Het tweede boeck des auteurs, handelende van de drie principien

of the wrath kindles in him / [so] that he burns in wickedness / where [then] in the Spirit and [in the mind immediately a substance] / or an entire being forms [to] avenge itself.

10. It is also thus to be compared in the originality of the birth f More distinctly or more clearly. of nature: yet one must present it ^f more understandably. See what Mercurius Mercury is: it is harsh / bitter / fire / and Sulfur-water / the most shifting essence; yet you must not here understand Materia matter or [a] comprehensible thing / but t The fountain. all [nothing other than] Spirit / and the ^t source of the original v Harsh. nature. ^v Harshness is the first being / it ^x attracts x Or it is attracting. to itself / but as it is a hard cold power / so the Spirit is entirely y Sharp-stinging. ^y prickly and sharp: now the sting and the sharpness cannot endure the attraction / but move themselves and resist / and are a counter-will / an enemy of the harshness / and from the stirring comes the first mobility / which is the third form. Now the harshness continually attracts harder to itself / so that it becomes hard and severe / so that the power becomes as hard as the hardest stones / which the bitterness (that is the very sting itself) of the harshness cannot endure: and there great anguish becomes / like the shifting Sulfur-spirit / and the sting of the bitterness: and it shows itself so stiff that in the anguish a shooting lightning becomes / which shiftily z Or the pulling-together harshness. flashes up / and breaks the ^z harshness: but as it finds no rest / and is thus continually born from below / so it becomes like a driving wheel which turns anxiously and terrifyingly with the shooting lightning like a madness / and the lightning [thus] is transformed into a prickly fire: which is nevertheless no burning fire / but like the fire in a stone.

11. But while there is no rest there / and the driving a Or quick. wheel goes as ^a swiftly as a fast thought (for the sting drives it so swiftly) so the sting kindles itself so hard / that the lightning (which is born between the harshness and the bitterness) shiftily becomes fiery / and goes up like a shifting fire / from which the entire matter is terrified and falls back as if dead or overcome / and no longer attracts so severely to itself / but it gives itself out from each other and becomes b Or master / that is: Primal. thin / for the fire-lightning has now become ^b primal / and the same matter (which in the originality was so ^c harsh and severe) c Or pulling-together. is now as if died away and powerless: and the fire-lightning now henceforth draws its strength therein / for it is its Mother: and the bitterness travels in the lightning / along from the harshness / and kindles the lightning / for it is the father of the lightning / or of the fire / and the driving wheel stands henceforth in the

in the fire-lightning / and the harshness remains conquered / and powerless; the same is now the water-spirit; and the ^d matter of d The matter of the pulling-together harshness. the harshness / compares itself henceforth to the Sulfur-spirit / entirely thin / rough / anxiously conquered / and the sting therein / trembling: and it dries and sharpens itself in the lightning / but because it becomes so very parched in the lightning / it becomes continually more shifting / and more fiery / from which the harshness becomes continually more powerfully conquered / and the water-spirit continually still greater: thus it now leaves itself continually in the water-spirit / and brings to the fire-lightning continually more matter / from which it kindles itself still more powerfully / for that is (to compare it so) the wood of the lightning or [of the] fire-spirit.

12. Understand now rightly how this Mercurius Mercury is: the word mer, is first the severe ^e harshness / for in the word upon the tongue e Or the pulling-together. you understand such / that it jars out of the harshness / and you also understand how the bitter sting is therein: for the word mer, is harsh and trembling / and every word forms itself from its power [according to] what the power does / or suffers. You understand that the word cu is the oscillation or the unrest of the sting / ^f with which f Or / over which. the harshness is not content / but raises itself and climbs up / for the same syllable forces with power / from the heart out to the mouth: thus it also happens in the power of the Prima materia first matter in the Spirit / but since the syllable cu has such a strong pressure from the heart / and yet is also so immediately caught by the syllable ri, and in the same the entire understanding is transformed / so it signifies / and is the same bitter prickly wheel in the birth which turns itself and becomes anxious as swiftly as a thought. The syllable us is the swift fire-lightning / so that the matter (in the quick turning / between the harshness and the bitterness) kindles itself [thus] in the swift wheel: there one understands in the word properly how the harshness is terrified / and [how] the power in the word sinks back again upon the heart / and becomes powerless / entirely thin: yet the ^g sting g That is / the sting or spur. with the driving wheel / remains in the lightning and travels out to the mouth (through the teeth); where then the Spirit hisses / like a kindled fire / and strengthens itself again (backwards) in the word.

13. These four forms are in the originality of nature / from which mobility arises / just as life in the seed and in all creatures has its originality from here: and there is no comprehensibility in the originality / but such power and spirit: for it is a poisonous hostile being: and it must be so / otherwise there would be no move-