ON THE SIGNATURE

appears; for the primordial fire original: "vhrständliche Feuer" is dark and black. In the fiery shine, the Godhead is understood in its origin, and in the darkness—as in the torment of anguish original: "Angstqual," a central term in Boehme's thought referring to the productive tension or "contraction" in nature—the origin of Nature is understood. Let the physician further understand this: the torment is the physician of the free desire, that is, of the still eternity. For the stillness finds itself therein within life; through the torment of anguish in desire, it leads itself into life, as if into the kingdom of joy, so that the "Nothing" has become an eternal life, and has found itself—which cannot happen in the stillness.

Secondly, we find how the Sul The first syllable of "Sulphur," which Boehme associates with the light or "Sol" (Sun)—that is, the desire of the freedom of the will—is the physician of the anxious nature. For the radiance of freedom, coming from the ignited fire out of Nature, shines back into the dark anguish and fills the anguish with freedom. Therein the wrath is extinguished, and the turning wheel referring to the "wheel of nature" or the restless circulation of forces stands still, and instead of the turning, a sound arises in the Essence. This is now the form of the spiritual life and of the essential life. Sul is the origin of the life of joy, and phur The second syllable of "Sulphur," associated by Boehme with the "fire" or "burning" of material existence is the origin of the essential life. The desire is before and outside of Nature, which is the true Sul; and the Spirit becomes manifest in nature through the torment, and this in a twofold form: namely, according to the desire of freedom in a torment of joy, and according to the desire of the anguish of lust,