The Signature of All Things — trans. John Ellistone (1651)

14. The Body lies shut up in a disesteemed Form in Saturn, not wholly in Saturn's Property, in a dark Colour, marked with Mercurius its Father, and Sol its Mother, cloathed with Saturn, and manifest with the Life of Mars; but its Mother is not outwardly manifest and known on it, unless its Faber be enraged with its own Iniquity; which yet cannot be, unless an Alienate be applied, whereby its Propriate is enraged; and then (if his Anger be yet on a Fire or Fury) he becomes so very hungry and thirsty, and yet can find no Refreshment in itself; then it seizes on its Faber who has made it, and fights against its Creator, as the earthly wicked Man does against God, so long till he devours and consumes himself, as a fiery [pestilent] Poison consumes the Body, unless you Remedy, stay, and allay its Hunger; yet there is none that can still this horrible Hunger, but God himself who has made him, and if he assists not in due Time, then the Hunger in the Wrath consumes the Body, and puts it into the eternal Darkness.

15. This Hunger desires nothing but the Mercy of God, that he Might be freed from the Anguish of Hell; but this he cannot obtain of himself, for he is shut up in the Anger of God; and his dear Mother, which nursed him in the Beginning, is also shut up in Death: But if God shews his Grace, and gives him again of his Love, then the Anger is dismayed at the Love, and this is a Flagrat of great Joy: For he again tastes divine Love, the Sweetness of his dear Mother, and then he knows full well that he has been so vile and wicked, and repents of his Iniquity, and will turn and mortify the old Adam, and cast it away from him.

16. So the Artist takes him presently away with the old Adam from the strange Anger, and lays him in a soft Bed; for the old Adam is sick, and will die, and then his own Faber in the old Adam is in the Love of God, which destroyed the Anger, and will make a young Child, and rejoices in the Child; and the old Adam grows sick, and weak, wholly dark, and swarthish, and dies; and the four Elements go out from him with their Colours: So the Faber gives him even leave to go, and continually labours on the new Body, which shall arise from Death; and none sees his Labour, for he Works in the Dark.

17. But the Artist takes no care about the Work, but gives the Faber his own Food, till he sees that a vegetative Life appears in the dark Death with a new Colour out of the Black; and then, when the new Man is ready, the Artist comes, and brings the Soul, and gives it the Faber; at which the Faber is dismayed, that another Life comes into him; and he puts the Soul into the new Body, and it goes inwardly in the Anger: Thus the new Man arises in great Power and Glory from Death, and bruises the Head of the old Serpent in the Anger of God, and passes through the Anger, and the Anger can do him no harm at all.

Whoe'er thou art, that to this Work art born,

A chosen Work thou hast, howe’er the World may scorn,

The Sixth Chapter.

How Water and Oil are generated, and of the Difference of the Water and Oil, and of the Vegetable Life and Growth.

1. ALL Life, Growth, and Instigation consist in two Things, viz. in the Lubet, and then in the Desire; the Lubet is a free Will, and as a Nothing in comparison to Nature; but the Desire is as a Hunger: In the Desire arises the moving Spirit, viz. the natural, and in the Lubet the supernatural, which yet is Nature's, but not out of its own Property, but out of the property of the Desire.

2. The Desire is the Instigation of the Essence, viz. an Hunger, and the Lubet is the Hunger's Essence, which it takes into itself; for the Desire is only an hungry Will, and it is the natural Spirit in its Forms; but the Lubet is out of the Liberty: For God is without Desire as concerning his own Essence, inasmuch as he is called God; for he needs nothing. All is his, and he himself is all.

3. But he has a Lubet-Will, and he himself is the Will, to manifest himself in the Lubet; yet in the Lubet which is free, without Affection, no Manifestation can be effected, for it is void of Desire, it is as if it were nothing in respect of Nature, and yet it is all; but not according to the Desire, viz. according to Nature, but according to the satisfying of Nature it is the satisfying of the hungry Desire, viz. of Nature; it freely and Willingly gives itself into the Hunger of Nature, for it is a Spirit without Essence and Desire, wholly free as a Nothing; but the Desire makes it essential [or Materializes] in itself, and that according to two Properties, viz. one according to the eternal Liberty, which is free from the Source; and the other according to the Desire, which gives a vegetative Life, viz. a growing, or a giving forth of itself.