Commentary on Genesis (Mysterium Magnum)

furious insanity, and is in itself a terrible anxiety; and yet no true feeling is understood here until the fire, and I instruct the true-understanding seeker of nature here, what that is or means: He may reflect; in his natural knowledge he will find it.

17. The anxiety makes the sulfur-spirit, and the sting makes the mercurium mercury, as the master-workman of nature: It is nature's life, and the astringent desire makes the sharp salt-spirit, and all three are only one, but divide themselves into three forms, which are called Sulphur, Mercurius, Sal Sulfur, Mercury, Salt: These 3 properties impress into themselves the free delight, so that it also gives a material essence, that is an oil, these three forms' life and joy, which quenches and softens their fierceness, and that no reasonable person can deny. There is in all things a salt, sulfur, and oil; and the mercury, as the poisonous life, makes the essence in all things, and thus the abyss leads itself into ground and nature.

☉ 18. The 4th form of nature is the kindling of the fire, where first the feeling and understanding life arises, and the hidden GOD reveals himself: For outside of nature he is hidden from all creatures, but in the eternal and temporal nature he is sensible and manifest.

19. And this revelation happens first through the awakening of the powers, as through the above-mentioned 3 properties, Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt, therein the oil, in which the life burns, and shines. In the 4th form, as in fire and light, the true life is first revealed; in fire the natural, and in light the oily, spiritual, and in the power of the light the Divine-understanding.

20. Reader, mark it well: I understand here by the description of nature the eternal, not the temporal. I only point the temporal to you underneath it, for it is spoken out of the eternal, therefore do not put calves, cows, or oxen into it: as the unreason at Babel is accustomed to do.

21. First, know this: That the Divine understanding leads itself into the fire so that its eternal delight may become majestic and a light: For the Divine understanding takes no torment into itself; it also needs none for its own being, for The All needs no "Something," the "Something" is only its play, with which the All plays, and with which the whole as the All itself becomes manifest to it, so it leads its will into property-