Six Theosophic Points, and Other Writings

27. So also with metals, which outwardly are a coarse corpus of sulphur, mercury and salt, wherein consists the growth; but in their inward ground they are a beautiful clear corpus, in which the ideal light of Nature shines from the divine efflux. In this lustre is to be understood the tincture and great power, how the hidden power makes itself visible. It cannot be said of such power or virtue that it is elemental, as neither is the power of the blossom so. The elements are only a mansion and counterstroke of the inward power, a cause of the motion of the tincture.

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28. For power proceeds from the tincture through motion of the coarse elemental spirit, and is carried thereby into sensation, viz. into taste and smell.

29. For smell is nothing but the sensation of the tincture, through which the efflux of divine power reveals itself, and thus assumes perceptibility. The sharpness of smell is indeed elemental, but the true power and virtue in the sharpness of the smell is the tincture. For the motion of a thing is not the highest reason of power, but that to which the cause of the motion is due.

30. The physician uses a fragi'ant herb for his medicaments; but the smell, that is, the sharpness of the smell, is not the cure which cureth the patient in his sickness. But that is the cure, from which such balsam or smell arises, viz. the tincture, which imprints itself in such balsam.

31. Christ said to the fig-tree: Be thou withered (Matt. xxi. 19) . But the external, audible, human word, or the sound, was not the power by which it was done. But the power was that from whence the word came. Else, if the external human soul did it, other men could do it too.

32. The like also is to be understood concerning faith. Confession and assent in respect to a thing is not true faith, much less is science so. But that is faith, from which the confession proceeds, viz. the revealed Spirit of God in the inward gi'ound of the soul, which by the confession frames itself in the pronounced word and makes this visible outwardly, and works with the visible elements ofp. 212 faith and exhibits itself outwardly. So that we understand that God's Spirit co-operates in the work of faith, just as it works with and through the power of the elemental world, and makes itself visible through the existence of this world with a counterstroke.

33. So that, as regards everything I look upon, be it evil or good, I can with truth say: Here, by this thing, has the hidden spirit of the separator of all beings shaped itself into a property, and made for itself here an object or image according to its efflux, either according to evil or good; all according to the properties of Nature, according to heat or cold, according to harsh, bitter, sweet or sour, or however that may be. And in all such formation there is only outwardly such an elemental nature, viz. such a sulphur and salt; but in the inward ground, in the tincture, it is good and profitable, and belongs to its hkeness for the nourishment of life, which by the astral and elemental nature stands in all properties according to its external ground.

34. Every particular thing, be is herb, gi-ass, tree, beast, bird, fish, worm, or whatsoever it be, is of use, and has proceeded from the separator of all beings, viz. from the Word or separable will of God, by which the separator of each thing's quality has made for itself a likeness or image in which it works.

35. For this visible world with all its host and being is nothing but an objective representation of the spiritual world, which spiritual world is hiddenp. 213 in this material, elemental world, like as the tincture in herbs and metals.