The Signature of All Things — trans. John Ellistone (1651)
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The translator’s English as printed (John Ellistone). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
48. Thus understand us right; the Salniter in the Fire-Flagrat is the Separation of the Properties, where Death and Life separate themselves, viz. the Life which enters with the Love-Desire into an Essence and Dominion; and then the Life which in the Flagrat of Death, according to the Property of the cold, sinks down in the Mortification of the Flagrat as an Impotency, and gives Weight; and according to the Subtility it gives Water, and according to the Grossness of the Austereness Earth; and according to Sulphur and Mercury, Sand and Stones; and according to the Subtility in Sulphur and Mercury, understand according to the Water of the same, it makes Flesh, and according to the anxious Darkness a Smoke or Rust; but according to the oleous Property, viz. according to the Love-Desire, a sweet spiritual Essence; and according to the Spirit a pleasant Smell; and according to the moving of the Fire and Light the [one] Element; and from the Lustre in the Fire-Flagrat with aspect of the Light the precious Tincture, which tinctures all oily Salts, from whence the pleasant Taste and Smell arise.
49. The Salnitral Flagrat is the Sude in the Essence, from whence the Growth and Pullulation arise, that there is a Growing in the Impression of the Essence; the Salt is the preservation, or upholding of the Essence, so that a Thing subsists in a Body or Comprehension; it holds the Sulphur and Mercury, else they would part from each other in the Fire-Flagrat.
50. All Things consist of Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt: In the Salnitral Flagrat the Element separates itself into four Properties, viz. into Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, which in itself is none of these, but only a Moving and gentle Walming, not as the Air, but as a moving of the Will in the Body, a cause of Life in the Essence; for as the eternal Spirit of God proceeds from the Father, who is a Spirit from the Fire and Light, and is the Motion and Life of the Eternity; so likewise the Air proceeds forth continually out of all the Properties in the Salnitral Flagrat in the Fire, from the Anguish in Sulphur in the forcing Mercurial Wheel, as an impetuous aspiring Motion; it is a Son of all the Properties, and also the Life of the same; the Fire of all the Forms affords it, and also receives it again for its Life; the Water is its Body, wherein it makes the Seething in the Salniter, and the Earth is its Power, wherein it enkindles its Strength and Fire-Soul.
51. There is but one only Element, and that unfolds itself in the Salnitral Flagrat into four Parts, viz. with the Enkindling it gives a consuming Fire of the Darkness, and its Essence; and in the Flagrat of the Dying of the cold and the Darkness it parts itself into Essences, viz. according to the Subtility into Water, and according to the Grossness into Earth; and then according to the Motion in the Flagrat's Walming into Air, which does most resemble the Element, but not wholly essentially; for the [one] Element is neither hot nor cold, also not forcing or compulsive, but gently moving.
Of the Desire of the Properties 52. Every Property keeps its own Desire; for a Property is Nothing else but an Hunger, and the Hunger forms itself into such an Essence as itself is, and in the Salnitral Sude it gives such a Spirit into the four Elements; for the Original of the Sude is in the Element, from whence four Elements proceed in this Flagrat.
53. Each Body stands in the inward Motion in the Element, and in the Growth and Life in the four Elements; but every Creature has not the true Life of the Element, but only the high Spirits, as Angels and Souls of Men, which stand in the first Principle; in them the Element is incitable: In the Life of the third Principle it stands still, and is as a Hand of God, where he holds and governs the four Elements as an Exit, or Instrument with which he works and builds.
54. Now every Property of Nature does in its Hunger take its Food out of the four Elements; as the Hunger is, so it takes a Property out of the Elements; for the four Elements are the Body of the Properties, and each Spirit eats of its own Body.
55. First, there are the Sulphurean Properties according to the first and second Impression, viz. according to the dark, astringent, and anxious Impression; and then according to the Love-Impression in the Light, viz. according to Evil and Good.