The Forty Questions of the Soul

308. But the spirit which hath a body, which the turba could not devour, remaineth for ever in the essentiality, in the divine body, wherein his spirit is, which is the body in the love of God, which is the hidden man, in the old Adamical man, which hath Christ's flesh in the corruptible body.

1 Or original fire.

2 Or form.

3 Viz. in the light-fire.

4 understood to be.

5 Or substantiality, or body.

309. And thus we understand the soul to be a life awakened out of the eye of God, its original is in the fire, and the fire is its life; but if it go not forth out of the fire with its will and imagination into the light (viz. through the wrathful death into the second Principle, into the fire of love), then it remaineth in its own original fire, and hath nothing for a body but the turba, viz. the l harsh wrath in the desire in the fire, a consuming, and a hunger, and yet * an eternal seeking, which is an eternal anguish.

310. But the soul, which with its desiring will entereth into itself, and sinketh down in its reason (viz. in its desire) and seeketh not itself, but the love of God, its own fire is as it were dead; for its will which the fire awakened is dead to the firelife, and is gone forth out of itself into the fire of love, that soul is fully in the fire of love: it hath also the body of the fire of love, for it is entered into it, and is a great wonder in the divine body, and it is no more in itself, for it hath mortified its will: and therefore the turba also is as it were dead, and the will of love doth wholly satiate the original fire, and therein it liveth eternally.

1 astringent.

* "an eternal seeking" (Sucht), or craving. See $ , par. 5.

311. But the souls which have awakened the turba, they have lost the image; for the turba hath devoured it: and therefore such souls get bestial images in the wrath, and in hell, according as the turba is in them; as Lucifer gat the image of a serpent: as the will was figured here in this life, it remaineth then l naked as it is.

312. For the wrathful turba always seeketh the image, but findeth it not, and therefore it figureth the image according to the will; for the earthly desires stick in the will: and that image remaineth in the wonders of God, in the eye of the wrathful Principle.

313. And here we understand that the Eighth Form is the turba, which seeketh the image; and if it find the limit of it, it destroyeth it, and entereth into the limit, and seeketh further in itself, and findeth at last the abominations of that which the soul hath wrought in this life.

314. And also we understand here the fire (which at last shall purge the 2 floor) and the severe Judgment; and we understand that every fire shall receive its essence from the turba; and also what that turba is.

315. Where then the fire will devour the earth, and draw the elements with the wonders in them into the beginning; where that which was at first will be again, and the elements become one; and everything will represent its own wonders, everything in that fire whereinto its will entered.

1 Or apparent, in its true similitude.

2 Or threshing floor. Matt. iii. 12.

316. Hearken to this, you children of men, it concerneth you; for no beast proceedeth from the eternal beginning, but from the model of the eternal; and its spirit attaineth not the eternal, as the soul of man doth.

317. Also the corruptible body cannot possess the eternal; it belongeth to the turba: But the new man, born of God, shall possess the eternal; for he is departed from the corruptible, and hath put on God in Christ; he hath the divine body in the old body.