The Forty Questions of the Soul

5. And thus we give you to understand, that the tincture is the true body of the soul; for the soul is fire, and the tincture ariseth from the fire; the fire draweth it again into itself, and allayeth itself therewith, so that the wrathful source is quenched, and then the tincture subsisteth in meekness.

6. *For it hath no essence nor 2 power in itself, but the fire is its power; for water proceedeth from the meekness of the tincture.

7. For the fire is desirous; and where there is a desiring of the original, there is also a finding of the original: Thus the fire findeth the water in the tincture, and turneth it into sulphur, according to the power of all the seven spirits of nature; and this is 3 a water of hfe.

8. For the tincture springeth up in the water like a sprout, and the fire in the abyss causeth it; and so the water in the sulphur of the seven spirits is turned into the Mystery; for the great 4 secret, what God and the eternity can do, lieth therein.

1 Or source.

2 might or ability.

3 Or the.

4 arcanum.

* "For it hath no essence nor power in itself, but the fire is its power." So translated by Sparrow in the first English edition, but in the edition of 1665 he prints "but the water is its might or power." (The editor of the 1764 reprint adopted the latter rendering.) The German editions of 1682 and 1730 read: claim sie hat kein Wesen einer Macht in sich, sondern das Feuer ist ihre Macht: sie ivird aus der Sanftmuth der Tinctur Wasser. "For it hath no substance of any power in itself, but the fire is its power, and out of the meekness of the tincture proceedeth water."

9. And thus the Mystery containeth two forms, viz. fire and water, and changeth itself according to them both, viz. according to fire into red, and according to the tincture into white: l this is a splendour or glance of the fire, by which the life may see and know itself, from whence reason and the senses arise; and the mind is in the wheel of the anguish in the fire, out of which the essences exist.

10. And so we see what the blood is, viz. 2 a house of the soul, but the tincture is its body.

11. The true soul hath no comprehensible body, which may be called soul; but the body groweth in the tincture, in the sulphur out of sulphur; that is, each spirit of the seven spirits of nature desireth essentiality , and that concrete essentiality is sulphur.

12. For sul is the virtue of the light, and phur is the virtue of the four forms of the original of nature; as is mentioned at large in the third book.

13. And thus the phur desireth flesh, that is, 3 a mass of fire and water, and it is conceived and born in the tincture.

14. And the tincture is the sprouting of the body, and the fire is an original of the spirit, through the tincture; for the spirit of the soul taketh its original in the tincture, which then figureth the true image according to the image of God, that is, according to all the three Principles: For in the fire, the soul is no similitude of God; but in the spirit, it is the image of God.

1 this white.

2 Or a habitation.

3 Mesch, mixture, or concretion.

15. For the first soul was incorporated with the divine essentiality together in the tincture, so that it had the divine body in the virgin of wisdom, in which the tincture standeth, which is the angelical image.

16. And so we answer you, that as to the soul only, besides the spirit, it is a globe of fire, with a fire-eye, and a light-eye, which turn back to back, one within another, as the wheel in Ezekiel, that could go on all sides; though Babel hath contrived another meaning about it, but a blind one without spirit.