Of the inward and outward cure of man
1. Let the lover of God understand us right; we do not go upon an historical heathenish conjecture, nor only upon the light of the outward nature; both suns shine to us. Understand us right, and see how God has cured man when the poison of the serpent and devil held him imprisoned in death, and how he yet still cures the poor soul captivated in God's anger; the like process also must the physician keep in curing the outward body.
2. The divine light and love were extinguished in Adam, because he imagined into the serpent's property, viz. into evil and good, so that the poison of death began effectually to work in Mercury, and the source of anger was inflamed in the eternal Mars, and the dark impression of the eternal nature's property took possession of him: His body became earth in the dark impression in the poison of the enkindled Mercury, and was an enmity against God: he was utterly undone, and there was no remedy for him by any creature, neither in heaven, nor in this world; the wrathful death captivated him in soul and body.
3. Now how did God do to cure him and tincture him again? Did he take a strange thing thereunto? No, he took the likeness, and cured him with that which was corrupted in him, viz. with the divine Mercury, and with the divine Venus, and with the divine Jupiter; understand; in man was the expressed word, which I call the eternal Mercury in man; for it is the true ruling acting life; it was inspired or in-spoken into man's image (which God created out of his essence into an image according to God) as into a creaturely image, which was the soul with the property of all the three worlds, viz. with the world of light and understanding, which is God; and with the fire-world, which is the eternal nature of the Father of all beings; and with the light, love-world, which is heavenly corporality; for in the love-desire is the essence, viz. the corporality.
4. The desire of love is spirit, and is the heart of God, viz. the right divine understanding: In the love-essence Mercury is God's word, and in the fiery nature he is the wrath of God, the original of all mobility and enmity, also of strength and omnipotence; the fiery property makes the light, viz. the liberty, desirous; so that the nothing is a desire, and this desire is the love of God, which Adam extinguished in him: For he imagined after evil and good, that is, after earthliness; the earthliness came forth into a being both out of the wrath, and out of the love-being, and that through God's motion, that the wonders of the abyss and byss might be made manifest, that good and evil might be made known and manifest: And this Adam, being the image of God, should not do, for God had created him to his image: He should have tinctured the fire-world and outward world with the word of love, that so none of them should be manifest in him, like as the day holds the night swallowed up in itself.
5. But by false imagination he has awakened and manifested the dark and poisonful mercurial fire-world in him, so that his bodily essence of the dark impression is fallen to the evil part in the poisonful mercurial property, and the soul is become manifest in the eternal nature in the Father's fire-property, viz. in the poisonful hateful Mercury; according to which God calls him an "angry and zealous God," and "a consuming fire."
6. Now to help and restore this again, viz. the image of God, God must take the right cure, and even the same which man was in his innocence: But how did he effect it? Behold, O man, behold and see, open thy understanding; thou art called.
7. He introduced the holy Mercury in the flame, viz. in the fiery love with the desire of the divine essentiality, or after the divine essentiality again (which desire makes divine corporality in itself) into the expressed word, viz. into the mercurial fire-soul (understand, into the soul's essence in the womb of Mary), and became again that same image of God: He tinctured the poison, viz. the wrath of the Father of all essences, with the love-fire: He took only that same Mercury which he had breathed into Adam for an image, and formed into a creature: He took only that same property, yet not in the fire's property, but in the burning love: He did with the love introduce again the light of the eternal sun into the human property, that he might tincture the wrath of the enkindled Mercury in the human property, and inflame it with love, that the human Jupiter, viz. the divine understanding, might again appear and be manifest.
8. Ye physicians, if you here understand nothing, then you are captivated in the poison of the devil: Behold, I pray, the right cure, with which the enkindled Mercury in man's life is to be remedied; it must be a Mercury again, but first enkindled in Venus and Jupiter; it must have the sun's property, which it attains to by Jupiter and Venus: As God deals with us poor men, so must the outward poisonful sick Mercury be tinctured with such an external cure; not with the dark impression of Saturn, with cold (unless it be first sweetly appeased and qualified with Jupiter and Venus, that the sun does again shine in Saturn), but with meek love; this is his right physic, whereby the death is changed into life; yet this is only a common manual cure, which the vulgar may learn.
9. But it behoves the doctor, if he will be called a doctor, to study the whole process, how God has restored the universal in man; which is fully clear and manifest in the person of Christ, from his entrance into the humanity, even to his ascension, and sending of the Holy Ghost.
10. Let him follow this entire process, and then he may find the universal, provided he be born again of God; but the selfish pleasure, worldly glory, covetousness and pride lie in the way. Dear doctors, I must tell you, the coals are too black, you defile your white hands therewith; the true unfeigned self-denying humility before God and man does not relish with you; therefore you are blind: I do not tell you this, but the spirit of wonders in its manifestation.
11. But we will give direction to the desirous seeker, who would fain see if he knew the way fitly to attain his intent; for the time is at hand, where Moses is called from the sheep to be a shepherd of the Lord, which shall shortly be manifest, notwithstanding all the raging and raving of the devil: Let not the dear and worthy Christendom think, seeing now it seems as if she should go to wrack and ruin, that it is utterly undone; No: the Spirit of the Lord of hosts has out of his love planted a new branch in the human property, which shall root out the thorns of the devil, and make known his child Jesus to all nations, tongues and speeches, and that in the morning of the eternal day.
12. Dear brethren, behold, I pray, the right cure: What did God with us when we lay sick in death? Did he quite cast away the created image, understand the outward part, viz. the outward corrupt man, and make wholly another new man? No: He did it not: For though he introduced divine property into our humanity, yet he did not therefore cast away our humanity, but brought it into the way or process to the new-birth.
13. What did he? He suffered the outward humanity, viz. the outward water, understand the essentiality of Venus, which was shut up in the wrath of death, to be baptized with the water of the eternal essence, and with the Holy Ghost, that the incentive of the outward essentiality shut up in death might again glow, as a fire that falls into tinder: Afterwards he withdrew his outward food from the outward body, and brought it into the desert, and let it hunger, and then the spark enkindled from the fire of God must imagine into God, and eat manna of divine essentiality forty days, of which Israel was a type in the wilderness of Sinai with their manna: The essence of eternity must overcome the essence of time, therefore it is called a temptation of the devil; for the devil as a prince in the wrath of God did there tempt the outward humanity, and represented all that to it wherein Adam fell, and became disobedient to God.
14. There now it was tried whether the image of God would stand, seeing internally there was God's love-fire, and externally the baptism of the water of eternal life: Here the soul was tempted, whether it would be a king, and an angelical throne instead of the fallen angel, and possess the elected throne of God in the royal office, from which Lucifer was taken, and thrust into the darkness, viz. into the throne of poison and death; but seeing he stood (in that the soul did resign and submit its will alone into God's love-fire, and desired no earthly food, nor the earthly kingdom good and evil for outward dominion) the process to the universal, viz. to the restoration of all that which Adam had lost, did further proceed and go on: He turned water into wine.
15. Ye physicians, observe this, it concerns you in your process, you must also go the same way to work: He healed the sick; so you must likewise make the form in your poisonful Mercury whole and sound by the power of the philosophical baptism: He made the dead alive again, the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and cleansed the lepers; all this must go before, that all the forms in Mercury may be pure, sound, and living, which Mercury himself does make after the baptism and temptation; as the living speaking Mercury did this in the person of Christ; the artist cannot do it, only there must be faith; for Christ also testifies, that he could not do many wonders at Capernaum, only heal a few diseased; for the faith of those at Capernaum would not enter into the divine Mercury of Christ.
16. So that we see there, that the person of Christ, viz. the creature, could not work the wonders in its own power, but the Mercury, viz. the living, speaking word in him; for the person did cry and call into God, viz. into the speaking word, and set its desire thereinto; as we may see in the Mount of Olives where he prayed, that he sweat drops of blood; and by Lazarus, when he would raise him up, he said, "Father, hear me; but I know that thou always hearest me; yet because of those that stand by, I say it, that they may believe that thou workest by me."
17. Thus the artist must not arrogate anything to himself, the Mercury does itself, after the philosophical baptism, work these wonders before it manifests the universal; for all the seven forms of nature must be crystallised and purified, if the universal shall be revealed; and each form carries a peculiar process when it is to be brought out of the property of the wrath, and entered into the pure and clear life; and it must transmute itself into the crystalline sea which stands before the throne of the ancient in the Revelation, and change itself into paradise; for the universal is paradisical; and Christ also came for that reason into our humanity, that he might again open or make manifest the universal, viz. the paradise, again in man: The speaking word in Christ wrought wonders through all the seven properties or forms, through the expressed word in the humanity, before the whole universal was manifest in the body of the human property, and the body glorified.
18. Even thus it is in the philosophical work, when the Mercury shut up in death receives into it the baptism of its refreshment in love, then all the seven forms manifest themselves in this property, as it came to pass in the process of Christ in his miracles, but as yet they are not perfect in the operation of the manifestation of their properties.
19. The universal is not yet there, till all seven give their will into one, and forsake their property in the wrath, and depart from it with their will, and take into them the love's property: They must take in the will of the nothing, that their will be a nothing, and then it can subsist in the wrath of the fire, and there is no further turba therein; for so long as the desire of the wrath is in the form, it is adverse and opposite to the second form, and inflames the second form with its wrathful property, that is, it strikes the signature of the second, and awakens it in the wrath, and then the voice or sound of the second enkindles the first form's property in Mercury, and so no form can attain to any perfection, that it might enter into love.
20. Therefore the artist can effect nothing, unless he gives a meat to the forms, which they all desire, and love to eat, wherein there is no turba: Now the properties cannot eat, seeing their mouth is frozen up in the impression of Saturn; the artist must first open their mouth, and make them alive in their zeal, that all the forms may be hungry, and then if there be manna, they all eat together of it, and so the precious grain of mustard-seed is sown.
21. Now when Mercury does thus awake from the death of the impression of Saturn, and gets manna into the mouth of his property of the poisonful death's source, then arises the flagrat of the kingdom of joy, for it is as a light which is enkindled in the darkness, for the joy or love springs up in the midst of the anger: Now if Mercury apprehends the glimpse or aspect of the love in Mars, then the love dismays the wrath, and it is as a transmutation, but it is not fixed and steadfast; and as soon as this comes to pass, the angelical properties appear in view.
22. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and the devil came to him, and tempted him. When the soul of Christ did hunger, the devil said to Jesus, Open the centre in the stones, that is, the impressed Mercury, and make thee bread, eat the substance of the soul's property: What, wilt thou eat of nothing, viz. of the speaking word? Eat of the expressed word, viz. of the property of good and evil, and then thou art lord in both; this also was Adam's bit, wherein he did eat death: Then said Christ Jesus, "Man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth from the mouth of God."
23. Mark! Whence had the person of Christ the will, that he would not eat with the soul's hunger of the bread which could have been made of stones, which he could well have performed? Or how had it been, if the hunger of the human property had after the unction of baptism eaten in the temptation of the Mercury in the impression of death, viz. of the Sulphur of the expressed word, in which was the anger, and from whence the love was fled, as it is so in the earthly property?
24. Observe! The will and desire to eat of the speaking word came into the soul's property from the motion of the Deity: When the same had moved itself in the soulish essence, shut up in death in Mary his mother in her essence or seed, and introduced the aspect of the eye of God in the love into the dead soul's essence, and had manifested the love in death, then one divine property desired the other; and the desire of the bodily hunger to eat of God's bread or essence came from the baptism: When the water of the body, which in the impression of the substance was enclosed in death, did taste the water of eternal life in the Holy Spirit, viz. the Holy Spirit's corporality or essentiality in the baptism, then the incentive of the divine hunger of the ardent desire after God's essence did arise in the flesh, as a divine hunger, a glimmering or shining incentive of divine property.
25. Now the man Christ must hereupon be tempted in body and soul, of which he would eat; on one part the expressed word of love and anger was represented before body and soul, in which the devil would be lord and master, and rule therein omnipotently; and on the other part the speaking word in the love-property was only represented to the soul and body.
26. Here now began the combat which Adam should have undergone in paradise; for on one side God's love-desire, which had manifested itself in the soul, did eagerly attempt the soulish and bodily property, and introduced its desire into the soul's property, that the soul should eat of it, and give the body manna thereof; and on the other side the devil in God's wrathful property did assault in the soul's property, and brought his imagination into the property of the first principle, viz. into the centre of the dark world, which is the soul's fire-life.
27. Here was the contest about the image of God, whether it would live in God's love or anger, in the fire or light; for the property of the soul, as to its fire-life, was the Father's according to the fire-world; and seeing the soul in Adam had quenched the light-world, the light-world was again incorporated with the name Jesus, which came to pass in the conception of Mary.
28. Now it was here tried in the temptation of which property man would live; whether of the Father's in the fire, or of the Son's in the light of love: Here the whole property of Christ's person was tempted: The devil said, as he had also said to Adam, Eat of the evil and good: Hast thou not bread? Then make bread of stones: Why dost thou hunger so long in thy own property? Then said the divine desire, "Man liveth not of bread alone, but of every word of God."
29. Thus the property of the fiery soul resigned itself with its desire into the love, viz. into the speaking word's property, and the fiery desire did eat manna in the love-desire. O ye philosophers! observe it well; when this was done, the love transmuted the fiery property into its love-property; here the Father gave the fire-soul to the Son, understand the fiery property of the expressed Mercury to the speaking Mercury in the light; for Christ also said so afterwards, "Father, the men were thine, and thou hast given them me, and I give unto them eternal life."
30. Here God's love gave the eternal love-life to the corrupted humanity; the love did wholly give itself in unto the fire-wrath, and transmuted the wrath of the soul into a triumphant joyful love; but if the soul's and body's property had obeyed the devil in God's wrath, and made bread of the enclosed Mercury, and eaten thereof, then had the will entered again into its selfhood, and could not have been transmuted.
31. But seeing it entered into resignation, into the speaking word of God, and was willing to be and do whatever that pleased, then the will went from its selfhood, through the wrathful death of God's anger, viz. from the expressed word, which the devil had poisoned with his imagination, quite through the property of the wrath, and sprang forth afresh with a new love-desire in God; here the will was paradise, viz. a divine love budding in death.
32. Thus now the love-will being set in opposition to the poisonful Mercury of the soul's property in the anger of God, then came the devil, and said, Thou art the king, who hast overcome, come and shew thyself in thy miracles and deeds of wonder; and he brought him upon the pinnacle of the Temple, and said, "Fall down, that men may see it; for it is written, He hath given his angels charge over thee, that they should bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." Here the devil would fain that he should use again the fire's might, viz. the soul's selfhood in its own fiery property, and depart out of the resignation into an arrogation of self in its own fire-will, as he had done, and also Adam, when he went with the desire in his own might into evil and good, and would have his eyes open in evil and good, as Moses writes thereof, that the serpent did persuade them to it.
33. Here came the fine adorned beast again, and tempted the second Adam also; for God gave him leave, seeing he said the fire's matrix had drawn him, he could not stand: Here now that should be tried; for he was an angel also, as well as the human soul, which he had seduced: But the human property in body and soul in the person of Christ had once cast itself into the resignation out of its selfhood into God's mercy, and stood still in the resignation, viz. in the divine will, and would not cast himself down, or do anything but what God alone did by it, and said to the devil, "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God;" which is as much as if he had said, A creature of God shall will nor do nothing but what God wills and does by it: There must be no other god besides the only one to rule and will, the creature must go and do as the will-spirit of God leads it; it must be God's instrument, with which he works, and does only what he pleases.
34. In this proof Adam did not stand; for he went from the resignation into an arrogation of self, into an own self-will, and would try evil and good, love and anger, and prove how evil and good tasted. Here, dear man, was the trying state before the tree of temptation in paradise, and that was fulfilled which the first Adam could not, and would not do in divine obedience in resignation.
35. When the devil saw that in this also he had no success, that the humanity would not give way to depart out of the resignation, out of God's will, he carried the humanity upon a high mountain, and shewed it all the riches of the world, all whatever does live and move in the expressed word, all the dominions and might in the outward nature, over which he calls himself a prince, but has only the one part in the wrath of death in possession, and said to it (understand to the human property), "If thou fallest down and worshippest me, I will give thee all this."
36. The humanity should again depart out of resignation into a desire of propriety, and desire to possess something of its own in arrogation of self in the cursed property, evil and good; this had been a dainty dish and delight to the devil; then had he remained king, and his lies had been truth: In this Adam also was corrupted, and entered into selfish propriety, and desired worldly dominion and covetousness (which may be seen in Cain), which is the heart of the poisonful Mercury, viz. its hunger's desire, which makes itself essence according to the property of its hunger, not manna, but earth; as we may see in the wild earth, what he has made in the enkindling, or motion of the Father in his fire's property, in which inflammation (viz. in the poisonful wrath of the expressed Mercury) the devil thought to be a prince, and is so in the same property in the wicked, and also in the government of the world in the wrath; but God holds him captive with the water and light of the third principle, so that he is not prince in the dominion of the expressed word, but the judge's executioner; he must look where turba magna is enkindled in the wrath, and there he is busy as far as turba magna goes in the wrath, further his courage is cooled.
37. He would give the humanity of Christ this whole dominion to rule in, and above all in the essence of all things, as a mighty god, which notwithstanding he only possesses in the part of the turba in the wrath of God, and has it not in his full dominion: He should but set his desire thereinto, and introduce his will into him, and he would bring his Mercury of the creature into the greatest omnipotence, that he should be a lord over good and evil, and have all things at command, to do therewith as he pleased, for so Adam had fooled it.
38. His Mercury went with the desire into the impression, whence cold and heat arise, and imagined thereinto, and so the property of the cold and hot fire did presently boil up in the Mercury of the creature; and so also the outward heat and cold did soon pierce into the enkindled Mercury of the human property, so that the body now suffers pain from the heat and cold, which property before (when it stood in the free-will of God in the resignation) was not manifest; and thus evil and good did rule and domineer in Adam.
39. For the centre of wrath, viz. the dark world's property, was manifest in him, in a poisonful death's property, as the Mercury in man is yet to this day so poisonful, and of a venomous source; whereas indeed he is changed in the vital light into a solar property, but yet the poison and property of death hangs to it, and it is his root; as we plainly see, that as soon as the ready instrument of his martial fiery property's signature or form is a little struck or played upon, that his evil poisonful fiery property comes forth, and shews itself, and inflames the body, that it even trembles and shakes for the very poison of wrath, and will ever enter into the enkindled poison-source in him who has awakened and enkindled the same, and assimilate in his malice with the malignant fomenter's malice, and wrestle in the poisonful property's right; and then must the body set to its strength as a servant, and accomplish the poison's will, and wrangle and contest with his adversary, and beat him, or be beaten by him; let it be either by hand-blows, or words; it is all in this property and desire of this poisonful Mercury.
40. From hence arises all war and contention, namely, from the dominion of God's anger in the corrupt and enkindled Mercury of the expressed word, which does so act its delight and sport in the poisonful wrath's and dark world's property in man.
41. Therefore the warrior is a servant of God's anger: He is the axe wherewith the angry husbandman cuts up his thorns and briars from off his ground: He is the chief worker and accomplisher of the wrathful anger of God: God's anger according to his fire's property will have it so, and not his love; and he that suffers himself to be made use of thereunto, he serves the anger of God according to the dark and fire-world's desire and property, which in the heavy fall of Adam has manifested itself in the human property, and brought man, viz. the angelical image, into an half-devilish vizard and likeness; in which property and image of his will in the expressed creaturely Mercury or vital word he cannot inherit God's kingdom, but must be born anew in his Mercury and will, with and in Christ, in God's love, viz. in the holy speaking Mercury and word of life, that a new obedient will wholly resigned into God's love may proceed from his creaturely Mercury, which neither wills or acts anything but what the will of the speaking divine Mercury wills, who in his selfhood, and selfish arrogation in his own will, is as dead, that he may be the instrument of the great God, whereby he should act, work, and do how and what he pleases: And then is God all in all in him, his will and deed, and he is a branch in the great tree which draws sap, power, and life from the tree of God, and grows and lives in him, and brings forth his fruit; then is the Mercury of the human life a procreated or expressed fruit, which grows upon the paradise-tree of God, and gives forth its note and sound, and strikes the signature in the speaking word of God, viz. God's harp and lute, in his praise, for which end man is created, not that he should necessarily play upon the instrument of anger and death according to the devil's will.
42. The devil has given himself to be such a lutanist who contrives and helps to act and drive on the play in the wrath, viz. in the darkness: He is the instrument and actor in the wrath of the eternal nature, which has its effects and achievements with him and in him, as its instrument: The like also must the wicked man do, as Saint Paul speaks thereof; "The holy man is unto God a sweet savour unto life, and the wicked a sweet savour unto death." All whatever does live and move must enter into the glory of God; one works in his love, the other in his anger: All is generated and created in the infinite being to the manifestation of the infinite great God; out of all the properties of evil and good, creatures were brought forth by the will of the speaking word; for the property of the darkness and the fire was as well in the speaking as the property of the light; and therefore there are evil and good creatures.
43. But the angels and men were spoken forth in the image of God's love; they ought not to speak and incline their will into the fire and dark world, and introduce their desire thereinto; also not at all will to be their own, but continue steadfast in the resignation in the speaking will of God, as a form of the speaking will, and bear no inclination to anything, but only to the speaking; in which figure they stand as an image or platform of the expressing, as a spoken word, wherewith the speaking word beholds itself in its own likeness, whereby it there manifests the eternal knowledge of the eternal mind, and sets the Spirit's will into a form, and plays therewith.
44. As a limner that pourtrays his own image, and does thereby behold what he is, and how his form and features are; or as a musician composes a curious lesson or song, and so plays and melodises with his life, and will of life, viz. with the sound of his own life's Mercury, in the tune of the song, or upon some musical instrument, as it is agreeable to his life's Mercury, wherewith his vital Mercury does rejoice and delight itself.