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

The birds of the heaven also lie hidden.

It is the summit, and the highest degree to which all things can ascend. It is fire again. By the virtue of fire, all things also receive their life, form, and color. All things, as it were, which are in the hand of God. Truly, it has its own artificial contriver, who tinges things now with this heat, now with that, and this is fire. What would you have been born without the great tincture? And what would water have brought you, had it not been conjoined with fire? Yet, of all the elements, fire is the most invisible. Behold! How all things are graded in the great chain of nature. Earth is heavy and most visible and palpable. Water possesses heaviness, and though it is visible, and can be felt, it cannot be handled on account of its fluidity. Air is now less visible and palpable, and ascends more toward spirituality. Fire, however, can be neither seen nor touched at all. For what appears visible in fire is the corporal mind of those things which are strong, and it moves them toward their own virtue and excellence. Afterward. And it is indeed the most hidden of all the elements, and all knowledge of it, the birds of heaven also lie hidden; but death and destruction say: We have heard its fame with our ears. Moreover, sacrifice and the offering of incense belong to the priestly office. Therefore, do not burn incense with profane fire, nor bring exotic fire to the altar, take heed, O mind, of what must be revealed to you concerning fire. For if you were to know nature perfectly and knew whence all things are made, and whatever can be made from the universal matter, and how the knowledge of the lower coheres with the knowledge of the higher, truly it would profit you if the rationale of fire were hidden from you. You see, therefore, the syringe depicted in the table, which is a symbol of hidden science. There is, however, a double fire, as you will easily perceive when you have consolidated the double symbol, which the table represents, in the intention of your mind. But if the necromantic fire—in our parlance also the double fire of which I speak—is itself fire, it is necromantic. Do not fear to shudder at the name; for this fire differs from sacrilege as much as light differs from darkness. I announce the name, lest anything be obscure: the name of the fire itself indicates its nature and origin to you. You know already from the preceding that the chaotic mixture, which gave origin to all things, is nothing other than of the highest origin. Where, therefore, will you seek fire except in that very chaotic mixture, which is the parent and offspring of all the elements at once? All things are matured by the virtue of fire, nor could the exterior fire have acted had it not been aided by the interior. Nothing, however, existed at the beginning except that very chaotic mixture; hence it is necessary that it be sought nowhere but in that. But through death and putrefaction, the force of the internal fire is greatly increased and exalted: to such a degree that, whereas it could not formerly extricate itself, bound by the chains of the crasser elements, it then, by spiritual virtue rather, extricates itself and seeks higher things—this very putrefaction...

rightly
is called the necromantic fire. Now, truly, you recognize the necromantic fire there, and you will see that what you seek with such anxious zeal has already offered itself to you of its own accord. But note one thing. No element is strictly solitary, and although water and fire seem to stand apart from each other, they rejoice in a certain conjunction, as has already been revealed to you in the preceding. Although fire and water seem to keep the greatest distance from each other, yet water is what fire loves most, and it very often uses it as a veil, and makes its image shine brightly in aqueousness, as in a mirror. Earth is indeed the matrix and receptacle of fire. Therefore, in both elements—water and earth—which have been separated by the operation of putrefaction, the hidden element of fire resides, and that very imbibition and irrigation, which the preceding symbol demonstrated to you, is the true igneous baptism. Therefore, where you ought to seek fire, you would not have found it, had you not penetrated into the kingdom of the arts. But I told you that there is a double fire. Truly, this also manifests itself in universal doctrine, teaching that where there is duplication, it derives its origin from nowhere else but simplicity. Thus, here too, the necromantic fire will reveal all hidden things to you. But it is necessary that I lead you, who must walk the path of nature, to the contemplation of nature. This fire of which I speak is external, humid and dry, hot and cold, and surrounds all things on every side, and hence is called its bath. But contemplate its nature internally, so that it may institute its operation from within. When, indeed, the elements had been disjoined through putrefaction in the natural way, the aerial and igneous circuit surrounded, cherished, and matured all things, and the earth, which had to be made fit to provide for maturation, was sent as if into a vaporous bath; and thus, with the exterior and vaporous fire and the interior [fire] hidden in water and earth working together, the earth began to mature. See here the external fire depicted for you; from whence will you take it? With what acute and igneous circuit will you surround the matter in the mystical operation? Certainly, you have need of a vessel. See, moreover, depicted for you, from whence the flame erupts. This is the vessel, this is the bath and the furnace which you must use. There, the hidden things, which especially rejoice in darkness, and the internal humidity, added to the internal heat, will surround them with cherishing vapor and bring them to maturity. See here how even the necromantic fire gives origin externally, so that it is the source and origin of internal rays. For earth is the receptacle of the dead; nor will that which can join itself to a better life be able to do so unless it has been committed to the earth. But take care, lest because of the excessive dryness of the earth, those things which have been committed to the earth should wither; for the fire should be vaporous. Take care also, lest through excessive humidity the things you have entrusted to the earth should become mucous, lest the fire, being overcome by aqueousness, be hindered from penetrating and acting. But the middle path is what nature loves.