The Drawing Back of the Veil: An Explanation of Symbols in the Hierologium

...insofar as it lowered itself into darkness and was clothed and bound by a certain condensation of corporeality, while the influxes of the divine light ceased, it was necessarily subject to dissolution, fermentation, death, and corruption. Not its spirituality, which is simple, could have suffered such, but its corporeality. And a great fermentation arose, and a huge conflict between the qualities mixed together that were adverse to one another, such as cold with heat, the moist with the dry, the light with the heavy; they have a huge struggle. But when the fire contracted itself into its innermost hiding place, so that it might proceed from there with greater virtue, water obtained the primacy, and all the corporeality which the light had put on passed into water, and death was present, dissolving all things; and by the internal virtue of the fire, all things were destined to proceed to corruption, which the divine mind ordered to happen. O you, if you could elevate your mind so far that you might propose to yourself those things which are intellectual without the admission of sensibility, you would feel that the same thing happened there as well, that all intellectuality must rise from the Ocean of primordial light. Nor could a commotion have occurred in the immense ocean of primordial light without a certain fermentation, though one altogether incomprehensible to human minds. But such as the solution that was made in the first creation of this world through the mind and the fermentation of the elements, such it also happens and appears even now. The light which passed into viscous humidity, unless it could rise again from the blackening death and manifest its exuberant virtue, unless it underwent natural death. While, however, the hidden fire receives itself into its center, and is no longer sustained by the external influx of light, the glutinous humidity passes into water, and the humid and viscous corporeality, which the invisible fire had cast around its invisibility, undergoes death; its ligaments and bonds are dissolved, and all things pass into water—into water, I say, chaotic, namely, which contains at the same time all the things that must be made from it: namely, earth, air, and fire, which are the stamina and primordial principles of things. And here death begins its empire. But an empire too imperfect, which could never obtain its goal unless plenary putrefaction and fermentation are present. And death indeed makes a beginning through dissolution, but putrefaction consumes death; nor can resuscitation to a better life happen through death unless plenary putrefaction is present. Whence, however, this? Through nothing other than fire, while namely both fires, the external and the internal, work upon each other; from this, a wonderful fermentation of the humid element is made. This, however, is the bond of spirituality and corporeality. Each draws to itself what corresponds to its nature. Make, make the luminous son of the Stars remain without fermentation and corruption; what would happen? He himself, who is of an igneous and spiritual nature and therefore is most volatile, could be held by no bonds, but would soon ascend upward and join himself to those of whom he is a twin brother: but the body which he associated with himself would return from the elements to the elements. But when putrefaction operates in fermentation, the aqua fortis assumes the fiery nature in a certain way and joins it to itself most strongly; nor can the fiery and spiritual nature fly away any longer, for it is joined most tightly with the heated corporeality, nor does the corporeality tend to return to the elements, for it tends toward greater subtlety through the conjunction with the spirit. But what, you will ask, does mental putrefaction do in man? Is it the very thing through which the spirit is fully separated from the body? Indeed, nor could it have been separated from the earth, the spirituality from the corporeality, except through consummated putrefaction, as you will soon see in the following table. But what does this putrefaction itself do? Does it, while it dissolves the ligaments, join the soul to the spirit so that it can never be separated from there? But return to the intent itself. You are called at last to spirituality and a purely intellectual life. Every inclination which joins you to sensibility must undergo death, so that you may be able to rise again to a new life, pleasing to God, which consists in Light.

Concerning natural solution.

Pass, soul, to your creator.

Nothing is outside the life of nature: likewise, [neither is] solution. Solution is twofold in the mystical operation; and both are natural. The first indeed happens when the viscous humidity has passed into pure water: the other, when through natural death and putrefaction all things are brought forth and the separation of spirit and body is perfected, as the third table represents to you. The body indeed will return to earth, but the spirit to God, who gave it. But where death exercises its empire through natural putrefaction, it is valid concerning the spirit, what is said: "Pass, soul, to your creator." But I will lead you first to the place of the creation of all things, so that you may contemplate what was done there through putrefaction, and see what it brings you in the mystical operation. And then first was light produced, but at the same time, those things which before lay unordered and confused, having been mixed, received order, and the humid was divided and separated from the dry. For indeed, where all things lay in most obscure confusion through the corruption and putrefaction of the elements and were enveloped in darkness, the Wisdom of the Father, which is the Word of God, went forth as Light in Darkness. The fire indeed worked internally, but from the outside, from all parts, sparks of Light, impregnated by the spirit of God, flowed in abundantly, and [the] hidden in...