Jakob Böhme

“ Thus the Artist must not arrogate any Thing to himself, the Mercury does itself, after the philosophical Baptism, Work these Wonders before it manifests the Universal, for all the seven Forms of Nature must be crystallized and purified, if the Universal shall be revealed, and each Form carries a peculiar Process when it is to be brought out of the Property of the Wrath, and entered into the pure and clear Life ”

“ The Mother of all Beings is Sulphur, Mercury is her Life, Mars her Sense, Venus her Love, Jupiter her understanding, Luna her corporeal Essence, Saturn her Husband: You must reconcile or lovingly betroth the Man with the Woman; for the Man is angry, yet give him his dear Spouse into his Arms; but see that the Spouse be a Virgin, wholly chaste and pure; for the Woman's Seed shall break the Serpent's head, viz. the Man's Anger: The Virgin must be in real Love, without any Falsehood or Unfaithfulness, a Virgin which never touched any Man in Anger according to his Manhood ”

“ Here God's Love gave the eternal Love-Life to the corrupted Humanity, the Love did wholly give itself in unto the Fire-Wrath, and transmuted the Wrath of the Soul into a triumphant Joyful Love; but if the Soul's and Body's Property had obeyed the Devil in God's Wrath, and made Bread of the enclosed Mercury, and eaten thereof, then had the Will entered again into its Self-hood, and could not have been transmuted. ”

“ And if the Mother shall yield her Consent thereunto, and receive the Name Jesus, then the new Humanity shall begin in the Mother, with the new Child in the old Apostate captivated in the Anger of God, and the Name Jesus will first give in itself to the dead Child which lay captivated in Saturn, and eagerly draw the Will of the evil dead Child to itself: This is the fair Bride, which shews her Crown of Pearl to her apostate Bridegroom; he should but again receive her, and she would again give him her Love. ”

“ Now if the apostate Youth shut up in Death does again receive her, then is the Artist well prepared, and counted worthy by God to finish his Purpose: Now will the Bride Love the Bride-groom, and a Virgin bring forth a Son, at which all the World will Wonder; the Virgin shall embrace the Man; but he is a Man, and not a Woman, and has the Virgin's Heart. ”

“ But it behoves the Doctor, if he will be called a Doctor, to study the whole Process, how God has restored the Universal in Man, which is fully clear and manifest in the Person of Christ, from his Entrance into the Humanity, even to his Ascension, and sending of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ This being done, the young Man with his Virgin-like Heart will wholly give himself up to the Mother, when the Tempter comes and assaults him, and the Mother will wholly swallow him up into herself through the Devil's Wrath: He gives himself forth wholly out of his own Will into the Nothing. Now, thinks the Artist with himself, I have lost all; for he thinks that he has lost Heaven; for he seeks Nothing, and does not consider that a Virgin has now brought forth: But let him have Patience; that which is impossible to the Artist, that is possible to Nature ”

“ The Devil said, as he had also said to Adam, Eat of the Evil and Good: Hast thou not Bread? Then make Bread of Stones: Why dost thou Hunger so long in thy own Property? Then said the Divine Desire, Man liveth not of Bread alone, but of every Word of God.
29. Thus the Property of the fiery Soul resigned itself with its Desire into the Love, viz. into the speaking Word's Property, and the fiery Desire did eat Manna in the Love-Desire. O ye Philosophers! observe it well, when this was done, the Love transmuted the fiery Property into its Love-Property ”

“ The chaste Virgin signifies in the philosophic Work the clear Deity, the Humanity is Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt, both heavenly and earthly; the heavenly Property is disappeared, and as a Nothing; the deadly Property in the Wrath is stirred up, and lives to the Anger, and in the Properties of the Anger; the Humanity, both in Adam and in Christ, was tempted. ”

“ The Essence Fire, Hunger, of Eternity must overcome the Essence of Time, therefore it is called a Temptation of the Devil; for the Devil as a Prince in the Wrath of God did there tempt the outward Nothing, the Humanity, and represented all that to it wherein Adam fell, and became disobedient to God. ”

“ The divine Light and Love were extinguished in Adam; because he imagined into the Serpent's Property, viz. into Evil and Good, so that the Poison of Death began effectually to Work in Mercury, and the Source of Anger was inflamed in the eternal Mars, and the dark Impression of the eternal Nature's Property took Possession of him: His Body became Earth in the dark Impression in the Poison of the enkindled Mercury, and was an Enmity against God: he was utterly undone, and there was no Remedy for him by any Creature, neither in Heaven, nor in this World ”

“ And then is God all in all in him, his Will and Deed, and he is a Branch in the great Tree which draws Sap, Power and Life from the Tree of God, and grows and lives in him, and brings forth his Fruit; then is the Mercury of the human Life a procreated or expressed Fruit, which grows in the Paradise-Tree of God, and gives forth its Note and Sound, and strikes the Signature in the speaking Word of God, viz. God's Harp and Lute in his Praise, for which End Man is created, not that he should necessarily play upon the Instrument of Anger and Death according to the Devil's Will. ”

“ Understand us right, and see how God has cured Man when the Poison of the Serpent and Devil held him imprisoned in Death, and how he yet still Cures the poor Soul captivated in God’s Anger; the like Process also must the Physician keep in curing the outward Body. ”

“ It is not enough to play the Sophister; the Grain of wheat brings forth no Fruit, unless it falls into the Earth; all whatever will bring forth Fruit must enter into its Mother from whence it came first to be. ”

“ The Desire of Love is Spirit, and is the Heart of God, viz. the right divine Under-standing: In the Love-Essence Mercury is God's Word, and in the fiery Nature he is the Wrath of God, the Original of all Mobility and Enmity, also of Strength and Omnipotence; the fiery Property makes the Light, viz. the Liberty desirous; so that the Nothing is a Desire, and this Desire is the Love of God, which Adam extin-guished in him: For he imagined after Evil and Good, that is, after Earthliness ”

“ Thus now the Love-Will being set in Opposition to the poisonful Mercury of the soul's Property in the Anger of God, then came the Devil, and said, Thou art the King, who shall overcome, come and shew thyself in thy Miracles and Deeds of Wonder ”

“ Here the Devil would fain that he should use again the Fire's Might, viz. the Soul's Self-hood in its own fiery Property, and depart out of the Resignation into an Arrogation of Self in its own Fire-Will, as he had done, and also Adam, when he went with the Desire in his own Might into Evil and Good, and would have his Eyes open in Evil and Good, as Moses writes thereof, that the Serpent did persuade them to it. ”

“ This Man is too mean for us, we will have a Messiah who may bring us to Worldly Dominion, and make us to be high and rich in the World, that we may alone possess the Honour of the World; we will not receive him, he is too poor for us; we Might so lose the Favour and respect of the Worldly Magistrate, and should be much damaged; we will rather abide in our Power, Respect, and Authority, and abandon this beggarly King with his Love-Kingdom: In like Manner as yet to this Day they are so Minded, and serve his Messengers so whom he sends. ”

“ Therefore the Artist can effect nothing, unless he gives a Meat to the Forms, which they all desire, and Love to eat; wherein there is no Turba: Now the Prop-erties cannot eat, seeing their Mouth is frozen up in the Impression of Saturn; the Artist must first open their Mouth, and make them alive in their Zeal, that all the Forms may be hungry, and then if there be Manna, they all eat together of it, and so the precious Grain of Mustard-Seed is sown. ”

“ For when God Cursed the Earth, then the heavenly paradisical Body disappeared, and the Impression of Saturn took it in Possession, till the Restitution, where God shall restore that which is hidden, that Paradise does again spring forth afresh in the expressed Word, or that the Artist does open the same in a Part by God's Permission. ”

“ He that does so is a Fool, and goes on in his own Self-Will, and is altogether unfit for the Work; let him not meddle with it; we desire faithfully to admonish him, that if he will seek aright, then let him consider the Process of Christ, how God has again regenerated the Universal shut up in Death in the human Property. ”

“ Did he take a strange Thing thereunto? No, he took the Likeness, and cured him with that which was corrupted in him, viz. with the divine Mercury, and with the divine Venus, and with the divine Jupiter; understand; in Man was the expressed Word, which I call the eternal Mercury in Man; for it is the true ruling acting Life; it was inspired or in-spoken into Man's Image (which God created out of his Essence into an Image according to God) as into a creaturely Image, which was the Soul with the Property of all the three Worlds, viz. ”

“ Jesus was led by the Spirit into the Wilderness, and the Devil came to him, and tempted him. When the Soul of Christ did Hunger, the Devil said to Jesus, Open the Center in the Stones, that is, the impressed Mercury, and make thee Bread, eat the Substance of the Soul's Property: What, wilt thou eat of nothing, viz. ”

“ The Devil has given himself to be such a Lutanist who contrives and helps to act and drive on the Play in the Wrath, viz. in the Darkness: He is the Instrument and Actor in the Wrath of the eternal Nature, which has its Effects and Achievements with him and in him, as its Instrument: The like also must the wicked Man do, as Saint Paul speaks thereof ”

“ Of the inward and outward Cure of Man.
1. LET the Lover of God understand us right; we do not go upon an historical Heathenish Conjecture, nor only upon the Light of the outward Nature; both Suns shine to us. ”

“ Therefore, when this melodious Instrument was broken in its Sound by the wrathful Might of his Anger, that is, when Man's Image would play in its own Might both in Evil and Good, in Love and Anger, viz. ”