WHERE BABEL, THE GREAT CITY ON EARTH, IS TO BE SEEK WITH ITS POWER AND MARVELS WHY BABEL IS BORN FROM WHAT, WHERE ANTCHRIST SHALL STAND NAKED
A most wonderful revelation, take it out of the highest Arcanum. Herein is Wholly revealed what the turba of all beings is. Written for the children of the Divine, who by such warning will flee from burning Babel, and shall be born children of the Divine out of the turba. All very earnestly and faithfully given from knowledge of the great Mystery, the 5th May, 1620
The ungrounded is an eternal nothing, but makes an eternal beginning as a craving. For the nothing is a craving after something. But as there is nothing that can give anything, accordingly the craving itself is the giving of it, which yet also is a nothing, or merely a desirous seeking. And that is the eternal origin of Magic, which makes within itself where there is nothing; which makes something out of nothing, and that in itself only, though this craving is also a nothing, that is, merely a will. It has nothing, and there is nothing that can give it anything; neither has it any place where it can find or repose itself.
1. Seeing then there is a craving in the nothing, it makes in itself the will to something. This will is a spirit, as a thought, which goes out of the craving and is the seeker of the craving, for it finds its mother or the craving. Then is this will a Magician in its mother; for it has found in the nothing something, viz. its mother, and so now it has a place for its dwelling.
2. And herein understand that the will is a spirit, and different from the desirous craving. For the will is an insensitive and in cognitive life; but the craving is found by the will, and is in the will a being. Thus the craving is a Magia, and the will a Magus; and the will is greater than its mother which gives it, for it is lord in the mother; and the mother is dumb, but the will is a life without origin. The craving is certainly a cause of the will, but without knowledge or understanding. The will is the understanding of the craving.
3. Thus we give you in brief to consider of nature and the spirit of nature, what there has been from eternity without origin. And we find thus that the will, viz. the spirit, has no place for its rest.; but the craving is its own place, and the will is a band to it, and yet is not held in check.
1. Seeing then the eternal will is free from the craving, but the craving is not free from the will (for the will rules over the craving), we recognize the will as the eternal Omnipotence. For it has no parallel. The craving is indeed a movement of attraction or desire, but without understanding; it has a life, but without knowledge.
2. Now the will governs the life of the craving, and doth therewith what it will. And though it doth somewhat, yet this is not known till the same reveals itself through the will, so that it becomes an entity in the life of the will; then it is known what the will has wrought.
3. We recognize, therefore, the eternal Will-spirit as the Divine, and the moving life of the craving as Nature. For there is nothing prior, and either is without beginning, and each is a cause of the other, and an eternal bond.
4. Thus the Will-spirit is an eternal knowing of the ungrounded, and the life of the craving an eternal being [body] of the will.
1. Seeing then the craving is a process of desire, and this desire a life, this same desiring life goes in the craving forward, and is always pregnant with the craving.
2. And the desire is a stern attraction, and yet hath nothing but itself, or the eternity without foundation. And it draws magically, viz. its own desiring into a substance.
3. For the will takes where there is nothing. It is a lord and possessor. It is itself not a being, and yet rules in being, and being makes it desirous, namely of being. And since it becomes in itself desirous, it is magical, and makes itself pregnant, viz. by spirit without being; for originally it is only spirit. Thus it makes in its imagination only spirit, and becomes pregnant with spirit as with the eternal knowing of the ungrounded, in the All power of the life, without being.
4. As then it is pregnant, the engenderment goes within itself, and dwells in itself. For the essence of the other life cannot grasp this pregnation, and be its container. Hence the pregnation must go within itself and be its own container, as a Son in the eternal Spirit.
5. And as this pregnation has no being, then that is a voice or sound, as a Word of the spirit; and yet remains in the primitive condition of spirit, for it hath else no seat.
6. But in this Word is a will, which desires to go out into a being. This will is the life of the original will, and proceeds out of the pregnation, as out of the mouth of the will, into the life of Magic, viz. into Nature; and reveals the no understanding life of Magic, so that the same is a mysterium in which an understanding exists essentially, and thus obtains an essential spirit. There, every essence is an Arcanum or a mysterium of an entire being, and is thus a comprehension as an unfathomable wonder of eternity; for many lives without number are generated, and yet all is together but one being.
7. The threefold Spirit without being is its master and possessor; and yet it possesses not the Nature-being, for it (the Spirit) dwells in itself.
8. The Word is its center or seat, and is in the midst as a heart; and the spirit of the Word, which takes its origin in the primal eternal will, reveals the wonders of the essential life. There are, then, two mysteries: one in the spirit-life, and one in the essential life. The spirit-life is acknowledged as the Divine, and is rightly so called; and the essential life is acknowledged as the Nature-life, which would have no understanding if the Spirit or the spirit-life were not desirous. In this desire the divine Being, as the eternal word or heart of the Divine, is continually and from eternity generated; from which the desiring will as Spirit eternally goes out into the Nature-life, and reveals therein the mystery in essences. So that there are two lives and also two beings, from and in a single, eternal, unfathomable origin.
9. And thus we apprehend what the Divine and Nature is; how the one and the other is from eternity without any ground or beginning. For it is an everlasting beginning. It begins itself perpetually and from eternity to eternity, where there is no number; for it is the ungrounded.
1. Seeing then there have been from eternity two beings, we cannot say that one exists beside the other, and is disposed so that the one comprehends the other; neither can it be said that one is outside of the other, and that there is a separation. No; but thus we apprehend it, that the spirit-life faces inwards, and the nature-life outwards and forwards.
2. Together, then, we compare them to a spherical orb which goeth on all sides, as the wheel in Ezekiel indicates.
3. The spirit-life is an entire fullness of the nature-life, and yet is not laid hold of by the nature-life. They are two principles in a single origin, each having its mystery and its operation. The nature-life works unto fire, and the spirit-life unto the light of glory. By fire we understand the fierceness of the consuming of the essentiality of Nature; and by light the production of water, which deprives the fire of power, as is set forth in the Forty Questions on the soul.
4. And thus we are able to recognize an eternal substantiality of Nature, identical with water and fire, which are as it were mixed together; where then this gives a light-blue color, like the Hash of fire; where it hath a form as a ruby mixed with crystal in one substance, or as yellow, white, red and blue mingled in a dark water; where it is as blue in green, yet each has its luster, and shines. And the water checks the fire, so that there is no consuming there, but an eternal essence or substance in two mysteries united in one another, and yet the distinction of two principles as two kinds of life.
5. And thus we understand here the essence of all beings, and that it is a magical essence, as a will can create itself in the essential life, and so enter into a birth, and in the great Mystery, in the origin of fire, awaken a source which before was not manifest, but lay hidden in mystery like a gleam in the multiplicity of colors; as we have a mirror of this in the devils and in all malignity. And we recognize also from whence all things, evil and good, take their origin, namely from the Imagination in the great Mystery, where a wonderful essential life generates itself. 6. As we have a sufficient knowledge thereof by the creatures of this world, as where the divine Life awakened once for all the Nature-life, when it brought forth such wonderful creatures from the essential mystery; whereby we understand that every essence is come to be a mysterium or a life, and also that in the great Mystery there is a magical craving, so that the craving of every essence makes in its turn a mirror, to see and to know itself in the mirror.
7. And then the craving seizes this (namely the mirror), brings it into its imagination, and finds that it is not of its life. Hence opposition arises and loathing, so that the craving would discard the mirror, and yet cannot. And therefore the craving seeks the limit of the beginning, and passes out of the mirror. Thus the mirror is broken, and the breaking is a turba, as a dying of the formed or comprehended life.
8. And it is highly recognizable by us how the imagination of the Eternal Nature has the turba in the craving, in the Mystery, but not awakenable, unless the creature, as the mirror of eternity, doth itself awaken this, viz. the fierce wrath, which in eternity is hidden in mystery.
9. And we see here, when the Eternal Nature put itself in motion once for all by the creation of the world, that the fierce wrath was awakened too, and also manifested itself in creatures. As indeed we find many evil beasts, likewise herbs and trees, as also worms, toads, serpents and the like,-of which the Eternal Nature hath a loathing, and the malignity and poison is nourished only in its own essence.
10. And therefore the Eternal Nature seeks the limit of the malignity, and would abandon it. Then it falls into the turba, as into a dying; and yet there is no dying, but a spewing-out in the Mystery, where the malignity with its life must stand apart as in a darkness. For the Eternal Nature abandons it and casts it into shade, so that it stands thus by itself as an evil, poisonous, fierce mysterium, and is itself its own magic as a craving of the poisonous anguish.
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