The Forty Questions of the Soul

4. And as there is nothing higher than the soul, so there is nothing that can destroy it, for it hath all things under it, and in it; it is a child 4 of the whole Essence of all essences. Thus it was created.

1 Trinity, or Number Three.

2 harsh.

3 in Verbo Domini.

4 of the eternal essences that proceeded from God; or the divine powers of the Deity.

* "contracted all into one" (aus Allen in Eins gezogeri), lit., "contracted from" or "out of all into one."

THE FOURTH QUESTION
What was the Breathing in of the Soul, and when?

1. EVERY spirit without a body, is 1 empty, and knoweth not itself, and therefore every spirit desireth a body for its food and *for its habitation.

2. And God having created the third Principle (which is a glass of the Deity) before the soul was created; and so that glass clave already to the 2 eternal, for it was born out of the eternal wonders, and so was created; and therefore the third Principle would not leave the soul free, seeing it also was created out of the wonders of God, and stood in the beginning as a figure in the wisdom of God, and desired

(f being itself was material) to have a material similitude in the soul; and therefore (in the creation of the soul) it stirred up its own spirit also together in the Fiat.

1 crude, raw, void, naked, or feeble.

2 glass.

* "for its habitation" (zu einer Wonne), "for its joy." In the course of his translation of Bohme's writings, Sparrow has rendered the word "Wonne," "joy," so repeatedly in the same way, "habitation," that one must suppose he had some strong reason for doing so.

f "being itself was material," or, "because it was itself material."

3. * Hence the outward image, according to the spirit of this world, with the outward Fiat, was 1 conceived, and a body was created out of the 2 matrix of the earth, a 3 mass of red earth consisting of fire and water.

4. And the heavenly matrix also longed after the soul, and would that the soul should bear its image, and took its own Fiat, in the creation of the body, and did create therewith before the earthly Fiat did create: it was first; for out of the Centre of the Word, the Fiat went out 4 with the Word: and thus the third Principle was created in the second.

5. The virgin of the wisdom did encompass the spirit of the soul, first with heavenly essentiality, with heavenly divine flesh, and the Holy Ghost gave it the heavenly tincture, which maketh heavenly blood in the water, as is mentioned at large in our third book.

6. And thus the inward man was in heaven, and his essences were paradisical: his 5 glance in the inward eye was Majesty, an incorruptible body, which could speak the language of God, and of angels, and the language of nature; as we see in 6 Adam, that he could give names to all the creatures, to every one according to its essence and property; he was also in the outward image, and yet knew not the outward image, as indeed the body hath no apprehension.

1 contrived, or formed.

2 Or quitessence of the inward ground.

3 Mesch, a mixture.

4 Or by.

5 light, or lustre.

6 Gen. ii. 19, 20.

* "Hence the outward," etc., lit., "Hence the outward image according to the spirit of this world was seized (ergriffen) by the outward Fiat."

7. And in this twofold body which was created on the sixth day, in the sixth hour of the day, 1 in the same hour in which Christ was hanged on the Cross, after the body was finished, the 2 royal soul was breathed in from within, by the Holy Ghost into the heart, in the holy man, into its Principle, like an awakening of the Deity.

8. The 3 Ternary moved itself with the creation, and breathing-in of the soul, for it was in the centre of the seed, as a bud 4 growing from the essences, and thus it was breathed into the inward centre, into the inward man, into the heavenly heartblood, into the water of the eternal life, with both the inward Principles.