The Clavis, or Key

46. The second substance is the separable will , which arises through the breathing and out-speaking word; which will has not its ground in the Unity, but in the mobility of the effluence and out-breathing, which brings itself into one will, and into a desire to nature, viz. into the properties as far as fire and light: in the fire the natural life is understood; and in the light the holy life, that is, a manifestation of the Unity, whereby the Unity becomes a love- fire, or light.

47. And in this place or working God calls himself a loving, merciful God, according to the sharpened fiery burning love of the Unity; and an angry [1] jealous God, according to the fiery ground, according to the eternal nature.

[1] or zealous

48. The Mysterium Magnum is that chaos, out of which light and darkness, that is, the foundation of heaven and hell is flown, from eternity, and made manifest; for that foundation which we now call hell(being a Principle of itself), is the ground and cause of the fire in the eternal nature; which fire, in God, is only a burning love; and where God is not manifested in a thing, according to the Unity, there is an anguishing, painful, burning fire.

49. This burning fire is but a manifestation of the life, and of the divine love; by which the divine love, viz. the Unity, [1] kindles up, and sharpens itself for the fiery working of the power of God.

[1] or over-inflames

50. This ground is called Mysterium magnum, or a chaos, because good and evil arise out of it, viz. light and darkness, life and death, joy and grief, salvation and damnation.

51. For it is the ground of souls and angels, and of all eternal creatures, evil as well as good; it is a ground of heaven and hell, also of the visible world, and all that is therein: therein have lain all things in one only ground, as an image lies hid in a piece of wood before the artificer does carve it out and fashions it.

52. Yet we cannot say that the spiritual world has had any beginning, but has been manifested from eternity out of that chaos; for the light has shone from eternity in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it; as day and night are in one another, and are two, though in one.

53. I must write distinctly as if it had a beginning, for the better consideration and apprehension of the divine ground of the divine manifestation; and the better to distinguish nature from the Deity; also for the better understanding, from whence evil and good are come, and what the [1] Being of all beings is.

[1] or Essence of all essences

Of the center of eternal nature

54. By the word [1] center, we understand the first beginning to nature, viz. the most inward ground, wherein the [2] self-raised will brings itself, by a reception, into [3] a something, viz. into a natural working; for nature is but a tool and instrument of God, which God's power and virtue works with, and yet it has its own [4] motion from the outflown will of God: thus the center is the point or ground of the own receivingness to somethingness; from whence something comes to be, and from thence the seven properties proceed.

[1] Centrum [2] or own arisen [3] Egoity, l-hood, l-ness, or own-ness
(propriety), [4] or mobility

Of the eternal nature and its seven properties

55. Nature is nothing but the properties of the receivingness of the own arisen desire; which desire arises in the [1] variation of the breathing word (that is, of the breathing power and virtue), wherein the properties bring themselves into substance; and this substance is called a natural substance, and is not God himself.

[1] or separation

56. For though God dwells [1] through and through nature, yet nature comprehends him but so far as the Unity of God yields itself into, and communicates itself with, a natural substance, and makes itself substantial, viz. a substance of light, which works by itself in nature, and pierces and penetrates nature; or else the Unity of God is incomprehensible to nature, that is, to the desirous receivingness.

[1] or thoroughly inhabits, totaliter