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.
52. For God did not take Man as he lay closed up in Death, and cast him into a furnace, and melted him in the Wrath, as the false Magus does; but he gave his Love first into his human Essence, and baptized the Humanity; afterwards he brought him into the Wilderness, and set the Devil opposite to him, not into him; he let him first fast and Hunger forty Days, and gave no outward Food to the Humanity: He must eat of his Life's Mercury, that God Might see whether the Humanity would bring its Desire into God; and when the Humanity introduced its Desire into the Deity, and received the Manna, then he let the Devil set upon the Humanity, who introduced all his Subtlety and desires into the Humanity, and tempted him: Dost thou not understand anything here? What shall I say more to thee? If thou art a Beast, then I give thee not my Pearl; it belongs to God's Children.
53. God must become Man, Man must become God; Heaven must become one Thing with the Earth, the Earth must be turned to Heaven: If you will make Heaven out of the Earth, then give the Earth the Heaven's Food, that the Earth may obtain the Will of Heaven, that the Will of the wrathful Mercury may give itself in unto the Will of the heavenly Mercury.
54. But what wilt thou do? Wilt thou introduce the poisonful Mercury (which has only a Death's Will in itself) into the Temptation, as the false Magus does? Will you send one Devil to another, and make an Angel of him? In Deed and in Truth I must needs laugh at such Folly: If thou wilt keep a corrupt black Devil, how dost thou think to turn the Earth by the Devil to Heaven? Is not God the Creator of all Beings? Thou must eat of God's Bread, if thou wilt transmute thy Body out of the earthly Property into the heavenly.
55. Christ said, He that eateth not the Flesh of the Son of Man hath no part in him: And he says further, He that shall drink of the Water that I shall give, it shall spring up in him to a fountain of eternal Life. Here lies the Pearl of the new-Birth: It is not enough to play the Sophister; the Grain of wheat brings forth no Fruit, unless it falls into the Earth; all whatever will bring forth Fruit must enter into its Mother from whence it came first to be.
56. The Mother of all Beings is Sulphur, Mercury is her Life, Mars her Sense, Venus her Love, Jupiter her understanding, Luna her corporeal Essence, Saturn her Husband: You must reconcile or lovingly betroth the Man with the Woman; for the Man is angry, yet give him his dear Spouse into his Arms; but see that the Spouse be a Virgin, wholly chaste and pure; for the Woman's Seed shall break the Serpent's head, viz. the Man's Anger: The Virgin must be in real Love, without any Falsehood or Unfaithfulness, a Virgin which never touched any Man in Anger according to his Manhood; for the pure Deity does so espouse itself in clear Love with the Humanity, even as Mary said, Be it unto me as thou hast spoken, for I am the Lord's Handmaid; and so the Humanity assumed the Deity, and also the Deity the Humanity.
57. The chaste Virgin signifies in the philosophic Work the clear Deity, the Humanity is Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt, both heavenly and earthly; the heavenly Property is disappeared, and as a Nothing; the deadly Property in the Wrath is stirred up, and lives to the Anger, and in the Properties of the Anger; the Humanity, both in Adam and in Christ, was tempted. Dost thou ask, wherewith? With the like Opposite in the Wrath, even with such a Devil as had all these Properties in him, as a potent prince [in all the Properties of the Anger].
58. The Properties in Sulphur were tempted with the Likeness of the Sulphur; in the Sulphur, or from the Sulphureous Property, the Temptation did come and arise, and its Forms are three, as one in the Impression, which the Philosophers call Saturn, which the human Spirit or Will should open in the Property of Venus, and therewith satiate or feed its Hunger, viz. the Fire; the other Property was, that he should live in his own awakened and opened Venus out of Saturn's Property, and aspire in Self-Will.
59. The third Property was, he should introduce his Will through the awakened Love-Desire again into the Centre, viz. into the Sulphurean Mother, which arises in the Impression in the Anguish: And this he would not do, but the first Adam did it; and therefore God when he would help him tempted him in the Sulphur, viz. in the first Mother to the Humanity, and suffered a wrathful Devil, which was enkindled in the Sulphur, to tempt him with his enkindled Malignity and Malice in the Sulphur: Dost thou not understand this? What then shall I say more to thee?