On the Threefold Life, Chapter 1.

light joy; and yet the burning glow remains: However, you must understand it as if in the glow no pain were felt, but rather only as a cause of the light of life, just as one cannot compare any fire with the Divine; for the Divine nature, from which the Divine fire of life burns, is imbued: inficiret (from the Latin inficere). Böhme uses this to mean a substance is thoroughly permeated or "stained" by a spiritual quality. with the love of God, so that the light of God makes another principle: Principium. In Böhme's cosmology, a "Principle" is a distinct realm of existence (like the dark world, the light world, or the outer world). within itself, wherein no nature is felt, for it is the end of nature. Böhme argues that the "Light" is a state where the harshness of natural forces is transcended and turned into joy.

19. Therefore the soul cannot, in its own essences, seize or master the light of God; for the soul is a fire in the eternal nature, and does not reach the end of nature: For it remains in nature, as a created creature out of the eternal nature: and yet there is no tangibility, but rather a spirit in a sevenfold form: And yet in the origin: urkund. Literally an "original record" or "document," but Böhme uses it to mean the primal source or foundational state of a thing. not seven, but only four are recognized, which hold the eternal bond, and are the source-torment: Quall. A play on the German words Quelle (source/well) and Qual (torment/agony). It describes the friction and tension of the forces that produce life. in the anguish: Angst. This refers to the "constriction" or "tightness" of the first forces of nature before they find the "light" and expand., within which stands the eternal, and out of which all other forms are born, wherein God and the Kingdom of Heaven stand: And in the four forms—the anguish and the woe—if they stand bare and alone, then we understand therein the hellish fire, and the eternal wrath of God.

20. And although we do not know the source of the Divine Being, we yet know the eternal birth, which never had a beginning. Since it then had no beginning, it is still the same today as it has ever been from eternity: Therefore we may well lay hold of that which we see today, and recognize in the light of God: and for this reason no one should account us as ignorant, just because God gives us to recognize—