ON THE SIGNATURE

original: "DE SIGNATURA" - Latin title for "On the Signature of All Things," a central concept in Böhme's philosophy where the inner essence of a thing is revealed in its outer form.

Since human life stands in three PrinciplesBöhme uses "Principles" to describe the three fundamental realms of reality: the dark fire-world, the light love-world, and the physical world., as in a threefold Essence, and also possesses a threefold Spirit from the property of each Essence—namely, according to eternal Nature, according to the property of the fire; and secondly, according to the property of the eternal Light and the Divine Being; and thirdly, according to the property of the outer world—we must therefore consider the properties of both this threefold Spirit and the threefold Essence and will: how each Spirit, together with its Essence, leads itself into conflict and sickness, and what its cure and medicine may be.

We understand that outside of Nature there is an eternal stillness and rest, as the Nothing; and then we understand that in the eternal Nothing, an eternal Will originates to lead the Nothing into Something, so that the Will may find, feel, and behold itself. For in the Nothing, the Will would not be manifest to itself; thus we recognize that the Will seeks itself and finds itself within itself. Its seeking is a Desire, and its finding is the substance of the Desire, wherein the Will finds itself. It finds nothing but the property of hunger, which it is itself; this it draws into itself—that is, it draws itself into itself and finds itself within itself. And this drawing-inward creates within it a shadowing or Darkness, which does not exist in the Freedomoriginal: "Freyheit" - Böhme's term for the "Ungrund" or the absolute abyss of God before manifestation. as in the Nothing; for