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.
2. When Adam was created in Paradise, the heavenly Mercury did then lead him; his Life turned in a pure Oil, therefore his Eyes were heavenly; and his Under-standing did excel Nature, for his Light shined in the Oil of the divine Essentiality; the external waterish Property was not manifest in his Oil; he was iliastrich, that is, angelical, and became in the Fall cogastrish, that is, the watery Nature in the mortal Property was manifest in his Oil, and penetrated, so that the Mercury in him became an anxious Poison, which before in his Oil was an Exaltation of Joyfulness.
3. For the Salnitral Flagrat in the Impression in the Coldness, viz. according to the Saturnine Property, was thereby elevated, and got the Dominion, as a cold Poison, which arises in the Impression of Death, from whence the Darkness was generated in the Oil, and Adam died to the divine Light; to which the Devil persuaded him by the Serpent, that is, by the Essence and Property of the Serpent; for the Kingdom of Wrath, and also the outward Kingdom was manifest in the Serpent; for it was more subtle than any Beast of the Field, and this Subtlety Eve desired; for the Serpent persuaded her that her Eyes should be opened, and she would be as God, and know Good and Evil.
4. Which also was the Will of the Devil, that he would know Evil: And in the Enkindling to the Knowledge in Mercury he became corrupt and dark; for he entered with the Imagination, according to his Condition, Knowledge, and Desire, into the fiery Byss; and Adam, according to his Knowledge and Desire, went into the cold Byss into the Impression, into the procreated watery Property in the Salniter, where both Kingdoms stand separated: He desired to prove and Taste the watery Mercury, in which is the mortal Poison, and Lucifer [desired] the fiery Mercury, which gives Strength and Might; from whence his Pride arose, viz. out of the fiery Mercury: But both, viz. Lucifer, and also Adam, lost the Oil of the Meekness of the divine Essentiality.
5. Now we are to consider of the Serpent, which deceived Adam with its Craft; how it was, and what its Subtlety was after which Adam and Eve did imagine, why they did eat of the forbidden Tree which was Evil and Good, and how they did eat Death thereby, and what their Salvation and Restoration is naturally and properly; what Evil and Good are, what the Property of the eternal Life, and then the Property of eternal Death is; what the Cure is, whereby the Sickness introduced by Adam, and its Death, may be healed, and restored both to the temporal and eternal Life.
6. Let the Reader attend to the Sense and Meaning; for we have not the Ability to give this into his Hands, that only belongs to God; but the Gates shall stand open for him, if he will enter in; if not, Flattery avails him not.
7. The Devil was a fair Angel, and the Serpent the subtle Beast, and Man the Likeness of the Deity; now all three were corrupted by Imagination and Pride, and got undone.
8. All whatever is eternal proceeds originally from one Ground, as Angels and Souls; but the Serpent is not out of the eternal Ground, but out of the Beginning, as we have before given you to understand, how with the Enkindling of the Fire in the Salnitral Flagrat two Kingdoms separate, viz. Eternity and Time; and how the Eternity dwells in the Time, but yet only in itself; but yet so nigh to the Time, as Fire and Light which are in one another, and yet make two Kingdoms; or as Darkness and Light dwell in each other, and the one is not the other. The like we are to consider of the inchoative poisonful Mercury in the Devil, and in Man, and in the Serpent also; how an Oil corrupts, and yet the Essence or Being of God is not hereby at all corrupted, but enters into itself, viz. into the Nothing; and the creaturely Mercury, which arises, or is begotten with the Beginning of the Creature in the Creature, goes out of itself, that is, out of the eternal into Time, viz. into the Beginning of the Creature; it desires its own Self, that is, the Beginning; and will be its own, or of a Selfish Property, and forsakes the Eternity, into which it should be wholly confined, and resigned with its Desire, and bring its Hunger thereinto, and then its Poison-Source would not be manifest.
9. For whatever Hungers after the eternal Nothing, viz. after the quiet meek Liberty of God, that is not manifest to itself, but it is manifest in the still Liberty, viz. in God; for as the Hunger is, such is also the Essence in the Hunger; each Hunger or Desire makes itself an Essence according to the Property of the Hunger or Desire.