Het tweede boeck des auteurs, handelende van de drie principien

up, and rejoices in the light: and its sting (being the bitterness) triumphs in the turning wheel with great joy.

10. Mark here: the terror of the fire is ignited in the harsh anxiousness, in the Sulfur-spirit; then the terror rises up triumphing, and the anxious harshness, or Sulfur-spirit, becomes thin and sweet pleasant from the light; for just as the light, or the lightning, becomes clear from the terror of the fire in the overcome harshness, and loses its wrathful right, so the harshness loses its right through the mixing by the infection of the light, and becomes thin and sweet from the white light; for in the origin the harshness was entirely dark and anxious because of its attraction; now it is entirely light, therefore it loses its own quality property, and out of the grim harshness severe astringency becomes an Essence an outgoing being which is sharp, and the light makes the sharpness entirely sweet.

The Gate of God.

11. Now see, when the bitterness, or the bitter sting, (which in the origin was so very bitter, raging and tearing, when it took its origin in the harshness) receives this clear light, and now tastes the sweetness in the harshness (its mother), it is so full of joy, and is no longer able to exalt itself so, but it trembles and rejoices in its Mother who bears it, and triumphs like a joy-filled wheel in the birth. And in this triumph the birth receives the fifth form, and then the fifth source-vein the fifth blossoming fountain or property rises up, namely, the friendly love; when the bitter Spirit tastes the sweet water, it rejoices in its mother (the harshness), refreshes and strengthens itself, and makes its mother move in great joy; there rises up in the sweet water-spirit a very sweet friendly source-vein fountain: for the fire-spirit (which is the root of the light, which in the beginning was a severe terror) now sounds out entirely lovely and full of joy.

12. There is nothing else there but love-kissing and love-having: and here the Bridegroom embraces his beloved Bride: and it is nothing other than when the pleasant life is born in the harsh death; and in a creature the birth of life is thus; from this stirring, moving, or turning of the bitterness in the Essence of the harshness of the water-spirit, the birth receives the sixth form, namely the tone the sound or the noise of the movement: and this sixth form is rightly named Mercurius Mercury, for it takes its form, power, and beginning in the anxious harshness or through the raging of the bitterness; for in climbing up it carries with it

with it the power of its Mother (that is the Essence the outgoing being of the pleasant harshness) and brings it into the fire-flash, from which the light ignites itself; there the testing begins, so that one power sees the other, and in the fire-flash, one feels the other through the climbing up: and from the stirring illuminated outgoing being one hears the other: and in the Essence one tastes the other: and through the lovely friendly source-vein one smells the other, from which the sweetness of the light rises up out of the Essence of the sweet and harsh spirit (which from now on is the water-spirit): and out of these sixfold forms there now becomes a sixfold substantial being in the birth, which is indivisible, where one continually begets the other, and one is not or cannot be without the other, and outside of this birth and being there would also be nothing: for the sixfold forms now each have the Essences of all sixfold powers within them: and it is like a single thing, and no more: only now each form has its own nature.

13. For mark thus: although out of the harshness there has become bitterness, fire, sound, water, and out of the fountain-vein of the water, love (or that from which the light rises up and becomes shining), the harshness the contraction still retains its first property, as also the bitterness its property, the fire its property, the tone the sound or stirring its property, and the victory in the first harsh anxiousness (being the turning back within itself) or the water-spirit, its property, and the rising fountain, the friendly love, which is ignited by the light in the harsh bitter property (and now being the sweet fountain-vein of the water) its property: and it is yet no divided separated being, one out of the other, but all within one another as a single being: and every form (or birth) takes its own form, power, operation, and climbing from all forms: and the entire birth now altogether retains primarily four forms in its birth or bearing, namely, the climbing up, the climbing down, and then through the turning wheel in the harsh Essence, the outgoing to the sides on both sides like a cross, or as I might say, it went from the point out towards morning, evening, midnight, and midday: for from the stirring and moving, and the climbing up of the bitterness in the fire-flash, a cross-birth arises. For the fire climbs above itself, and the water below itself, and the Essences of the harshness go out to the sides.