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.
8. These two Kingdoms are in continual Combat one with another, and there is an incessant Wrestling in them; as Water boiling on the Fire; each boils in its Property, viz. the oily in Joy and Meekness, and the mortal in the Anguish of Darkness, and yet one is the Cause of the other: The Light is the Death, and deadly Destruction of the Darkness, viz. of the Anguish; for in the Light the Anguish has no Strength, but it changes it into the Exultation of Joyfulness. and the Cause of Joy, else there would be no Joy; for the Meekness is like a Stillness, but the Source of Anguish sublimes it, and turns into a pleasant Laughter: So also the Anguish, viz. the Darkness, is the Death and Destruction of the oily Property; for if it gets the upper Hand in the oleous Property, it takes Possession of the Corpus, and turns the Oil into a poisonful Source, viz. Or Body, into a dark Spirit, or Body wholly earthly, as Adam was when he imagined into the Evil.
9. And yet we do not acknowledge that the oleous Property takes any Poison-Source into itself; but Mercury, viz. the Fire-Life, insinuates itself into the Anguish, and Poisons the Essence of Time, which the outward Mercury, in itself makes in its own Desire, that is, he departs from the inward oleous Essence, and then the internal [Being] remains immoveable in itself, and the Essence and Spirit of Time do separate from the Essence and Spirit of Eternity, and yet there is no Parting [or dividing,] but both Principles remain in one Essence; whereas there are two Essences, but the one comprehends not the other, as Eternity does not comprehend Time: For thus also Adam and Eve died; the Soul's Mercury departed with its Imagination from the Essence of Eternity into the Essence of Time, viz. into the Anguish-Source, and then the Essence of Eternity lost its Leader, which Christ restored again by the divine Word, or Mercury; so that the Essence of Eternity, which in Adam was forsaken by the Soul's Mercury, obtained the Life again.
10. And thus we know that the Essence of Eternity lies hid in the anxious Mercury, as in the Fortress of Death; and our writing and teaching are to shew how a Man may bring the poisonful Mercury with its Desire so far, as to enter with its Desire again into the Essence of Eternity, viz. into the enclosed, and re-assume the Essence of Eternity for a Body, and with the same tincture the Essence of Time, and reconcile them in one, that the whole Corpus of the inward and outward World may be only one, that so there may be only one Will in the Spirit, viz. a Love-Hunger; and this Hunger does then make to itself only one Essence, and then every Spirit eats of its [own] Essence or Body, so that afterwards no evil Will can arise any more therein.
11. Thus we understand, that Joy and Sorrow, Love and Enmity, do originally arise through Imagination and Longing; for in the Inclination [or earnest Desire] towards God, viz. the free Love, the Kingdom of Joy arises in the Midst of the Anguish of Death; and if the Desire departs out of the free Love into the Anguish of Death, viz. into the Source of Darkness, then is the Desire filled with the Source of Death, and Mercury Works effectually in the Source of Death.
12. Thus we declare with a true Ground, that there is nothing so bad, but there lies a Good therein, but the Badness is not capable of the Good; also there lies in the most poisonful Mercury, the greatest Pearl and Jewel; if his poisonful Will may be introduced into the same, then he himself manifests the Pearl; for he changes himself; as is to be seen in the Earth, where Mercury seeks its Pearl, and turns it in the Ore to Gold, and to other Metals, according as the Sulphur is in each Place.
13. For there is a continual Combat in the Earth; the Eternity travels with longing Love, through Time to be free from Vanity, and in its Longing it gives itself to Mercury, as a Gross Stone, to its Life and Faber; and when Mercury obtains it in his Hunger, he becomes Joyful and makes this free Lubet corporeal in him, and there arises Gold and Silver, together with other Metals and good Herbs, all according to the powerful Efficacy of each Place: As the Boiling is in each Place, so likewise is the Metal, all according to the Property of the seven Forms of Nature; that Form which is chief in a Place, according to the same Property grows a Metal, also Herbs and Trees.