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.
10. For Sulphur in the eternal Beginning consists in two Forms, and so also in the outward Beginning of this World: viz. in the internal the first Form, viz. the Sul consists in the eternal Liberty; it is the Lubet of the eternal Abyss, viz. a Will or an Original to the Desire and the other Original is the Desire, which is the first Motion, viz. an Hunger to the Something; and in this same Hunger is the eternal Beginning to the pregnant Nature, and it is called Sulphur, viz. a Conception of the Liberty, viz. of Nature of the Good, and a Conception or Comprehension of the Desire, viz. of the austere Attraction in the Desire.
11. Sul in the Internal is God, and Phur is the Nature, for it makes a Spirit of the Nature of Brimstone, as is to be seen externally in the Property of Brimstone; for its Substance is a dry constringent Matter, and is of a painful anxious fiery Property, forcing itself forth; it attracts eagerly and hardly into itself, and parches up as a dry Hunger, and its painful Property does eagerly and anxiously force itself forth: The Cause and Original is this: because it stands in two Beginnings, viz. in the Property of the Desire.
12. The Desire, viz. the Attraction makes Hardness, and is the Cause of the Fire, and the Lubet is a Cause of the Lustre or Light of the Fire: Sul is Light, and Phur makes Fire, yet it cannot be reduced alone in Sulphur to Fire and Light, but in Mercury and at last in Sal, which is the real Body, but not of the Brimstone, but of the Essence and Water: And so understand, that in the first Desire, which arises in the Lubet of the Liberty, all Things are, and are made substantial and essential, from whence the Creation of this World is proceeded, and we find herein the Property of the Earth, so likewise of all Metals and Stones, and also of the Astrum, and the Original of the Elements, all out of one only Mother, which is the Lubet and the Desire, from whence all Things proceeded and still proceed.
13. For Mercury is generated in Sulphur: It is the severing, viz. of Light and Darkness from one another, the breaking Wheel, and Cause of the various Division or Multiplicity: it separates the dark Essentiality from the Essentiality of the Light, viz. the Metals from the gross, astringent, dark, stony, and earthly Property; for the Property of the Desire gives and makes dark Essence, and the Property of the free Lubet makes Light Essence, viz. Metals, and all of the same Kind and Resemblance.
14. Mercury has in the Beginning of his Birth three Properties, viz. the Trembling in the Austereness, and Anguish from the hard impressing of the astringent hard Desire, and the Expulsion of the Multiplicity, viz. the essential Life; for the Desire attracts very hard to itself, and the Attraction makes the Motion, or Sting of Trembling, [or horrible Compunction] and that which is impressed is the Anguish; but if the Liberty be therein comprehended, it refuses it, and there arises the Original of Enmity, and the Severing, that one Form separates from another, and a twofold Will arises.
15. For the Lubet of the Liberty does again set its Desire into the Stillness, viz. into the Nothing, and forces again out of the Darkness of the Desire’s Austereness into itself, viz. into the Liberty, without the Wrath of the Enmity, and so it has only sharpened itself in the austere Impression in Mercury, that it is a moving feeling Life, and that its Liberty is sharpened so that it becomes a Lustre, which is, and causes a Kingdom of Joy in the Liberty; and so understand us, that the Spirit's Dominion, viz. the Spirit and the Essence do thus separate.