The Forty Questions of the Soul

110. Now when this hath consumed it, then the anguish is a darkness again, and the flash remaineth hidden in itself again; and is an extinguishing, and the anguish is in the darkness as at first, before the flashing of the fire, and it remaineth only in a terrible source, where the bitterness is always made more terrible, by the rough attraction.

111. Now this is thus according to the outward Principle of this world, as we see undeniably by experience. Seeing then there is an always-enduring essence in the eternity, we therefore demonstrate it thus: behold and consider it deeply, and read this with diligence.

112. The sinking of the anguish in the eternal darkness is an eternal hunger, and an eternal thirst, and an eternal desiring; and the darkness in itself attaineth nothing in the l eternity that 2 it can satiate itself withal, out of the eternity; therefore it is rightly and truly the hunger and thirst of the abyss of hell and of the anger of God.

113. But the will in the anguish, because it can attain or find nothing, maketh a figure and a similitude to itself in the desiring, with the eager attraction; and the eager, harsh, bitter, dark essence, is the material similitude itself, it eateth itself, and is itself the matter of the fire, that so the eternal flash may always continue; and the wrath is always an eternally continuing burning, and burneth eternally, out of the darkness, and hath its own life in itself, viz. the bitter sting of the anguish, which rageth and raveth, and the stirring and original of the life, and that is a

3 Principle.

1 Or hberty.

2 Understand by this the sinking of the hunger and thirst of hell, and of anger.

3 Or Principium.

114. And understand hereby the eternal desiring seeking, an eternal coveting, and yet having nothing but itself, an eternal envious enmity, a seeking of the essences, when the innumerable and unsearchable multiplicity is always born in the will; and an eternal craftiness, a continual rising in the hunger, an eternal finding of the similitude of its own desire, the simihtude of the essences, in the will; and this is manifest in the flash, for the flash elevateth itself ever above the darkness; and the essences are in the flash, and are continually brought into the will.

115. Thus the fire-will is a 1 seeking of the high swelling pride, and a contempt of the darkness; it contemneth its own root; it is covetous, and would devour more than it hath, or more than it should; it hath all lusts; for the desiring essences are manifest in the fire, and thence it cometh to pass, that in each will each essence is again a centre of a whole substance.

116. And this is the cause of the creation of this world, viz. that the model hath appeared from eternity as in a glass, and was in the eternal essences in the figure, as in a virgin without bringing forth, and was seen in the hght of God: and hence cometh the matter of the earth, stars and elements, also all arts, wit and subtlety, deceit, falsehood, covetousness, haughtiness in the creatures of this world.

1 sucking or attraction.

117. *For this world is a material seeking, comes from the x eternal, and is become material and perceptible in the creation, viz. in the word 2 Fiat, by the heaven of the waters, as may be seen in earth and stones: and the firmament, together with the elements, is yet this 3 seeking, and still it seeketh the earthy; for it cannot reach back again into the eternal.