, for he has arisen from death and lives in God;
his life has become our life and his death our death; we are buried in his
death, but we bud forth in his resurrection and conquest, in his life.
5. But understand the meaning correctly.
Adam was the virgin image, he had love proper, for the Spirit of God had
breathed it into him. For what else can the Spirit of God breathe from himself
but what he himself is? Now he is all, and yet is not called God in respect of
every, source; but in all sources there is one only Spirit which is God, viz.
according to the second Principle in the light, and yet there is no light
without fire. But in fire he is not the love-spirit or the Holy Spirit, but the
wrath of nature and a cause of the Holy Spirit, an anger and consuming fire;
for in fire the spirit of nature is liberated, and the essential fire indeed
gives nature, and is itself nature.
6. We understand, however, but one Holy
Spirit in the light. Though all is one being, yet we understand that the matter
which is generated from the gentleness of the light is as if impotent and dark.
This the fire draws into itself and swallows up, but gives from the material
source, from the fire, a powerful spirit which is free from matter and also
from fire. Though it is held by the fire, yet the fire does not reach its
quality; as we see that light dwells in fire and yet has not the fire's
quality, but a gentle love-quality, which however would not be if the matter
had not died and been consumed in the fire.
7. Let us consider then the first Adam. He
was composed from the essence and nature of the light; but because he was to
enter into a creaturely existence and be a complete likeness of God in accord
with the whole reality, with all the three Principles, he was grasped by the
verbum fiat in the whole sphere of all the three Principles and brought into a
creaturely being. All the three Principles were indeed free in him, and were
one in another, each in its order, and he was a quite complete likeness of God,
according to and derived from the Being of all beings. But we are to know that
the third Principle or the source of this world had at the kindling of Lucifer
become wrathful, thirsty and evil, and that this source at once in Adam
thirsted after the second Principle, viz. after the heavenly matter, whence
craving arose in Adam. For the source of pure love springing from the Holy
Spirit had rejected this. But when the love did enter into the earthly source
in order to satisfy it in its enkindled thirst, the pure immaterial love
received the desiring, earthly, corrupt craving. Here was extinguished the
second Principle, not as a death, in such a sense that it had become a nothing,
but it was caught in the raging thirst. And seeing then God is a Light, the
pure love-source lay shut up in death out of the light of God. The image was
thus corrupted-and taken captive in the wrath of God, and love proper lost its
power, for it was shut up in the corrupt earthliness, and loved the
earthliness.
8. From this image, then, a woman had to
be made, and the two tinctures, viz. the fire's essence and the watery essence
of the matrix, had to be divided into a man and woman, so that love should be
moving in a twofold source, and that one tincture should love and desire the
other, and they should commix, whereby this stock should be continued and
preserved.
9. But this race of men, thus contained in
the earthly source, could not know or see God, for the pure love without spot
was shut up in the earthly thirsty source and imprisoned in the thirst of the
wrath of the Eternal Nature, which Lucifer had kindled; for the wrath had drawn
the love with the earthliness into itself. Now, in this imprisoned love lay the
virgin chastity of the wisdom of God, which, with the second Principle, with
the heavenly essentiality, was in Adam incorporated into his body, and still
more the spirit of their gentle essentiality, by the insulation of the Holy
Spirit, which was inbreathed into Adam.
10. Now there was no remedy unless the
Deity should stir itself in the divine virgin according to the second
Principle, in the virginity that was shut up in death, and another image should
arise from the first. And we know and sufficiently understand that the first
image had to be given to the wrath in order that it might quench its thirst,
and had to enter into corruption, as into the essential fire, although the
essence does not corrupt or die. And on this account God has decreed a day, in
which he will bring the essence of the old and first Adam through fire, when it
shall be released from vanity, from the craving of the devil and from the wrath
of the Eternal Nature.
11. We understand further how God has
brought again into us the life of his holy Being by putting himself in motion
with his own heart or Word and power of the divine life in the virginity that
was shut up in death, viz. in the true pure love; and has rekindled this love
and introduced his heavenly essentiality with the pure virginity into the
virginity shut up in death, and has out of the heavenly virginity and that shut
up in death and wrath generated a new image.
12. And thirdly we understand that this
new image has had, through death and the fierceness of fire, to be introduced
again into the heavenly divine essentiality, into the Ternarius Sanctus; for
the earthly craving, which the devil had possessed, had to remain in the
wrath-fire and was given to the devil for food; therein he was to be a prince
in accordance with the wrath-source of the Eternal Nature; for the devil is the
food of the fierce wrath, and the fierce wrath is the food of the devil.
13. Seeing then the Word of eternal life has
again moved itself in our cold love and virginity that was shut up in death,
and taken upon it our corrupt virginity, and become a man inwardly and
outwardly, and has introduced the centre, viz. the fire of our soul, into his
love: we acknowledge his love and virginity that has been introduced into us as
our own virginity; for his love and virginity has espoused itself with our cold
love and virginity, and given itself up to them, that God and man may be
eternally one person.
14. Here Reason says: This has taken place
in Mary, that is, only in one person, but what becomes of me? Christ has not
been born also in me.
15. Oh, our great misery and blindness,
that we will understand nothing! How entirely has the earthly material craving
blinded us and the devil led us away by and through the abominable Antichrist
in
16. The Word of God has indeed become man
in Adam's virginity that was shut up in death. The heart of God has stirred
itself in Adam's virginity, and from out of death through God's fire has
introduced it into the divine source. Christ has become Adam, not indeed the
divided Adam, but the virgin Adam, such as he was before his sleep. He has
brought the corrupt Adam into death, into God's fire, and has brought the pure
virgin Adam out of death through the fire. His son art thou, if thou remainest
not in death like rotten wood which cannot
qualify, which in fire gives no essence,
but takes the form of dark ashes.
17. Reason then says: How is it, seeing I
am a member of Christ and the child of God, that I find not nor do I feel Him?
Answer: Yes, there's the rub, dear soiled bit of wood! Smell in thy bosom, of
what dost thou stink? Of devilish craving, viz. of temporal pleasure, of greed,
honour and power. Hearken, that is the devil's dress. Strip off this pelt, and
throw it away. Place thy desire in Christ's life, spirit, flesh and blood;
imaginate thereinto, as thou hast imaginated into the earthly craving, then
thou wilt put on Christ in thy body, in thy flesh and blood; thou wilt become
Christ; his incarnation will forthwith begin to make itself felt in thee, and
thou wilt be new-born in Christ.
18. For the Deity or the Word, which
stirred itself in Mary and became man, at the same time also became man in all
deceased men descended from Adam who had given up and committed their spirit to
God or to the promised Messiah; and passed too upon all those who were yet to
be born from the corrupt Adam and would suffer themselves to be awakened by
this Word, for the first man comprehends also the last. Adam is the stem, we
all are his branches; Christ, however, has become our sap, virtue and life. If
now a branch of the tree withers, what can the sap and virtue of the tree do to
that? Is not the virtue given to all the branches? Why does the branch not draw
the sap and virtue into it? The difficulty lies in the fact that man draws into
himself devilish power and essence instead of divine essence, and allows
himself to be led away by the devil into earthly craving and desire. For the
devil knows the branch, which has grown up for him in his former domain, and
still grows. Therefore, as he was a liar and murderer at the beginning, he is
so still, and infects men, because he knows that they have fallen to the outer
dominion of the stars, into his magical craving. Hence he is a constant
poisoner of the complexion; and where he scents a spark which serves him, that
he always sets before man; if a man imaginate thereinto, he will straightway
infect him.
19. Therefore it is said: Watch, pray, be
sober, lead a temperate life, for the devil, your adversary, walketh about as a
roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. v. 8). Follow not, then, after
covetousness, money, goods, power and honour, for in Christ we are not of this
world. For therefore it was that Christ went to the Father, viz. into the
divine Being, in order that we should follow him with our hearts, minds and
wills; and hence he says he will be with us all the days, even unto the end of
the world (Matt. xxviii. 20); but not in the source of this world. We must
force a way out of the source of this world, out of the earthly man, and give
up our will to his will, and introduce our imagination and desire into him;
then we become pregnant in his virginity, which he has quickened again in us,
and we receive the Word, which stirred itself in him, into our virginity shut
up in death, and we are new-born in Christ in ourselves. For as death passed
upon us all by Adam, so the Word of life passes upon us all from Christ. For
the motion of the Deity in the incarnation of Christ has remained active, and
is open to all men; there is lacking only the power of entry, in that man
allows himself to be kept back by the devil. Christ need not first leave his
place and enter into us, when we are new-born in him; for the divine Being, in
which he was born,
contains everywhere the second Principle.
Wherever it may be said that God is present, there also it may be said that the
incarnation of Christ is present too; for it has been revealed in Mary, and
thus inqualifies backwards to Adam and forwards even to the last man.
20. Reason then says: It is only faith
that attains it. Yes certainly, in the true faith the gestation begins; for
faith is spirit and requires substance. The substance, moreover, exists in all
men; there is nothing wanting but that the spirit of faith should lay hold of
it. And if it be laid hold of, the fair lily grows and blossoms forth, not
merely a spirit, but the virgin image is born out of death into life. The rod
of Aaron, which is dry, buds forth from the dry death and takes its body from
death, the fair new virgin life from the half-dead virginity. The rod of Aaron
betokens this, and the same holds true of old Zacharias and of Abraham with his
old Sarah, who were all according to the outer world just as if dead, and no
longer fruitful. But the promise of the new birth was to accomplish it, life
was to bud from death. Not the old Adam, who was earthly, was to be lord; nor
Esau the first-born, to whom indeed the inheritance would have belonged if Adam
had stood firm; but the second Adam, which is Christ, who buds forth from the
first through death, is to remain lord. Not the man or the woman is destined to
possess the kingdom of God, but the virgin which is born from the death of the
man and woman is to be the queen of the heavens one sex, not two; one tree, not
many. Christ was the stem, because he was the root of the new body which budded
from death and brought the dead virgin again as a fair twig out of death; and
we all are the branches and all rest upon one stem, which stem is Christ.
21. We are then Christ's branches, his
twigs, his children, and God is the Father of us all, and also of Christ. In
him we live and move and have our being. We bear Christ's flesh and blood in us,
if we attain to the new birth; for in Christ's spirit are we reborn. He who in
Mary, in the dead humanity, became a living man without involving contact with
a man, he in like manner becomes in ourselves, in our dead virginity, a new
man; and there is nothing wanting but that we cast the old Adam or the husk
into death, that the torment of the earthly life may pass from us, and we may
thus go out from the domain of the devil.
22. And this not simpliciter, for the old
Adam must not be wholly cast away, but only the husk or hull, in which the seed
lies hidden. The new man must bud forth in the motion of God from the old
essence, like a stalk from the grain, as Christ teaches us. Therefore the
essence must be cast into God's wrath, be persecuted, tortured, mocked, and
sink under the cross; for from God's wrath-fire must the new man bud forth; he
must be tried and approved in fire. We had fallen into the power of the essence
of the wrath, but the love of God presented itself in the wrath and quenched
the wrath with the love in the blood of the heavenly essentiality in the death
of Christ. Thus the wrath retained the husk or the corrupt man, understand the
earthly nature, and the love retained the new man. Not by another man shall
heavenly blood be shed, but only the earthly mortal blood. For Christ, who was
conceived without the intervention of man and woman, could alone do that, for
in his heavenly essentiality was no earthly blood. He shed, however, his
heavenly blood 'mongst the earthly blood, in order that he might deliver us
poor earthly men from the wrath. For his heavenly blood had in his
blood-shedding to mingle with the earthly, that the turba in the earthliness in
us, which kept us prisoner, might be drowned and the wrath extinguished with
the love of the heavenly blood. He gave up his life to death for us, for us he
descended into hell, into the fiery quality of the Father, and went out of hell
again into God, in order that he might break death to pieces, drown the wrath
and make a way for us. When Christ hung and died on the cross, we hung with and
in him, and died in him, rose again also in him from death, and live eternally
in him, as a member of his body. And thus the seed of the woman has bruised the
serpent's head; Christ has done it in us and we in Christ: Divine and human
essence has accomplished it.
23. Therefore the matter now lies in this,
that we follow him. Christ has certainly broken down death and quenched the
wrath. But if we wish to become like his image, we must follow him also in his
death, take his cross upon us, suffer ourselves to be persecuted, scorned,
mocked and slain. For the old husk belongs to the wrath of God; it must be
purged away, seeing it is not the old man that must live in us, but the new.
The old is given up to the wrath. For from the wrath blossoms forth the new, as
light shines from fire. The old Adam must thus be the wood for the fire, in
order that the new may bud forth in the light of the fire; for he has to
subsist in fire. Nothing is eternal that cannot subsist in fire, and that does
not originally arise from fire.
24. Our soul comes from God's fire, and
the body comes from the light's fire. But understand always by the body a dumb
substantiality, which is not spirit, but an essential fire. The spirit is much
higher, for its origin is the fire of the wrath, of the wrathful quality; and
its true life or body, which it carries in itself, is the light of the
gentleness; this dwells in the fire and gives to the fire its gentle
nourishment or love; otherwise the fire would not subsist-; it will have
something to feed upon. For God the Father says: I am an angry, jealous,
wrathful God, a consuming fire (Deut. iv. 24); and yet is called also a
compassionate, lovable God (1 John iv. 8), in reference to his light, to his heart.
Therefore He says: I am merciful, for in the light is born the water of eternal
life, which extinguishes the fire and the wrath of the Father.
CHAPTER
XIII
OF THE TWOFOLD MAN, THAT IS, OF THE OLD AND NEW ADAM, SHOWING HOW THE
OLD EVIL ADAM BEHAVES TOWARDS THE NEW, WHAT SORT OF RELIGION, LIFE AND FAITH
EACH PRACTISES, AND ALSO WHAT EACH OF THEM UNDERSTANDS
1. ALL that is taught, written, preached
or spoken in the old Adam regarding Christ, whether it be as the result of art
or no matter how, belongs to death, and has neither understanding nor life; for
the old Adam is dead as to Christ. The new Adam only, who is born of the
virgin, should do this; he alone understands the word of regeneration and
enters by the door of Christ into the sheepfold. The old Adam aims at getting
in by art and inquiry. He supposes that Christ may be grasped sufficiently in
the letter. He holds that one who has learned arts and languages, who has read
much, is appointed by God and called to teach; that the Spirit of God must speak
through his preaching, even though he is but the old corrupt Adam. But Christ
says: These are robbers and murderers, and have come only to rob and to steal.
He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other
way, the same is a thief and a murderer (John x. 1). And he says further I am
the door of the sheep: by me if any man enter in, he shall find pasture, and
the sheep will follow him (John x. 9). For he that is not with me is against
me.
2. A teacher must necessarily be born of
Christ, otherwise he is a thief and a murderer, and only stands forth to preach
for the belly's sake. He does it for money and honour, he teaches his own word
and not God's word. But if he be born again of Christ, he teaches Christ's
word, for he lives in the tree of Christ, and gives his sound from the tree of
Christ, in which he lives. Therefore is there such contrariety on the earth,
because men heap to themselves teachers, to tell them what their ears itch
after and what the old evil Adam readily listens to, what ministers to his
elevation and carnal pleasure, what is conducive to might and magnificence.
3. O ye devilish teachers, how will you
stand before the wrath of God? Why do you teach, when you are not sent from
God? You are sent from
4. Therefore the virgin's child is opposed
to the old Adam. The latter shows himself by desires of temporal pleasure,
honour, power and authority, and is a fierce, horrible dragon, who seeks only
to devour, as the Revelation of John represents him. The child of the virgin,
however, stands upon the moon, and wears a crown of twelve stars; for it treads
under foot what is terrestrial or the moon; it has grown forth from the
terrestrial moon like a flower from the earth. Accordingly the virgin image
stands upon the moon. Against it the fierce dragon casts out of his mouth water
as a flood, and tries continually to drown the virgin image. But the earth
comes to the aid of the virgin and swallows up the flood of water and brings
the virgin into
5. It is known to us that the old Adam
knows and understands nothing of the new; he understands everything in an
earthly way. He knows not where or what God is; he. acts the hypocrite to
himself, ascribes to himself piety and thinks that he serves God, yet serves
only the old dragon; he sacrifices, and his heart cleaves to the dragon; he
will be genuinely devout and with what is earthly ascend into heaven, and yet
mocks at the children of heaven. Thereby he shows that he is an alien in
heaven; he is only a master on earth and a devil in hell.
6. Among such thorns and thistles must the
children of God grow. They are not known in this world, for the wrath of God
covers them. Even a child of God knows not himself aright; he sees only the old
Adam who hangs unto him, who always strives to drown the child of the virgin.
Unless indeed the virgin's child obtain a glimpse into the Ternarius Sanctus;
then he knows himself, when the fair knightly garland is set upon him; in such
case must the old Adam look on from behind, and knows not what happens to him.
He is indeed joyful, but he dances as one who dances to the sound of stringed
instruments: when the playing ceases, his joy has an end and he continues to be
the old Adam; for he belongs to the earth and not to the angelic world.
7. As soon as a man gets to the point that
the virgin image begins to bud forth from the old Adam, so that the man's soul
and spirit gives itself up into the obedience of God, then in him does the
combat begin, for the old Adam in the wrath of God fights against the new Adam
in the love. The old Adam wishes to be lord in flesh and blood, and in this
connection the devil can reach, infect and possess him. The virgin twig can the
devil not endure, but he may not touch it. Because his own dwelling in the
darkness of the abyss pleases him not, he willingly dwells in man; for he is an
enemy of God and outside of man has no power. Therefore he possesses man, and
leads man as he-pleases into the anger and wrath of God, so that he may mock at
God's love and gentleness; for he still supposes, because he is a fierce
fire-source, that he is higher than humility, seeing that he can sweep along in
a terrible manner. But because he must not touch the virgin twig, he makes use
of nothing but guile and villainy, and covers the twig, that it may not be
known in this world; otherwise there might grow too many such twigs for him in
his so-called country, for he is hostile to them. He brings his proud servants
with mockery and molestation upon any such man, so that he is
persecuted, derided and accounted a fool.
This he does by the reason-wise world, by those who call themselves shepherds
of Christ, whom the world has regard to, in order that the lily-twig may not be
known; otherwise men might observe it, and for him there might grow too many
such twigs, and hence he might lose his dominion among men.
8. But the noble lily-twig grows in
patience and meekness, and receives its essence, power and smell from the field
of God, that is, from the incarnation of Christ. Christ's spirit is its power,
God's essence is its body. Not from a foreign property, but from its own
essence which is shut up in death and budding forth in Christ's spirit does the
virgin lily-twig grow. It seeks not nor desires the beauty of this world, but
of the angelic world; for it grows not in this world, in the third Principle,
but in the second Principle, in the paradisaic world. Therefore there is great
strife in flesh and blood, in the outer reason. The old Adam knows not the new
and yet finds that he resists him: the new one wills not what the old Adam
wills, he is always leading the latter to abstinence. This afflicts the old
Adam, who desires only pleasure, possessions and temporal honour, and cannot
suffer mockery and tribulation. But the new Adam is well pleased to bear the
marks of Christ, that he may become like the image of Christ. Therefore the old
Adam goes about often mournfully, for he sees that he must be regarded as a
fool; nor knows what is happening to him, for he knows not God's will, he has
only the will of this world: what shines there he will have, he would fain
always be master, before whom people bow. But the new Adam bows himself before
his God; he desires nothing, wills nothing, but only longs after his God as a
child after its mother; he casts himself into the bosom of his mother and gives
himself up to his heavenly mother in the spirit of Christ; he desires of his
eternal mother food and drink, and eats in the bosom of the mother as a child
in the womb eats of its mother. For as long as he is covered up in the old
Adam, he is still in process of incarnation; but when the old Adam dies, the
new Adam is born from the old he abandons the vessel, in which he lay and
became a virgin child, to the earth and to the judgment of God; but he is born
as a flower in God's kingdom. Then when the day of restoration shall come, all
his works, which he has done in the old Adam, shall follow him; the iniquity of
the old Adam, however, shall be burnt away in the fire of God and given to the
devil for food.
9. Here Reason says: Since then the new
man in this world, in the old Adam, is only in process of incarnation, he is not
perfect. Answer: This is no otherwise than as in a child, the seed being sown
with two tinctures, masculine and feminine, united in each other, and from it a
child grows. For as soon as a man turns round, and turns himself to God with
his whole heart, mind and will, and goes out from the godless way and gives
himself up in real earnest to God, then the gestation begins in the soul's
fire, in the old corrupt image, and the soul seizes in itself the Word which
put itself in motion in Mary in the centre of the Holy Trinity, which gave
itself to Mary, to the half-dead virgin, with the chaste highly blessed
heavenly Virgin of the wisdom of God, and became a true man. This Word, which
moved or stirred itself in Mary in the centre of the Holy Trinity, which espoused
itself with the halfdead shut-up virginity, is laid hold of by the soul's fire,
and gestation begins immediately in the soul's image, that is, in the soul's
light in the gentleness, in the shut-up virgin essence. For man's love-tincture
seizes God's love-tincture, and the seed is sown in the Holy Spirit in the
soul's image.
10. Now consider 1 When the virgin sign
presents itself thus in God's love, such a twig may indeed be born, for in God
all is perfect. But as long as it is covered up in the old Adam, and stands as
it were in essence only as a seed, there is yet great danger in connection with
it, for many a one attains this twig only at his latter end; and though he had
brought it with him out of the womb, it yet becomes deteriorated and in the case
of some is broken and terrestrialized.
11. So is it likewise with the poor
sinner. When he repents, but afterwards becomes again a bad man, it fares with
him as befell Adam, who was a beautiful, glorious image, created by God and
highly enlightened; but when he let himself be overcome by desire, he became
earthly and his beautiful image was imprisoned in the earthly source in the
wrath of God: and so it happens still. But this we say, as having received
illumination in the grace of God and having striven a considerable time for
this garland, that to him who continues steadfast in real earnest, until his
twig becomes a tree, his twig in one or more storms will not easily be broken;
for what is feeble has also a feeble life. We do not thus break in upon the Deity.
On the contrary, the position is of a natural kind, and indeed all comes to
pass naturally; for the Eternal itself has also its nature, and one merely
proceeds out of another. If this world had not been poisoned by the malice and
wrath of the devil, Adam would have remained in
this world in
12. Seeing then we know that we are
surrounded by the wrath, we ought to take heed to ourselves and not estimate
ourselves lightly; for we have our being not only from this world, but also
from the divine world, which lies hidden in this world and is near us. We may
live and be at the same time in three worlds, if we bud forth again out of the
evil life with the virgin image. For we live: (1) in the first Principle in the
Father's world in fire, according to the essential soul, that is, according to
the firesource in the centre of nature of eternity; and (2) with the true pure
virgin image we live in the light-flaming paradisaic world, although it is not
manifest in the place of this world, but yet is known in the virgin image in
the Holy Spirit, and in the Word which dwells in the virgin image; and (3) we
live with the old Adam in this external corrupt distempered world, along with
the devil in his enkindled desire: therefore it is necessary to be cautious.
Christ says: Be simple as doves and wise as serpents (Matt. x. 16). Take heed
to yourselves. In God's kingdom we need no guile, we are only children in the
bosom of the mother; but in this world we should certainly be on our guard, we
carry the noble treasure in an earthly vessel. It is soon done, losing God and
the kingdom of heaven, which after this time can no longer be attained. Here,
we are in the field and as seed, we are here in process of growth; though the
stalk be broken, the root is still present, so that another stalk may grow.
13. In this life the door of grace stands
open to man. However great the sinner, if he turn round and produce honest
fruits of repentance, he may be new-born out of what is bad. But he who
deliberately casts his root into the devil's fire (corruption) and despairs of
his budding forth: who shall help him, who himself wills not? But if he turn
his will to God, then God will have him. For he who wills into God's wrath, him
will God's wrath have; but he who wills into the love, him will God's love
have. Paul says: To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye
are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto
righteousness (Rom. vi. 16). The wicked man is to God a sweet savour in the
wrath, and the holy man is to God a sweet savour in His love (2 Cor. ii. 15,
16). A man can make of himself what he pleases: he has the two before him, viz.
fire and light. If he will be an angel in the light, then the Spirit of God in
Christ helps him to enter the angelic host; if he will be a devil in the fire,
then God's anger and wrath help him, and draw him into the abyss to the devil.
Further, he gets his ascendent, of which he has desire. But if he break the
first desire and enter into another, then he gets another ascendent; but the
first clings to him strongly, it strives continually to possess him again.
Therefore the noble grain must frequently be in a great strait; it must suffer
itself to be pricked by thorns, for the serpent always stings the woman's seed,
that is, the child of the virgin, in the heel. The sting of the serpent lies in
the old Adam, it always stings the child of the virgin in the mother's womb, in
the heel. Therefore life in this world is with us poor imprisoned men a vale of
sorrow, full of anxiety, tribulation, misery and affliction. We are here
strange guests, and are upon our pilgrim's path. We must traverse great waste,
wild solitudes, and are surrounded with evil beasts, with adders and serpents,
wolves and nothing but horrible beasts, and the most evil beast we carry in our
bosom. In this evil villainous stable our fair virgin lodges.
14. But this we know and with good reason
say, that when the noble twig grows and becomes strong, there in that man must
the old Adam become servant, he must walk behind, and often do what he does not
wish. Often, he must suffer tribulation, mockery and even death. This he does
not do willingly, but the virgin image in Christ constrains him; for it would
follow joyfully after Christ, who is its bridegroom, and become like Him in
tribulation and affliction.
15. And certainly no one is crowned with
the virgin's crown which the woman in the Revelation of John wears with twelve
stars, viz. with six spirits of nature of a heavenly kind, and with six spirits
of an earthly kind, unless he stand firm against the torrent of the dragon and
flee into Egypt, that is, under the cross into the plagues of Egypt. He must
carry the cross of Christ and put on Christ's crown of thorns, suffer himself
to be mocked, fooled and scorned, if he would put on the crown of Christ and of
the virgin. He must first wear the crown of thorns, if he. would put on the
heavenly crown of pearls in the Ternarius Sanctus.
16. And we make known to the illuminates
another great mystery, namely, that when the pearl is sown, the soul for the
first time puts on the crown in the Ternarius Sanctus with great joy and honour
before God's angels and all the holy virgins. And there is assuredly great joy
there, for in that place God becomes man. But this crown conceals itself again.
How should there not be joy there? The old Adam dances also, but as an ass to
the sound of the lyre; but the crown is assigned to the incarnation.
17. Wouldest thou be a champion, then thou
must in Christ's footsteps wage war with the old ass, as well as fight against
the devil. If thou conquer and art acknowledged and accepted as a valiant child
of God, the woman's crown with twelve stars will be put on thee. That shalt
thou wear, till the virgin be born out of the woman from thy death or by thy
death; she shall put on the triple crown of great honour in the Ternarius
Sanctus. For as long as the virgin image is still shut up in the old Adam, it
attains not the angelic crown, as it is still in danger. But when it is born at
the death of the old Adam and emerges from the husk or shell, then it is an
angel and can no longer perish, and the right crown as assigned, in which God
became man, is put upon it. But the crown with the twelve stars it retains as
an eternal sign; for it must never be forgotten that God has in the earthly
woman again disclosed the virginity and become man. The Deity is spirit, and
the holy pure Element is born out of the Word of eternity; and the master has
passed into servant, at which all the angels in heaven marvel: and it is the
greatest wonder which has been done from eternity, for it is against nature,
and such may be described as love. The six earthly signs of the crown with
twelve stars shall stand as an eternal wonder and be an eternal song of praise,
in that God has redeemed us out of death and distress; and the six heavenly
signs shall be our crown and glory, to show that we have overcome what is
earthly by what is heavenly, that we were men and women, and thereafter are
chaste virgins filled with love proper. Thus the signs of victory shall
continue to eternity, whereby shall be recognized what God has had to do with
humanity, and how man is the greatest wonder in heaven, at which the angels
highly rejoice.
CHAPTER
XIV
ON THE NEW BIRTH: IN WHAT SUBSTANCE, ESSENCE, BEING AND PROPERTY IS
FOUND THE NEW BIRTH, THAT IS, THE CHILD OF THE VIRGIN, WHILE IT STILL LIES IN
THE OLD ADAM
1. SINCE we swim in earthly flesh and
blood in this sea of sorrow, and have become of an earthly nature, in which we
are shut up in obscurity in the reflection, the noble mind ceases not to
inquire regarding its true country, whither it is destined to go. It is always
saying: Where then is God, or when will it be that I can see God's face? Where
then is my noble pearl? Where is the child of the virgin? I see it not at all;
how does it happen that I thus travail in desire after that which,
nevertheless, I am unable to see? I find certainly great longing and desire for
it, but can see nothing in which my heart might rest. I am always as a woman
who would fain bring forth; how fain would I see my fruit, which is promised to
me by my God I She yearns continually to bring forth; one day calls unto
another, the morning unto the evening, and the night again unto the day; and in
privation hopes for the moment when at last will arise the bright morningstar,
which will bring rest to the soul; and it is with the soul as with a woman who
labours to bring forth, who continually hopes for the sight of her fruit, and
waits with longing and desire.
2. Thus does it fare with us, my dear
children of God. We suppose that we are still far from it, and yet are thus in
travail. We bring forth, accordingly, with great longing in anguish, and know
not the seed which we bring forth, for it is hidden. We do not bring forth to
this world; how then should we see the fruit with the eyes of this world? the
fruit belongs not to this world.
3. But seeing that we have obtained the
true knowledge of this thing, not according to the outer man, but according to
the inner, we will portray it in a similitude, for the sake of the reader and
for our own recreation and delight.
4. When we consider ourselves, as to how
we are twofold, with twofold sense and will, we cannot better attain to knowledge
than by considering creaturely existence. Lying in view is a rough stone, and
in some we find the best gold. There it is seen how the gold glitters in the
stone, but the stone is inert, and knows not that it contains in itself such a
noble gold. This holds also of us: we are an earthly sulphur, but have a
heavenly sulphur in the earthly, where each is its own possession. During this
lifetime both are together, but inqualify not with each other; one is merely
the container and tenement of the other, as we see in gold. The rough stone is
not the gold, but only the receptacle of it. The roughness of the stone in no
wise gives rise to the gold, but the tincture of the sun in the rough stone
produces it. The rough stone is the mother and the sun the father; for the sun
impregnates the rough stone, because it has the centrum naturae, to which the
sun owes its origin.
5. So it is also with man: the earthly man
is indicated by the rough stone, and the Word that became man is indicated by
the sun, which makes the corrupt man pregnant. The cause is as follows The
corrupt man is indeed earthly, but he contains in himself the centrum naturae
eternally; he longs after God's sun, for at his creation God's sun was taken
also into his being. The rough stone, however, has overgrown the sun and
swallowed it up in itself, so that the sun is mixed up with the rough sulphur,
and cannot escape the rough sulphur, unless it be purified in fire, so that
what is rough is melted away, and the sun remains alone by itself. Understand
this of death and corruption, in which the coarse earthly flesh is melted away,
and the virgin spiritual flesh remains without the other.
6. Understand correctly what we mean; we
speak solemnly and truly, as we know it. The new man is not a mere spirit; he
lives in flesh and blood; just as the gold in the stone is not merely spirit,
it has body, yet not such a body as the rough stone shows, but a body which in
the centrum naturae subsists in fire. For the fire cannot consume its body,
because the gold has another principle. But it justly remains dumb, for the
earth is not worthy of the gold, although it carries it and also produces it.
So likewise the earthly man is not worthy of the jewel which he carries; and
though he help to produce it, he is nevertheless a dark earth in comparison
with the child of the virgin born of God.
7. And as the gold has a real body, which
is hidden and imprisoned in the rough stone, so has the virgin tincture in the
earthly man a real, heavenly, divine body in flesh and blood, but not in such
flesh and blood as the earthly; it can resist fire, it passes through stone and
wood and is not laid hold of. As the gold penetrates the rough stone and breaks
it not, nor is itself broken, and the stone knows nothing of the gold, so is it
also with the old earthly man: when he receives the Word of life which in
Christ became man, he receives it in the corrupt sulphur of his flesh and
blood, in the virgin centre that is shut up in death, in which centre Adam was
a virgin image; and there the rough earth covered his gold of the clear divine
essentiality, so that the heavenly nature had to remain in death, in the centre
of fire. In the same centre the Word of life, which in Mary became man, moved
itself; there the essence that was shut up in death obtained a living tincture.
At this point the noble gold or the heavenly essence begins in death to bud,
and has at once in itself, in the Word of life, the Holy Spirit, which proceeds
from the Father and Son; and wisdom or the heavenly virgin, as a mirror and
image of the Deity before itself, forms as it were a pure sulphur, a pure flesh
and blood, in which the Holy Spirit dwells, not in the form of earthly essence,
but in the form of divine essence, by means of heavenly essentiality. That is
the true flesh and blood of Christ, for it grows in the spirit of Christ, in
the Word of life which became man, which has broken down death so that the
divine tincture budded again and produced being from itself, for all is born
and has arisen out of God's desire. But as God is a fire and also a light, we
know sufficiently from whence each individual thing has come. We cannot
possibly say otherwise than that from what is good and loving good has arisen;
for a good desiring will conceives in its imagination its like, it makes to
itself its like by the hunger of its own desiring.
8. We recognize, then, that because the
Deity desired to have a mirror, an image of itself, the Divine longing also in
its self-impregnation will have generated in its desiring will what is good and
most lovable, a true likeness according to the Good, according to the clear
Deity. But the fact that the earthly element has become mixed up with it, that
is the fault of the desiring wrath, of the fire, of the devil, who has kindled
it by his longing.
9. So likewise it is highly recognizable
by us that God would not abandon his own (viz. his best and dearest, which he
created as his like to be a creaturely being); rather he became himself such a
being as he had created, that he might generate again out of corruption what
has been corrupted and turn it into what is best, in which he might dwell
eternally. And we say with good ground that God dwells in the new man
self-subsistingly, not by a reflection or extrinsic shine, but essentially, yet
in his principle. The outer man touches or grasps him not. Further, the flesh
and blood of the new man is not God, it is heavenly essentiality. God is
Spirit, God does not decay and perish; though being decay and perish, yet God
remains in himself. He has no need of any departing away, for he does not make
use of any entering in; but he manifests himself in flesh and blood, it is his
good pleasure to possess a likeness.
10. If then we know ourselves aright and
follow this up, we find that man (i.e. the whole man) is a true likeness
according to God. For by the earthly life and body he belongs to this world,
and by the virgin life and body he belongs to heaven; for the virgin essence
has a heavenly tincture, and makes heavenly flesh, in which God dwells. Just as
the gold in the stone has a different tincture from the rough stone, and this
tincture has another body; each body arises from its own tincture, as for
instance we know that the earth has been generated from the fierceness
springing from the centre of the sour or cold fire, from the sulphur of the
austereness in the anguish for fire.
11. Thus also a good body is produced out
of a good essence, for the essence makes the life, and yet is not itself life.
Life has its origin in the Principle or in fire, whether it be in the cold or
hot fire, or in the fire of light; each of them is a special principle, and yet
is not separated.
12. And now, on the basis of truth, we
will speak of the incarnation or humanity, and say in clear, plain, unveiled
language, not founded on conjecture or opinion, but on our own true knowledge,
given to us by God in illumination
I. That the new regenerated man, who is
hidden in the old like gold in the stone, has a heavenly tincture and divine
heavenly flesh and blood in himself; and that the spirit of this flesh is no
spirit of another, but his own spirit, generated from his own essence.
II. We acknowledge and say that the Word,
which in Mary the Virgin became man, is the primal cause of the tincture that beginneth
in the sulphur; and we acknowledge Christ's spirit, which fills the heavens
everywhere, to be dwelling in this tincture.
III. We acknowledge this heavenly flesh as
Christ's flesh, in which the Holy Trinity dwells undivided.
IV. We confess that it is possible that
this same flesh and blood during the time of the old Adam may in turn be
corrupted by imagination or desire, as took place in Adam.
V. We say that in the process of
corruption nothing departs from the Deity, nor is it touched by anything that
is evil; for what the love of God loses devolves to the wrath of God. Whatever
falls away from the light is seized by the fire, and God's Spirit remains by
itself uncorrupted.
VI. We say that in all men exists the
possibility of the new birth, else God were divided, and not in one place as in
another. And we acknowledge that man is drawn by fire and light: where he
inclines with the balance [the will], there does he fall; and yet he may in the
course of this time again lift up his hinge or balance. We say that the clear
Deity wills no evil, and wills no devil either, nor has it willed any; much
less does it will to have a man in hell in the wrath of God. But as there is no
light without fire, we recognize how the devil has by desire set his imagination
on the wrath-fire. In like manner all the men who are damned will not suffer
themselves to be helped, but themselves fill up the rapacious fire-source. They
allow themselves to be drawn, yet it would be possible for them to stand firm.
VII. We say that the true temple in which
the Holy Spirit preaches is in the new birth; that all is dead, dumb, crooked,
blind and lame, which is not or teaches not from God's Spirit; that the Holy
Spirit does not mingle with the sound given by the godless mouth; that no godless
man is Christ's pastor. For, though in the holy man the hour is struck by means
of the voice of the godless man, this would also ensue from the cry of a beast,
if its sound were intelligible or the precious name of God were mentioned. For
as soon as the name of God is mentioned and gives a sound, then the other sound
takes hold in the place where it is sounding, that is, in the holy soul. But no
godless man awakens another godless man from death, for they are both in the
wrath of God and are still shut up in death. Had we ourselves been able to rise
from death and make ourselves alive, the heart of God would not have needed to
become man. Therefore we say with good reason that that Word alone which became
man awakens the poor sinner from his death and to repentance, and generates new
life. Accordingly all ranters that are godless profit not the
VIII. We acknowledge and say that all
teachers who profess to be servants and ministers of Christ, and are such in an
unregenerated way, for the sake of the belly and honours, are Antichrist and
the woman on the dragon in the Revelation of John (Rev. xvii. 3, 4).
IX. We say that all unjust tyranny and
selfusurped power, whereby the wretched one is oppressed, sucked dry, crushed
and tormented, whereby also he becomes fickle and loose, and is led and drawn
to all kinds of excess and injustice, is the horrible abominable beast on which
Antichrist rides.
X. We know and say that the time
approaches and the day dawns in which this evil beast with the whore shall go
into the abyss. Amen, Hallelujah,
Amen.
PART II
OF THE SUFFERING, DYING, DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
HOW WE MUST ENTER INTO CHRIST'S SUFFERING, DYING AND DEATH, AND OUT OF
HIS DEATH RISE AGAIN WITH HIM AND THROUGH HIM, AND BECOME LIKE HIS IMAGE, AND
LIVE ETERNALLY IN HIM
CHAPTER
I
OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE FROM FIRE. FURTHER, OF THE ETERNAL SPIRIT IN THE
ETERNAL VIRGIN OF THE WISDOM OF GOD, AND WHAT THE ETERNAL BEGINNING AND THE
ETERNAL END IS
1. OUTWARD Reason says: Would it not have
been sufficient that God should become man in us; why had Christ to suffer and
die? Could not God then introduce man thus into heaven by the new birth? Is God
then not powerful enough to do what he wills? What pleasure has God in death
and dying, that he has not only allowed his Son to die on the cross, but we
must also all die? Since then God has redeemed us by the death of his Son, and
he has paid for us, why must we also die and rot? Thus runs Reason.
2. Before this mirror we would have
Antichrist invited, who calls himself Christ's minister and pastor, as well as
all the universities of this world with their disputations and laws, as also
all the children of Christ, who bear Christ's cross. They shall all see the
real ground, not with the view to reviling someone in his ignorance, but of the
true doctrine, that everyone ought to seek and find himself. For it will be a
very serious matter, and touches man; it demands his body and soul, he must not
jest with it at all, for he who has given this knowledge has prepared his
trumpet; it concerns the human race, let everyone trim his lamp. A great king
of a twofold kind will come by two doors; he is one and yet two; he has fire
and light; he makes his entry on earth and also in heaven: this we may leave to
be a wonder.
3. Dear children of Christ, when we
consider death, and how we must by death enter into life, we find quite a
different life, which arises out of death. We soon find why Christ has been
obliged to die, why we have also to die in Christ's death, rise again in him,
and with and through him enter into God's kingdom.
4. If now we would find this, we must
consider eternity in reference to the ground and unground, else there is no
finding; we will find it only where it is. As we have our origin with God's
image from the eternal ground, but with the soul and its image have been
introduced into what is temporal and perishable, that is, into suffering
(Qual), and eternity or the unground is a freedom out of or beyond suffering
(Qual), therefore we must by dying enter again into freedom. It cannot,
however, be said that there is no life there; it is the right life, which
exists eternally without pain or suffering. And we give you this to consider of
in a true similitude, which indeed is a likeness according to the kingdom of
this world; but if we add to it the Divine world, it is the reality itself.
5. You know that our life is rooted in
fire, for without heat we live not. Now fire has a special centre, its own
maker in its circle, viz. the seven forms or spirits of nature. But only the
first four forms are regarded as nature or the source in which fire is awakened
and kindled, so that a principle or life-centre is present; the materia of the combustion
being formed in the spirits or forms themselves, and always consumed in the
fire. And the fire produces from the consumption something different, which is
better than the first thing which the fire makes. For the fire mortifies and
swallows up the nature which the fire itself makes (understand the essential
fire, in the forms for fire); it consumes it, and produces from death something
much nobler and better, which it cannot consume. This is shown in fire and
light, which is not merely the veritable likeness, but the reality itself; only
that the principles have to be distinguished. All is indeed one fire, but it
differentiates itself according to the source.
6. If now we would present this to be
understood, it will be necessary to give information about the origin of fire.
This, however, has been described at length in the book of the Three Principles
and other works. Accordingly we give here only a brief abstract for the
understanding, and refer the reader to the other writings, if he wish to investigate
the seven forms of nature.
7. Fire has mainly three forms in itself
as centre. The fourth form is fire itself and gives the Principle, i.e. life
with spirit; for in the first three forms is no true spirit, there are essences
only, viz. (1) Sour, that is the desiring will, the first and chiefest form;
(2) Bitter, stinging, is the second form, a cause of the essences; (3) Anguish
as the circle or centre of life, the turning wheel, which embraces in it the
senses or the bitter essences, swallows them up as it were in death and gives
(4) from the torture-chamber as from death, the mind, viz. another centre.
Understand it thus
8. In eternity, i.e. in the Unground out
of nature, there is nothing but a stillness without being; there is nothing
either that can give anything; it is an eternal rest which has no parallel, a
groundlessness without beginning and end. Nor is there any limit or place, nor
any seeking or finding, or anything in which there were a possibility. This
Unground is like an eye, for it is its own mirror. It has no essential
principle, also neither light nor darkness, and is above all a magia and has a
will, after which we should not strive and inquire, for it confuses us. By this
will we understand the ground of the Deity, which has no origin, for it
comprises itself in itself; whereat we are justly dumb, for it is out of
nature.
9. Seeing then that we are in nature, we
know not the will in eternity, for in the will the Deity itself is all, and the
eternal origin of its own spirit and all beings. In the will the Deity is
all-powerful and allknowing, and yet in this will is not called God or known as
God, for there is in it neither good nor evil. We have here a desiring will,
which is the beginning and also the end; for the end makes at the same time the
beginning of this will, and the beginning again the end. It is found thus that
all beings are included in an eye, which is like a mirror wherein the will
beholds itself and finds what it is; and in the beholding it becomes desireful
of the entity which it is itself. And the desiring is a drawing-in, and yet
there is nothing that can be drawn; but the will draws itself in its own
desire, and in its desiring represents to itself what it is; and this representative
image is the mirror in which the will sees what it is, for it is a likeness of
the will. And we recognize this mirror (in which the will itself always beholds
and has vision of itself) to be the eternal wisdom of God, for it is an eternal
virgin without substantial being; and yet is the mirror of all beings, in which
all things have been seen from eternity, whatever could or was to arise.
10. The mirror is not the seeing itself, but the will which is appetent; that
is to say, the longing which goes out from the will is a spirit, and makes in
the longing of desire the mirror. The spirit is the life, and the mirror is the
manifestation of the life, without which the spirit would not know itself; for
the mirror or wisdom is its ground and container; this is the discovery of the
spirit, since the spirit finds itself in wisdom. Wisdom without the spirit is
not a being, and the spirit without wisdom is not manifest to itself, each
without the other were an ungrounded existence.
11. Thus wisdom, as the mirror of the
spirit of the Deity, is of itself passive, and is the body of the Deity or of
the spirit, in which the spirit dwells. It is a virgin matrix in which the
spirit reveals itself, and is God's essence, that is, a holy divine sulphur
formed in the imagination of the Spirit, of the Unground of eternity. And this
mirror or sulphur is the eternal first beginning and the eternal first end, and
everywhere resembles an eye, by which the Spirit sees what it is within, and
what it has to disclose.
12. This mirror or eye is without ground
and limit, so the spirit, too, has no ground, save in this eye. It is
everywhere entire, undivided, as we know that the Unground cannot be divided,
for there is nothing which can divide: there is no motion besides the spirit. We
are able, then, to recognize what is the eternal spirit in wisdom, and what is
the eternal beginning and the eternal end.
CHAPTER
II
THE TRUE AND HIGHLY PRECIOUS GATE OF THE HOLY TRINITY, THE EYE OF THE
ETERNAL LIVING SHINE. OF THE DEITY OUT OF OR BEYOND NATURE
1. WE recognize that the eternal beginning
in the Unground is in itself an eternal will, whose origin no creature shall
know. But it has been given to us to know and to recognize in spirit its
ground, which it makes in itself, in which it rests. For a will is thin like a
nonentity; therefore it is desireful and wishes to be something, that it may be
manifest in itself. For the nothing causalises* the will so that it becomes
desireful, and the process of desire is a mode of imagination, as the will
beholds itself in the mirror of wisdom. Accordingly it imaginates from the
Unground into itself, and makes for itself in the imagination a ground in
itself, and makes itself pregnant with imagination through wisdom, i.e. through
the virgin mirror, which is a mother without bringing forth, without will.
2. The impregnation does not take place in
the mirror, but in the will, in the imagination of the will. The mirror remains
eternally a virgin without bringing forth, but the will becomes impregnate with
the aspect of the mirror. For the will is Father, and the impregnation in the
Father, i.e. in the will, is heart or Son, for it is the will's or Father's
ground, as the spirit of the will lies in the ground, and proceeds from the
will in the ground into virgin wisdom. Thus the will's imagination, viz. the
Father, draws the mirror's vision or form, that is, the wonders of power,
colours and virtue, into itself, and thus becomes pregnant with the splendour
of wisdom, with power and virtue. This is the heart of the will or of the
Father, as the unfathomable will obtains a ground in itself by and in the
eternal unfathomable imagination.
3. We recognize, then, the impregnation of
the Father to be the centre of the spirit of eternity, where the eternal spirit
always seizes itself. For the will is the beginning, and motion or drawing-in
for imagination, as for the mirror of wisdom, is the eternal unfathomable
spirit. This arises in the will and seizes itself in the centre of the heart,
in the power of wisdom as drawn-in, and is the heart's life and spirit. Since
then the eternal unfathomable will in itself were dumb, what is seized through
[in] wisdom (which is called heart or centre) is the will's word, for it is the
sound or power, and is the will's mouth which reveals the will. For the will,
viz. the Father, with the movement of the spirit speaks forth power into the
mirror of wisdom. And with the speaking forth the spirit proceeds from the
will, from the word of the mouth of God, from the centre of the heart, into what
is spoken forth, viz. into the virgin mirror, and reveals the Word of life in
the mirror of wisdom, so that the threefold nature of the Deity becomes
manifest in wisdom.
4. Thus, we recognize an eternal,
unfathomable, divine Essence, and in its nature three persons, whereof one is
not the other. The first person is the eternal Will which is a cause of all
being. This will is not being itself, but the cause of all being, and is free
from being, for it is the Unground. There is nothing before it which constitutes
it, but it constitutes itself, of which we have no knowledge. It is all, yet at
the same time one in itself; without the being it is a nothing. In this one
will the eternal beginning arises from imagination or desire. And in the
process of desire the will impregnates itself from the eye of wisdom, which
exists in co-eternity with the will, without ground and beginning. This
impregnation is the ground of the will and of the Being of all beings, and is
the will's Son, for the will perpetually begets this Son from eternity to
eternity; for he is its heart or its word, as a sound or revelation of the
unground of the still eternity, and is the will's mouth or understanding. And
he is justly called a person other than the Father, for he is the revelation of
the Father, his ground and being; since a will is not a being, but the will's
imagination makes being.
5. Thus, the other person is the being of
the Deity (i.e. the being of the Holy Trinity), the mouth or revelation of the
Being of all beings, and the power of the Life of all lives.
6. The third person is the Spirit, which
proceeds out of the power of speech, from the grasp of the will by the
imagination, out of the mouth of the Father into the eye, as into the mirror of
wisdom; this is free from the will and also from the word. And though the will
gives it through the word, yet it is free, as air is free from fire. We see
that air is the fire's spirit and life, yet is something different from the
fire, although it is given by the fire. And as we see that the air gives a
living and moving sky, which is shining and mobile; so also is the Holy Spirit
the life of the Deity, and a person other than the Father and Son. It has
moreover a different office; it discloses the wisdom of God, so that the
wonders appear, just as air initiates all the life of this world, so that
everything lives and grows.
7. Such is then a short intimation
regarding the Deity in the unground, indicating how God dwells in himself, and
is himself his parturient centre. But the human mind does not rest satisfied
with this; it inquires after nature, after that from which this world was born
and all was created. Accordingly there follows further the text of the
Principle, to which we have invited Reason as guest.
CHAPTER
III
THE VERY EARNEST GATE. HOW, APART FROM THE PRINCIPLE OF FIRE, GOD IS NOT
MANIFEST. ALSO, OF THE ETERNAL ESSENCE AND OF THE UNFATHOMABLE WILL
1. WE have by describing it shown what the
Deity out of nature is. In this connection it is to be understood that the
Deity, as regards the three persons, is, with the eternal wisdom, free from
nature, and that the Deity has a still deeper ground than the Principle of
fire. The Deity, again, without the Principle, would not be manifest. And
understand the Deity apart from the Principle as an aspect of great wonders,
where no one knows or can know what that is; where all colours, power and
virtue shine forth in a terrible essence, which however resembles not any
essence, but is like a terrible wonder-eye, where neither fire, light nor
darkness is seen, but only an aspect of a corresponding spirit, in deep blue,
green and mixed colour, in which lie all the colours, and yet not one is known
from another, but resembles a terrible flash, whose aspect would confuse and
consume all.
2. And so we are to know the eternal
Essence, that is, the eternal Spirit beyond or out of fire and light; for it is
a desiring will, which thus makes itself into a spirit. And this spirit is the
eternal potence of the Unground, the Unground bringing itself into a ground
from which all being arises. For every form in the spirit is a source of
imagination, a desiring will, and desires to manifest itself. Every form
impregnates its imagination, and every form also desires to manifest itself.
Therefore the mirror of the aspect is a marvel of the Being of all beings; and
of the wonders there is no number, origin nor end; it is pure wonder, of whose
contents it is impossible to write. For the spirit of the soul, which springs
from the said wonder, alone understands this.
3. And, secondly, we understand how this
unfathomable will from eternity to eternity is ever desireful to manifest
itself, to fathom itself and find what it is, to bring the wonders into being
and to reveal itself in the wonders. And the process of desire is a mode of
imagination, as the will contracts into itself and makes itself pregnant, and
overshadows itself with imagination, so that from the free will arises an
opposing will to be liberated from the overshadowing or from the darkness. For
what is drawnin forms the darkness of the free will, as apart from imagination
it were free, and yet also in itself apart from the imagination were a nothing:
thus there arises in the primal will, in the process of desire, an opposing
will. For the desiring is intrahent, and the primal will is still and in itself
without being, but impregnates itself with desire so that it becomes full of
being, namely, of the wonders and power which overshadow it and make of it a
darkness, whereby in the powers as drawn-in another will forms itself to go out
from the dark power into freedom. This other will is the will of the heart or
Word, for it is a cause of the Principle, a cause that the wheel of anguish
kindles fire. It goes forth then through anguish, viz. through fire, with the
shine of the light, viz. Majesty, in which the nature of the Holy Trinity is
revealed, and receives here the dear name of GOD. Understand this further as
follows
4. The primal will, i.e. God the Father,
is and remains eternally free from the source of anguish as regards the will in
itself. But its desiring becomes impregnate, and in the process of desire
nature with the forms first takes its rise. Nature dwells in the will, in God,
and the will in nature, and yet there is no commingling. For the will is thin
like a nonentity, therefore it is not seizable, and is not laid hold of by
nature. For if it could be laid hold of, there would be in the Deity but one
person. It is indeed the cause of nature, but it is and remains nevertheless in
eternity another world in itself, and nature remains likewise another world in
itself. For nature exists in virtue of the essence from which the Principle
arises; but the clear Deity in Majesty exists not in the essence or Principle,
but in the freedom out of or beyond nature, and the shining light which
proceeds from the Principle makes the unseizable and unfathomable Deity
manifest. The Principle gives the lustre of Majesty, and yet contains it not in
itself, but takes it from the mirror of virgin wisdom, from the freedom of God.
For if the mirror of wisdom were not, no fire or light could be generated: all
has its origin from the mirror of the Deity. Further, it is to be understood in
this way
5. God is in himself the unground, viz.
the first world, of which no creature knows anything, for it lives with spirit
and body solely in the ground. God also in the unground would not be manifest
to himself, but from eternity his wisdom has become his ground, after which the
eternal will of the unground of the Deity has longed, whereby the divine
imagination arose, so that the unfathomable will of the Deity has thus from
eternity in the imagination impregnated itself with the power of the vision or
form of the mirror of wonders. Now, in this impregnation is to be understood
the eternal origin of two principles, viz. (1) The eternal darkness, from which
arises the world of fire; (2) the essence of wrath in the darkness, wherein we
understand God's anger and the abyss of nature; thus, we recognize the world of
fire as the great life.
6. We understand, secondly, how from fire
light is generated, and how between the world of fire and of light death
appears; how light shines out of death, and how the light-flaming world is in
itself a principle and source other than the fire-world, and yet neither is
separated from the other, nor can either lay hold of the other. And we
understand, thirdly, how the light-world fills the eternal freedom, or the
primal will which is called Father. Fourthly, we understand also here earnestly
and fundamentally how the natural life that wishes to dwell in the
light-flaming world must pass through death and be born out of death,understand
the life which has its origin from the darkness, from the essence of the dark
nature, that is to say, man's soul, which, in Adam, had turned itself away from
the fire-world to the dark nature. Then, fifthly, we understand fundamentally
and very exactly why God, i.e. the heart of God, became man, why he has had to
die, enter into death and break his life in death, and then bring it through
the world of fire into the light-flaming world; and why we must follow him.
Sixthly, why many souls remain in the world of fire, and cannot pass through
death into the light-world; and what death is; also what the soul is. Now
follows this point
7. When we consider what life is, we find
that it consists mainly of three elements, viz. desire, the disposition and
thinking. If we investigate further, what it is which gives this, we find the
centre or the essential wheel, which contains within it the firesmith himself.
If we reflect further, from whence the essential fire arises, we find that it
has its origin in the desiring of the eternal unfathomable will, which by
desire makes for itself a ground; for every desire is astringent, or attractive
of that which the will desires, and yet there is nothing before it that it can
desire, save only itself.
8. This is the great wonder-eye without
limit and ground, in which lies everything, and yet also is a nothing, unless
in the desiring will it be made into a something. This is effected by
imagination, whereby it becomes a substance, although it is still a nothing,
for it is but an overshadowing of the free will. This substance overshadows the
freedom or the thin unfathomable will, so that two worlds arise: the first,
which in itself is unseizable or imprehensible, an ungrounded existence and
eternal freedom; the other, which seizes itself and makes itself into a
darkness. And yet neither is separated from the other, with this difference
only, that the darkness cannot lay hold of the freedom, because it is too thin
and dwells also in itself, as indeed the darkness dwells also in itself.
The very earnest gate
9. Now, we understand here, (1) how the Father's
other will, which he draws in the mirror of wisdom for his heart's centre,
becomes impregnate in the Father's imagination with substance, and that this
impregnation is a darkness in comparison with the freedom of the first will
(which is called Father), and in this darkness or substance all power, colours
and virtues lie involved in the imagination, as also all wonders. And we
understand (2) how the power, wonders and virtue must be made manifest through
fire, that is, in the Principle, where all enters into its essence; for in the
Principle essence first has its origin. And we understand (3) very earnestly
that in the Principle before fire arises, a dying appears, viz. the great
anguishful life, which in truth is not a death, but a sour, stern, dying
source, from which the great and strong life arises, viz. the fire-life, and
then from what has died the light-life, with the power of love. This light-life
dwells with love in the eternal freedom, viz. in the primal will which is
called Father; for the Father requires this in his own will, which he himself
is, and requires nothing more.
10. Ye see and know that no light exists
without fire, and no fire without severe pain, which pain is likened to a
dying; and the substance from which the fire burns must thus die and be
consumed. From the consuming process arise two principles of two great lives:
the first, in pain (Qual), is called Fire; the other, derived from the
subjugation or from death, is called Light, is non-material and without pain,
yet contains in itself all source or quality (Qual), but not that of wrath, for
wrath has remained in death. And the light-life buds out of death as a fair
flower out of the earth, and is no longer reached by death. And indeed you see
how the light dwells in fire and the fire cannot move it; nor is there anything
than can move the light, for it is like the eternal freedom, and dwells in
freedom.
11. Here it is understood how the Son is a
person other than the Father, for he is the light-world, yet dwells in the
Father, and the Father begets him in his will. He is truly the Father's love,
as well as wonder, counsel and power, for the Father begets him in his
imagination, in himself, and leads him forth through his own fire, through the
Principle, through death, so that the Son makes and is in the Father another
world or another Principle than the fire-world in the darkness.
12. And you understand also how the
Father's eternal Spirit divides into three worlds: First, he is the issuing out
of the imagination of the primal will of the unground which is called Father,
as by the issuing he reveals wisdom and dwells in wisdom, and wears this as his
garment of great wonders.
13. Secondly, he is the cause of
contraction for the entity of darkness, i.e. of the second world, and is the
cause and spirit for the origin of the essential fire. He is, himself the
source in the anguish of the Principle, and also the fiery world as the great
life.
14. Thirdly, he is also himself the one
who, in the dying of the Principle, brings the power out of the fire, where the
power, emerging from the anguish, from the dying, separates from the dying and
enters into freedom and dwells in freedom, and makes the light-world. Thus, he
is the flame of love in the light-world. And here in this place the precious
name of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has its origin. For in the world of
fire he is not called the Holy Spirit or God, but God's anger, God's wrath, in
reference to which God calls himself a consuming fire. But in the light-world,
in the Son of God, he is the flame of love and the power of the holy divine
life itself; there he is called God the Holy Spirit. And the light-world is
called wonder, counsel and power of the Deity; it is the Holy Spirit who
reveals it, for he is the life therein. And everything together, wherever our
heart and mind can reach, is nothing but those three worlds: in them lies
everything. First, the eternal freedom, and in it the light with the power in
the mirror of wisdom, and it is called God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The
second world is the dark nature in the imagination, in the sour desiring will,
the impregnation of desire, where all is in darkness, in perpetual fearful and
anguishful death. And the third world is the world of fire or the first
Principle, which arises in the anguish and is the great, strong, all-powerful
life, in which the light-world dwells, but unapprehended on the part of the
fire.
CHAPTER
IV
OF THE PRINCIPLE AND ORIGIN OF THE WORLD OF FIRE. ALSO OF THE CENTRE OF
NATURE, AND HOW LIGHT SEPARATES FROM FIRE, SO THAT TWO WORLDS ARE CONTAINED IN
ONE ANOTHER FROM ETERNITY TO ETERNITY
1. WE will not write dumbly but
demonstratively. We recognize and know that every life has its origin in
anguish, as in a poison which is a dying, and yet is also the life itself, as
is to be seen in man and every creature. For without anguish or poison there is
no life, as is evident in every creature, particularly in man, who lives in
three Principles; namely, one in fire, wherein consists the great fire-life, to
which belongs a dying poison, viz. the gall, which poison makes the torture
chamber wherein the fire-life has its origin. And from out of the fire-life the
second Principle or the light-life, whence arises the noble mind with the
senses, in which we carry our noble image; and we understand how the fire-life
in the heart springs from the death of the gall. And we understand the third
Principle in the other torture chamber, i.e. the stomach, in which we stuff the
four elements with the astrum, whereby the other torture chamber or the third
centre constitutes, as the kingdom of this world, a stench and evil
tormenthouse, in which the third life, viz. the astral and elemental life, is
born, and through the outer body rules with the reason of the third Principle.
2. Now, we understand very well that in
the heart, in the centre of fire, another world lies hidden, which is
incomprehensible to the torment-house of stars and elements; for the heart
longs after this world, and the spirit, which is born out of the death of the
heart's poison and comes into being, possesses this other world, for it is free
from the poison which kindles the fire, and yet dwells in the fire of the
heart; but by its longing the spirit takes the other world of freedom into the
imagination and dwells in freedom out of the torment of fire, in so far however
as it has a desire of God.
3. Seeing then there is such a threefold
dominion in man, this still more holds true outside of man; for if that were
not, it could not have come into man. For where nothing exists, there also
nothing arises; but if something arises, it is produced from that which is
there. Every imagination fashions in itself only its like, and manifests itself
in the likeness. Since then the Being of all beings is an eternal wonder in
three Principles, it also brings forth only wonders, each Principle according
to its property, and each property again by means of its imagination, whereby
we know that the Eternal is a pure wonder. Now this wonder is to be meditated
upon, and the nature and property of the eternal genetrix to be considered, for
there can be no property unless it have a mother which gives it.
4. Now we understand in the great wonder
of all wonders, which is God and eternity with nature, in particular seven
mothers, from which the being of all beings arises. All seven are but a single
existence, and none is first or last, they are all seven alike eternal, without
beginning. Their beginning is the opening of the wonders of the one, eternal
will, which is called God the Father; and the seven mothers could not be
manifest if the one eternal will, which is called Father, were not desireful.
But as he is desireful, he is an imaginating into himself, a longing to find
himself. He finds himself also in the imagination, and finds particularly seven
forms in himself, whereof not any is the other, nor is any without the other,
but each brings forth the other. If one were not, neither would the other be;
but the will would remain an eternal nothing, without being, shine and lustre.
5. Seeing then that the will is desireful,
it is attractive of that which is in the imagination; but as however there is
nothing, it draws itself, and becomes pregnant in the imagination, not in the
will, for the will is thin like a nonentity.
6. Now every desire is astringent, for it
is its property. That is the first mother, and the drawing of the will in the
desire is the second mother, for these are two forms which are contrary to each
other. For the will is still like a nothing, grim like a still death, and the
drawing is its movement. This, the still will in the astringency cannot suffer,
and contracts much more violently into itself, and yet does but sharpen its own
will in the drawing, and would enclose and hold the drawing by its stringent
contraction, but only awakens it in this way. The harder the astringency
gathers itself in with a view to holding the sting, the greater becomes the
sting, the raging and breaking; for the sting will not allow itself to be kept
down, and yet is held by its mother so rigorously that it cannot withdraw. It
wishes to be above itself, and its mother wishes to be below itself; for the
astringency contracts unto itself and makes itself heavy. and is a sinking
below itself; it makes in sulphur the phur and in mercury the sul, and the
sting makes in phur the bitter form, the pang, an enmity in the astringency,
and is always wishing to break loose from the astringency, but cannot. Thus one
ascends and the other descends. And if this is not possible, it becomes turning
like a wheel, and turns continually on itself. That is the third form, from
which arises essence and the wonder of plurality without number and ground. And
in this wheel understand the wonder or power which the will, i.e. the primal
unfathomable will, draws into itself from the mirror of the unground for its
centre or heart; such is here the will of power and wonder. And in this wheel
of the great anguish arises the other will, viz. the Son's will, to go out from
the anguish into the still freedom of the primal unfathomable will, for the
wheel causes nature to be. Accordingly nature first takes its origin thus; this
forms the centre and a breaking of the still eternity; it kills nothing, but
constitutes the great life.
7. And that we speak of killing,
understand it in this way: It is not a killing, but the sensibility; for life
prior to fire is dumb, without feeling; it is only a hunger after life, just as
the material world is only a hunger after life, and in its hunger labours so
hard, even unto the Principle, so that it attains fire, whereby the outer life
of this world arises. And this cannot possibly be otherwise, unless the first
matrix or the astringent desire break to pieces, that is, the wheel of the
first three forms or the astringency; and the drawing of the astringency
produces the sphere of anguish and torment. For it is a terror in itself, as
the nothing must come into sensibility; for what we have here is the
poison-source whence wrath and all that is evil arises, and yet also is the
true origin of the feeling life. For thus life finds itself, namely, in the
pang of anguish. As is to be seen in all creatures, that life has its origin in
stifled blood, in anguishment, both the creaturely and the essential life, as
in a stinking dung in corruption, where in the death of the grain the greatest
life springs; and yet in the essence no death is understood, but a pang of
anguish, since the mother, which is a dumb entity, must burst asunder, as may
be perceived in the grain, where the essential life buds forth from the
disruption.
8. In like manner is it also with the
centre of nature. The pang of anguish is the true centre and makes the triangle
in nature, and the fire-flash, i.e. the fourth form of nature, makes of the
triangle a cross; for there is the Principle, and is separated into two worlds
of two Principles, as into a twofold source and life. The anguishful life or
the fire is and remains one source, and the other source arises in the breaking
of the anguish. Understand it thus The first form of the Essence, viz.
astringency, in the desiring imprehensible will, must give itself up wholly to
the source of anguish in the wheel of nature, for the sting becomes too strong.
Accordingly the astringency sinks down like a death, and yet is not a death but
a dying source; for the sting becomes master and transforms the astringency
into its property, into a furious flash, into a pang of anguish which, coming
from the sting and the astringency, is bitter, as is the nature of poison. For
the poison or the dying has especially three forms, viz. astringent, bitter and
anguish of fire; it creates itself thus in itself, and has no maker except the
strong will for the great life in fire.
9. Understand us correctly The unground
has no life, but thus in such a property the great eternal life is born. The
unground has no movement or feeling, and thus is generated movement and
feeling, and thus the nothing finds itself in the eternal will, whose ground we
know not, nor should we make search, for this confuses us. The position thus indicated
is, however, only an essential life without understanding, like the earth and
death or dying, where indeed there is a source in itself, but in darkness
without understanding; for the astringent anguish contracts into itself, and
what is drawn-in causes darkness, so that the anguishful life stands in
darkness. For every being is in itself dark, unless it have the light's
tincture in it; hence the tincture is a freedom from darkness, and is not laid
hold of by the pang of anguish, for it is in the light-world. And though it is
involved in essence, as in a dark body, it is nevertheless of the nature of the
lightworld, where no circumscription exists.
10. An account has been given above,
firstly, of the mirror of wisdom of the wonders of all being; and, secondly, of
the trinity of the Being of all beings, showing how this trinity arises from a
single eternal will which is called the Father of all beings, and how he draws
in himself another will to manifest or to find himself in himself, or, as might
be said, in order to be sensible of what and how he is. And further, how this
other new-drawn magical will to feel itself is his heart or peculiar abode, and
how the primal unfathomable will impregnates itself with imagination from the
mirror of wonders, which in the light-world is called wisdom. And then we have
set forth how that the same primal unfathomable will together with the
impregnation and likewise the mirror of wonders or wisdom is not, in such a
property, prior to the Principle of fire, rightly called a divine being, but
rather a mystery of the wonders of all beings, which mystery receives in fire
its severance into infinite parts or beings, and yet remains also but one
being.
11. We give you now to understand with
regard to the other will,-which the primal will draws in its imagination or
impregnation, and which is the great mystery wherein the primal will, which is
called Father, seeks, finds and feels itself, as a life in the heart,-that this
other will is the parturient matrix in the impregnation as impressed or
imprinted in the imagination. It is this will which is the cause of the seven
forms of nature, and is the cause too of the wheel of anguish or the dying. It
is this will also which, in anguish, goes out through death into freedom,
breaks death to pieces and gives life; which kindles fire, and in fire receives
into itself the lustre of majesty, and in the light of majesty dwells in fire,
being unapprehended on the part of the fire, like one who feels nothing, who is
dead to the source, and has in himself another source, which feels not the
former, to which he is dead.
12. And that we proceed to inform you
briefly, at the same time fundamentally and exactly, of the origin of fire, we
recognize in the deep that is revealed to us by God's grace, that fire in its
origin depends on two causes: One cause is the will-spirit of the heart,
understand the Father's other will or the Son's property; the second cause is
the matter of the will, i.e. the wonder of the wheel of the essential life or
the chamber of anguish. The anguish longs after the will of freedom, and the
will longs after manifestation; for the will cannot in the still freedom, in
itself, become manifest without the essential life, which in the anguish or in
the dying attains to manifestation, that is, to the great life.
13. Thus the will is in the dark anguish,
and the anguish is the darkness itself. Seeing then that the anguish longs so
vehemently after the will of freedom, it receives in itself the will of freedom
as a flash, as a great terror, as if water were poured into fire. And here
takes place the true dying, for the fierce dark anguish is terrified at the
flash, like darkness at the light, for the darkness is slain and vanquished,
and the terror is a terror of great joy. There the fierce sour poison sinks
down in itself into death and becomes powerless, for it loses the sting, and
indeed is no death. On the contrary, in this way the true life of feeling and
longing is kindled: it is just as if steel and flint were struck together, for
they are two great hungers, of the will for essence, and of the essence for
life. The will gives life, and the essence gives manifestation of the life. As
a fire burns from a candle, so burns the will from the essential substance. The
will is not the light itself, but the spirit of light or fire; the light arises
from the essence, and the essence in turn from the will. The anguishful
essential fire is the matter for the shining fire, and the will becomes kindled
in the essential fire and gives the white lovely fire, which dwells in the hot
fire without feeling. The will takes its feeling from the fierceness of the
essential fire in the fourth form, so that it is made manifest in itself, and
yet remains free from the fierceness, for the source is changed in the kindling
into a gentle source of love.
14. And here the other will receives its
name which is Spirit. For by means of the essential fire it attains to the
propria of all the wonders and also to the right life of power and might over
the essential firelife, since from nature it takes power into itself, and has
also in itself freedom. The freedom is a stillness without being, and the still
freedom gives itself to the nature of the anguish, and the anguish receives
this freedom that is void of pain, whereby it becomes so joyous that the
anguish is changed into love (the fifth form of nature); for the will which had
given itself up to the anguish is thus released from the death of the anguish:
accordingly it finds itself in freedom, and goes out from the raging anguish.
For here death is broken to pieces, and yet continues to be a death in itself;
but the will-spirit, i.e. the true holy life, goes at the breaking to pieces
out from the anguish and is now also a fire, but a fire in freedom, and burns
in the source of love. As this may be seen in fire and light, how the essential
fire is a burning pain, and the light a joyous delight, without sensible pain;
and yet it contains in itself all the property of fire, but in another essence,
as a gracious beneficent essence, a true aspect of the kingdom of joy, and fire
an aspect of terror and anguish; and yet one dwells in the other, and one is
not found without the other in the essential source.
15. Thus two worlds are contained in one
another, whereof neither comprehends the other; and nothing can enter into the
light-world except through death, and the imagination must have precedence over
death. The anguishful will must long after the freedom of the power of the
light, and wholly surrender itself, and by the desiring imagination take hold
of the power of the freedom. Then the strong will passes through the death of
the darkness, through the essential fire, breaks the darkness and falls into
the light-world, and dwells in the fire that is void of pain, in the kingdom of
joy. And this is the gate into Ternarius Sanctus, and faith in the Holy Spirit,
dear children of men.
16. Here you understand the fall of the
devil, who had turned the spirit of his will only to the essential fire, and
willed to rule therewith over the light. And here understand also the fall of
man, who turned his imagination to material essential substance, and has gone
out from the light; on which account the will of love from the light-world has
again entered into material essentiality, into humanity, and has again wedded
itself and given itself up to the essential fire-spirit in man, i.e. to the
soul, and has brought the same through death and fire into the light-world,
into Ternarius Sanctus, into the will of the Holy Trinity.
17. Let this be a finding and knowing to
you! Despise it not on account of the great depth, which will not be everyone's
comprehension, the reason is the darkness into which man plunges himself.
Otherwise, anyone might well find it, if the earthly way were broken through
and the Adamic evil flesh were not too cherished, which is the hindrance.
CHAPTER
V
OF THE PRINCIPLE IN ITSELF, WHAT IT IS
1. WE have to consider further the first
four forms of nature, then we shall discover what a principle is. That is
properly a principle when an existence becomes what it was not, when from
nothing a source springs, and from the source a true life with understanding
and senses. And again we recognize the right principle in the origin of fire,
in the fire-source, which breaks the substantiality and also the darkness. Thus
we acknowledge the fire's essence and property to be a principle, for it
constitutes and gives the origin of life and of all movement, as well as the
strong power of the fierce wrath.
2. And, secondly, we recognize that also
as a principle which can dwell in the fire, being unapprehended on the part of
the fire, which can deprive the fire of its power and transmute the fire's
quality into a gentle love; which is omnipotent over all, which has
understanding to break the root of the fire and make of the fire a darkness;
and a dry hunger and thirst, without the finding of any refreshment, as is the
torment of hell: that is the abyss, where essence is famished, where death
exercises its sting like a fainting poison, where indeed there is an essential
life, but at enmity with itself, where kindling of the right fire is not
realized, but shines forth only as an unburning flash.
3. And we give you thus to understand that
in the Eternal there are not more than two Principles (1) The burning fire,
which is filled with the light; the light gives it its property, so that from
the burning source springs a high kingdom of joy; for anguish attains freedom,
and the burning fire thus remains but a cause of the finding of life and of the
light of Majesty. The fire takes into itself the light's property, viz.
gentleness, and the light takes into itself the fire's property, viz. life and
self-discovery. And the second Principle is understood in the light; but the
essential substantiality from which the fire burns remains eternally a darkness
and a source of wrath wherein the devil dwells, as we see that fire is a thing
other than that from which the fire burns. Thus the Principle stands in fire,
and not in the essential source of substantiality; the essential source is the
centre of nature, the cause of the Principle, but it is dark and the fire is
shining: here is shown rightly how the breaking of the wrath, viz. death, and
also the eternal freedom out of nature, are both together the cause of the
shining. For the wonderspirit of the unground is therefore desireful, in order
that it may become shining; and hence it brings itself into qualification, that
it may find and feel itself, that it may manifest its wonders in the
qualification, for without qualification there can be no manifestation.
4. Understand us then further: The
qualification as fierceness has no true substantiality, but the sour fierceness
is the substantiality of the sting, wherein it pierces; nor does the anguish
together with the fire form or make any true substantiality, but there is only
a corresponding spirit; nevertheless, one must be thicker. than the other, else
there were no finding, that is to say, the astringency causes it to be thick
and dark. Thus the bitter sting finds the anguish in the sour dark property, as
in a matter; for were there no matter, neither would there be any spirit or
finding. The unground finds itself in the sour darkness, but it disperses the
darkness and goes out from the sour darkness as a spirit which has found itself
in the source of anguish; it abandons this sour matter of the darkness wherein
it found itself, and enters into itself, again into freedom, into the unground,
and dwells in itself. Thus the qualification must be its sharpness and finding,
and is also for it a kindling of its freedom, of the light in which it sees
itself and finds what it is.
5. Hence it no longer requires
qualification for itself, for it is now itself a qualifying principle; but it
modelizes itself and sees itself according to all the forms, and every form is
desireful to find itself and to manifest itself; every form thus also finds
itself in itself, but with the desiring passes out of itself, and manifests
itself as a figure or spirit; and that is the eternal wisdom in colours,
wonders and virtues, and yet exists not in particularity, but the whole
universally, though in infinite form. These forms have by the motion of the
primal will which is called Father embodied themselves in spirits, that is, in
angels, so that the hidden nature might see, feel and find itself in creatures,
and that there might be an eternal play in the wonders of the wisdom of God.
6. Further, let us understand the
substantiality of the light-world, that it veritably is a true substantiality,
for no real substance can subsist in fire, but only the spirit of substance.
Fire is, however, the cause of substance, for it is a hunger, an earnest
desiring; it must have substance or it goes out.
Understand it in this way: The gentleness
gives and the fire takes. The gentleness is emanant from itself, and gives a
substance that is like itself, every form from its own self, and the fire
swallows this up, but out of it produces light. It gives something nobler than
it has swallowed up, gives spirit for substance; for it swallows up the gentle
beneficence, that is, the water of eternal life, but at the same time gives the
spirit of eternal life: as you see that wind arises from fire, so also air or
the true spirit arises from the fire-life.
7. Understand our meaning aright: God the
Father is in himself the freedom out of nature, but makes himself manifest by
fire in nature. The nature of fire is his property, though he is in himself the
unground, where there is no feeling of any pain. But he brings his desiring
will into pain (Qual), and draws for himself in the pain another will to go out
from the pain again into the freedom beyond pain. This other will is his Son,
which he begets out of his eternal one will from eternity, which he leads forth
through fire, through the breaking of the source of death, as out of his fierce
ferventness. It is this other will, viz. the Son of God the Father, which
breaks down death as the stern, dark source, which kindles fire and proceeds
through the fire as a shine or lustre of the fire, and fills the primal will
which is called Father; for the lustre is also as thin as a nonentity, or as
the will which is called Father. Therefore it can dwell in freedom, that is, in
the Father's will, and makes the Father bright, clear, gracious and friendly,
for it is the heart of the Father or mercifulness; it is the Father's
substantiality, it fills the Father everywhere, although in him is no place, no
beginning nor end.
8. The Father's fire swallows up the
gentle substance, viz. the water-fountain of eternal life into itself, into the
fire's own essence, and meekens and sweetens itself therewith. Here must the
substantiality die as it were in the fire, for the fire swallows it up into
itself and consumes it, and gives from the consumption a living joyous spirit.
This is the Holy Spirit; it proceeds thus from the Father and Son into the
great wonders of the holy Essence, and reveals them ever and eternally.
9. The Deity is accordingly an eternal
bond which cannot dissolve. Hence it brings forth itself from eternity to
eternity, and the first is also always the last, and the last again the first.
Understand, then, the Father as the world of fire, the Son as the world of
light and power, the Holy Spirit as the life of the Deity, that is, as the
emanating guiding power; all is nevertheless but one God, just as fire and
light and air are but one single existence, yet it divides into three parts,
and neither can subsist without the other. For fire is not light, nor the wind
that arises from fire; each has its own office, and each is a specific nature
in itself, yet each is the other's life and a cause of the other's life. For
the wind blows up the fire, else it would stifle in its wrath, so that it would
fall into dark death; and indeed the stifling is real death, as the fire of
nature is extinguished and no longer draws substance into itself.
10. Of all this you have a good similitude
in the outer world, in all the creatures, showing how every life, namely the
essential fire-life, draws substance, which is its food, into itself; further,
the fire of its life consumes the substance, and gives from what is consumed
the spirit of power, which is the life of the creatures. Here may certainly be
seen how life takes its origin from death. No life comes into being
unless it break through that out of which
life must arise. All must enter into the torture-chamber, into the centre, and
attain in the anguish the fire-flash, else no kindling results. Fire, however,
is manifold, so also life; but from the greatest anguish arises also the
greatest life, as from a true fire.
11. Thus, dear children of God in Christ,
we give you our knowledge and purpose to ponder over. At the outset we made
mention we would show you the death of Christ, why Christ was obliged to die,
and why we also must die and rise again in Christ. This you see now in this
description clearly, and understand our great misery, that it was needful for
us that the Word or life of the holy Light-world became man and generated us
anew in himself. He who here understands nothing is not born of God. Consider
into what lodging Adam has introduced us. He was an extract of all the three
Principles, a complete likeness according to all the three worlds, and in his
soul and spirit had angelic quality in him. He was introduced into the holy
power and essentiality, viz. into
12. But because the soul was inbreathed
into man from the Spirit of God, namely, from the Eternal, so that the soul is
an angel, therefore God has shown interest in it again; and the power of the
holy lightworld, viz. God's heart, has entered into the human essence which lay
shut up in death, into the torturechamber of our misery, has from our essence
drawn a soul into himself, has taken on himself our mortal life, and brought
the soul through death, through the severe fire of God the Father, into the
light-world, has broken down death which held us captive and disclosed the true
life.
13. Now, this may not and cannot be
otherwise. He who would possess the light-world must enter by the same way that
Christ has made. He must enter into the death of Christ, and in Christ's resurrection
he enters into the light-world. Just as we know that the eternal Word of the
Father, which is the Father's heart, is begotten from eternity to eternity out
of the wrath of the death of darkness through the Father's fire, and is in
itself the true centre of the Holy Trinity, and out of itself with the
processional Holy Spirit is the light-flaming Majesty or lightworld: so also in
like manner and capacity must we with our heart, mind and soul go out from the
harsh stringent and evil earthliness, out of ourselves, out of the corrupt
Adamic man, break him and slay him by our earnest will and doing. We must take
upon us the cross of the old Adam, who cleaves to us as long as we live, and
must upon and in the cross enter into the centrum naturae, into the Triangle,
and be new-born out of the wheel of anguish, if we would become angels and live
eternally in God.
14. But because we were not able to do
this, Christ gave himself to this centre of wrath, broke down the fierce wrath
and extinguished it with his love. For he brought heavenly divine
substantiality into this wrath, into the centre of the torture-chamber, and put
out the soul's anguish-fire, viz. the fierce wrath of the Father of the fiery
world in the soul, so that we no longer fall unto the fierce wrath; but if we
give ourselves up to the death of Christ, and go out from the evil Adam, then
we fall into Christ's death, into the way which he has made for us, we fall
into the bosom of Abraham, that is, into Christ's arms; he receives us into
himself. For the bosom of Abraham is the light-world that is opened in the
death of Christ, it is the
15. Thus we become pregnant with the
kingdom of heaven and enter thus whilst alive into Christ's death, and receive
the body of Christ or the divine essentiality; we carry the kingdom of heaven
within us. Accordingly we are Christ's children, members and heirs in God's
kingdom, and the image of the holy divine world, which is God the Father, Son,
Holy Spirit, and the substantiality of this same holy Threefoldness. All that
is born and disclosed out of wisdom is our
16. Let this be revealed to you, dear
children, for it is highly known; and suffer not yourselves to be tickled or
flattered with the death of Christ and to picture it as a work which suffices
us if we do but know and believe that it was accomplished for us. What does it
avail me to know a treasure lies hid, and I dig it not up? It is not enough to
take comfort, play the hypocrite and give fair words with the tongue, and yet
retain the impostor in the soul. Christ says: Ye must be born anew, or ye shall
not see the
17. Hypocritical Reason says: Christ has
done it, we cannot do it. Yes indeed, he has done what we could not do; he has
broken down death and restored life. What does it profit me, if I enter not
into him? He is in heaven and I in this world; by his path that he has made for
us must I enter into him, otherwise I remain outside. For he says: Come unto me
all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke
upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find
rest unto your souls. It is upon his path that we must enter into him; we must
do good for evil, and love one another, as he did us, and gave his life for us.
18. If we do this, we extinguish the wrath
of God also in our neighbour. We must give a good example, not in guile and
artifice, but in simplicity, with good will and heart. Not like a glistering
hypocritical strumpet who says: I am a virgin, and makes a fine show in outward
modesty, but is at heart a whore. Entire and downright earnestness is required.
Better have no money nor goods, also lose temporal honour and power, than God's
kingdom. He who finds God has found all, and he who loses Him has lost all; he
has lost himself. O how difficult it is to break the earthly will! Do but enter
the lists, thou wilt no longer need to inquire after the footsteps of Christ,
thou wilt see them well. Thou wilt certainly feel the cross of Christ, likewise
the wrath of God, which in general rests and sleeps finely in the old Adam
until thou fattenest it plumply, and then it gives thee thy kingdom of heaven
which thou hast sought here, in which thou must sweat eternally.
CHAPTER
VI
OF OUR DEATH. WHY WE MUST DIE, SEEING THAT CHRIST HAS DIED FOR US
Citatio prima
1. COME hither as guest, dear showy specious
Reason, hither have we invited you all, knowers and ignorant, all ye who wish
to see God. There is a solemn seal and hard lock to be opened. Meditate
thereon, it concerns you all.
2. Reason says: Was God then not
sufficiently powerful to forgive Adam his sin, that He had first to become man,
suffer and allow himself to be put to death? What pleasure has God in death? Or
again, since He willed then to save us in this way, why, as Christ has redeemed
us, must we also die? Yes, dance, dear Reason, guess till thou hittest upon it;
here thou art a doctor and knowest nothing, art learned and also dumb. If thou
wouldest not, then certainly thou must, unless thou comest to this school, i.e.
the school of the Holy Spirit. Who is here that can open? Is not this the
closed book of him that sits on the throne in the Revelation of Jesus Christ?
Then says the hypocrite: We know it well. Accordingly I say that I have never
heard it from their lips, nor read it in their writings; they have forbidden me
this quest, and interdicted it, and accounted it as sin to one who should
inquire after or desire to know the closed book referred to; thus the fair
woman has remained subtly covered up. O how Antichrist has been able to play
under such covering! But this shall be revealed, against the will of the devil
and of hell; for the time is born, the day of restoration dawns, so that it
will be found what Adam has lost.
3. The Scripture says: We are dust and
ashes (Gen. xviii. 27). That is correct, we are dust and earth. But it may be
asked whether God made man out of earth. Reason insists on maintaining it, and
authenticates it by Moses, whom Reason however understands not. Nor does
investigation give this position, but indicates rather that man is a limus,
that is, an extract of all the three Principles. If he was destined to be a
likeness according to God's nature, he must have come from God's nature; for
whatever issues not from the Eternal is unabiding. All that begins belongs to
that from which it arose. But if we have come merely from the earth, we are of
the earth: what should then accuse us that we do just as the earth's property
works and wills? But if there be a law within us which accuses us of living in
an earthly way, this law is not earthly, but it is from that to which it
directs and draws us, namely, from the Eternal; and our own conscience accuses
us before the Eternal of doing what is contrary to the Eternal. But if we
commit ourselves to that which draws us into the Eternal, then must the other,
which draws us into what is earthly, break and enter into that towards which it
wills, viz. into the earth, whither it draws us; but the will which we give up
to the Eternal, that the Eternal receives.
4. And if God has created man in a being,
to be therein eternally as flesh and blood, then must the will which gives
itself up to the Eternal be clothed with flesh and blood such as these were
when God had created them for Paradise, for the Eternal. Thereby we recognize
clearly that God has not created us in flesh and blood such as we now carry,
but in such a flesh as the will is clothed with in the new birth; else it would
have been earthly and perishable even before the fall. Why then should my
conscience blame me for that in which God had created me? Or, why should it desire
anything but what it- were in its own nature? Thus we find plainly that there
is in our flesh another nature, which longs after that which it now is not. But
if it yearn after that which it now is not, then this must in the beginning
have belonged to its own nature, for which it yearns; else no yearning nor
desire for another would be in it. For we know that every entity longs after
that from which it has its primal origin.
5. Thus our will longs after such a flesh
as God created, which may subsist in God, not after an earthly perishable flesh
in pain, but after a durable flesh without pain: whereby we clearly understand
that we have gone out from the Eternal into what is perishable; that we have
attracted matter into the limos and have become earth, from which however God
has extracted us as a mass, and thereinto introduced his Spirit with the
Eternal. For Adam's imagination has drawn the earthly source of the stars and
four elements into the limos, and the stars and elements have absorbed the
earth's craving. Thus the heavenly matter of the heavenly flesh became earthly;
for the Spirit of God, which by the verbum fiat was breathed into the limos out
of God's heart, had heavenly essentiality or heavenly flesh and blood in
itself: this Spirit was to rule Adam in accordance with the heavenly divine
property. But as the devil had infected the limus when he was in heaven, he now
also did Adam this villainy, and infected him with his imagination, so that he
began to imaginate according to the corrupt craving of the earthly source,
whereby he was caught by the kingdom of this perverted world, which entered
into the limus as a master. Thus the image of God was spoiled and fell into the
earthly source.
6. But seeing that the heavenly spirit was
in the corrupt earthly sulphur, the heavenly brightness and the divine fire
could not therefore subsist in the burning, for the light of the eternal fire
has its subsistence in freedom out of the source. And again, the water of
freedom, which was the food of the eternal fire, had become earthly, that is,
filled with earthliness, and the gentle love was infected with the earthly evil
craving: thus the eternal fire could not burn nor give light, but sprang
accordingly in the corrupt flesh as a choked fire that cannot burn for moisture.
This fire gnaws us now and always accuses us; it would fain burn again and be
capable of heavenly essence. It has to devour into itself earthly quality, i.e.
earthly imagination, with which the devil's craving becomes intermingled:
therefore it also becomes bad, and draws us continually towards the abyss, into
the centre of nature, into the torture chamber, from which in the beginning it
arose.
hou seest, then, O man, what thou art; and
what thou further makest of thyself, that thou wilt be to eternity. And thou
seest why thou must break up and die, for the kingdom of this world passes.
Accordingly thou art in thy external being not master of this kingdom, to
continue unto its ether (perpetuity), but thou art powerless therein and only
existest in a constellation which the astrum had when thou begannest to grow in
the womb in flesh and blood of the earthly nature. Thou art by the external
life so powerless that thou canst not defend thyself from thy constellation;
thou must enter into the breaking up of thy body when the constellation
abandons thee. Thou seest then what thou art, namely, a dust of earth, an earth
full of stench, a dead carcass while thou yet livest. Thou livest unto the
stars and elements; these rule and urge thee according to their property, they
give thee practical rules and art. But when their saeculum and their
constellation, under which thou wert conceived and born into this world, is
completed, they let thee fall. Then thy body is given up unto the four
elements, and thy spirit, which led thee, unto the Mystery from which the
astrum was produced, and is kept for the judgment of God, when God will prove
all by the fire of his might. Thus, thou must rot and become earth and a
nothingness, except the spirit, which has proceeded out of the Eternal which
God introduced into the limos. Consider then what thou art, a handful of earth
and a torment-house of the stars and elements. If in this world, in this time,
thou hast not enkindled again in God's light thy soul and eternal spirit, which
was given thee by the highest Good, so that it has been reborn in the light of
the divine Essence, then it falls in the Mystery unto the centrum naturae
again, as unto the first mother, and enters into the torture chamber of the
first four forms of nature. There it must be a spirit in the dark source of
anguish along with all the devils, and devour that which it has in this time
introduced into itself; that will be its food and life.
8. But seeing that God has not willed such
with regard to man, who is his likeness and image, He has himself become what
poor man became after he had fallen away from the divine essentiality, from
Paradise, so that He might help him back again; that man might thus have in
himself the gate of regeneration, that he might in the soul's fire be born
again in God, and that this same soul's fire might again draw into itself
divine essentiality and be filled with the divine love-source, whereby the
divine kingdom of joy would again be generated and the soul's fire again bring
forth the Holy Spirit; which Spirit would proceed out of the soul's fire and
wrest the ungodly will from the Adamic flesh, so that the poor soul would not
again be filled with the earthly and devilish craving.
The gate of the new man
9. This is to be understood thus: God has
become man and has introduced our human soul into the divine essentiality again
in Christ; it eats again of divine essentiality, viz. of love and gentleness,
and drinks of the water-spirit of eternal life, springing from the eternal
wisdom, which is the fountain of divine essentiality. The same soul of Christ
received into itself divine heavenly flesh and blood by the Word which is the
centre of the light-world, which Word longed after the poor imprisoned -soul.
This Word dwelt in the divine essentiality and in the virgin of wisdom, but
came into Mary, took our own flesh and blood into the divine essentiality, and
broke through the power which held us captive in the wrath of death and
fierceness, on the cross, i.e. in the centre of nature of the origin, in the
Father's eternal will to nature, out of which our soul was taken, and kindled
again in this essence, in the soul's dark fire, the burning light-fire, and
brought the other will of the soul through the fire of God, that is, out of the
origin into the burning white clear light. When nature felt this in the soul,
it became joyous, broke death to pieces and budded forth by God's power in the
light-world, and made of the fire a love-desire, so that in eternity no longer
any fire is known, but a great and strong will in love towards its twigs and
branches, namely, towards our soul.
10. And this is what we say: God thirsted
after our soul. He has become our stem, we are his twigs and branches. As a
stem always gives its sap to the branches, so that they live and bear fruit, to
the glory of the whole tree, so does also to us our stem. The tree Jesus Christ
in the light-world, who has revealed himself in our soul, will have our souls
as his branches. He has come in Adam's place, who caused us to decay and
perish; he has become Adam in the new birth. Adam brought our soul into this
world, into the death of fierce wrathfulness; and He brought our soul out of
death, through the fire of God, and rekindled it in fire, so that it obtained
again the shining light, as otherwise it would necessarily have had to emain in
the dark death in the source of anguish.
11. Now, it depends only on our own
acceptance that we follow the same path that Christ has made. We need only
introduce into Him our imagination and entire will, which is called faith, and
resist the old earthly will: then we receive out of the new birth the spirit of
Christ, and it draws into our souls heavenly essentiality, i.e. Christ's
heavenly flesh and blood. And when the soul tastes this, it breaks up the dark
death within it and kindles in itself the fire of eternity, from which the
shining light of gentleness burns. This gentleness the soul draws again into
itself, into its soulic fire, and swallows it up into itself, and gives from
death the life and spirit of Christ. Thus, this spirit, which proceeds out of
the eternal fire, dwells in the light-world with God, and is the true image of
the Holy Trinity. It dwells not in this world, the body comprehends it not, but
the noble mind, in which the soul is a fire, comprehends it, though not in a
graspable way. Certainly the noble image dwells in the soulic fire of the mind,
but it only hovers therein, as light in fire. For so long as the earthly man
lives, the soul is always in danger, for the devil has enmity with it, and is
ever shooting his rays with false desire into the astral and elemental spirit,
and reaches therewith after the fire of the soul, and aims at continually
infecting it with earthly devilish craving. Here the noble image is compelled
to defend itself against the fire of the soul; here fighting is required for
the angelic garland; here rises frequently in the old Adam fear, doubt and
unbelief, when the devil makes an onset upon the soul. Ah, cross of Christ, how
heavy art thou oftentimes! O, how heaven conceals itself! But thus the noble
grain is sown; and when it springs up, it brings forth many fair fruits in
patience.
12. Thus every twig in the soul grows up
out of divine wisdom. All must put forth out of the torture chamber, and grow
as a branch from the root of the tree: all is generated in anguish. If a man
wish to obtain divine knowledge, he must repeatedly enter into the torture
chamber, into the centre. For every spark of divine knowledge which proceeds
from God's wisdom must be born out of the centre of nature, else it is not
lasting nor eternal. It must rest upon the eternal foundation, upon the eternal
root. In this way it is a twig in God's kingdom springing from Christ's tree.
13. Thus we understand the dying, what it
is, and why Christ has had to die, and why we must all die in Christ's death,
if we would possess his glory. The old Adam cannot do this; he must go again
into that out of which he went, he must be proved by the fire of God and
restore the wonders which he has swallowed up. They must return to man, and
appear to man in his will, in so far as he has done them here in God's will;
but if conducive to God's dishonour, they belong to the devil in the abyss.
14. Therefore let everyone take heed what
he does and brings about in this world, with that inward disposition and
conscience he speaks, acts and lives all must be tried by fire. And whatever
shall be susceptible of this fire, that it will swallow up and give to the
abyss, to the anguish. Of that shall man suffer loss and be without it in the
other world, by which he might and should have had joy, if he had been a worker
in God's vineyard; but thus he will be found to be an idle servant. Therefore
also the power, might and clearness in the wonders of divine wisdom will be unequal
in the other world. Many a one is here a king, and in the other world a
swineherd shall be preferred to him in the clearness and wisdom: the reason is,
his wonders will be given to" the abyss, because they were evil.
15. Ye dear men, behold, I show you a
similitude of the angelic world: Look upon the flowering earth or the stars,
see how one star or herb excels another in the vigour, beauty and gracefulness
of its form so is also the angelic world; for we shall be embodied in a
spiritual flesh and blood, not in such a form as here. The spiritual body can
pass through earthly stones, so subtle is it; otherwise it would not be
susceptible of the Deity; for God dwells out of or beyond the palpable source,
in the still freedom, and his own being is the light and power of Majesty. So
must we also get a power-body, but truly in flesh and blood, in which however
is a brightness of the tincture. Spirit is so thin that it is imprehensible by
the body, yet is prehensible in freedom, else it were a nonentity. And body is
much thicker than spirit, so that spirit can lay hold of it and eat it, whereby
it preserves the spirit-life in fire, and produces from spirit the light of
Majesty, and from light again gentleness in flesh and blood, so that thus there
is an eternal being.
16. If we then find and know ourselves, we
see and know what God is and is able to do, and what the Being of all beings
is. And we find that we are being led erroneously and blindly, as much is told
us regarding God's will, and the Deity is represented always as a strange
nature that is remote from us, as if God were a strange existence and bore only
a will inclining towards us; as one who forgives sin by favour, like a king
grants one his life who has forfeited it. But no, hearken, it is not a question
of playing the hypocrite and remaining an impostor; it is necessary to be born
of God or to be lost eternally from God. The right faith and will must
accomplish it; this will must enter earnestly into God and become one Spirit
with God; it must acquire heavenly essence, else neither singing, ringing, nor
glistering show, will avail. God requires no service; we ought to serve and
love one another, and give thanks to the great God, that is, elevate ourselves
in one mind into God and proclaim his wonders, invoke his name and praise him.
That is the joy in Ternarius Sanctus, where wonders, power and growth are
realized out of the praise by the eternal wisdom. And hence the devil's kingdom
is destroyed, and God's kingdom comes to us, and his will is done. Apart from
this, all is human conceits and works, in the sight of God a useless thing, an
hypocrisy, and brings about no reconciliation, but only leads man away from
God.
17. God's kingdom must come in us and his
will be done in us, then we serve him aright. If we love him with all our
heart, with all our soul and with all our strength and our neighbour as
ourselves, that is all the worship which he accepts of us. Why should we play
the hypocrite to ourselves? If we are righteous, we are ourselves gods in the
great God; what we do then, God does it in us and through us. If his Spirit is
in us, why are we so much concerned about divine worship? If he would do
something, we ought to be servants and willing; he must be the masterworker, if
a work is to please him. Whatever is outside of that, is built in an earthly
way, in the spirit of this world; we build the same unto the outward heavens,
unto the stars and elements, which have their fulfilment and wonders in us, and
we serve the dark devil by works outside of God's Spirit.
18. Let this be declared to you, it is
highly known No work is pleasing to God, unless it arise from faith in God.
Play the hypocrite as thou wilt, thou labourest only in this world, thou sowest
in an earthly field. But if thou wouldest reap heavenly fruit, thou must sow
heavenly seed. If it shall refuse to strike root in the field of another, thy
seed comes to thee again and grows in thy field, and thou wilt enjoy the fruit
thyself.
CHAPTER
VII
OF SPIRITUAL SEEING; HOW A MAN MAY IN THIS WORLD HAVE DIVINE AND
HEAVENLY KNOWLEDGE, SO THAT HE CAN SPEAK CORRECTLY REGARDING GOD; AND HOW HIS
SEEING IS
The second citation or summons of the outward Reason of this world in
flesh and blood
1. EXTERNAL Reason says: How can a man in this
world see into God, as into another world, and say what God is? That cannot
possibly be; it must be a mere fancy, with which man tickles and deludes
himself.
2. Answer: So far external Reason
reacheth; and further it cannot explore, so that it might rest. And if I were
still involved in that art, I should also speak in like manner. For he who sees
nothing, says there is nothing there. What he sees, that he knows; he is
cognisant of nothing more than what is before his eyes. But I would have the
scoffer and earthly man asked, whether heaven is blind, as well as hell and God
himself? Whether in the divine world there is also a seeing? Whether the Spirit
of God can see, both in the world of love and light, and also in the fierceness
in the world of wrath, in the centre? If he says that there is a seeing
therein-and, indeed, this is true let him look to it carefully that he do not
often see with the devil's eyes in his purposed wickedness, when long
beforehand he fashions to himself a thing in his imagination, to bring it about
in guileful malice, and sees beforehand how he may and will accomplish his
wickedness. And if he can here see beforehand what is bad, why does he not also
see beforehand his reward? O no: the devil sees with his eyes and covers up the
penalty, so that he may accomplish the wickedness. If he would expel the devil,
he would see his great folly, which the devil had assigned to him. He shows him
the bad and lends him eyes for this purpose, so that he sees what is distant,
what is yet to happen; and he is thus blinded and knows not that he sees with
the devil's eyes.
3. So too in like manner he that is holy
sees with God's eyes what God has in view, and that the Spirit of God sees in
the new birth by true human eyes, by the image of God. This Spirit is to the
wise man a seeing and also a doing; not to the old Adam, he must be a servant
to it, he must practically work out what the new man sees in God. Christ has
said The Son of man doeth nothing but what he sees the Father do, that he doeth
also. Now the Son of man has become our habitation into which we have entered;
he has become our body, and his spirit is our spirit. If we live in Christ,
shall we then be blind in God? The spirit of Christ sees through and in us what
he wills; and what he wills, that we see and know in him, and out of him we
know nothing of God. He does divine works and sees what and when he pleases,
not when Adam pleases, when Adam would willingly (with pride of showing
himself) pour out his malignity. O no, there he conceals himself and sees not
in us in the light of joy in God, but in the cross, in tribulation, in Christ's
sufferings and death, persecution and reproach, in great sorrowfulness; in
these does he see and leaves the old ass to struggle and to carry Christ's cross,
that is its office. But by this way through the death of Christ the new man
sees into the angelic world; it is to him easier and clearer to understand than
the earthly world. This comes about naturally, not by illusion, but by seeing
eyes, by those eyes which are destined to possess the angelic world, by the
eyes of the soul's image, by the spirit which proceeds from the soul's fire.
The same spirit sees into heaven, it looks upon God and eternity, and no other
can, and it is also the noble image according to God's likeness.
4. As the result of such seeing has this
pen written, not under guidance of other masters or out of conjecture as to
whether it be true. Though a creature is a part and not a whole, so that we see
only in part, yet such fragmentary knowledge is sound. But the wisdom of God
cannot be written, it is infinite, without number and circumscription; we know
this only in part. Even though we know much more, the earthly tongue cannot
extol and declare such: it speaks only language of this world, and retains the
meaning in the hidden man. Therefore one always understands differently from
another; according as each is endowed with wisdom, so does he seize it and so
does he interpret it.
5. Everyone will not understand my
writings in my sense,-nay, not even anyone. But everyone receives according to
his endowment, for his amendment, one more than another, according as the
Spirit has its property in him. For the Spirit of God is often subject to the
spirits of men, if they exercise good-willing, and sees what man wills, that
his good be not hindered, but that God's will be everywhere done. For the
spirit which is born out of the soul's fire, out of God's gentleness and
essence, is also the Holy Spirit. It dwells in divine quality and takes its
seeing from divine quality.
6. What is there that is alien in us that
we cannot see God? This world and the devil in God's wrath is the cause that we
see not with God's eyes; otherwise no impediment exists.
7. If then anyone says: I see nothing
divine; let him consider that flesh and blood along with the subtlety of the
devil is a hindrance and veil to him frequently by the fact that he wishes in
his pride to see God for his own honour, and frequently by the fact that he is
filled and blinded with earthly malignity. If he would look into the footsteps
of Christ and would go into a new life, submit himself under the cross of
Christ and desire only the entering of Christ by the aid of Christ's death,
descent into hell and ascent to the Father: how in sooth should he not see the
Father, his Saviour Christ and the Holy Spirit?
8. Is then the Holy Spirit to be supposed
blind when he dwells in man? Or do I write this for my glorification? Not so,
but for the reader's guidance, that he may desist from his error, proceed from
the path of reviling and blasphemy into a holy divine existence, that he also
may see with divine eyes the wonders of God, so that God's will may be done. To
which end this pen has written much, and not for our own honour and the
pleasure of this life, as the oppressor is always reproaching and reviling us,
and yet only remains the oppressor in the wrath of God, to whom we would fain
wish the kingdom of heaven, if he might be released from the devil and the
earthly craze for pride, which make him blind.
9. Therefore, dear children of God, ye who
seek with many tears, only put your serious earnestness into it. Our seeing and
knowing is in God. He reveals to everyone in this world as much as He pleases,
as much as He knows is profitable and good for him. For he who sees with the
eyes of God has to work the work of God; he must work, teach, speak and do what
he sees, else the seeing is taken away from him. For this world is not worthy
of God's seeing; but for the sake of the wonders and manifestation of God it is
given to some to see, in order that the name of God may be made manifest to the
world, which also will be a witness unto every godless being of those who
pervert the truth into lies and despise the Holy Spirit. For we are not our
own, but his whom we serve in his light. We know nothing of God; he himself is
our knowing and seeing. We are a nothingness, that he may be all in us. We
should be blind, deaf and dumb and know no life in ourselves, in order that he
may be our life and soul, and our work be his. Our tongue ought not to say if
we have done something that is good: this have we done, but rather: this has
the Lord done in us; his name be highly praised! But what doth this wicked
world now? If any say This has God done in me if it be good, then the world
says: Thou fool, thou hast done it; God is not in thee, thou liest. Thus the
Spirit of God must be their fool and liar. What is it then, or who speaks out
of the blasphemous mouth? The devil, who is an enemy of God, that he may cover
up the work of God, in order that God's Spirit may not become known, and that
he may continue to be prince of this world till the judgment.
10. If then you see that the world fights
against you, persecutes you, reviles and calumniates you on account of the
knowledge and name of God, then consider that you have the black devil before
you. Accordingly bless, so that God's kingdom may come to us and destroy the
devil's sting; so that the man may by your blessing and prayer be released from
the devil. Thus you will labour rightly in God's vineyard and hinder the
devil's kingdom, and produce fruit for God's table; for in love and gentleness
we are new-born out of the wrath of God. We must in love-and gentleness bathe
among the devil's thorns, and in this world fight against him; for love is his
poison, it is to him a fire of terror in which he cannot remain. If he were
cognisant of a spark of love in himself, he would cast it away, or would burst
asunder that he might be rid of it. Therefore love and gentleness is our sword,
with which we can, under Christ's crown of thorns, fight with the devil and the
world for the noble garland. For love is the fire of the second Principle; it
is God's fire, to which the devil and the world are hostile. Love has God's
eyes and sees in God, and wrath has the eye of fierceness in the anger of God,
it sees in hell, torment and death.
11. The world simply supposes that one
must see God with the earthly and stellar eyes; it knows not that God dwells
not in the outer life but in the inner. If then it sees nothing strange in
God's children, it says: Oh I he is a fool, he was born foolish, he is
melancholy. So much it knows. Listen, Master Hans, I know well what melancholy
is, I also know well what is of God; I know both of these, and also thee in thy
blindness. But such knowledge requires not a state of melancholy, but a
knightly wrestling; for to none is it given without wrestling (except he be a
goal chosen by God), unless he strive for the garland. Many a one indeed is
chosen thereto in the womb, as John the Baptist (Luke i. 15), and others, laid
hold of in God's covenant of the promise, which is always a goal of a saeculum,
which is born at the time of the great year, and is chosen by God to disclose
the wonders which he has before him. But not all as springing from the goal,
but many of them from zealous seeking; for Christ said: Seek and ye shall find,
knock and it shall be opened unto you (Matt. vii. 7). Further: Him that cometh
to me I will in no wise cast out (John vi. 37). Also: Father, I will that they
whom thou hast given me be where I am (John xvii. 24), that is, with the new
man born of Christ in God his Father. Further: Father, I will that they see my
glory which I had before the foundation of the world. Here we have seeing out
of Christ's spirit, out of God's kingdom, in the power of the Word, of the
essence of the Deity, with God's eyes, and not with the eyes of this world and
of the outer flesh.
12. Therefore, thou blind world, know with
what we see when we speak and write of God, and give over thy false judging.
See thou with thy eyes and let God's children see with their eyes. See thou by
means of thy gifts and let God's children, or another person, see by means of
his gifts. As everyone is called, so let him see, and so let him walk; for we
do not all pursue one and the same walk and coversation, but everyone according
to his gift and calling unto the honour and wonders of God. The Spirit of God
suffers not itself to be bound, as outward Reason with its laws and Councils
supposes, whereby always a chain of Antichrist is formed, so that men undertake
to judge God's Spirit, and hold their conceits and reasonings for God's
covenant, as if God were not at home in this world or as if they were gods upon
earth; they confirm also by oath what they choose to believe. Is it not a
fool's work to bind to an oath the Holy Spirit in his wonderful gifts? He is to
believe what they wish, and they know him not, nor are born of him, yet make
laws as to what he shall do.
13. I say that all such compacts are Antichrist
and want of faith, whatever devout show of holiness there may be, God's Spirit
is unbound, he enters not into compact, but freely appears to the seeking
humble mind according to its gift, according as it is constituted. He is even
subject to it, if it desire him wholly with earnestness. What then is the
purpose of the compact in human wisdom of this world if it relate to the honour
of God? Are not all compacts born of personal pride? Friendly conversation is
certainly good and necessary, so that one may exhibit his gift to another, but
compacts are a false chain contrary to God. God has once made a covenant with
us in Christ, this suffices to all eternity; he will make no more. He has taken
the human race once for all into the covenant, and formed a permanent testament
by death and blood. That is sufficient, we content ourselves justly with that,
and we cleave to this covenant. We ought not to dance boldly around the cup of
Christ, as is done at present, else it will be taken away, as happened to the
Turks.
14. There is a very great earnest severity
at hand, such as never was seen from the time of the world. Let this be told
you: It is known that Antichrist shall stand naked. But look to it that thus
you become not worse! For the axe is put to the tree the bad tree shall be hewn
down and cast into the fire. The time is near; let no one ensconce himself in
carnal pleasure. For it avails nothing that any-one know how he may be
new-born, and yet remains in the old skin, in the sensuality of the old Adam,
in greed, pride and unrighteousness, in licentiousness and a scandalous life:
such a one is dead while he lives, and lies in the jaws of the wrath of God;
his knowledge will accuse and condemn him at the judgment. If he receive and
accept the word which God gives him to know, that it is the right way to life,
he must at once become a doer of the word and go out from what is bad, else he
will have a severe judgment pronounced regarding him. What is he better than
the devil? The devil also knows God's will, but does his own evil will. No one
is good till he becomes a doer of the word: then he walks in God's ways, and is
in the vineyard engaged in God's work.
15. Hypocritical
CHAPTER
VIII
THE PILGRIM'S PATH FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE
1. DEAR children, let us discourse
together deeply concerning the ground of things. Our true life, with which we
are to see God, is as a choked fire; in some even as the fire shut up in a
stone; we must kindle it by right and earnest turning to God. Consider God's
care: He has regenerated us in Christ by the water of eternal life, and has in
the covenant of baptism left us the same water as a key of refreshment by which
we may unlock and sprinkle therewith the fire of our souls, so that it may
become capable of the divine fire. He has given us his body for food and his
blood for drink, that we may appropriate these, enter into his covenant and
feed our soul therewith, that it may be quickened and wake up from death, so
that it may kindle the divine fire., Dear children, it must burn and not remain
shut up in the stone, or as tinder that fain would glimmer and cannot for the
devil's moisture. Historical faith is tinder which glimmers as a small spark;
it must be enkindled; we must give it matter in which the spark may inflame
itself. The soul must penetrate out of the reason of this world into the life
of Christ, into Christ's flesh and blood, then it receives matter for its
enkindling. There must be earnestness; for history reaches not Christ's flesh
and blood. Death must be broken to pieces; according as Christ has broken it to
pieces, the earnest desire must now just follow along, and do that gladly and
always labour to that result, as a pilgrim or messenger, having to go a long
dangerous journey, runs on continually towards the term or goal, and is
indefatigable: though misfortune and calamity befall him, he still hopes for
the term or goal and approaches ever nearer, where then he is expectant of his
reward and delight, and rejoices that his hard journeying will come to an end.
2. Thus, a man who would journey to God
must set out upon the pilgrim's path. He must depart always more and more from
the earthly reason, from the will of the flesh, of the devil and of the world.
Frequently pain and woe befall him when he has to abandon that which he might
have, and by which he might sweep along in temporal honours. But if he will
walk in the true narrow path, he must only put on the coat of righteousness,
and put off the coat of covetousness and of the specious hypocritical life. He
must part his bread with the hungry and give his garment for a covering, not be
an oppressor of the wretched and wish only to fill his own pocket, wring his
sweat from the miserable and simple man, and give him laws merely for his own
pride and pleasure. He is not a Christian who does this, but he walks in the path
of this world, just as the stars and elements with the devil's infection and
desire impel him. And though he know the form of faith, as relating to God's
mercy, to the atonement of Christ, this will be of no avail to him. For not all
they that say, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that
doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. And that will is: Love thy
neighbour as thyself; Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so
do ye also unto them.
3. Say not in thy heart: I sit in this
office and lordship with good right; I have bought or inherited it; what my
vassals do for me, they owe me. See and inquire where this right originates,
whether it be ordained by God or whether it arise from fraud and personal
pride, and from greed. If thou findest that it is God's ordering, then observe,
and walk therein according to the commandment of love and righteousness. Think
that in this position thou art a servant, and not a lord over Christ's
children, and not only sittest there to draw their sweat to thee, but that thou
art their judge and pastor, that thou must give an account of thy charge: to
thee have been given five talents, thou hast to deliver them to thy lord with
interest. Thou shouldest lead thy inferiors on the right path, and give them a
good example in connection with doctrine and the punishment of the wicked. It
will be required of thee, if thou punish not the wicked and protect not the
oppressed. Thou art not a ruler only in order that thou mayest be their lord; not
thou, but God is their lord; thou shouldest be their judge and decide between
them, not for thy greed's sake but for the sake of their conscience. Thou
shouldest teach, guide and direct the simple not merely through pressure of his
toil, but through gentleness. Thou hast a heavy charge upon thee; thou must
therefore furnish a serious reckoning. When the wretched man groans with
reference to thee in his misery, he accuses thee before his and thy lord: in
such case thou shalt and must stand with him before the judgment; for sentence
is pronounced regarding souls, no hypocrisy is of any avail.
4. All that is sown in tears, in true real
earnest, that becomes a substance and belongs to the judgment of God; unless
indeed the man turn round and become reconciled by benefits to the oppressed
person, so that he should bless him: in this way the substance is dissolved.
Therefore ye who are in authority have a heavy charge upon you. You may well
study your rank or position, wherever it may originate, the root will be
closely sought after; everyone shall give an account of his rank or position.
Take heed, however, that by it ye ride not in hellish fire, as the fierce devil
himself does, and ye be found his servants; as the spirit of wonders shows us,
that ye have come to be the filling up of the eternal anger and wrath. Say not
in thy heart: Thus have my parents and forefathers lived; I have inherited such
mode of life. Thou knowest not into what abode they have entered. If thou
wouldest be a Christian and a child of God, thou must not give attention to the
way of predecessors, as to how they have careered in lust, but to God's word:
that must be a lamp unto thy feet. For many who have done ill have gone into
the abyss, and thou wilt also follow them if thou walk in their footsteps.
Suffer not the devil to pourtray to thee the specious hypocritical path; its
colour shines on the outside and in the essence it is poison.
5. O how very dangerous a path we have to
walk in through this world! and it were to be wished that there were in the
wicked nothing that is eternal, then they would not suffer eternal torment and
be in eternal reproach. As in this life they are enemies of the children of
God, so likewise they remain eternal enemies of God and of his children.
Therefore the children of God must take the cross upon them, and here sweat in
the bath of thistles and thorns, and be new-born in anguish; they must walk in
the narrow way, where Reason is always saying: Thou art a fool, thou mightest
live in joy and still be saved. O how external Reason often strikes the noble
image, which grows up out of the thorny bath of tribulation! How many a twig is
torn away from the tree of pearl by doubt and unbelief, which bring the
individual into the false path! The wretched man sighs after temporal
nourishment and curses the coercer who wrings from him his sweat, and thinks he
does right in this; whereas he does but bring destruction on himself thereby,
he acts just as wickedly as his oppressor. If he would take patience in himself
and remember that he walks in the pilgrim's path, and if he would put his hope
in his goal, and consider that thus under tribulation and misery, under
oppression, he labours in the vineyard of Christ: O how blessedly would he
journey! he would thus have reason to seek another and better life, seeing that
here he must be in anguish and misery. If he would but understand aright how
well God is inclined towards him, that thus He allures him and endeavours that
he should not build upon the earthly life. Since he sees that it is but a vale
of sorrow and a state of affliction, that he must spend his days here in hard
constraint, in misery, in mere toil, he ought indeed to consider that God lets
not things take their course thus in vain, but that thus He gives him occasion
at the same time to seek the true rest, which is not in this world. Besides, he
is under the necessity at all hours of awaiting death and leaving his work to
others. Why is it then that a man builds his hope upon this world, in which he
is but a guest and pilgrim who has to walk in the paths of his constellation?
If he would adopt the inner constellation, O how blessedly would he work in
God's work and let the outer life go as it can.
6. A man in this world who looks to
possess God's kingdom has no better way and he can have no better help than
constantly to remember and set before himself that he is in the vineyard of God
with all his doing and being, in order that he may do it for God. His soul
should be directed to God in a constant hope that he shall obtain from Him his
reward for his labour, and that he may work in God's mirificence. Therefore he
ought to be diligent in his work which he performs; even though he is compelled
often to serve his oppressor by toil without pay, let him but consider that he
works for God only, and be patient in hope that God assuredly will give him his
reward in due season. For the master of the vineyard pays not his labourers in
the day, but in the evening when the day's work has been done. When we go home
to our Lord out of the vale of this tabernacle, then everyone will receive his
pay. He who for a long time has laboured much has much pay to expect; but he
who has been a blusterer, grumbler, sluggard and bad worker by want of
patience, has earned little, and will even have to expect punishment from his
Lord; for he has only led away other workers, and has been a useless worker,
has done nothing but false work in order to defraud his Lord, and he will
receive justly punishment instead of reward.
The gate in the centre of nature
The third citation
7. Reason says: Why does God permit things
to go in such a way that there is nothing but misery and hardship in this
world, moreover only coercion and oppression, so that one torments and afflicts
another? And though many a one possess much and does not want, yet he has no
rest; he strives only after turmoil and unrest, and his heart is never quiet.
8. See! thou shut-up cognition. The
foundation of the world is such, the origin of life also is such. It cannot be
otherwise in this world unless a man be new-born. He exists differently in the
new man, and yet this impulse in the old man always cleaves to him. It is the
struggle of the spirit against the flesh, in which the flesh lusts against the
spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Reason now says: Where then does it
first take its rise?
9. Answer: Mark! in the centrum naturae
there is such a mode of being. Do but reflect. The eternal will, which is
called God, is free, for he contains in himself nothing but the light of
Majesty, and dwells in the eternal nothing, hence also nothing can move him.
But his desiring, which makes the centrum naturae, has only one such a
property. For there astringency is found, viz. the first form of nature. It is
always drawing to itself, and takes where there is nothing; where it has made
nothing, there does it take, and gathers this in, and yet cannot eat it, nor is
it of any advantage to it; it creates for itself thus anguish, torture and
unrest, in the same way as greed and covetousness does in man. The second form
is its attraction or sting, that is, its servant, who gathers in what the
desiring wishes; he is the worker and signifies the underman; he is angry,
wrathful, furious, he stings and rages in the astringency. This can the
astringency not suffer from the servant, and draws him only more vehemently;
hence the servant becomes more angry and frantic, and storms the master's
house, Accordingly the master tries to bind and hold the servant, and the
servant breaks loose with rage beyond measure. If then his master, viz. the
astringency, cannot reduce him to subjection, they fall together into great
anguish, enmity and opposition, and begin to make a revolving wheel, to kill,
murder and slay one another. Such is the third form of nature, from which
arises war, conflict, devastation of country and cities, envy and terrible
malice, -where each would have the other dead, and would devour and draw into
itself everything. It desires alone to possess it, yet to it alone by itself it
is of no use, but only hurtful. It acts as the wrath of nature acts: this
devours itself in like manner in itself, consumes and destroys itself, yet in
like manner generates itself. Therefrom comes all evil, the devil and every
evil thing comes from thence. It is thus that it first takes its rise.
10. As nature in the centre acts,
understand apart from the light, so also does the devil act, who possesses not
the light; similarly the evil man and beast, as well as herbs, grass and all
that is hostile. For what we have here is the poison-wheel, from which life has
its origin; this revolves thus in great anguish, in stinging, raging and
breaking, till it draw for itself another will to go out from the anguish, and
sinks into death, and freely gives itself up to freedom. In this way the
stinging and breaking is shattered in death, and falls into the freedom of the
primal will, which kindles the anguish of death with the still freedom, whereby
the anguish is terrified, breaks death to pieces, and out of the anguish flames
up as a life of joy.
11. Thus is it also with man. When he is
in the anguish of enmity and the sting of death and anger rages within him, so
that he is anguishful, covetous, envious, angry and hostile, he ought not to
remain in this evil nature; otherwise he is in the forms of death, anger, wrath
and hell-fire. If the water-fountain were not in him in connection with flesh
and blood, he would be already an enkindled devil and nothing else. But he must
reflect and in his evil anguish draw another will to go out from the covetous
malice into the freedom of God, where there is always rest and peace enough. He
must sink down into death, into patience, willingly give himself up to the
wheel of anguish, and draw a thirst for the refreshment of God, which is
freedom; in this way he sinks down through the anguishful death into freedom.
When then his anguish tastes freedom, that it is such a still gentle life, the
anguish-source is terrified; and in the terror the hostile grim death is broken
to pieces, for this terror is a terror of great joy and a kindling of the life
of God. And so the branch of pearls is born; it is found now in trembling joy,
but in great danger, for death and the anguishsource is its root; and it is
encompassed therewith, as a fair green branch that grows up out o£ a stinking
dunghill, out of the fetid source, and acquires an essence, smell and quality
other than its mother has, out of which it was born; and indeed the source in
nature has such a property, so that out of evil, i.e. out of anguish, is
produced the great life.
12. And as we know further that nature in
the terror divides into two kingdoms into the kingdom of joy, and (2) into a
sinking down of death into a darkness-so also does the nature of man, if the
lily-twig as requisite for the kingdom of joy be generated accordingly, divide
into two wills. The first arises in the lily and grows up in God's kingdom; the
other sinks down into dark death, and longs after the earth as its mother. The
latter will is always fighting against the lily, and the lily flees from the
roughness. As a twig grows out of the earth, and the essence flees from the
earth, and is drawn up by the sun till a stalk or tree is produced out of it:
so also does God's sun in his, power always draw man's lily, i.e. the new man,
from the evil essence, and at length draws up a tree therefrom in God's
kingdom. Then he lets the old evil tree, or the bark beneath which the new has
grown, fall into the earth, into its mother after which it longs, and go out
from the earth again into the centrum naturae at the end of the day of
separation, when all must enter again into its ether. Then the lily also enters
into its ether, into the will of freedom, into the light of Majesty.
13. Understand it further in this way:
When in the terror of nature two kingdoms thus separate, the terror is in
itself a flash of lightning and a cause of fire, or of the enkindling of life.
Thus the prima materia, which the astringency made by its contraction, wherein
enmity has originated, separates into two parts. Namely, one below itself into
death, which is the essential life with the substantiality of this world, such
as earth and stones; and, secondly, the other part separates out of the terror
of fire into the light of freedom, for the fire-terror inflames freedom so that
it also becomes desireful and in its desiring draws into itself the kingdom of
joy, i.e. the gentle beneficence, and makes it also a materia. This is then the
heavenly divine essentiality; it draws the fire again into itself and swallows
it up it its terror, which is the source of the fire. There the source consumes
the gentle essentiality and is brought into great joyfulness, so that anguish
is changed into love and fire into a love-burning, and gives from the burning
the joyous spirit of eternal life that is called God's Spirit, which originally
arises in the primal will that is called Father. For it is the desiring of
nature, and in the fire is a fire-source, and in the anguish of death a sting
of death, of wrath and enmity in the essence of nature, i.e. in the centre. And
in the light it is the divine kingdom of joy, revealing in the divine Essence
or in wisdom (as being the colours of virtue) the noble tincture, which forms
the lustre of the heavenly Essence; and in the Essence it produces the Element
of the angelic world, of which this world is an extern birth, but kindled in
wrath by the devil, who is a cause that the wrath of nature has been kindled,
whereby in the Essence earth and stones have arisen, as is evident, and this
has the mightiest source separated in the verbum fiat into a Principle )
14. Understand, then, the fire-flash as
the fourth form of nature, and the love-birth of the kingdom of joy as the
fifth form; and the swallowing up of the essentiality out of the gentleness
into the firesource, where fire also attains the kingdom of joy, i.e. the sound
or manifestation of colours, wonders and virtues, from whence arise the five
senses, viz. seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling, understand as the
sixth form of nature; and the essentiality of the light, in which is comprised
the divine Element wherefrom budding or Paradise originates, understand as the
seventh form, or, again, as the mother of all the forms, giving essence, power
and gentleness to all the forms, so that there is an eternal life and rapture
of life. For the seventh form contains in itself the angelic world as well as
CHAPTER
IX
SEVERAL FURTHER PARTICULARS REGARDING THIS
THIRD CITATION, HIGHLY TO BE CONSIDERED
1. THUS, ye children of men, be now seeing
and not, blind. Pray observe what is revealed to you, it does not take place in
vain; there is something behind it. Sleep not, the time is come. Do but see
what the Being of all beings is. This world is progenerated from the Eternal;
the centre of nature has existed from eternity, but it has not been manifest.
Through this world and through the devil's fierce wrath it has come into
substantial being. Understand though what the devil is. He is a spirit of his
legions which proceeds from the centre of nature. He was created unto divine
essentiality, yet he was to be tried in fire and was to place his desire in
love. He put his desire back into the centre of fierceness, into the fourth
form of anguish, and wished in fire to rule over God's gentleness, as an enemy
of the kingdom of joy; and he despised love because he saw that fire gave
strength and might: therefore he was thrust out of the fire of God into the
anguish of darkness, into the centre of the four forms. He has no longer
anything of fire but the terrible flash, that is his true life; but the will of
God, which in angels and men longs after the life, which comes to the aid of
the life with freedom, i.e. gentleness, has abandoned him. Hence he cannot
attain the light in eternity, nor can he draw any desire for it, for God's
Will-spirit torments him in the torture chamber, in the first four forms of
nature; the fifth form he cannot reach. And though he has all the forms of
nature, yet all is hostile and adverse; for the Holy Spirit has abandoned him,
and now wrath or the fierce quality is in him. God, who is all, has opened His
fierceness or the centre of the origin in him, so that it also became
creaturely, for it has also longed *to manifest itself. And when God put
himself in motion for the creation of the angels, all that was hidden from
eternity in the wonders of wisdom, in the centre, both in love and wrath, was
revealed.
2. Seeing that we know what we are, and
that God enables us to know it, let us take heed and produce from ourselves
something that is good. For we have the centre of nature in us. If we make of
ourselves an angel, then we are that; if we make of ourselves a devil, then in
like manner we are that. We are in this world in the source of making and
creating, we are in the field. God's will in love is presented to us in the
centre of life. God has become man and wishes to have us; his wrath also wishes
to have us into the kingdom of fierceness. The devil wishes to have us into his
company and God's angels into theirs: the one towards which we aspire, into
that do we go. If we place our desire in the light of God and enter with
earnestness, then we come in, and are also with earnestness drawn in. If we
will place our will in the glory of this world and let the Eternal go, we have
to expect that we will necessarily enter with this world's fierceness into the
first Mystery. If we shall then not have in us divine imagination [formative
power] or faith, the divine love will abandon us and not admit us at her door.
In truth, if God break not open [our dark prison], we come to misery. If thou
bringest not God's Spirit with thee, thou wilt never reach it: therefore it is
well to come to full growth here in this life. Christ has become our field, we
may realize this without too great anguish and distress. The object in view is
only this, that we break the will; this is painful, for Adam will not, nor will
the wrath nor the devil.
3. Behold, O man, thou art thine own
enemy. What thou regardest as friend, that is thine enemy. If thou wilt be
saved and see God, thou must become the worst enemy of thy best friend, i.e. of
the outer life. Not that thou shouldest break it, but only its will. Thou must
do what thou wouldest not, thou must become thine own enemy or thou canst not
see God. He whom now thou holdest for thy friend has arisen from the torture
chamber, and still has the anguish-life in himself; he has the craving of the
wrath-source and of the devil in him. Thou must draw a will in God, from thy
soul must thou draw a will, and with it go out from wickedness into God; in
this way thou wilt be introduced into the fire of God, that is, the Will-spirit
will kindle thy soul. Thereupon reach after the life and spirit of Christ, and
thou wilt receive it. It will regenerate thee with a new will which will remain
to thee. This will is the flower of thy soul, wherein lies the new child in the
image of God: to it God gives Christ's flesh and blood to feed upon, and not to
the Adamic ass, as Babel hoaxes strangely, as if the godless man could become
participative of Christ's body. O no! he receives the four elements and in them
the wrath of God, because he discerns not the Lord's body, which is present in
heaven, and is eaten by the soul that attains heaven. Not as a sign, as the
other phantasy hoaxes, not spirit without essentiality, but the essentiality of
the spirit along with it, enclosed in God's wisdom, Christ's flesh which fills
the light-world everywhere, which the Word that became man brought with it into
Mary. This essentiality, although it was revealed in Mary in her flesh and
blood, and took human essence unto itself, was nevertheless during the time
that Christ lay in Mary's womb, in heaven, in the Element, everywhere. It
passed not over many miles from any place into Mary: no; but the shut up
centre, which Adam had shut up in the wrath of God, in death, that did the Word
of the Deity open, and introduced divine essentiality into the virgin centre
that was shut up in death. This took place in the womb of Mary, in the goal of
the covenant, not by way of absence nor entrance, but disclosingly,
ingeneratingly, and in this world progeneratingly, God and Man, one Person, heavenly
as well as in death shut up essentiality and virginity, one Substance, one Man
in heaven and in this world. And such must we also be, for the Word that became
man is stirring in the soul and stands in vital sound in all souls; it draws
all souls and the wrath likewise draws all souls. Now, go whither thou wilt,
thou hast in thyself the centre of the Deity in sound and in motion, and also
the centre of wrath; into which thou goest and which thou awakenest, in that is
rooted thy life. Do what is pleasing to thee, thou art free and God enables
thee to know it. He calleth to thee; if thou comest, thou wilt be his child; if
thou goest into the wrath, thou wilt also be received.
CHAPTER
X
OF THE IMAGE OF GOD WHICH IS MAN, OR OF THE LIKENESS OF GOD AND MAN
1. WE cannot in this world behold our
essentiality or new body, because we are in the earthly life. The outer man
knows it not, but the spirit, which is generated and proceeds from the new man,
this knows its body.
2. As however we have knowledge of it, and
wish to know whether we are in the new birth, there is no better test than by
the likeness of God, which we understand to be desire, sense and mind. These
three things contain the centre of the spirit, from which is generated the
strong will wherein lies the true real likeness and image of God in flesh and
blood, which the outer man knows not. For this image is not in this world, it
has another principle in the angelic world, and during this lifetime remains in
the mystery, in hiddenness, like the gold in the stone, where the gold has
another tincture, essence and lustre, and the roughness of the stone cannot lay
hold of it; nor does the gold lay hold upon the roughness, and yet the
roughness, as the anguishcentre, is a cause of the gold, for it is mother and
the sun father. So likewise is our old Adam a cause of the new body, for it is
the mother: from the old entity springs the new body, and God's Spirit in
Christ is the father. As the sun is father of the gold, so also is God's heart
the father of the new man.
3. Now, we know not the new man better
than in the centre, viz. in desire, sense and mind. If we find that our desire
stands wholly in accordance with and directed towards God, that our senses
constantly run in the will of God, that the mind gives itself up entirely in
obedience to God's will, and that the imagination seizes something of God's
power: then we may know certainly that the noble lily-twig is born, that the
image of God exists in essential being, that God has become man in the likeness.
Here it is highly necessary to safeguard the noble image and give not room to
the old Adam with his lusts, but to kill him continually, so that the new man
may grow, increase, and be adorned with the wonders of wisdom.
4. Reason, however, now asks: How is then
God's likeness? Behold, God is a Spirit, and the mind with the senses and
desires is also spirit. The mind is the wheel of nature, desire is the centre
as the first thing for the realization of nature, and the senses are the
essences. For the senses arise from the essences, they have their origin from
the sting of desire, from the sourness; they are the bitterness and run always
in the mind, i.e. the wheel of anguish, and seek rest, to see whether they may
attain the freedom of God. It is they who, in the anguish-wheel or mind, kindle
fire, and in the kindling, in the terror, willingly give themselves up to
death, and thus sink down through the torment of fire into freedom, into God's
arms; they proceed into freedom as a life which proceeds out of death. They are
the roots of the new taste, which penetrate into God's wisdom and wonders; they
bring desire out of the pangs of death; they fill their mother the mind, and
give her power from God's essence.
5. Thus the mind (das Gemiith)1 is the wheel
or the true chamber of life, the proper habitation of the soul, of which itself
is a part if the essence (understand the essence of the tincture) be reckoned
thereamong, and is the fire-life, for from the fire-life arises the mind, and
the fire-life dwells in the mind. But mind is nobler than fire, for it is the
mobility of the fire-life; it makes the understanding. The senses are the
mind's servants and are the subtlest messengers; they go into God, and again
out of God into evils, and wherever they become kindled, either in God or in
evils, as in falseness, that do they bring home to the mind. And hence the
noble mind must often attack what is bad and stifle it in its anguish when the
senses have admitted false imagination into the desire.
6. Understand it, then, lastly in this
way: God is himself all and in all; but he goes out from fierceness and finds
the world of light and power in himself. He himself constitutes it, so that
fierceness with all the forms is but a cause of life (and the finding of himself
in great wonders). He is the ground and unground, freedom and also nature, in
light and darkness. And man too is all that, if he do but thus seek and find
himself like God.
7. Our whole writing and teaching comes
only to this, as to how we must seek, make and ultimately find ourselves; how
we must bring forth, so that we are one spirit with God, that God may be in us
and we in God, that God's love-spirit may be in us the will and also the doing,
and that we may escape from the source of anguish; that we may dispose
ourselves into the true likeness in three worlds, where each stands in its
order, and that the light-world may be lord in us, as that which bears rule;
that thus the anguish-world may remain hidden in the light-world as it remains
hidden in God, and so only be a cause of life and of the wonders of God.
Otherwise, if we attain not the light-world, the anguish-world in us is the
dominant influence, and we shall live eternally in hostile pain. This struggle
goes on as long as the earthly life lasts; after that, such life passes into
the eternal ether, into light or darkness, from which there is no longer any
deliverance, and of which God's Spirit warns us and instructs us in the right
way. Amen.
Conclusion
8. Thus, God-loving reader, know that a
man is the true likeness of God, which God highly loves and reveals himself in
this likeness as in his own being. God is in man the middle, the middlemost,
but he dwells only in himself, unless the spirit of man become one spirit with
him, when he manifests himself in humanity as in the mind, senses and desire,
so that the mind feels him; otherwise he is in this world much too subtle for
us to behold. But the senses behold him in spirit, understand in the will's
spirit, for the will sends the senses into God and God gives himself up to the
senses and becomes one being with them. Then the senses bring the power of God
to the will, which receives it with joy, but at the same time with trembling;
for it knows itself unworthy, because it comes from a rude lodging, from the
wavering mind; therefore it receives the power in sinking down before God.
Accordingly its triumph is changed into gentle humility, which is and embraces
God's true nature; and this same nature as embraced is in the will the heavenly
body and is called the true and right faith, which the will has received in the
power of God; it sinks into the mind and dwells in the fire of the soul.
9. Thus the image of God is complete, and
God sees or finds himself in such a likeness. And we are by no means to think
with regard to God that he is a strange being. To the godless he is a strange
being, for the godless man does not lay hold of him. God is certainly in him,
but not manifest according to his love-light in the will and mind of the
godless man. His wrath only is revealed in him; the light he cannot attain, it
is in him, but it is of no use to him; his essence seizes it not, he shrinks
from it; it is his torture and pain, he does but show enmity towards it, as the
devil is hostile to the sun and also to the light of God. The devil would be
better satisfied if he could live eternally in the darkness and knew that God
were far from him, then he would find no shame and reproach in himself. As,
however, he knows that God is so near him and yet he cannot lay hold of him,
this is his great torment, so that he has an enmity against himself and makes
for himself an eternal contra-will, fear and despair, in that he knows that he
cannot reach the countenance and gracious favour of God; his own falseness
torments him, but he can draw no consolation that he may attain to grace. For
he reaches not God, but only the centre in anguish, in wrath; he remains in
death and in the dying source; he cannot break through, for nothing comes to
his aid by which he might maintain himself so that he might be established in
God's kingdom. Though he carry on for a thousand years in the abyss, in the
deep, yet he is in the darkness out of God, and nevertheless God is in him, and
it profits him nothing; nor does he know him, but he is aware of him and is
sensible of his fierce wrath only.
10. Understand it thus: As fire exists in a stone, and the stone knows it not, feels it not, but feels the fierce cause of the fire which keeps the hard stone imprisoned in a body: so likewise the devil f