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.
40. Thus we see this Ground very exactly and properly in Thunder and Lightning; for the Flash, or Lightening, or ethereal Blaze, goes always before, for it is the enkindled Salniter; thereupon follows the Stroke in the Flagrat of the Coldness; as you see, as soon as the Stroke is given the astringent Chamber is opened, and a cool Wind follows, and oftentimes Whirling and Wheeling, for the Forms or Nature are awakened, and are as a turning Wheel, and So they carry their Spirit the Wind.
The Third Chapter.
Of the grand Mystery of all Beings
1. COURTEOUS Reader, observe the Meaning right; we understand not by this Description a Beginning of the Deity, but we shew you the Manifestation of the Deity through Nature; for God is without Beginning, and has an eternal Beginning, and an eternal End, which he is himself, and the Nature of the inward World is in the like Essence from Eternity.
2. We give you to understand this of the Divine Essence; without Nature God is a Mystery, understand in the Nothing, for without Nature is the Nothing, which is an Eye of Eternity, an Abyssal Eye, that stands or sees in the Nothing, for it is the Abyss; and this same Eye is a Will, understand a Longing after Manifestation, to find the Nothing; but now there is nothing before the Will, where it Might find something, where it Might have a Place to rest, therefore it enters into itself, and finds itself through Nature.
3. And, we understand in the Mystery without Nature in the first Will two Forms; one to Nature, to the Manifestation of the Wonder-eye; and the second Form is produced out of the first, which is a Desire after Virtue and Power, and is the first Will's Son, its Desire of Joyfulness. And understand us thus: the Desire is egressive, and that which proceeds is the Spirit of the Will and Desire, for it is a Moving, and the Desire makes a Form in the Spirit, viz. Formings of the Infinity of the Mystery.
4. And this Form [or Likeness] is the eternal Wisdom of the Deity; and we understand herein the Trinity of the only Deity, whose Ground we must not know, how the first Will arises in the Abyss from Eternity, which is called Father; only we know the eternal Birth, and distinguish the Deity, viz. what purely and merely concerns the Deity, or the, Good, from Nature, and shew you the Arcanum of the greatest secret Mystery; Namely, how the Abyss, or the Deity, manifests itself with this eternal Generation, for God is a Spirit, and as subtle as a Thought or Will, and Nature is his corporeal Essence, understand, the Eternal Nature, and the outward Nature of this visible comprehensible World is a Manifestation or external Birth of the inward Spirit and Essence in Evil and Good, that is a Representation, Resemblance, and typical Similitude of the dark Fire, and Light World.
5. And as we have shewn you concerning the Original, of Thunder and Lightning with the tempestuous Stroke; so likewise the inward Nature of the inward World is, and stands in the Generation: For the outward Birth takes its Original from the inward; the inward Birth is unapprehensible to the Creature, but the outward is apprehensible to it; yet each Property apprehends its Mother from whence it is brought forth.
6. As the Soul comprehends the inward eternal Nature, and the Spirit of the Soul, viz. the precious Image according to God, comprehends the Birth of the angelical Light-World, and the sidereal and Elemental Spirit comprehends the Birth and Property of Stars and Elements; every Eye sees into its Mother from whence it was brought forth.
7. Therefore we will set down the Generation of all Essences out of all Mothers and Beginnings, how one Generation proceeds from another, and how one is the Cause of another, and this we will do from the Eyesight of all the three Mothers.
8. Let none account it impossible, seeing Man is a Likeness according to and in God, an Image of the Being of all Beings; and yet it stands not in the Power of the Creature, but in the Might of God, for the Sight and Science of all Essences consist alone in the clearest Light.
9. We have made mention before how the external Birth, viz. the Essence of this World consists in three Things, viz. in Sulphur, Mercury, and Sal: Now we must set down and declare what it is, seeing that all Things arise from one Original, and then how its inward Separation is effected, that out of one Beginning many Beginnings are produced; this is now to be understood, as is before-mentioned, concerning the Center of all Essences.