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

10. Thus the Devil makes [or causes] in himself his Darkness; for he went with his Desire into himself, Into the Property of the Center to the Desire, and forsook the Eternity, viz. the Nothing, that is, the Lubet of Love, so that he enkindled himself in his poisonful Mercury, that is, in the Forms to Life in himself, and became an anxious Fire-Source in the Darkness; as Wood that is burnt to a Coal, which only glows, and has no more any true Light in it, also no Oil or Water; so it went with him. Now in his own Property, viz. in his Life's Forms, there springs forth nothing but a Stinging envious Property, where one Form hates and annoys the other, and yet they so beget each other.

11. And so was the Serpent likewise, yet not by its own aspiring Haughtiness; but when God said; Let all Sorts of Beasts come forth, each according to his Property [or Kind,] then came forth Beasts out of every Property of Nature, as it was manifest: in the Separation, when God moved himself to the Creation, for the Devil would domineer over the Love and Meekness of God, and put his Desire also into the Anger, that is, into the austere Might, where the Poison-Life arises, viz. into the Fiat of the wrathful Property, out of which Form are proceeded Vipers, Serpents, Toads, and other venomous Worms; not that the Devil has made them, that he cannot; only as the Desire was in the Impression of the Fiat, such also was the Creature in the Evil and Good.

12. For in the Impression of the Fiat, in the Original of the outward Mercury, viz. of the Life, which is manifest to itself internally, was the Separation, where God and the World separate, viz. God inwardly, the World outwardly, as a Similitude of the Abyss, or a Looking-Glass of Eternity; even there the inward Wrath, from whence God is called an angry zealous God, and a consuming Fire, manifested itself externally in Figures, as in a Similitude of the inward Birth in the Center; like as the eternal Lubet, which he is himself, stirs up [awakens] and causes the Desire to the Nature of the eternal Manifestation, and gives in itself into the Desire, and turns the Wrath of the Desire into Joyfulness.

13. Thus it is also with the Serpent's Craft: In the highest Mercury is the highest, or sharpest Proof of all Things; the more poisonful a Thing is, the more sharply it proves a Thing; for the sharpest Taste and Smell consists in the great Poison, viz. in a Dying Source.

14. And the eternal Light is generated out of the Father's Sharpness, that it attains the Shining, and goes forth with its own Source through the Sharpness out of the Anguish-Source again into the Liberty, viz. into the Nothing, where the Light, by Reason of the Fire's-Source and Property, becomes also a Desire, which is the Desire of the divine Love and Joyfulness; in which Desire Mercurius, the Eternal Word, or the Understanding of Eternity, or Deity, is rightly considered and Named: And this Efflux from the Fire (understand from the eternal magical Spiritual Fire) is a Procreation, viz. of the Word of the Power, Colours, and Virtue: And this Desire of the same Mercury, or Word, does also modelize the Power into its own Desire, and makes it essential; which is the Meekness and the Love, which quenches the Wrath of the Eternal Father, viz. of the eternal Nature's Desire with Love, and changes it into Joyfulness, where the Name of God has its Original from Eternity. This immassed Essentiality causes two Properties, viz. one oleous, which is heavenly Essence, a Cause of the Shining of the yield Light; and also a powerful [Property] from the Motion of the eternal Impression, or Desire of the Father after the Birth of the Son; from whence the divine Air (as the Power through the Shining of the Light) proceeds forth out of this Love-Fire, which is the Spirit of God.