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

51. The Power of the Most High has given to all Things (to every one according to its Property) a fixed Perfection; for all was very good, as Moses says, but with the Curse the Turba is introduced, so that the Properties stand in the Strife of Mercury; yet in each Property, in every Herb, or whatever is, in whatever grows or arises out of the Walm of the four Elements, there is a Fixity hidden; for all Things which are in the four Elements are originally sprung forth out of the eternal Element, in which there is no Strife, neither Heat nor cold, but all Things were in equal Weight of all the Properties in a Love-Play, as it is so now in Paradise; and the same [Paradise] sprung forth in the Beginning of this World before the Curse through the Earth: Thus it is also yet hidden in all Things, and may be opened by Understanding and Art, so that the first Virtue may overcome the enflamed Malignity.

52. Though we Men have not full Power to do it in Self-Might, yet it may be done in God's Permission, who has again turned his Mercy towards us, and again opened Paradise and its Comprehension in Man: Hath God given us Power to become his Children, and to rule over the World? Why then not over the Curse of the Earth? Let none hold it for impossible; there is required only a divine Understanding and Knowledge thereunto, which shall blossom in the Time of the Lily, and not in Babel, for whom we also have not written.

The Fourteenth Chapter.

Of the Wheel of Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt; of the Generation of Good and Evil; Shewing how the one is changed into the other, and how one manifests its Property in the other, and yet both remain in the first Creation in the Wonder of God to his own Manifestation and Glory

1. This is an open Gate of the foregoing Description: Every one says, Shew me the Way to the Manifestation of the Good. Hear and observe well, dear Reason; thou must thyself be the Way, the Understanding must be born in thee, otherwise I cannot shew it thee; thou must enter into it, so that the Understanding of the Work in its practic art, wherein I deal not, may be opened to thee; I write only in the Spirit of Contemplation; how the Generation of Good and Evil is, and open the Fountain: He shall draw the Water whom God has appointed thereunto; I will here only describe the Wheel of Life as it is in itself.

2. When I speak of Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, I speak of one only Thing, be it either spiritual or corporeal; all created Things are that one Thing, but the Properties in the Generation of this only Thing make a Difference [or give various gradual Distinctions]; for when I Name a Man, or Lion, Bear, Wolf, Hare, or any other Beast; yea also a Root, Herb, Tree, or whatever may be Named, it is the same only Thing.

3. All whatever is corporeal is the same Being; the Herbs and Trees, and also the Animals, but each Thing in its Difference of the first Beginning: According as the Property in the Verbum Fiat has imprinted itself in each Thing, so is that Kind in its Propagation, and all Things stand in the Seed and Procreation; and there is not anything but has a Fixity in it, be it either hidden or manifest, for all shall stand to the Glory of God.

4. Whatever is risen from the eternal Fixity, as Angels and the Souls of Men, remains indestructible in its fixt Being; but whatever is risen in the unfixt Being, viz. with the Motion of Time, that does again enter into the first Motion from whence it has taken its Original, and is a Map of its Form which it had here, like a Picture, or as an Image in a Glass without Life; for so it was from Eternity before the Times of this World, which the Most High has introduced into an Image, into the comprehensible natural Life in Time, to behold the great Wonders of his Wisdom in a creaturely Being, as we plainly see.

5. Now we are to consider the only Mother, how the same is in her Property, from whence the innumerable Multiplicity arises, and has continually risen; and how she generates Life and Death, Evil and Good; and how all Things may be brought into their first [Ens], viz. into the Place where they originally arise, to which the Death, or the Dying, is the greatest Mystery.

6. For Nothing, which is departed out of its first Order, as the Mother brought it forth, can go back again, and enter with its assumed Order into its Root, unless it dies again with its assumed Order in its Mother; and even then it is again in the End, and in the Place whence it was created, and so it stands again in the Verbum Fiat, viz. in the Bound of its Order in the expressed Word, and may enter again into that which it was in the Beginning before it was corporeal; and there it is good, for it stands again in that from whence it proceeded.