Commentary on Genesis (Mysterium Magnum)

I will show you something: Just pay attention / and grasp it / do not be a mocker / like the confused Babylon is. See / when we want to talk about the being of all beings / we say / of GOD and through GOD is everything. For St. John also says: Without Him nothing is made that is made.

4. Now reason asks / from what / or how has GOD made good and evil / pain and torment / life and death: Is then such a will in GOD that makes evil? Here reason begins to speculate / and wants to grasp it / but goes only around the circle from the outside / and cannot get in / for it is outside / and not in the circle of the Word of life.

5. So just look at yourself, what you are / and look at the outer world with its government / what that is: then you will find / that with your outer spirit and being you are the outer world: You are a small world out of the large one / your outer light is a chaos of the sun and the stars / otherwise you could not see by the sun-light. The stars give the essence of distinction in understandable seeing: Your body is fire / air / water / earth: Therein lies also the metallic property / for that of which the sun with the stars is a spirit / of that the earth with the other elements is a being / a coagulated power: What the upper is / that is also the lower / and all creatures of this world are the same.

6. When I lift up a stone or clod of earth and look at it / I see the upper and the lower / yes, the whole world therein / only that in every thing sometimes one property is the greatest / according to which it is also named. The other properties all lie together in it as well / only in different degrees and centris centers / and yet all degrees and centers are only one single center; it is only one single root from which everything comes / it only separates itself in the compaction, where it is coagulated / its primordial state is as a smoke or vapor from the great Mysterio mystery of the spoken Word / which stands in all places in the re-speaking / that is in the re-breathing / a likeness after itself / a being according to the spirit.

7. Now we cannot, however, say: that the outer world is GOD / or the speaking Word / which in itself is without such a being / just as the outer man is not / but it is all only the spoken Word / which in its re-grasping (to speak itself) has thus coagulated / and is still ever-