The Forty Questions of the Soul

296. For this hand is simple and accounted foolish in the eye of the world, as you know; and yet there lieth such a 1 secret therein, as is incomprehensible to reason.

297. Therefore have a care, and pour oil into the wounds that require healing; and consider what Christ saith: 2 How hard it is for that man to enter into the kingdom of God, who is entangled with 3 worldly cares, having great power and honour.

298. You shall not find this plant in the highness and exaltation of the world; for 4 you cannot, you are a Mystery to them: the spirit itself seeketh the beginning: look to it, 5 play not the hypocrite (for the beginning is paradisical), that the impure enter not into the pure, and at last the serpent beguile Eve again.

1 arcanum, or a hidden treasure.

2 Mark x. 23-25.

3 Or cares for the belly.

4 you have no power with them.

5 flatter none.

* "God hath so prepared it," etc. Lit., "God hath ordained [disposed] things so as to reveal Himself to you through means (Mittel), that you, through means [or an instrument] should know Him and not say that the wit [ability] is mine." Mittel is rendered "intermede" by St Martin.

299. Let no 1 dissimulation be in you, but 2 plain dealing, yea and no: and fear not, for that which is eternal will continue; and the distemper is nothing else but the turba, which as a destroyer always insinuateth itself; beware of that (for the old serpent is subtle) and have a care, that you may be pure both in the beginning and in the end.

300. For this work endureth no dissembling, it hath a clear ground; also it belongeth not to the turba, but to the beginning of the 3 glory: therefore, beware of those that are born with a wolfish disposition, whose spirit is a subtle serpent: we speak freely to you.

301. Everything that hath a beginning is sought by the beginning; for the beginning seeketh through the deep, and would find the 4 ground: and if the beginning findeth the ground, and that there is a limit in a thing, then the beginning proceedeth to the limit, and leaveth the 5 first, and seeketh further till it findeth the abyss; and then it must remain in itself, and it can go no further, for there is nothing beyond.

302. But if the beginning leaveth the first, then it is under the power of the turba, which destroyeth it, and maketh it to be as it was in the beginning.

303. Then when the thing is destroyed, the turba is naked without a body, and yet seeketh itself, and findeth itself, but without 6 essence: and then it entereth into itself, and seeketh itself till it cometh into the abyss, and then the first eye is found, whence it proceeded.

1 fair gloss, or soothing.

2 speak roundly, or sincerely with your mouth, with yea and nay.

3 Or clarity.

4 Or bottom.

5 Or former.

6 Or substance.

304. But seeing it is naked, and without essence, therefore it belongeth to the fire, for it putteth itself into it; and in the fire is a desire to seek its own body again, and so the ifire of the beginning is awakened.

305. And herein we know the Last Judgment in the fire, and the resurrection of the flesh; for the turba desireth the body which it had before, though destroyed in the limit, and the desire of the soul was the life of the body.

306. But seeing there are two fires, therefore the turba is known in a twofold

2 manner; in an incorruptible, and in a corruptible body, viz. the one in the fire of wrath, and the other in the fire of light, 3 wherein we understand the divine body; and in the wrathful fire the earthly body, which the turba destroyeth, for the turba findeth the limit of it.

307. Now the eternal fire in the eye of God is 4 both the fire of wrath, and also the light -fire of love: and you must understand, that the spirit without a body must remain in the wrathful fire, for it hath lost its 5 essentiality; the turba in the fire hath swallowed it up.