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.
4. Thus every Thing which is generated out of the internal has its Signature; the superior Form, which is chief in the Spirit of the Working in the Power, does most especially sign the Body, and the other Forms hang to it; as it is to be seen in all living Creatures, in the Shape and Form of the Body, and in the Behaviour and Deportment, also in the Sound, Voice, and Speech; and likewise in Trees and Herbs, in Stones and Metals; all according as the Wrestling is in the Power of the Spirit, so is the Figure of the Body represented, and so likewise is its Will, so long as it so boils in the Life-Spirit.
5. But if the Artist takes it in Hand with the true Mercury, then he may turn the weakest Form to be uppermost, and the strongest undermost, and then the Spirit obtains another Will, according to the most superior Form; that which before must be Servant becomes now Lord and Master in the seven Forms; as Christ said to the Sick, Arise, thy Faith hath made thee whole, and they arose: And thus likewise it is here, each Form Hungers after the Center, and the Center is the Voice of Life, viz. the Mercury, the same is the Faber or Former of the Power; if this Voice gives itself in to the Hunger of the meanest Form in the strong Combat, then it lifts up its Property (understand the Property of that Form,) and thus its Desire or Faith has saved it; for in the Desire Mercury lifts up [or sublimes] itself; and thus it was in Christ’s Patients.
6. Sickness had taken Possession of them, and the Poison of Death had gotten the upper Hand in Mercury, but now the Form of Life in the Center did set its Hunger as a famished and mean Property after the Liberty to be freed from the Abomination, but seeing the Mercury was revived in Christ the divine Property, therefore the weak Hunger entered into Christ’s strong Hunger after the Salvation of Man, and so the weak Hunger received the Strong in the Power; and then the divine Voice in Christ said, Arise, lift up thyself, thy Faith, that is, thy Desire which thou hast introduced into me, hath saved thee.
7. Thus the Life prevails over the Death, the Good over the Evil; and on the contrary, the Evil over the Good, as came to pass in Lucifer and Adam, and still daily comes to pass: And thus every Thing is signed; that Form which is chief receives the Taste, and also the Sound in Mercury, and figures the Body after its Property; the other Forms hang to it as Co-helpers, and also give their Signature thereto, but very weakly.
8. There are especially seven Forms in Nature, both in the eternal and external Nature; for the external proceed from the eternal: The ancient Philosophers have given Names to the seven Planets according to the seven Forms of Nature; but they have understood thereby another Thing, not only the seven Stars, but the seven-fold Properties in the Generation of all Essences: There is not any Thing in the Being of all Beings, but it has the seven Properties in it; for they are the Wheel of the Center, the Cause of Sulphur, in which Mercury makes the Boiling in the Anguish-Source.
9. The seven Forms are these; viz. the Desire of the Impression is called Saturn, into which the free Lubet of Eternity gives itself; this in the Impression is called Jupiter, by Reason of its pleasant commendable Virtue; for the Saturnine Power incloses and makes hard, cold, and dark, and causes the Sulphur, viz. the vital Spirit, understand the moving vital Spirit, viz. the natural; and the free Lubet makes the Impression to long to be freed from the dark astringent Hardness, and it is very rightly called Jupiter, being a Desire of the Understanding, which opens the Darkness, and manifests another Will therein.
10. In these two Properties is portrayed and exactly deciphered God's Kingdom, viz. the Original, and also the Kingdom of God's Anger, viz. the dark Abyss, which is a Cause of the Motion in Saturn, viz. in the Impression, the Impression, viz. Saturn, makes the Nothing, viz. the free Lubet moveable and sensible, and also opposite; for it causes it to be Essence; and Jupiter is the sensible Power proceeding from the free Lubet to Manifestation out of the Nothing into Something, in the Impression of Saturn; and they are two Properties in the Manifestation of God according to Love and Anger, viz. a Model of the Eternal Form, and are as a wrestling Combat, viz. an opposite Desire against each other; one makes Good, the other Evil, and yet it is all Good; only if we will speak of the Anguish-Source, and then also of the Joyful Source, then we must distinguish, that the Cause of each Source may be understood.