Theosophia Practica – by Johann Georg Gitchel Translated In English by Ramon Light

Translator’s Introduction of 2018

This translation of our dear brother Johann Georg Gichtel has been provided free for all humanity. Our dear Gichtel, a kindred spirit, was the head of a little group named the Angelic Brethren, who followed the path of Jacob Boehme while creating a practice to culminate the Great Work, the Work of Reconciliation, Regeneration, and Reintegration. It is a worthy text, and one that brings with it not only a practical path, but also a certain perspective that connects one to the Heart Brethren.

As for the translation, I pray that it will bring forth the true message of brother Gichtel. This was a straight translation from the French edition of Gichtel’s Three Principles and the Three Worlds, most commonly known as Theosophia Practica. As mistakes are usually inevitable, please email me if any mistakes are found.

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by our dear Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Blessings and Victory to you!

~ brother Ramon Light, translator and fellow Theosopher.

Contents:

Preface of the 1786 edition

Introduction

FIRST CHAPTER

SECOND CHAPTER

THIRD CHAPTER

FOURTH CHAPTER

FIFTH CHAPTER

SIXTH CHAPTER

Theosophia Practica

All artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

With advice by Russell Yoder Emeritus Elder Ephrata

Copyright © 6/12/2018 by Ramon Noursamadi

With Permission to publishing free to Sam Robinson and Panshophers.com

SHORT OPENING AND INSTRUCTION

ON THE

THREE PRINCIPLES AND THE THREE WORLDS

IN THE MAN

REPRESENTED IN DISTINCT FIGURES

How and where they have their respective counteracts in the inner man; from what the author has found in himself in the divine contemplation, and that he has felt, tasted, and perceived.

Plus a description of the three kinds of men, according to the Principle or the dominant Spirit; so each one can see as in a mirror under what regimen he lives;

WITH AN INSTRUCTION ON

COMBAT OF MICHAEL AND THE DRAGON

ON WHAT IS TRUE PRAYER IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH

DRAWINGS AND WRITING

BY: Johan Georg Graber, from Ringhausen,

BY: Johan Georg Gichtel, from Regensbourg

IN THE YEAR OF CHRIST 1696

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Preface of the 1786 edition

1. The beloved reader will receive here, against all presumption, this that he hoped for such a long time. These are the figures of the interior man that the author kept hidden for fifteen years, until the end of his life, and which we kept for ten years.

2. They should have been kept secret for a long time, if Love did not care, and to please fans, had not at last given us the permission and urged to entrust them to printing.

3. We rejoice in the great goodness of God, because our hearts take the good and send back the praises of God.

4. So recite this gift that makes you Love, with a faithful heart, as if it came from God itself and serve you for the salvation and the utility of your soul.

5. The reader will be grateful to us for having followed the FIGURES with some words of explanation; we did it because the Spirit of God was revealed and dictated to us the necessary words.

6. At the same time, this completes to a certain extent what the AUTHOR did not explain all along; for it cannot describe at once the Kingdom of God; we can only say what the Spirit lets us know.

7. By the same influx of Grace we have followed the process of Jesus, in spirit, and by the virtue of Him who is the beginning and the end of our faith.

8. Thanks to God we have seen the day after which the AUTHOR in his time had sighed.

9. We also had Jesus with us, and He made us enjoy the work of the youth of our combatant for the common good of all the collaborators. God be praised. Amen.

Introduction

To the reader friend of God and wisdom

1. Though I have great hesitation in sharing this little paradise flower conquered by a long and fatiguing struggle with that coarse and dirty world which tramples underfoot the pearl of the knowledge of God and of Self, and who perseveres in its fervents, my dear collaborators have obliged me, by their repeated exhortations, to bring to light this representation of the Divine mystery in its innermost depth, so that they may have a mirror before their eyes to gaze upon it.

2. In order that it may serve them as a memorial and a warning, because Adam, having committed the shock, awoke and made the cold and irascible Darkness in his forms of life operative, and provoked in all his offspring a violent struggle of evil against the good, Darkness, Anger and a No against the Light, Love and the ‘Yes’.

3. Thus, let everyone be on his guard, pray and vigilantly and vigorously watch over all the venomous influxes of the infernal and earthly constellations; That he should take full care of the desire, and the imagination of his character, in order that the Good is not overwhelmed, and so that the separation from covetousness and its elimination are even more marked.

4. This is what happens very easily and very quickly when the soul relaxes its hold on itself a little, when it turns inconsiderately towards the terrestrial spirit of this world, or when she allows an evil thought to penetrate into herself against her brother, and she exalts her pride above the Thrones.

5. For the Three Principles apply to the soul: each searches for the regency and rotates for as long as it has been obtained or has been obtained by the strongest, that is to say until the Light alone All powerful, has bound them and subdued them, as I have experimented during the long years of my difficult struggle.

6. It is not enough to begin this enterprise with good intentions; after having hardly worked for eight, nine, ten years or more, we must not weaken, bewilder, and weaken other weak hearts, and rush them in the eternal misfortune

7. But it is necessary to sacrifice to the Lord his whole life, to abandon himself to body, soul and spirit, fortune and health, and to understand that it is the grace of God who has called us to regeneration; It is necessary to promise God and his Christ a faithfulness and a constancy that are eternal and to be lifted for life to be a witness of truth.

8. What can this serve to love his earthly life? It is, however, perishable, and, according to the word of Christ, it will be lost. It is better not to put a hand to the plow and patiently await in its simplicity the call of God, or that if one works by the Spirit of God, one humbly enumerates one’s internal forces, not to oppose ten thousand soldiers to twenty thousand; It is better to go slowly than to fly to meet the enemy, to despise him and finally to be overwhelmed.

9. I write to warn those who walk merrily behind the Lord, but have not yet fought. For the beginning is usually sweet, rejoicing, and very agreeable; But when it becomes serious, that the soul seeks to withdraw its will from the external constellation to turn to God in its CENTER, to abandon all the visible and to pass through in the eighth form of the Fire, it requires hard work, blood sweat; for the soul must then struggle with God and men.

10. So that you want to return to life and love it again, the Devil comes with seven wicked spirits, surrounds the poor soul in all forms, and makes you spend the rest of life in the great misery, poverty, hunger and worries of a terrestrial greediness of a slave to finally be thrown into the fire of God with trembling, anguish and grief. I have, alas! Known of truthful examples of such misfortunes!

11. You are at this time your own artisan. Remain in humility and make yourself an angel, you will be an angel. But make yourself proud of yourself, you are a demon and God cannot forgive you.

12. The Fire of the Eighth Form is the point of separation; I have extracted the figure from Boehme’s Book of Triple Life, and I have drawn it to make it clearer; for man has become so terrible and so external, that he always SPECULATES on himself, and that he seeks very far, above the stellar FIRMAMENT in the supreme Eternity, which is very near in him, in the inner CENTER of the soul.

13. The following FIGURES also depict how the three worlds are distributed in man, or in what relations they are, as the very good God has revealed it to me by introducing my spirit into all the CENTERS. For I show only the CENTERS, if one wishes to make great circles or spheres, and to move them one into the other, he can do it; Such as I have seen them in spirit, as I have drawn them.

14. And although each one does not arrive at this contemplation, for it takes place by divine grace and constant fidelity, victory and supremacy, every sincere combatant will find him again in his sensitivity, if he interacts with God.

15. I described in the fifth chapter the combat of Michael and the Dragon, what it is, how it takes place in creation by the separation of the will moved in many opposing wills; I also added and explained what tests the Son of the Virgin must undergo until it is established in spiritual marriage.

16. And finally, in the sixth chapter, I have spoken of prayer and its MYSTERY, which is to pray in spirit and truth, as I have learned from my own experience; For prayer is the ever-sharp sword of the soldier.

17. Let the dear reader take this in Love; that he uses it and thanks God, from Whom I have received it and has the adorable love of Whom I recommend to the reader, through Christian prayer.

FIRST CHAPTER

FOREWARD…

1. Reader who seeks God, the wheel of genesis is communicated to you completely according to the three principles, all of which you can actually see as the forms are generated according to their order in the temperament.

2. Imagine this in a living way in your soul; you will understand with all the more ease the following figures of our Author, for comprehension is internal.

3. This is why he wants only to show, as an introduction, what the image of God first created before the fall, something which the author, in a practical manner, recognized occultly in the mind, and which he develops in the figures of the perfect man.

4. And, if you are the author with application, the regeneration will be realized for you, and you will accomplish it.

Of the Great Mystery

Of the Divine Revelation

According to Time and Eternity

In the Human Form

1. If we want to contemplate and observe man in his deep inner generation, we need to leave with our soul the ELEMENTAL life and the terrestrial Sidereal and turn to the divine inner life of Jesus Christ; We must appeal to the grace of this dear doctor, that He may deign to open our eyes, closed until then by the devil from Paradise, so that we may recover our eye of light to recognize and contemplate God in us; Without which everything would remain a MYSTERY sealed and inconceivable to our reasonable Sidereal (Sidereal, relating to the Astral nature; literally, the domination of the “stars” over us, that CONFLICTS with and often OBSCURES our Spiritual nature. The astrological term is “Occultation”, which means that which covers or hides).

2. For what we see of man is, with the exception of the word and the natural regimen of sensible understanding, common to all animals, in the mother earth; and many would desire that there should be no resurrection, that their deeds may not come to light.

3. Because it pleased God to bring me, unworthy worm, to the knowledge of myself, I have not buried this in my property, but I want to communicate it to him who uses it, if he discovers its inclination, and I have represented these FIGURES so that as one imagines to see God in the outer constellation, can conceive THE

4. I have labored much in this way during my youth, having read in the Holy Scripture that Moses, Joshua, David, and other holy men spoke with God and saw heaven; but I could not realize my INTENTION.

5. Until God mercifully appeared to me inwardly, face to face and opened his heaven in me, and I speak with my soul, mouth to mouth, according to the ENS and the MENS, I rejoice extremely and I ignite love for my adorable Jesus, to whom I bind myself in body, soul and spirit, no longer wanting to leave him or to faint in suffering or affliction, and having the firm confidence that he would never let me leave him. (ENS is Essential, Inner, and Spiritual ‘Essence’: the Real part of us that both the Sidereal and Animal Nature obscure. MENS is the intelligence, thought, soul.

6. This is what He has faithfully fulfilled: for Him, therefore, be honor, power, strength, kingdom and splendor in eternity. Amen

7. Man is properly, in his outer and inner genesis, a triple constellation, as can be seen by this figure; lives in an incessant movement and a voracious greed towards its CENTER; is always swirling around the latter to reach it and to find rest, and, although it reaches its center, it cannot rest until it is returned to its first state, in which everything was created and begotten.

8. The first constellation is the outermost, and governs the natural man, leading him to the different arts, trades, studies and business, and making men good or bad, rich or poor, high and low, as each can see. Adam fell into this regime because of his lack, and he has dragged all his children with him, so that today, without a determined fight, and without regeneration, we will not be able to leave.

9. This life, with the seven forms of outer Nature, insinuates itself to the heart, to the sun, whose root is in the fire, from which it derives its splendor and its brightness. In these seven forms the devil, the ancient Serpent, is hidden and has poisoned the soul, on which the Apocalypse 5 can be consulted.

10. The eighth form is the World of Fire, with the igneous constellations; Is situated in the middle of the macrocosm and the microcosm; Is the point of separation between the outer and the inner man: in regeneration, the World of Light is in the center; It is there where Jesus is seated, who has subdued the World of Fire in our humanity.

11. The root of this World of Fire is the dark world (On the generation of the Darkness, see Jac. Boehme: Three Principles C. XXI, V. 17) , with the dark constellation that holds within itself the World of Fire, with all devils and damned souls; it is the place of separation of Good and Evil, it is the sieve that leaves nothing impure to pass in the inner heaven of God.

12. In this World of Fire is the Cherubim with his double-edged sword; He keeps the path of the inner tree of life, and it is necessary that we fight him in this life or the other, and that we experience the strength of his arm, for at the end of our life are Moses with his severe laws and the devil with the record of our sins, which must prevent men from not delaying their penance until the end.

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

13. For no human tongue can express the pain caused by the blade of that sword! Blessed is he who purifies himself in this time and who calls Jesus: the second death will have no power over him. Woe to him who has delayed this care, for he will scream and grind his teeth, he will curse the day of his birth, and he will wish he had never lived; – see Jer. XX: 14 and Apoc. VI: 16

14. Beyond this World of Fire, or properly between this Fire and the Tincture, are the Angels and the soul of Adam, which form the ninth wheel. This is what the Scripture speaks of when it says, “He makes his angels spirits, and his servants the flames of fire.” (Hebr, I:7)

15. The hidden Dark World contains the first three forms, to the Fire, and is called Hell, outside the Fire, is the severe power of God, to which the Devil has stretched, and has infernalized it, as did Adam.

16. This world, after the Christ closed it, should have remained secret within the Fire, if man, by his sins and his crimes, had not opened it again in this world by becoming devilish.

17. When the man is pierced by the sword of the Cherubim, thus overcomes God and Man, the heavenly Sophia finds him again in the ninth form; it refreshes the soul through an inexplicable sweetness, and she dresses again in its celestial presence, then the soul becomes an angel of God, who dwells in Heaven and can converse with God.

18. For it is only under this new clothing that she can arrive before the Holy Trinity and serve the God Most Holy, in spirit and truth, like Melchizedek, priest of the Most High.

19. She (soul) arrives at her goal like a bride who has been sighing for many months after the betrothed Jesus, and who is finally taken to the wedding chamber; but it must have passed through the forms of Fire and filled its years of trial.

20. For the Father does not take sons to marry his dear Sophia or Jesus, he does not lead any to the nuptial bed, who is not pure and constant; and the celestial Sophia does not confide in the arms of her beloved unless she is certain of it in many ways, for she has been deceived by Adam.

21. And although she sometimes descends to rejoice her lover in the dark lust, so that it does not darken and despair, she does not stay long; she soon withdraws into the inner man as in its inner PRINCIPLE. That is why patience and humility are necessary.

22. But he who weakens and who thinks he has compelled her to join him by obstinacy or impatience, and by a powerful property, he ought to know that God has no kindness for him, and that his dear Virgin will not esteem his egoism; For grace answers only to the humble and the gentle.

23. The tenth number is the Trinity; it is there that the blessed spirit must stand still and sing the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, with all celestial cohorts. We other men can understand nothing outside of the Virgin Sophia.

24. We must even dig deeply if we want to contemplate revelation in the inner virginal image, for it is itself generated according to the three PRINCIPLES and is immediately born from the virginal image; This is hidden secret, known to those alone who live in its intimacy.

25. The reader can easily understand by this FIGURE that God is much nearer within himself than outside him in the constellations of the empyrean. Everything is reduced to turning our souls, to direct our lust inwardly, to desire God, and not to cease until the dear Sophia with the Holy Ghost meets the desire of our soul and conducts it gradually.

26. For we cannot conceive it all at once, because the wheel of Nature continually turns and we can only perceive the depth of the divinity by flashes and as in an obscure mirror.

27. The first glance of the eye is very weak, and it is impossible to conceive everything until the mind, through a long exercise, pierces the depth and arrives at the understanding of the MYSTERIUM MAGNUM; this is how I experienced it; I say something about it in the fifth chapter.

28. This is not like looking at something and holding the image in memory, to talk about it afterwards; but the soul must form a single being with knowledge, and pass very often through Fire so that it becomes FIXED.

29. The search is not the most important; but the sensation, the flavor, the taste, which no tongue can describe, and whose abyss the amateur cannot conceive of by any reading, must pass into the Being and pass through the interior fire; after which one can put his experiences on paper. We shall recognize all that we have felt in the soul much more profoundly than by reading.

30. Certainly, with the exception of the Bible, we would not need any book in the world if we learned to read our own book of the three PRINCIPLES. For it is full of wonders that human language cannot express them and that the ignorant would not believe them.

31. This is why illuminated writers who do not find sufficient words, express themselves by means of analogies taken in external Nature, so that the student is led to a deeper meditation.

32. But as man has become quite external and animal, as he seeks only the perishable treasures of this world, as he loves his life and disdains the imperishable Good, many things remain sealed to him.
33. For what would a swine with the golden necklace or a back-yard-bird with the pearl do? They would trample them underfoot in the dung because they would not know the price.

34. But a soul hungry for God and his knowledge, acting in humility and seeking in the simplicity of his desire, finds himself without work too great, too difficult, or too painful. For God is around him; He loves the humble who considers himself utterly unworthy of His great love, and who is often far from conceiving the knowledge of God.
35. God is the enemy of personal and proud understanding; He turns his back on them, because they hold themselves wise and learned and want to read in the book of His Secrets with the glasses of reason.

36. He who prays to God for His Holy Spirit, without ceasing, will find the best and safest way, and receive a guide who will lead him into all abysses, open all the locks and doors to him; as testified by them, and who by their example teach all enlightened men; apart from that, nothing is found.

37. Accordingly, the researcher will not confine his STUDIES to reading and written science; He will also think of beginning his journey, and beside the assiduous prayer, he will hate earthly life, seek the interior, as I have done; He will recognize in this way that the lessons and teachings come from God.

38. Here the word of Christ, “who asks for will receive, who seeks will find, whoever knocks will be opened”. For the treasure is deeply buried in souls, guarded by the Wrath of God, which must above all be overcome by means of the Love of Jesus; without this, nothing is found, for this Wrath holds strong what it has devoured.

39. That is why Christ teaches us and exhorts us to strive, to fight, to pass through this narrow gate; there is need for an extraordinary application, like that which Jacob showed in the execution of the commands which God gave him.

40. Do so; envelop yourself in the love of Jesus Christ; never let the will go out of His wounds; be firm in His promises, for God cannot lie; and do not let yourself be led into doubt by your heart.

41. For the wrath of God penetrates into your body and into your soul through His sharpness and tests to the bottom if you are well rooted in Jesus; and if it sees that it cannot overthrow Jesus in your heart, it finally surrenders and no longer exercises its sharpness.

42. Then weigh the dawn of the love of Jesus in your heart; she TRANSMUTES anger in the great Mercy, and I wish you, dear reader, to feel and enjoy this sapidity that I cannot render words.

43. The more the soul digs into it, the nearer it approaches God, until finally it stops before the Holy Trinity; then it reaches a deep knowledge.

44. Moreover the Spirit of God goes forth with the soul into the most external nature, and shows him, forward and backward, the generation of the One, as the majesty of the Ternary, through the Seven Forms; and the soul feels a much greater joy in this science than in all the treasures of the world.

45. For what can be more dear to a soul than God, eternal love, whose sweet savor surpasses all human understanding, to the degree that even the rhetorician or poet cannot, using all his art, express it.

46. Many souls will curse themselves on the day of Revelation, to have been so close to such a grace, to have pursued it to the end and not to profit from it.

47. The untrained soul will have a veil before the eyes, because in the FIGURE here represented the Father is in the eighth form, while in the wheels of eternal Nature is in the fourth.

48. For, in the said FIGURE, we begin with external Nature, where human life rolls and swirls from without to within.

49. The latter is threefold, as the exterior terrestrial; then comes the Astral-fiery-Life, of which they both participate; and the inner life with its root in the darkness is the point of origin of the spirit or interior light of life.

50. But when Eternal Nature is organized into forms, the first three are taken for the first PRINCIPLE; and Fire as the necessary generator of life.

51. This must also be understood of the SPIRITUS MUNDI which was given to the children of Israel on Mount Sinai by the laws of Moses, which is the nature of this Father, names in the igneous form a jealous and angry God and a consuming fire.

52. As in the fifth form of eternal Nature, God is called light of love.

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

53. Secondly, the unenlightened soul will find even a stone upon its path, if it believes that in the regenerated inner man the middle PRINCIPLE is that of the Light; we see in the corresponding figure that the igneous world is the center and the point of separation between the external temporal nature and the eternal interior nature.

54. The student must be assured that this figure reproduces well the order of eternal Nature in the interior; he will notice that the first PRINCIPLE, as an igneous root, presents itself as coming out of the center or rising from below; so the whole order develops like vegetation.

55. This is only given to simple, weak design and easily fatigued of search, because all this is full of CONFUSION.

56. When man tears his soul from the divine light, and when he lays his life in the outer constellation, his soul becomes the seven-headed red dragon, ridden by the prostitute of the constellation of outer understanding and fights the Most High in the abyss of Light, as explained in the next chapter.

57. But if the soul remains in humility, and if it derives from love the nourishment of its combustion, it becomes an angel of the Lord by whom His Majesty and Gentleness are manifested; it is engaged to the Sophia as it is said in the third chapter; it struggles with the dragon of the selfhood, and is constantly armed with the sword of the Spirit, and lives as a priest of God holily, modestly, and in abnegation.

SECOND CHAPTER

FOREWORD…

1. In the previous figure, which is the first our CENTRAL author illuminates, learn what Adam’s fall is, and how he breaks with God and the Yes.

2. It has become a personal ray, of foreign and false ESSENCE, which is called lying. It is Satan, the ancient serpent, in the heart of our first parents, and that accordingly our adorable Savior, who is our spirit and life, calls the priest of falsehood (John 8:44). This essence turns on itself, for good and evil, and reaches only the external sun.

3. The soul died internally, it became hell or acts eternal corruption.

4. So let man go far away and turn his courage towards God.

5. This is what he calls penance; the operation is in the heart, the prayers forcefully push him out of the infernal abyss, striking with violence at the gate of Heaven and attract him to praise in Faith.

6. This includes Regeneration; the spark of faith shines in the depths of the soul; the heart passes through the Fire of Anguish, into the holy burning of those who trust and surrender to God, and Jesus desires a stature in the heart.

7. With this, Faith in the force of Jesus bursts out all the power of Satan; and all the chains of anger and darkness, which keep the soul in the Forms of Nature, are broken, and the yoke of Satan is rejected.

8. This happens by death; Jesus shows us by His own that it will be necessary to undergo such agony, when our soul which extends with all its strength by prayer before God, has become itself the tree of the Cross.

OF THE NATURAL MAN

1. When the reader, friend of Wisdom, seeks God in his miracles and wants to contemplate in himself the occult Ternary, he must first of all return to himself and learn to know himself to the bottom in its genesis and its triple life, for it is in itself the eternal image of God according to the worlds of darkness and light.

2. And as these Three who are but one, are distinguished in their ESSENCES and their operations, this is the triple life of man, and it cannot be otherwise conceived, each one remaining in his own will, fire, or spirit.

3. Each fire has set its own CENTER and covets the particular food which is agreeable to it; and he takes no other, which is why men find different ways of living.

4. The exterior Life, engendered as a likeness of the interior or eternal world, has its CENTER in the outer heart, in the flesh and blood; it is common to all animals which only seek to feed and reproduce.

5. Its food is the constellation with its elements and the air that blows on the fire of the heart; this life has its radiance in the seven forms of external Nature, which give it intelligence, govern it and excite it, it has a beginning and a temporal end, and breaks even into the TINCTURE or the ESSENCE which resides in the Fire; but animals are not like that.

6. The Life of the soul emerges from the eternal interior Fire, which also has its CENTER in the heart, but more deeply; it is represented in the following figure by a dark GLOBE placed below the heart. It is the fiery Dragon or Spirit of this World; and is as united with the first life as man and woman; its root is in the Abyss.

7. It also begets seven statures but they produce only anguish, self-sufficiency, and vanity, as seen in devils and unregenerate men. These are the seven seals that the Devil imprints on the soul so that it does not perceive the love in the divine Fire, with which it should be comforted. (Apocalypse 5)

8. His food is partly of the ESSENCES of the outer body, partly of the stars and fiery elements of the Devil, namely sufficiency, the future, envy, anger, hypocrisy, crimes and all sins; His spirit is the angry breath of God, which impels and governs man.

9. According to the terrestrial body, it is the light of the sun which it uses; but in itself it operates out of the body, in a diabolical way, like cats, rats, mice and nocturnal animals.

10. In these two Lives, in the human form, the being is only a diabolical animal; it has a sweet or savage quality externally and according to the soul, it is only a disgusting worm.

11. For all self-will is a pure devil; and when the external life ceases, the soul finds itself in its will, acquired in the dark abyss with the devils.

12. The third life is the holy Life of Light; it is hidden, inactive and insensible in the natural man, its Fire is that of divine Love or where the will of the Regenerated burns.

13. This again starts from the fire of the heart; but has a deeper degree, as will be seen in the next chapter.

14. Its food is the celestial presence, flesh and blood of Christ; and its powers in the new body are humble love, gentleness, justice, truth, & etc. It also engenders the seven spiritual forms, but in humiliation and abasement.

15. Its action, its movement, is the Holy Spirit, the producer of celestial joy; for it gives to the Fire of the soul the fresh water of eternal Life to refresh and make Anguish a Jubilation.

16. This Spirit gives the rays of its TINCTURE to the external sensible Life and contains below and above the poisonous influences of the constellation and the Devil.

17. These two Fires (that of the Anger and that of Love) are eternal, and instilled from the Lord into Adam whose body was originally in a balanced TEMPERAMENT.

18. But as the Wrath desired to be manifest and become preponderant in Adam, they fought with the consent of the latter: such was his fall and separation from the MATRIX of water or light in human nature; such was the corruption of the paradisiacal body replaced during its sleep by the earthly body where diseases and death besiege.

19. Let us note that in the struggle of this triple life Adam aspired to the three PRINCIPLES because he wanted to taste and test their qualities: that is why God dismembered his life, as Christ clearly teaches (Luke 15:12-30).

20. Scripture says that all men come from a seed of sin; we have the same mode of appearing on this earth and disappearing as animals, with the difference that the soul of man comes from the Eternal.

21. That is why we are eternal, and the animals are perishable creatures of which only the shadow remains. But at the end of time we will be resurrected for judgment and eternal damnation or for eternal joy and splendor.

22. Since we know that God is just and truthful, that he cannot lie, let us open our eyes and no longer live like beasts, according to that flesh from which all our corruption comes.

23. Scripture reveals two kinds of Fire: one divine, lit from above in heaven; and another, foreign, lit in the earthly nature and the inferior elements by the hand of man.

24. The priests of the outer temple had to maintain the latter with wood: but God did not accept their offering and confounded them in his anger. (Numbers 16)

25. It is a very beautiful image of the two spiritual fires which are in us, that of Love and that of Wrath: that of the supernatural fire of God, descending from the interior heaven; and that of the natural fire of the creaturely property in the body and in the soul, excited by evil lust.

26. They are but one and differ only in pain, as seen in physical fire and light; both breathed by God into Adam; and the earthly lust and false desire of the first man separated them from each other as from the divine HARMONY.

27. They are now fighting in man, of his own seed; and the one who prevails, rules the form of the child in his mother’s womb, as the figures of Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob explain.

28. They produce two kinds of men, the good and evil; and this does not happen by a divine order as the understanding claims; the Holy Scriptures teach us that God created only one man. (Malachi 2 :15, Genesis 1)

29. Therefore, when Adam and Eve committed the offense relating to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that they had become utterly brutal and devilish according to the body and according to the soul, the eternal Word was enclosed in the MATRIX of Eve as re-creator and regenerator, and has replaced itself as an adversary of the Devil in the light of life.

30. From this opposition comes enmity and the combat between the seeds, (Genesis 3) so that from a father and a mother came out children of nature, AFFECTIONS and varied inclinations.

31. It is in order to expose all this to the reader with some detail that I wish to show him in the FIGURES the constitution of the triple man.

32. The first FIGURE represents the animal body. (For the paradisiacal body is destroyed and unknown.) The signs show the many forms of the elements that are manifested there.

33. Among them the bile and the gastric juice cause the stomach COCTION (alchemical term), and by the excess or defect of one or the other substance, the ARCHEES (used by Paracelsus, meaning principle/spiritual principle, also Greek Arche) is corrupted, and all sorts of diseases are declared in the body.

34. See our misery, in what decay life is imprisoned, and as death surrounds it on all sides; we do not know whether, in an instant, one or the other element will not rise in the body, blow out life, drown it, or dry the radical humidity.

35. However, we take care of this animal, we adorn it with furs and fabrics, we adorn it with jewels, pearls, gold and silver, we fill it with all sorts of exquisite food, and we often lose our poor soul because of him.

36. When we have reached this earthly paradise, death comes to give our body to be devoured by the earth and the worms, and the soul to the dark and infernal Fire; for many it arrives early and without being expected; and it does not go away without great anguish, as I have observed in the dying.

37. The Spirit of life of this earthly man is the air, with the seven Forms, terrestrial and SIDEREAL; His vision is the light of the sun; His CENTER is the eternal Darkness, which imprisons him if he does not arrive at the regeneration.

38. As the nourishment of man is entrusted to the great sidereal Spirit of the World and the elements, the latter employ with all their strength to obtain its direction.

39. But God has put the soul in the body to govern it, and has given to him as a helper his celestial Virgin, the wisdom of the light of life, that the soul may work and manifest the miracles of God in this world by way of the external Spirit as an INSTRUMENT: for the miracles of God are in the Soul of Fire.

40. The Soul of Fire has separated from her beloved helper, to be her own mistress and to do in this world her will; for she believed that the strength and power of miracles were proper to her.

41. This is exactly the fall of Adam, he would not multiply himself with the celestial Virgin and obey her; but he desired a female, like animals, wished to enjoy bodily fruits and terrestrial pleasures.

42. Then God put him to sleep, reunited the female MATRIX with the TINCTURE of light or water into a woman and FORMED, by means of the SPIRITUS MUNDI, her coarse body with limbs, as we are still today and as the FIGURE

43. Thus the external spirit of the world received the regency of Adam and Eve, in the Soul of fire, which it later led, with the falsehood of the serpent and his terrestrial desire, to the enjoyment of the forbidden fruit.

44. In this way we became, the children of this world, bent under the yoke of the Spirit of this world, who leads us by his insatiable hunger, as hard as Pharaoh ruled the children of Israel; so that we pursue honors, renown, splendor, voluptuousness and grandeur as if we were to live eternally in this world.

45. To this co-operates the insatiable hunger of souls, coming from the black abyss on which the world is raised; and it carries souls to brutal lust, crimes, robberies, and all perversities, fruits whose seed is in it, as is seen in the first generation of Cain.

46. The enemy of men has thrown his tares in under the good grain that grows till the harvest, God collects the harvest when in season, while tying the tares in bundles and throwing them into the fire.

47. Fire is a very good thing, and one cannot neglect it; it gives to men heat and light so that they can see in darkness, and it is necessary for them to cook and for all sorts of uses.

48. The divine Fire, when it burns in Love, is equally useful and good, and it cannot be dispensed with, because it gives man a way of seeing in darkness, it helps to produce the miracles of God and gives strength and power to light; carries the things of the Obscurity into the Being, which would be impossible to the light alone. It causes joy, contentment and joy in heaven, as well as pain in Darkness.

49. When it wants to devour, conserve and annihilate all that surrounds it, it is evil; it burns as long as it finds MATERIAL to nourish it; when it is extinct all that remains is black coal, ashes, and dust. For this, God created water that can preserve fire.

50. Likewise, the Fire of divine Wrath when, departing from its order, separates itself from the Light, wants to become clean and absorb all the good; when it is not extinguished, it devours the oily moisture so that the light is extinguished and the fire becomes a black deposit, as can be seen in the second Figure.

51. The signs of the planets represent the wheel of external Nature, the SIDEREAL body that winds within itself, even into the sun. Around the sun there is a serpent, which is the Devil in the SPIRITUS MUNDI, which introduces itself into our form of terrestrial life, unto the sun.

52. The circle or GLOBE that is around the sun represents the world of the Light that is hidden.

53. And the dark GLOBE drawn below indicates the soul of Fire or the wrath of God.

54. If this GLOBE was lit by the fire of divine Love, and it produced a clear light in the deepest part of the heart, the old serpent, Satan, would be precipitated into the darkness.

55. And you would be an angelic regenerated man, a child of the Light who would fight the flesh and blood, the Devil and the world, who would crucify his own will with all his works and follow Christ in his regeneration.

56. But now you are in a form of Antichrist and you hate the Light because your works are bad. It is your own irritable, creaturely Will that makes you perverse and damnable and not God; it is she (creaturely Will) who makes you walk and act according to her laws, which makes you disobedient to the Spirit of God and prevents you from being the betrothed to the celestial SOPHIA.

57. But who makes of you a personal humanimal who lives according to your pleasure and your conveniences of the external carnal life, without cross or opposition, which does not call the Christ, who feels neither hunger nor thirst for the celestial presence and who incessantly strives after honors and fortune.

58. Yes, answer the creaturely Will; I can do nothing without Christ, I cannot alienate by myself, nor give anything to God without his permission; if he wishes to lead me to battle against myself, let him arm me with the Spirit of prayer, that I may persevere. For whoever puts his hand to the plow and quits, is incapable of the kingdom of God. I prefer to remain in my simplicity than to strive towards superior things; I remain thus peaceful and tranquil; if I am not called at the sixth hour, God may call me to the eleventh; he who takes on the burden of a cross, must bear it; if God wants to give me one, he will know how to find me.

59. Response: All this is true, dear friend your opinion is very good; but you still demonize yourself, you cover your conscience with fig leaves, thinking that God does not see your egoism in such obscurity. If you did not know it, and if the Will of God had not been manifest to you, it would be necessary for you to be able to protect yourself from the Fire penetrating the Divine wrath.

60. You know, however, that it is not before the swineherd that God the Father hurries, but at the meeting of that converted Will, which conceives in his heart a desire and which is directed towards Him with deep humility; and although it is still far away, He embraces, kisses and dresses.

61. Your will sees very well that, even if it only conceives a desire towards God, that God would hurry to its aid and arm it with strength; but it loves itself too much and fears to lose its life according to the Flesh and the Blood.

62. It should desire to leave the stable of the Devil; lose its own Nature, die and find a violent adversary who precipitates it out of the dark igneous Root along with doubt, anguish, incredulity, impatience and anger.

63. Externally, it will be overwhelmed, whipped, hated, exceeded, debased, and despised, and regarded as mad by these pigs; as abandoned by God and men, it will be nailed to the cross and cry out; “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me”? Or where would natural life take its subsistence?

64. It is with such representations that the Devil immobilizes the majority of men; and although God calls them daily, at every hour, to his feast, one makes excuse because of his cattle, the other for his field, the third for the earthly marriage, and the fourth because he’ll be in need of many years before becoming pious.

65. God does not accept the egoistic Will; it is only an opponent and obscure demon in man, who belongs to hell and not to heaven.

66. But if man, who is still in charge of the bonds of flesh and blood, does not want to pass the Fire of Anguish of divine Wrath and allow it to consume his egoism, he will have to undergo the test after his earthly life; and it will no longer be so sweet. Who has ear to hear, let him hear.

67. God has inspired in the avaricious man free will, the seven Forms to produce the eternal Trinity and Divine Wisdom; He has commanded the understanding, with the five senses for external help; so that free will reigns in every creature and that the wonders of God are manifested.

68. But the object of this will is to submit to and obey the Creator, to be open humbly to the abyss of the Divine Light for what it wants to work and reveal; The Will must eat faithfully the WORD of the Lord, as the flesh and Christ’s blood of the inner man; and not feed on terrestrial fruits from the outer body.

69. Thus this divine Liberty separated itself from the Abyss of Light in you, becoming a God, and now reigns with its Forms of external Nature, over the understanding and the senses; directs the soul, fights and contradicts God in the innermost depths, doing what pleases it, and what is agreeable to the flesh, is a Devil, a fire dragon and a serpent, whom God must fight with his strong Irascible Power, capture, submit, pulverize and reject.

70. But that God, by His Holy spirit, comes inwardly to the aid of the poor soul who is a prisoner, and awakens in it His Fire of Love so that it may reach towards a clear splendor so that the Will of self can come to see the hideousness of the dragon.

71. This Will, gives by its false lusts of the flesh so much moisture to the Fire of the Soul, that it is suffocated and cannot be consumed in divine love.

72. If God calls him by His regenerated children and disciples, to penance and conversion, if the presence of the Lord is announced to him, he excuses himself as having received another mission for which God will perform wonders.

73. The members of the body, he says, are not a single whole, they are capable of a multitude of movements, and each performs its particular function.

74. He encloses himself, and closes the gates of the soul to the divine voice, so that it is not heard in his rest and physical regime.

75. Who will punish and convince this egoistic god?
    He lives in a beautiful animal, in a human form; he seems pious to the outside, honorable and devout, goes to the churches, receives communion, honors the masters and the poor, boasts of being Christian and predestined to beatitude, or he hopes for celestial graces.

76. He knows how to expound on Scripture as well as the Masters; he often goes far enough to leave the exterior church, to judge its decline, and to become acquainted with the true pupils of Christ, whose hidden life and language he imitates; he circles himself outside and leaves his wife or does not marry; and he speaks of the nuptial bed and the marriage of Sophia with the believing soul.

77. It is, however, only a beast rising from the Abyss of Darkness; it speaks like the Lamb and is only the ape of Divine Wisdom who mocks her children and all honest creatures.

78. He puts on his forehead the sign of Jesus and is only a liar; the true Christian, who possesses in truth a humble and equanimous will, placed in the ESSENTIAL PROCESS of Christ, loves poverty, the only sign and touchstone of the true disciple, more than all the treasures of Egypt.

79. I feel very well the diabolical adversity in my creaturely ego; it willingly hides in the man and does not like to be stifled; but I let the One who reigns act.

80. For the self-Will loves so much, and makes man so blind that he can no longer know divine love, nor distinguish it from personal love; and he imagines, when one touches his egoism with a single word, that one attacks the apple of the eye of God, and he would willingly shake the fire of heaven to annihilate the audacious.

81. But your own Will is not the prophet of God, Elijah, who was subject to the Spirit of God; it is simply a will of the Devil who has enthroned himself in your Light of Life, as in a temple of God, and reigns over all that is divine, believing himself to be God.

82. The blind reason is addressed in these terms to the self Will: If all men walked in the footsteps of Christ and followed him uniformly, the world could no longer stand, because there would be no more food.

83. But, dear reason, six hundred thousand men, not counting women and children, came out of Egypt; yet they did not lack food. The first Christians sold their fields and put everything in common, and Jerusalem remained standing.

84. It will be said to the self Will that it must possess as if it did not possess; and if God sends riches, let him not shut them up in his chests, saying, this is my good and that of my children, I will live on that, I will do with it what I will, and I will leave these treasures to my children.

85. But must say: Lord, this is your good and that of your poor children; I offer it to you again, and will leave the crumbs falling from its table to the poor. Thus the poor will be able to go without worry and to serious spiritual service of God and prayer, and to bring benedictions on the head of the charitable donors.

86. Christ and his teachings are in no way the cause that the rich become poor, that food is lacking, and that the world is shaken; it is you, blind reason, which is the sole cause of evil, by inverting the clear precepts of the lessons of Christ to strengthen personal desires.

87. You say that one could serve two masters at a time, gather treasures and pursue thieves, feasting and criticizing the rich; that nothing should be given to the poor, so that he may not be strengthened in his idleness or HIS PHANTASY; and you fill the well of Abraham.

88. For this reason, the self-Will, consolidated in its egoism, takes for itself all the riches of the earth, to keep as its own, despises the poor and behaves like sloth;

89. It paralyzes the poor members of Christ and the fight against God’s wrath, so that they are obliged to call God to their aid.

90. Thus the justice of God is often awakened, it’s a secret enemy to you, changes your apparent benediction into malediction, so that you must maintain thousands of soldiers, to protect your Mammon, to prevent the enemy from falling on you, take your all, and make you like one of these poor Christians.

91. Let not the rich of this world be proud, let them not trust in the uncertain riches, but in the living God, let them do good, and good works, which they gladly give, they will gather up treasures for the future, and receive eternal life. (Paul 1 Timothy 6)

92. The blessing of God, through his munificence, enriches without work: for God loves the giving and he will return even a glass of cold water.

93. Christ, speaking of his future judgment (Matthew 25), also tells us that he will put the poor on his right hand and the rich on his left, saying: I was hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and prisoner, and this whether you have done it or not to my poor members, you have done it or not to me; and he will give to each one reward according to his works.

94. To this, reason replies: If the rich were to support the poor, they would fall into misery themselves and could no longer share anything. To this Tauler [Note: German Johannes Tauler 1300 – 1361] answers that if the rich went so far, they would be in the poverty of Christ who would take care of them and provide for their needs.

95. But I answer that reason is blind and does not know the poverty of Christ nor distinguishes it from the poverty of the world. For the poor of Christ are the faithful Christians who are poor only for the love of their Master, and who value this poverty more than all the treasures of the world.

96. And even if you would give to a faithful Christian all the jewels of your Mammon, he would not accept them, because he lives in a complete abnegation of all earthly goods, that he is the blessed poor, rich in divinity, what a poor temporal will not be.

97. A believer does not make himself poor, but the world pursues him, takes everything from him, expatriates him, and thus puts him in the real poverty of Jesus, so that he can neither buy nor sell in this world.

98. Thus oppressed, though joyfully and freely, he becomes a disciple of Christ, and seeks the kingdom of God in firm trust, and God will clothe him and give him his food.

99. He must guard himself in this faith, without turning back, to the end, without which confidence will be withdrawn, he will have to beg and become a slave to the world and his belly.

100. If God did not care for such children and such faithful hosts, he would be worse than a pagan and a wild beast, feeding his young.

101. A poor temporal disbeliever, who, unfortunately, has fallen into misery, is occupied only with material bread, and when he has it, he is content and esteems himself happy, but he knows nothing about God.

102. A believer keeps the commandments of God, and neither covets the good of his rich neighbor, nor asks him for help; and if he does so, according to reason, he will draw nothing from it.

103. For God desires to have alone the honor of helping those who pray to Him; He will wear a Habakkuk by the hair in Daniel’s lion’s den, where he will send a sweet and angelic man who will provide for Christ’s poverty.

104. A poor temporal disbeliever courts the rich excessively; for he has nothing to hope from the poor, and the rich do not willingly give because they can enrich the poor.

105. A believing Christian disregards all confidence in men, even in himself, for God has forbidden it: A poor, temporal disbeliever has no other God or help than the rich in this world.

106. A poor faithful Christian is a consecrated priest of God and of the Temple of the Holy Spirit, where the Lord dwells: His work is to pray constantly in the Spirit and in the Truth, both for the land he inhabits and for all men, let them be brought to the truth by the descent of the Holy Spirit.

107. He must help his brothers to fight, to fight and to triumph; it is impossible for him to serve two masters at the same time, and use his senses for food, for he is unfit for all external works.

108. That is why he must guard and live with moderation, give constant attention to the movements of the Holy Spirit in his heart, in order to hear what the Lord says to him; but a poor temporal man is occupied only with the things of this world.

109. Where are such Christians, asks reason? I would gladly see one. I recognize that they are very thinly scattered in our time, and that they can easily be counted.

110. It would not have been necessary, poor reason, that you exhort your rich listeners and partisans to close their chests and hands, and leave all the few to starve.

111. I also hope that God will not count your blindness, of which you have thought of ridding yourself; because you have been useful to us, you have excited the fire of our prayers and exercised our faith, our love, our hope and our patience.

112. If you want to see these faithful Christians, drink the chalice we have drunk, be baptized with the anointing we have received. Externally, we are miserable and sinful, like everybody else; but the inner man is hidden in God and remains hidden from all understanding.

113. I had proposed to no longer be acquainted with any man, because I feared this reason which is now the queen of the world, and who wishes to govern everything, and that I foresaw strong combats coming from relationships.

114. But I bowed before the Spirit of God who directed my life and traverses against my will and reveals to me in my prayer as a good friend.

115. I have to thank the Most High who has snatched my life from the vengeance of death and hell and from my hatred of all men, and in this fierce struggle against God and men, has not let me succumb.

116. But it is sad that out of thirty there was one who remained firm, who placed his faith in Jesus, and who alone can celebrate the omnipotence of the love of God.

117. Reason says: Since you celebrate such a high apostolic life, why do you not go and preach the Gospel instead of staying in retirement?

118. Yes, dear reason, you said well. You would be the first, if we preached to you and if we told you: Leave your house and follow us, who would refuse?

119. We have no order to leave; we are called, and we must remain in the Will of the Creator to accomplish what pleases him, as his INSTRUMENT. [Note: “as his INSTRUMENT.” This is a very important and unique distinction, especially among those pietists who were called Inspirationists; and communities they planted in the New World, as early as Ephrata in Pennsylvania, up to as late as the Amana communities in Iowa. The notion here was that the inspired preceptors of such communities were wholly submitted ‘tools’ in the Hand of God; capable of being ‘moved’ solely to accomplish his specific design, as, and when, He chose to ‘apply’ them for this purpose.]

120. The proper authority, though sincere, serves no purpose and acts only against the divine will. A detached and peaceful will is more useful and agreeable to God than will acting by itself.

121. We want nothing but what God wants; we leave reason to say what pleases it, for we know that it is blind in divine things.

122. We know that God is good, that all he has done is good, and that consequently he cannot in any way excuse our perversity and Will which we have rendered egoistic and that he has given us free and divine;

123. Who is now diabolical, compared to the Spirit by the pen of Daniel and John, has ferocious animals, has horrible dragons, and has venomous serpents; it is certainly not the result of hatred, envy or bitterness.

124. But it came out of a cordial love, so that the poor children of Eve might one day learn to know one another, conceive hatred, disgust and horror for themselves, and come back as the prodigal son to the house of our celestial Father.

125. Though we rise in the love of God, and wish to see in heaven all the damned souls with the devil, which I do not oppose, such a thing is neither In the omnipotence of God, neither in our will, but in that of these souls and devils, when they have conceived a desire for humility, they will tend to be delivered from the depths of wrath. [Note: This is known as the “Restitution of All Things”; an open-ended belief in the possibility that even ‘damned’ spirits can still give over and finally surrender their hitherto-perverse will, in acknowledgment that only God can truly help them now! The net result of this would be a final ‘Re-absorption of All’ into Although Gichtel leans compassionately towards this possibility, which was adopted by many of Boehme’s later disciples; ultimately like Boehme himself, he remains highly doubtful, and provides the reasons why in what follows here.]

126. However, I believe that there is no possible change in what is eternal. I do not speak of those who hang onto the thread and pass through the MAGIC Fire of the Wrath at the price of inexpressible pains;

127. But of those for whom intercession will have no effect and who do not to know how to soften: They will deny, curse and flee from God. Their Will would have no place in the judgments of God; therefore it is necessary to be at peace with Him, for He is just and true.

128. And though, according to 1 Peter 3:19, one wishes to hope some relief for the hells, because Christ has preached to imprisoned spirits; I acknowledge that I had been in spirit in this prison between Time and Eternity and in the Hell of Devils, but I found the two greatly different.

129. For in the prison between Time and Eternity there is no anguish, neither darkness nor light, but a twilight. In a Hell, there are terrible torments which immediately force the soul to doubt and to the negation of God.

130. For my sojourn in this place lasted only six hours, and if God had not kept my tongue, I would have denied Him forever.

131. I must not hide either how God, in the agony of great sinners, whom I witnessed, showed me that Christ follows the soul until it separates from the body.

132. And when the soul reaches the boundary of the igneous eighth form, or holds Moses with his law, and the Devil reads to the soul the register of his sins, Christ is the mediator and the intercessor of the soul, So that it may still receive a glance of grace and preserve a glimmer of hope.

133. But I do not advise anyone to sin, for when the wrath of God is excited, it burns inexorably, as one sees the semblance in the natural fire; the more it is given wood and oil, the better it burns; as well each one stands to be warned.

134. If we notice how all the religions of the world sharpen the mind, making it a pleasant way to Paradise to bring it into divine splendor without dying to itself and without following Christ, we see Combat of the three PRINCIPLES to obtain the government of the soul.

135. Hence the blindness and great egoism of the natural man, who believes that his opinions and theories are those of God, and follows them instead of listening to the words and orders of Above.

136. I do not speak here of the pagans who never heard of Christ: one thinks thus today among Christians; each one lives and dies, reasoning according to his ideas and believes he comes to heaven without regeneration or the death of his self, as his blind masters have taught him.

137. Out of pity for our misery, God has given us the grace to reveal to us, through a simple and ignorant layman, Jacob Boehme, the deep abyss of the THREE PRINCIPLES, the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil and of the fall of LUCIFER and Adam that resulted.

138. These notions have inflamed many souls who have searched to find the little pearl; and some of them have found it here or there, which has vowed them to love and prayer.

139. These writings fell into my hands for the first time, a few years after my awakening; they were very useful to me in my first combat.

140. One may be wondering that the zeal of the primitive Church has so rapidly vanished and that one falls back from the rejection of earthly goods to an egoistic acceptance.

141. I can never thank my God enough to have led me, the most unworthy, into the very poverty of Christ, and who has opened my retreat by PRACTICE, although it is despised by men who lack a burning love for Christ Jesus.

142. We must be subject to him and obey him as our chief, our king, our eternal betrothed; And we must love him above all things; for if there is no uniformity, there can be no unity and HARMONY.

143. We know from the Scriptures how, through the light of Nature, Adam turned his free will from his Creator to the Spirit of this world, and coveted the treasures and splendor, inculcating such envy and making us enslaved to the world and children of the darkness.

144. We gather our bread by the sweat of our brow, and spend our lives in fatigue, anguish, need, pain, until we finally leave everything to go into eternal darkness and become children of Hell.

145. Let us return, therefore, and call Jesus, who has come down from his Father to help us, to extract our creaturely will from all terrestrial desires and turn it to his Father, and be subjected to it until the death of the Cross.

146. He taught us that if we wanted to be His DISCIPLES, we must renounce all earthly desires, take up our cross and follow him: and this instruction is addressed not only to the Apostles but to all Christians.

147. The first Christians PRACTICED this commandment and thus testified that they loved Christ and kept His law.

148. From it flows all His teaching; “blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs”, “No one can serve two masters at a time”, “Look at the birds of Heaven: they do not sow or reap, but your heavenly Father feeds them.”

149. “Seek in the first place the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all the rest will be given to you in addition”, “do not have worry, the Father takes care of you”, “seek treasures which remain eternally”, etc.

150. This life according to faith is rare today, I readily admit; it is true that we are like unbelieving heathens; yet our incredulity does not go beyond faith in God.

151. This is why I was afraid of being known to men because I saw that Christ’s poverty would overthrow all worldly life on the ground and provoke violent conflicts and contradictions, as if everyone wanted to rush against this cornerstone, Saying, Who can live like that?

152. They judged Christ-like poverty and its practitioners as the most dangerous sophists the world ever had, seriously damaging to the better-settled REPUBLICS; the bell was well melted, but the clapper was missing.

153. This tempest did not exert us much, and it carried us to prayer, because the Devil had thought we could be vanquished.

154. Reason can torture Scripture and derive false interpretations; the life and the lessons of Christ remain however quite opposed to the Adamic Natural Life; and he who possesses something in his will cannot be a true regenerated Christian.

155. For in possession nests the egoism which has seduced Adam. It must be complemented, or it will be thrown into Hell, to which it belongs. Christ lived on earth on alms, and had nothing for himself, not even to rest his head on.

156. But, replies the reason: if all men were so poor, who would support them? Listen, reason, the teaching of Christ, do not chase the unjust Mammon and do not exceed moderate use.

157. Christ calls the rich householders and He has commanded them to give in due time and according to their needs to His poor servants; the latter do not ask for more.

158. And he who says: this is my property and that is my property, steals from God, and will have to render his accounts. God has created everything for common use and not for pride and comfort.

159. And those rich who have shut up the riches of God in their coffers, who have not helped the poor Christians at the right time, will hear with terror these words: “Depart from me, cursed, go to the eternal fire, which is prepared for you and for all the devils.”

160. As long as a faithful owns, he cannot confide in God with all his heart, he cannot penetrate to firm and living faith, nor be freed from the regime of the Spirit of this World; this seems to the rich a PARADOX, but the poor believers understand it very well.

161. Christ’s poverty is the consolidation of celestial Wisdom and the clothing which wraps around it. Anyone who wishes to go to it must first become poor. This poverty is the treasure hidden from all the riches, powers, knowledge and MYSTERIES of God. A fool despises it, but a sage holds it in high esteem; the entire terrestrial Mammon is mud in front of it.

162. I speak without pride, and in truth; the Lord is my witness: If the goods of the whole world were to be offered to me in exchange for the poverty of Christ, I would not want them. It keeps one from distraction and vanity, and it is a divine Fire which awakens and excites incessantly to love and prayer.

163. God is so intimately connected with His poor that He cannot abandon them: angels, men, and crows must serve them. God does not let them beg, as the Spirit of the World does to his poor infidels, whom he often rejects like dogs.

164. God always awakens beneficent hearts who care for the faithful. We cannot know the Poor according to Christ, because externally they appear rich, and thus remain covered by all reason.

165. Men blush at the poverty of Christ and regard it as a shame; but the Lord will also blush at them before his celestial Father.

166. I have never asked for money from any rich man, nor have I ever prostrated myself before Mammon; but I have freely witnessed the Truth, I have stigmatized the Unjust, and I was loved by the rich more than I deserved.

167. When I lived in the world and served its SPIRIT, I was obliged to do what it wanted; but when the grace of God had seized me from within and I had been reprimanded and punished with life according to the world, it took away my food, took everything from me, and did not leave a shirt, like bring trampled under feet.

168. He thereby lost his authority; for I have served the holy will of God, I have borne my pain; and when it saw its defeat, it pressed me earnestly and pushed me beyond measure, but by the grace of God could not take me into its heaven of Venus.

169. It became violently irritated deployed its strength to starve the poverty of Christ. But God wisely foiled it. To God be eternally glory, honor, praise and thanks, power, kingdom, strength and authority. Amen!

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

THIRD CHAPTER

FORWARD…

1. In the central FIGURE, which is the second of our author’s, appears the result to which the faithful arrives through the Forms of exterior Nature (which include the dark world and three eternal forms of the CENTER OF NATURE) At the POINT median, in the heart.

2. Jesus rises in the heart, the dark matrix bursts, and in our heart stretches out his kingdom; The beginning and the future of Him who is designated by God as the conqueror of the serpent, develops the infinite, in us, with the holy genesis of the Light; he constantly crushes the head of Satan, the ancient serpent, and throws into the Abyss that venomous beast.

3. A new world arises in the will, the prodigal son, the soul, returns to his Father; it is accepted in the heart of God, in this TINCTURE of interior and divine light, and Jesus dresses it with a new garment, innocence (Luke 15:22).

4. That Satan envied him, as he did to our first parents; and he kindles the soul internally and externally in the Forms of Dark Nature; he also experiences it in the Form of Fire; and to which it must resist by unshakeable faith.

5. It is a very long battle; Love and Anger urge it mutually, and Angers it to manifest Love, by leading it through the ten forms of the inner vital Fire so that one sores to that Love that is God and all powerful, that anger is only Nature, which must restore its strength to the Love, so that the two may be but one ESSENCE and one Being.

6. Thus the Divinity dwells in the Spirit; The Father and the Son embrace each other in the regenerated humanity: the Father gives up the Son to humanity, and the latter marries Jesus in the Virgin of his wisdom; Satan tempts like lightning from Heaven on Earth, it is rejected, and we overcome it easily in all circumstances.

OF THE REGENERATED MAN

1. The benevolent reader must know that I do not speak from books or my own reasoning; but from my experience; and here I have great difficulty in writing because the man of whom I shall speak of is spiritual and very occult; it cannot be described by natural FIGURES or by a terrestrial tongue.

2. I must use natural similarities. Thus the benevolent reader must meditate by himself until he has attained intelligence.

3. And as he might desire to recognize himself and to contemplate himself in the light of divine wisdom, that he is interiorized with ardent application, in the most profound CENTER of his soul, that he prays without ceasing, that he calls the Holy Spirit, and that he surrenders himself entirely to It with all that he possesses, in body, soul, and spirit; taking the firmest resolution not to weaken in poverty, need, pain or death, but to follow God to the end, with the same firmness, as I myself did.

4. So I have no doubt that God will listen to his prayer in the name of Jesus, and will give him what his heart has asked of Him.

5. The new body is as different from the old as the resplendent sun from the dark earth; and though it is held in the old body, it is inconceivable, though sometimes sensible.

6. It cannot be properly represented by images of suns or stars; and it is also impossible to look at it, as our physical eye cannot fix on the midday sun.

7. And if this were to be the appearance of Christ after his resurrection, it would be necessary to remark that he was not yet transfigured.

8. The story of Paul in Damascus shows us how he was blinded by the brightness of the body of Christ. This is to silence my own experience.

9. As the light of the sun behaves towards the stars, thus make our bodies new with respect to that of Christ; he is the sun, we are his stars, the same flesh, the same being; the more we imitate his sufferings and his life, the more brilliant and luminous we are.

10. I can only compare the forces of this body with the colors of the most brilliant jewels: diamonds, rubies, hyacinths, jaspers, etc.

11. Who by the crossing of their multicolored fires offer a magnificent spectacle, which dazzles the angels themselves and which language cannot express: for we have only terrestrial analogies which are only the shadow of the celestial realities.

12. Ah! That men are mad to despise this eternal magnificence for a handful of passing carnal pleasures.

13. This body is derived from the Word of God, or from the celestial Sophia, which emerges from the sacred interior fire of Love and which desire or faith makes present or conceivable. And all this is spiritual, more SUBTLE than air, like the sun’s rays which penetrate all BODIES.

14. This celestial Presence of the new spiritual life attracts the soul by its powerful desire, in its igneous ESSENCE, as the Fiancé calls its fiancée, and emanates in the world of Light a high TRIAMPHANT lucidity, clear and white, from the deepest of the soul.

15. Then the Holy Spirit goes out to eternal Wisdom and helps the outer life to produce, train and perfect its earthly bread and what it needs.

16. And this is the holy eternal generation of the three PRINCIPLES, the Father, the Son, the Spirit and the Wisdom, in the regenerated man; and it is not only bread that I mean, as you think, poor blind reason; you will never grasp this profound MYSTERY because you are not worthy to understand it.

17. For you seek only this world, you only think to fill your coffers and leave what is superfluous to your children. It would be much better if you tried to make them pious.

18. The rich pious are equally blind and punishable, although they have good notions; by helping their carnal friends, they strengthen in them their wickedness and in their laziness, and fortify themselves with the demon of Egoism.

19. Let them not expect either praise or thanks from these unbelieving friends or from God;

20. For man will not be judged according to his opinion, but according to the KNOWLEDGE which God has given him, as the Lord himself declares (Luke 12:47 and James 4:17)

21. I hope that this fraternal and cordial warning will not be taken in bad part: for we must let our light shine, without considering whom it enlightens and on whom it pronounces its judgment.

22. Certainly a firmly resigned will, where God may want, to form and create what pleases Him, is dear to Him, and He manifests amicably to it, but hates self-will, though it did many good works; for it would act without the Unity.

23. The enlightened and experienced reader does not need our writing; for he possesses in him his instructor and his conductor; and it is not for him that we write.

24. But we must enlighten our inexperienced and untrained soul, and tell it what the Regeneration is; what PROCESS takes place between God and the new Adam and how the new man must go from one degree to the other until his new body has attained its full development.

25. Let us not forget that we are not receiving a new soul from the Regeneration, but a new body; So that the soul does not need a new birth, but simply a renewal and a conversion from the exterior to the interior, so that there is RENOVATION by pure divinity.

26. The old carcass is and remains fragile, and gives by its perpetual hunger as much trouble as manure deposits on a field to make the wheat grow.

27. It exhausts all the ammunition of the soul, gives it poverty, anguish, grief and sorrow, so that it can no longer find joy, nor rest in the external life of friendship, it becomes sad and grieves over the fatigues of earthly life and the variety of things, and begins to think of the house of its Father.

28. And if this bearer of anguish was not there, the wonders of God’s wisdom could not be seen, and the prayers of the faithful could not arise with ardor and fervor.

29. To this end, Christ leads his disciples into his holy poverty, makes them despair, banishes and persecutes and does not leave them enough to rest their heads; so that they may place their trust in God, and believe in the promise they have received, that the Father watch over them.

30. Poverty and need teach to call, cry, and pray to God for the strengthening of faith; this is what the disciples of Christ understand best.

31. Although the rich do not believe it, this is however the truth, and it would prove itself if only they were deprived of food for a day; incredulity, doubt, ingratitude, anguish, grief would take possession of their souls, and they would cry out; “Where to find bread in this desert?” As Moses says (Numbers 11:13)

32. We poor men do not know how deeply we are buried in the spiritus mundi; and in what impiousness we live; we often imagine ourselves to have strong faith, but we do not trust God for a piece of bread; we are afraid to have to love God, and to learn confidence, while we should fear Him above all else.

33. I have sufficiently recognized my weakness and felt the palpitations of my heart, until by the many exercises the small shrub of my faith has developed into a robust tree, capable of resisting all the tempests of the Devil and reason.

34. When the soul is converted into the body, it turns its back to the light of the Sun, and raises its face toward God in the interior Light of the World; it receives at once new meanings, although it is still engaged in the darkness.

35. It recognizes at first its bewilderment, its flight from the paternal house, and the excesses of its amorous life with worldly courtesans; falls on its knees, humbles before the heavenly Father who dwells in the Secret Light, and wishes to pray in spirit; it cannot yet, because it can only pray with books and does not understand the true prayer in spirit and truth.

36. The Holy Spirit is sent to it in a sensible movement of the heart, as the dove indicates in this FIGURE; this movement seems strange to the soul because it does not yet know God, it is astonished and concerned.

37. The devil, observing all this, slips into the temperament in haste, and seeks to put doubt into the soul by false suggestions; thus, at this period of my life, the Devil wanted me to believe that it was he who possessed me.

38. My soul was frightened, and having ceased my prayer, I took the New Testament to find some reading proper for chasing these evil thoughts.

39. And having opened it, the words of Paul (1 Corinthians 6:19), fell before my eyes: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, received from God, and you are not your own.”

40. These words caused me the deepest admiration, for I had been, since my youth, seeking God outside of myself, having often spent the days in the country, or hiding in an cave, contemplating heaven and desiring to speak to God, like Moses, David and other men of God.

41. But no God wanted to appear to me, and I went home very grieved; or else I took my prayer book, I opened the window, or went outdoors, so that the formulas could rise freely to Heaven; and I remained blind for twenty-six years.

42. Having immediately closed my New Testament, I fell on my knees to thank God for this grace, which flowed so abundantly that it lasted five hours, and I am amazed at the richness of this blessing.

43. I immediately tied my heart to Christ and abandoned myself entirely to him with body, soul and spirit, consenting to bear all the crosses he would send me, on the condition that He would not leave me alone, because I was like a little child, unable to distinguish my right from left.

44. My dear Savior kindly accepted my prayer and gave me drink of the whole cup, sweet to the mouth but very bitter to the body.

45. He never left me alone; he has faithfully saved me in all trials, diseases, poverty, pursuits, and sorrows. May He receive honor, praise, and gratitude for eternity.

46. I was illuminated little by little by the divine knowledge which led to punish a disordered life, to show me the Priests, who sounded the alarm and denounced me to the authorities as an enthusiastic, a lunatic, a heretic, and an Anabaptist.

47. They laughed and taunted, outraged and shamed; causing me to be dragged into the streets by the sergeants, and wishing to have me beheaded; but as they could not agree, they abandoned it all at once, and banished me from the city, in perpetuity.

48. Then I was shut up in an infected dungeon, the Devil TRIED his first assault, and struck me with such terrible doubts that I was on the point of taking a knife to myself in order to be delivered from this sorrow, and my miserable life.

49. This combat was so fierce and so violent that the skin of my knees were torn from me as I crawled on the ground, without my realizing it, because of my inner anguish, for the Devil sowed doubt in all my prayers.

50. Having passed all day in tears, I sang this Lutheran psalm “If God was with us,” I was suddenly struck by the spirit, and fell to the ground.

51. I saw in my heart a white light, with a large serpent around it, twisting three times on itself like a braid; in the midst of a clarity appeared Christ in the form described in Apocalypse of John (1:13, 14, 15)

52. He said with a great sigh: “If Grace was not my consolation, o God, I would expiate the pain!”

53. Scarcely were these words pronounced, as by a formidable shock, the serpent was crushed and reduced into small pieces, which I saw fall into the obscure vapors.

54. I then returned to myself and felt a remarkable alleviation and consolation in my prayer; as is shown in this FIGURE.

55. This expulsion from the house of Egyptian slavery is only the first step in the desert of the test for the unbelieving reason, which is not satisfied with the poverty of Christ; it is ashamed of begging, and regrets the meat, garlic, and onions of Egypt; then the Devil awakens incredulity, mistrust and doubt.

56. Faith which is still in the heart only as a little mustard seed cannot do much against the tempest; then comes the rumblings and the whispers, and the soul forcefully sighs.

57. But God sends admirable helpers if man will pray; I have experienced it myself, although the details are too long to say.

58. I will, however, caution the reader against two difficult temptations, which have caused many to fall before my eyes.

59. The first consists of this: When the soul is expelled from the house of bondage by the Spirit of this world, and is placed in Christian poverty to work in the vineyards of the Lord, to satisfy its earthly hunger with divine promises , to Imagine, to form and to create with the assistance of his fiancé and faithful helper, Jesus, through prayer, faith and supplication, the satisfaction of his needs in the inner heaven, so that the same thing happens on earth and be sent to him by pious and beneficent hearts:

60. Then the soul returns to Egypt for its terrestrial reason, and accepts, seizes and assimilates what it receives in the CASUAL as a divine sending and not as a diabolical test; it does not pray with application, instead from fearing the tempter and keeping itself exactly in the path of Christ.

61. Thus many valiant souls have been deceived, who afterwards have wept and complained bitterly: “Ah, if I had not fallen for that. Alas! If I had been faithful!” but the evil is done, and there is nothing more to change.

62. For the celestial Virgin then locks herself in her CENTER and lets the soul knock and wait in vain.

63. And although the understanding has received a ray of divine light, so that it conquers the MYSTERIES and that its mouth can speak of it, the imaginative, formative, and creative power is gone; and there remains only an empty barrel.

64. The Devil also calls for the love of God; but take heed lest he swallow you up, and take possession of your house, for he has great envy.

65. And when he enters anywhere, he takes with him seven spirits, more wicked than he, and he binds your soul and temperament in the seven forms of Nature, so that afterwards you do not get away easily. So keep what you have.

66. The other temptation is even more difficult and corrupting: When the soul, lighted by divine fire, burns with a clear flame and produces a beautiful light, where the celestial Virgin rises triumphant in the temperament, and kisses her dear fiancé with her soft rays of light in the igneous soul, when it transmits all its forces to manifest and realize the marvels of God by the powerful desire of prayer, it becomes present and appears in the Heaven singing a hymn of praise:

67. The soul leaves humility and equanimity and then returns to self-love, thinking that it is its own Fire that can work and produce these miracles, and not the igneous MAGIC and its own prayer: Rising high above the Thrones, wants to be something and becomes a proud and egoistic devil who, under the pretext of divine justice, wants to bend everything at its feet, pursuing that which does not submit to the hour by fire and sword, cursing and condemning it to hell.

68. The dear Virgin is offended and grieved at this, for she cannot come to the aid of her fiancé!

69. For when she wishes to introduce her gentle rays of light into the Fire of this soul, in order to soften it, the soul becomes only more igneous, more arrogant, and more exalted, resisting with all its might the soft light, leaving nothing in it that can dampen its sharpness.

70. It considers all gentleness as hypocrisy and rejects all that is not igneous; it covers all this with the MYSTERY OF STUPIDITY and calls it justice and judgment of God; it is, nevertheless, under this exterior, only a proud and arrogant devil.

71. When the dear Virgen Sophia sees that her fiancé cannot be cured by her love and sweetness, she withdraws into her PRINCIPLE of light, obscures the fire of the soul, drops it into sin and madness, and gives it a corporeal woman in order to alleviate the great fire of the terrestrial water, so that the spirit may have something to play with in its fantasy and that by this bond it is no longer allowed to soar.

72. I have been stung and burned by such an igneous spirit; for I had no experience and did not know the Devil; I thought it worthy to be divine, and thought I ought to bow beneath his DIRECTION, and obey his orders as a novice soldier.

73. But the good God had compassion for my simplicity and liberated me in time; for that, I am eternally grateful.

74. That is why I warn the reader; for it is much better to be instructed by the misfortunes of another than by his own.

75. Without fire, nothing great or small can happen in the external Nature or in the interior, it is certain that where there is a great fire, there will be a great light; it is very useful when it burns in humility, that it does not leave its order to devour and consume all that is around him.

76. If Lucifer in Heaven and Adam in the Paradise had observed this, it would remain an Angel, and this man heavenly.

FOURTH CHAPTER

FORWARD…

1. Here are the third and fourth FIGURES of the author, which have been placed at the head of the book, because they represent the first image of God in the perfect regeneration by Christ, with the BREASTPLATE of the two eternal PRINCIPLES, the Urim and Thummim, the light and perfection of the Spirit, with the VESTMENT and the royal mantle of the kingdom of JESUS on the outer PRINCIPLE; Read Isaiah 9: 6

2. The reader can see, from the beginning, what the AUTHOR means throughout this book, to depict externally in Jesus that image which is in each of us, according to St. Paul.

3. It is the divine primitive order according to which the CENTERS are located in the new man; the first and the second PRINCIPLE in front; the third in the temperament.

4. All three have their origin in the heart, and plunge into each other for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so that the world of the Light declares itself above, and that of the Fire below.

5. The world of Air, which is seen along the back, is the product of the first two; it receives in its union their powers, and it shines when the King appears in his magnificence; it is then like the brilliance of a multitude of gems; this is the Celestial Jerusalem (Rev. 21). All the forces act in concert and play through each other their virtues and their light, like a Sea of Crystal, of which the AUTHOR has already spoken a word.

6. When Jesus begins to fight in the soul, the majestic light retreats and, in its place, JESUS encircles us with the ESSENCE of Truth, takes Justice which is the daily MOUNT of the true soldier Of Christ, he presents himself before God with the shield of faith in the hand of the will: Such is our adornment according to Christ.

7. The Virgin keeps the nuptial robe at home; is covered with the PRINCIPLE at the same time as the dark side of the mirror of Light upon which hangs the Holy Spirit. As God has his holy nuptial bed at the center of the holy PRINCIPLE (which has become Jesus in each of these sanctified men in body, soul and spirit), the powers flow from the head into all the members, which God carefully assembles in the ESSENCE of the Truth.

8. Finally, the reader sees what heavenly and infernal forms oppose each other in the highest and deepest struggle and besiege one another simultaneously.

9. The war is all around the kingdom of the third PRINCIPLE that our Lord and Savior (who endures all by the words of His power) has taken on his shoulder and snatched Satan from humanity.

10. The latter does not want to give up his rights, and pours into torrents all his infernal venoms (which are the COAGULOUS spirits of the Abyss) against virginal Temperament.

11. That raises love, wraps the poisoned arrows of Satan with the shield of faith in Christ and returns them to his adversary.

12. This fight lasts until Satan has exhausted his anger and Jesus, prince of Light, has dethroned and expelled him.

13. It is thus that our faith becomes more and more profound, and sublimates itself as light, such is the victory by which we conquer SUCCESSIVELY Satan in all the PRINCIPLES and we finally rush him into Hell.

14. Then all the evil spirits submit themselves to the scepter of Love of Jesus and bend the knee before Him.

15. Love, which has suffered everything, holds Satan and all the armies of the Underworld prisoners, and presses them so strongly that evil spirits coagulate like a sea between this world and the kingdom of hell, and pay homage to Jesus.

16. Our prince triumphs (as He did for the first and second PRINCIPLES) and leads us through the immense ocean of the infernal power.

17. The evil spirits take their place, and rank themselves on both sides on the banks, and cannot make a movement without the permission of Jesus.

18. Thus Jesus Christ, GOD and man, Reigns in us, in the three kingdoms, over all His enemies.

19. He leads our humanity, which the Father has destined for Him, commutes the bride in her dress washed by blood; and she presents herself before God, splendid and without spot.

20. This time is very near, as the spiritual children of Jesus notice; they adorn their lamps with justice and holiness of truth; the Spirit and the Fiancée say: Come, yes, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

OF THE INNER MAN

ACCORDING TO THE IMAGE OF GOD

OF THE DIVINE ENTRY IN HIM

AS IN HIS OWN TEMPLE

1. This figure represents the angelic triple man as created by God and as regeneration renews and purifies him.

2. It has given me lots of hard work before I did it; you will see, dear reader, when your turn will come, the truth I speak.

3. The sphere or outer world is the anxious temperament with the seven forms of Nature, containing the sensory government, with the understanding, both in spirit and body.

4. It is a mirror of the dark inner world of Fire and Light; it is linked to both during the time of outer terrestrial life.

5. That is why he is in a very miserable condition, as can be seen in the following FIGURE of which, for this purpose, I have represented the back.

6. Sometimes the devil grasps him from down in his dark hell, sometimes from above or from the outside of the constellation; so that this combat and this opposition ceaselessly shakes him.

7. He sighed always after the sweet abyss of Light of the eternal Love, IMAGINES with longing, softens, attracts in itself and makes it present.

8. The Fire engulfs this celestial presence, then burns clearly and produces in the heart a beautiful and white light.

in another writing, the author expresses himself thus:

9. This FIGURE with the Temperament describes the miracle eye that I have placed in the back so that the curious reader can see it clearly.
10. It is the eye of the body, of which Christ speaks (Matthew 6), it is at the center like a sphere.

11. Inside (or on the front in the third figure) is a mirror of the two INTERIOR PRINCIPLES.

12. Behind is a FIGURE of the constellation, of the understanding, indicated by the stars.

13. He is half in the shadow, half in the Light; on the back is a dark bosom; behind a luminous mirror.

14. The author continues: Under the Temperament, on the loins, there is a CIRCLE which designates the Abyss, dwelling of the Devil.

15. It must not be understood that it is locked up; but when he is rejected in the fight by the Spirit of God, that’s where he falls.

16. As David asks in his Psalms: “Drive back my enemies behind me”, idem, “Throw my enemies underfoot”. The seasoned soldier understands that.

17. In the heart is the divine light of the world, or the eye, Temple of the Holy Spirit, in which God dwells, and which is called God in the Light; it is the median PRINCIPLE in the regenerated man.

18. Below is the Magical divine eye of Wonder and Fire that is (1), in the regenerated, the place where the Father produces His Son. In others, it is the Fire of the Divine Wrath.

(1) J. Boehme, incarnation, part I, chap. 3, V.19:

“It is not indeed the true image according to the Deity, but a magical everlasting fire, which has never had any beginning; neither will it have any end. Understand that God has introduced the eternal unoriginated fire (which from eternity has existed in itself, in the eternal Magia, viz. in the will of God, in the desire of the eternal Nature, as an eternal parturient center); for this image was to be a likeness according to Him.”

19. It is the bottom of the heaven, the underworld, and the visible world, from which are born good and evil, like light and darkness, life and death, beatitude and damnation.

20. It is not without reason that it is called MYSTERIUM MAGNUM, because it contains two beings and two wills: Unity and Multiplicity, which is introduced as lust for the Fire and the Light; in the Fire is understood Natural Life, and in the Light, the Holy Spiritual Life of Unity.

21. It also produces two wills, one igneous, exalted, proud, and diabolic; the other humble, low, angelic; hence the choice of the Elect.

22. Because man is, for now, his own craftsman; he can place his desires in himself, as selfhood, or in the unity of God according to equanimity; and is accepted by Anger or by Love.

23. For what the temperament assimilates, burns in the temperament, whether it be a terrestrial or celestial aspect; and exhales an analogous spirit, in word and deed.

24. If, therefore, the Will burns in Love, it is Paradise; but as soon as it separates itself from Love, it is Hell.

25. This is the great soul of fire, according to the Eternal True Nature of the Father; in the heart sits the eternal nature of the Light, according to the property of the Son; they are not separated from each other.

26. According to the third PRINCIPLE is the aerial soul, as SPIRIT of the WORLD; it burns in heat and cold.

27. Note that this is not a MATERIAL fire, but a spiritual fire, of which the CENTER or root is the eternal Darkness, according to which God is called a consuming fire.

28. The MAGICAL fiery eye, on the left, under the heart is, in its root, the fire of divine Anger, according to which God is called an angry and jealous God; and according to the Light, it is the fire of divine Love, according to which it is called simply God.

29. According to the root, Jacob Boehm calls this spirit, the Spirit of the great World, who mocked Adam after his fall (Genesis 3:22); item, the CHERUB with his flaming sword; item, the vengeful angel in Egypt; item, the angel who gave laws to the children of Israel on Mount Sinai.

30. It was with him that Jacob fought all night as well as Jesus at the Garden of Olives; every true disciple of Christ necessarily passes through this process; it is not a duel, it is only a Fire, but clothed with two QUALITIES.

31. According to this igneous eye, the soul belongs to God the Father; all those who believe in justice and truth do it by this Fire of Anger.

32. But those who blindly act according to the root of Fire, Jacob Boehme calls them officers of Nature, whom God employs to exercise His children and to manifest the miracles of His wrath, like the brothers of Joseph and the Pharisees. There is in these men, as shown in the second FIGURE, a sulphurous Fire devouring.

33. This is the description of the three worlds in man according to body, soul and spirit.

34. The soul penetrates these three worlds; it is bound to them and becomes the servant of what they appropriate for their lust and their will.

35. These three principles or worlds were in balance with Adam; the dark world is in the Fire, and the Fire is hidden in the Light.

36. All three of them produced a spirit of heavenly joy in the Temperament; and Paradise has manifested itself as the home of the celestial Sophia.

37. I cannot describe all these exquisite sensations; this gives the temperament and the whole body a new youth.

38. Let the reader earnestly strive towards the regeneration and the Marriage of the Lamb: he will experience this celestial marriage and will then close himself and will not be able to say anything about it.

39. The two circles are the two eternal PRINCIPLES or eyes of the soul, love and anger, light and darkness; on that read Boehm, in the first of the Forty Questions of the Soul.

40. We will see how the soul behaves in each PRINCIPLE, remaining foreign to the other.

41. A man cannot see more than in the bosom of his mother; each PRINCIPLE entails one’s own understanding; see Acts XII: 12-13.

42. When the reader meditates on the FIGURE of the first chapter, he can easily understand how God reveals himself in us according to time and eternity, and how we are SHAPED in his image and likeness in the three worlds.

43. How everything comes back to us from our soul with the astral understanding, to put our Will and desire in the depths of the innermost Light.

44. Then the Holy Spirit comes to meet us in our heart, kisses and embraces our desire, and puts us back in the presence of our dear celestial Father, in the majestic Secret Light, by Jesus, as Joseph did with his father and of five younger brothers.

45. Our Father rejoices at seeing his lost Son humbly returning to Him; and He tenderly kisses the external Nature and the five senses, as all the children born again know.

46. The reader must know where the fall has originated in such a beautiful image; that he understood that it was not the will of God, as reason says, but Adam’s own fault, which was created good and received from God the free will to develop himself.

47. For he had both TINCTURES in him, was a male virgin, dressed in wisdom and intelligence, reigning over fish, birds, and animals, who could give each one a name, according to its property, as the story goes: Moses, Genesis 1 and 2, in very clear terms.

48. Then God said that it was not good for Adam to be alone, that he needed a helper.

49. If one asks: If God has created good, could it become evil? What is the tree of the test, and its defense?

50. According to what Christ reveals in Luke XV 12; Kai dicilen autois ton bion (And he twisted these lives/ and he divided the property), we must say that Adam would like his life forms to be separated and ordered into a female body in order to be like all animals.

51. This took place indeed, but against the first design of God; so the fall is not, in the first place in the consummation of the person.

52. Although Adam had not eaten the forbidden fruit with his carnal mouth, but his IMAGINATION was so strongly strained towards the tree that he was overwhelmed and died to the inner vital force, or, as said Scripture, he fell asleep.

53. Let’s look for where Adam came from in order to separate his life forms? This desire came from the PRINCIPLES, from these forms of life themselves, and not from God, who is Love and goodness, and cannot want evil.

54. I said in the previous chapter that Fire is good as long as it enlightens, warms and serves mankind.

55. In the same way, the Fire of Divine Anger is useful and good, when it burns in us in love and humility, and when it does not come out of its limits.

56. The Fire of Anger is the generator of the Fire of Love or the Light, and the Father of the Son. But when Anger wants to rule Love, strife and disorders ensue in the ESSENCE of Light, and it is extinguished.

57. Then the fire has nothing to consume; and it becomes dark, as is seen in Sulfur; that’s what happens to the devil who has become completely dark. Genesis 1:2

58. This Fiery anger, or dark PRINCIPLE, was in Adam the first motive of his desire, because he was hidden in the Inner Light, but he wanted to manifest himself and act by his own power.

59. The second motive was SPIRITUS MUNDI, or the air of the soul, whose root is in the dark PRINCIPLE, and which Adam was to nourish and cultivate; he was buried in the depths of the two inner lives, and was to be subjected to them.

60. He had also been manifested with pleasure to carry out a proper diet according to the external senses, to feel, taste and know each QUALITY.

61. But the connecting PRINCIPLE, that of the Light, barred the road, and had supremacy over the other two.

62. This struggle for preeminence was developing in the soul of Adam, but without convulsions; he could master it by the force of the luminous PRINCIPLE, according to which God is called God in short.

63. But what did Adam do? He IMAGINED so long in the earthly lust and the struggle of the SPIRITUS MUNDI, that at last he faltered, fell into failure and was mutilated during his sleep.

64. He who understands and conceives the substance of the PRINCIPLES, all the hidden meaning of Scripture will be distinct to him.

65. According to this division of PRINCIPLES, three kinds of men are produced; as can be seen from the three sons of Noah who peopled the world.

66. And although there is infinity of generations and lives, among men, they all remain, however, under these three PRINCIPLES, which, one or the other is predisposed in each individual.

67. The three PRINCIPLES move and sense; but they do not all operate.

68. We are today doing the same as Adam, and the regenerated are no exception.

69. We seek the external kingdom, money, honors, a good time, comfort, we serve the Spirit of this world, we go to the Church and we commune, we pray the SPIRITUS MUNDI blindly, with the formulas of books, so that it may bless us and preserve the imperfect and perishable Mammon that we are.

70. We serve the Devil under a beautiful cloak of foresight, wisdom and piety; we will not hear the heart of the truth, we do not call darkness from darkness, so that it does not happen to us what the proverb (popular saying?) predicts: He who plays the air of Truth, breaks the violin on the head.

71. And when we are forced to come to light, to safeguard our honor and our good reputation, we arrange ourselves so well that no one can attack us, saying, do not judge anyone, not to be judged in our turn; which has an appearance of piety.

72. Thus the Devil remains covered, and we, pious people, who live without a cross, think to be blessed without trial, and enter without suffering into the kingdom of God.

73. We lie to the good God; for we would like to go to heaven; we say many beautiful words, speak of the invitation of Christ, make our society of honest Christians, and we do a lot of good, so that men praise us.

74. And think that God will take us to Heaven without having passed through the Death of selfishness.

75. But God does not inquire about gossip; he wants to have the body, the soul and the spirit in eternal property, and that we are identical to his son Jesus, now as in Eternity. (1 John 3)

76. For the servant is not better than the master; and if they called the Lord a Beelzebub, they do the same to his servant.

77. I must admit that in my time I have seen very little of them who put their foot on the moon along with the woman (Revelation 12), and who surrendered themselves to God for their sustenance.

78. For although there is no shorter path to be delivered from all selfishness and from the regime of the Spirit of this world, than to go through Christian poverty, almost everyone is ashamed of it, despises the supporters, and considers them Pharisees who want to attract attention from others.

79. I wish from the bottom of my heart that all men become like Christ, and regard Him above all as their most beloved Fiancé; they would certainly embrace his poverty and thank God eternally.

80. For He cares for His poor children, gives them His most holy faith, and does not let them beg.

81. He who has my commandments and observes them loves me; and he who loves me is loved by my Heart, and I will love him and show myself to him, says Christ. (John 14:21)

82. When the love of Jesus does not burn the heart, there is no desire to imitate Him, and no strength in the intention of asking God His Holy Spirit, to remove us from this world and from ourselves and to introduce us to Jesus Christ.

83. Our nature is frightened like Christ, when he fought in our humanity against the Anger of God in the Garden of Olives. From it also comes that very few succeed, since they prefer earthly life to that of Christ.

84. Just as the love of the earth gives a man the strength to bear fatigues, dangers, sorrows, and worries to obtain from the temporal Mammon the honor, the glory and the well-being.

85. Thus the Love of Jesus gives a Christian the strength to endure suffering, the Cross, poverty, persecution, and sorrow, to imitate him.

86. For love makes Jesus’ yoke soft and light, he drives away all fear, and only, after suffering, awakens desire.

87. Because the man who always feels consolation, joy, and strength in the heart, learns that God does not abandon him, but tears him out and saves him from hell, death, and need, and gives him one victory after another.

88. If someone already had enough faith to move mountains, without that love, it would only be a resounding cymbal. This love is more powerful than death, than a stream can quench.

89. And if you receive it in your heart, and if your soul is lit, be very careful not to let it extinguish, or to let it devour, because the Devil is hungry.

90. This is why I am going to show you the process of what is happening in the regeneration, as I experienced it: When the soul turns back internally as the prodigal son, and begins to want to return to the house of his Father, it does not have the strength to leave.

91. But immediately, Christ comes with his Spirit and ignites the life forms of the soul, so that the luminous PRINCIPLE, hitherto motionless and hidden, begins to strive, and becomes responsive.

92. By this the soul receives the strength to go onits way and approach God by prayer; but it is still in the dark body and cannot recognize its own love and will, nor humble itself, or go to the dear Will of God.

93. Then Christ illuminates with his Light, the MAGIC igneous eye (which the Devil destroyed in Adam and set in Anger), so that burning in love, and illuminating the heart, He pierces the soul with its rays and engulfs it entirely.

94. It is only then that the soul perceives its ugliness, and how much it is attached to hundreds of animal qualities. Ah! How it laments, how it cries and how it sobs! It would go through a mouse hole, even it must tear off skin and hair.

95. It would even bare itself, if it was in her power, to be clothed with the celestial Sophia.

96. Ah! What an oath the soul takes! What fidelity it promises! It would like, for the sake of its fiancé, to circumcise itself spiritually, to renounce all the terrestrial, to take up all the crosses, to follow Him in need and death, to belong to Him body, soul and spirit, and stay faithful to Him until the end.

97. The dear Sophia hears all this with joy, kisses the soul internally, the wraps of her presence and hides all the sins.

98. When the soul has gone for some time with its beloved in the garden of roses, when it has provisioned flowers, the Fiancée takes the soul entirely out of the body.

99. it then appears like a ball of fire (see the third FIGURE where is represented the sheen of the wonders of Boehme), it is plunged into the sea of fire (it happened five times in five consecutive days, during my evening prayers, I saw that it was in mass, of a crystalline blue like the firmament, but it was a igneous water, that the soul, while crossing it, made splash in small waves of fire; I cannot express neither its delicious flavor or impression).

100. The soul is baptized by this MAGIC fire, and in the heart, by the Holy Spirit, as it is indicated in Ch 1 number 36; at last, it is let to the carnal deserts, to be tempted by the Devil in SPIRITUS MUNDI.

101. This is where the serious work begins, the Fiancée withdraws in its PRINCIPLE; the Devil comes in the form of an angel and says to the soul: Why are you so sad? Make bread with these stones, your faith is very great; you do not know it yourself.

102. If the soul is humble, if it directs its appetite towards the WORD of the Lord, the adversary weakens, and presenting another larva, sends to the soul great forces, so that it believes itself to be something rare and called by God to accomplish great wonders in the world.

103. If the soul still humbly abandons itself to God, so that it will make of it what will please Him, the Devil has yet to leave.

104. But he returns in the form of a cunning snake, and proposes to the soul in the third PRINCIPLE, riches, honors, renown, or a rich marriage.

105. Who seem sent by God himself, without any lust for man; the soul is often amazed, and many have falling into this trap, which, later, did not have enough lamentation about their misfortune.

106. It is further explained in the next chapter, and I indicate it in this place only to exhort the reader to the foresight, to the serious and applied prayer, so that he never abandons himself to egoism and that never thinks, when he has been seized by the Spirit of God, that he has already triumphed, and that he holds the enemy under his heel.

107. An iron stays red as long as it is in the fire; so the soul, as long as it remains in the love of Jesus, constantly receives strength and remains able to overcome the Tempter and carry his cross.

108. But when it comes out in the understanding and IMAGINATION according to the suggestions of the Tempter, it is immediately weakened, captured by the earthly desire, which awakens the desire and pushes the will until the act, so that the deepest love can be turned into great bitterness and fury, and the older brothers can become enemies and persecutors.

109. They throw in the depths of hell who they had praised and proclaim it loudly and falsely: “I have unfortunately passed through there with great pain”.

110. For this, a beginning student, when he has received in the soul a kiss from dear Sophia, must carefully beware of exaltation and not think that he will become a collaborator before having taken his classes, and that the Prince of Fury or the Red Dragon is defeated and chained within him.

111. For the Devil is like the soldiers who rush to the assault of a fortification: although they have been repulsed several times, and that many have lost their lives, the survivors always hope to overcome the besieged.

112. Thus, a serious worker must not slacken nor sleep; but be on his guard, discern the temptations presented by the Devil in the SPIRITUS MUNDI, even if they appear to be divine, and not contradict the letter of Scripture, and reject them immediately without SPECULATION.

113. And if even an audible voice came to him from the SPIRITUS, let him not listen, but patiently ask that he never leave his unique, unshakeable and permanent support, his Jesus and his very dear Fiancée.

114. But let him rather hate his life and completely abdicate everything that could induce him from this chaste love into a creaturely affection.

115. If I had not PRACTICED this with great difficulty for thirty years, I would never have come to the certainty that I possessed, by the grace of God, and the Devil mocking Christ and all his dear children, would have locked me up again in that dark prison, from which Jesus took me by his blood and his death, and hid my beautiful pearl.

116. It is better to lose earthly life than Christ; He can give us in exchange eternal life.

117. The life of Jesus Christ is exactly the OPPOSITE of the natural life of this world; that is why He is a stranger to all natural men.

118. He points to Himself when in Matthew 26, the rich ask him, “Lord, when did we leave you starving, or thirsty, sick, naked, or prisoner?” * (seems this bible quote is found in Matthew 25:35 instead)

119. For a Christian abhors what the natural man loves. He despises what men possess according to the world, since his treasure is in the will of heaven, with God and all the holy Angels.

120. He seeks only the Kingdom of God, not caring for his food, not seeking treasures; he cares little about what he eats and drinks, and about his clothing, although he is in charge of a terrestrial body, like men.

121. It is for this reason that he is considered insane, as murderer of himself, as scorning the gifts that God has made for everyday use, and as a corrupt and hurtful plague in a well-organized REPUBLIC.

122. Being of no use to anyone, damaging to other honest people; devouring the sweat and blood of the rich, and wasting out of indolence and guilty laziness what is necessary for others.

123. With whom one should not have to deal with according to the precepts of Paul’s I Thessalonians 3: 14. For he can corrupt others by his poisoned doctrines, and make so many poor that the rich would have no more money to provide for their needs. (there is no 1 Thessalonians 3:14, most likely 2 Thessalonians 3:1-14)

124. These hard foods are very indigestible to the stomach of a poor Christian; let him acquire patience and reckon that the valet is no better than his master.

125. If they did not recognize the Lord in this world, how could they discern the poor despised members, clothed like other men of a terrestrial dark gloomy body? It takes another eye to recognize the poor Christian.

126. When God pushes a man out of the world, and makes him abandon his field and plow to follow Christ, man must stand completely blind, deaf and mute, to the outside.

127. He must not orient himself according to the eye of understanding, according to the ordinary course of the world, which remains on its own regimen and quite different from the life of Jesus; he would be very quickly weakened and lost.

128. But let him turn in his heart, his inner eye to his predecessor and his guide Jesus, to beware of what this One wants, to act and operate in his soul.

129. And let him not proceed by excess of zeal, for many souls have been thus deceived by Satan; he has only to follow.

130. And although he thinks reason is better to understand, that he does not listen to it, because the Spirit of God interprets the Scripture as He pleases, and not as the reason conceives, which rests only in the flesh.

131. And if anything seems contrary to your reason, pray to ask for an opening of the intelligence and the Divine Will, so that God can lead in the Light, so that you can see in the darkness and follow the Spirit in you.

132. For you will often have to walk in faith where you do not see anything; and you can do nothing, better than give up your will to God and let Him do as He pleases.

133. Such a man is the true temple of the triune God, in which the Father is Flaming Love, the Son the clear and beautiful Light of the Heart, from which the Holy Spirit exits in eternal Wisdom.

134. Who is the Helper of the Soul, where She descends spiritually, and produces in other souls prayers, words, and spiritual teachings.

135. For the soul is clothed with the presence of Christ, anointed with the Holy Spirit, baptized by the fire of Divine Love, like Melchizedek, priest of the Very High.

136. Jesus is ESSENTIALLY the channel of grace through His spiritual blood and His animate spirit, the true intercessor before God, our celestial Father.

137. The soul must offer itself until blood and death, as ANATHEMA for its sinful brothers, whether they are still alive, whether they have left their body or that they only hold it by a thread.

138. A prayer full of faith is then very necessary, as my faithful Savior brought me; although, in the beginning, it seemed strange and repugnant to me, because I had been so taught in schools.

139. But my Guide opened to me the understanding about the words of Christ, Luke. 15:9 : “Make friends with the unjust Mammon, so that when it runs out, they will receive you in the eternal tabernacles.”

140. This cannot be PRACTICAL without an incessant prayer, by which the spirit of will of the soul penetrates with its IMAGINATION in the chaste love of Jesus, calls for grace and mercy, and fights along his non-regenerated brothers with the fiery source of Divine Wrath.

141. It is a fierce fight, to which no soul could resist without the shield of Jesus.

142. Just as the priests of the Old Testament had to keep themselves pure, holy, immaculate and chaste to celebrate the worship, so that the Anger of God was not excited in them and that they could stand before God in the Sanctuary.

143. Thus this Melchizedek priesthood of the new covenant demands much more, because the complete divine service demands a complete renunciation of all earthly love.

144. For the dear celestial Sophia’s love for the soul is extraordinarily ardent and demands in return such a perfect affection.

145. However, the TURBA (Divine Anger /purifying wrath-fire) resides in the terrestrial cohabitation, from which springs the struggle of the three Principles, which always obscures the beautiful light in the soul.

146. Seeing that, the celestial Sophia is obliged to shut herself up in her PRINCIPLE, and to leave her fiancé at the door, in shame and regret.

147. It is thus that tested men have confessed to me that they have not been able to pray for long days, and not daring to raise their eyes to God.

148. Let the reader ponder why the children of Israel, when they had to appear before IEHOVAH on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19), did not approach their wives; and why Abimelech, when David came to Nob, asked him expressly whether his men had abstained from women. (1Samuel 21).

149. For whoever wants to approach God and who wants to have the freedom to converse with Him, must beware of every stain, hold his conscience pure so that the TURBA or the divine Anger has no hold on his soul and does not hide the face or the light of God.

150. I speak here from experience and warn the reader that the carnal love is very much opposed to the love of Jesus; and it makes quite unable to fast and pray. 1 Corinthians 7

151. The reader must not think that I am speaking here of an external Saintliness and of a personal justice, which are worthless before God; no, because we are all conceived and born in sin and we drag with us a perishable body, full of faults.

152. But I am aiming at the inner man, as the true temple of God, where no other fire should burn, and all thoughts should be cursed, that are not the love of Jesus and the divine Fire.

153. The inner man is with his celestial Sophia in a holy and hidden union; must not welcome unclean thoughts, but fight them immediately.

154. How could an incontinent be presented in the Holy of Holies of the inner man? Because God is also a JEALOUS God, who wants to be loved above all.

155. Whoever wishes to penetrate Hell and Death, to fight the princes of Fury, must put on the divine armor and protect himself against the obstacle of the sour source by an ardent love of God and neighbor.

156. If not, it is better for him to abstain, and to limit himself to helping by his money the soldiers of God whom he will meet; in this way, he will also receive his reward.

FIFTH CHAPTER

COMBAT OF MICHAEL AND THE DRAGON

1. This spiritual struggle between Love and Anger, Light and Darkness, Yes and No, arose in heaven in Lucifer’s own Creature Will, before the creation of the visible world.

2. Lucifer detached himself from his origin, eternal Love, in will of his own, introduced himself into an operation and into forms, and fought against God and his Son, as well as against his brothers, the good Angels, who overcame him.

3. And Lucifer was hurled from heaven to earth with his angels, as revealed by St. John in Revelations 12.

4. This furious prince of the Anger refused the salvation offered to him in Adam, who had been created in his place as human HIERARCH; and it led him to fall and disobedience.

5. On the other hand opposition, war, murder, enmity, pain, complaints, need, and death, both in and out of man; and this misfortune could not be deplored enough, even with tears of blood.

6. But this spiritual struggle is so occult and so bizarre that no one can conceive of it except those who have taken part in it and have fulfilled their duty, as we will be able to convince ourselves by what follows.

7. Nobody can carry, in truth, the name of Christian, who was not often beaten down in this combat, and who did not rise up after each blow, defeating his enemies with those of Christ by the force of Jesus.

8. The greatest good is a kind, blessed, charming, humble and peaceful whole, where there is no darkness, no anguish, no pain, no fight, no adversity; we cannot say that GOD created an OPPONENT, since Lucifer was a prince of heaven, as Adam was on earth in Paradise.

9. Let our light shine for the reader, and let us share our experience; but advise him to cultivate prayer and ask God for his Holy Spirit; without this illumination we would be sealed and incomprehensible to him.

10. Because Holy Scripture employs some obscure expressions, which would need a thorough clarification, reason not illuminated conceives them backward and to its advantage.

11. When PHILOSOPHIZING on the good God, saying that he is the cause of the wickedness, the promoter of the fall of Lucifer and Adam, predestining one to beatitude, the other to damnation.

12. Reason thus makes the good God a mere devil, as his writings and these blind conclusions state; while GOD is love, and in all eternity, can only want love.

13. However, nothing can exist without its opposite; if there were no opposition in life, there would be no sensibility, no will, no understanding, no service.

14. For a single thing does only one thing; and though it is good in itself, it knows neither good nor evil, because it has nothing in it that makes it discernible.

15. Thus we can PHILOSOPHIZE on the Will of God, and say: If the hidden God, who is only a being and one will, did not go out with this will of the eternal and always equal wisdom towards a separation of this will, and if such a separation tending towards a natural and creatural life, had not been introduced into a palpability, and if this separation was not in life, a continual struggle, how the hidden Will of God, which is one in itself, would it have manifested itself?

16. What is the one Will, one separation, is, in the separated, a Will of its own, and so in the unique Will, arise abyssal and innumerable wills, like the buds on the trees.

17. Thus, we see and understand that, in such a separation, each distinct Will is introduced into its own form, and that the combat of the wills for form consists in the fact that, in the distribution, no form is like the other, although they all come from the same substance.

18. Just as Evil or bad will is the cause of the goodwill and desire of the latter to return and to enter its origin, that is to say in God (since what is good in itself and does not suffer, does not desire anything, because he does not know what he lacks in himself or out of himself).

19. Thus, one can also say of the good and a will of God, that in itself it cannot desire anything: since it has nothing in Him or out of Him that can add anything to Him.

20. This is why He entered into a differentiation from which a resistance results in what is differentiated, and from which Good is changed into a distinct wrong, active and desiring; that then separates from Evil and wants to enter the Will of God.

21. Because the one and eternal will of God always comes out of itself to manifest itself, the divine force goes out with it from the eternal One into a multiplicity and into many CENTERS.

22. And this movement provokes in the Good the desire of rest and return to the Lord. In this operation are the tenderness, the knowledge and the will.

23. God, as God, has nothing before or behind Him that He may want; but when He wants something, this thing comes out of Him, it is an opposition He makes to Himself, or the eternal Will desires that thing.

24. If, then, that thing were one, the will would have nothing to do; that is why the Abyssal Will has separated itself from the origin and conceived itself into a being that it can ever kill in anything; we have a similarity in the temperament of man.

25. If temperament did not go out from itself by itself, it would have no meaning if it had no meaning, it would not be known to itself or other objects, and could not have any operation.

26. The sensory outflow of temperament makes him willing or desirous, to introduce the senses into a selfhood; the temperament operates with the senses and manifests itself and contemplates itself in this operation.

27. If all the senses were melted into one, they would have only one will and always do the same thing; how could the wonders and powers of divine wisdom be recognized and FIGURED by the temperament?

28. But because there is an OPPOSITE like that which is between the Light and the Darkness, one quality is always the cause that another introduced itself in the desire, to fight the first one and to try to dominate it.

29. In this longing, the senses and the temperament are introduced into one wanting by a natural and creaturely substance, as if for control, as if this temperament wanted to govern all the others.

30. From there, the combat, the anguish and the contrariety; so that the entire temperament is forced to enter again into a breakdown of the senses and its own will and to return to God from which it had left.

31. Here faith and hope are born: the anxious soul hopes for deliverance and tends towards its source, God.

32. We must understand the same divine revelation: all things have their first beginning in the afflux of the divine will.

33. And as the divine will sees nothing, neither of Nature nor of the creature, it contains neither pain, nor suffering, nor contrariety; the understanding and the knowledge result from the pronunciation of the Word.

34. And this outflow is the beginning of the Will, when the understanding has distinguished itself in forms; thus these forms have become desirous in themselves, to have an opposition to their resemblance.

35. And this same desire has become a capacity for selfishness tending towards self-will.

36. And this self- will is the behind his selfishness, which is a behind the darkness and painful senses.

37. Such is the basis of nature, whence comes the multiplicity of properties, where a will arises from another, in a perpetual opposition, to escape pain.

38. It is necessary to understand, in such emanation of the divine powers up to Nature and the creature, two kinds of wills in a being: first the divine will which is introduced in the senses and in the operation only to manifest forces, colors and virtues.

39. Then the beginning will of Nature which is introduced in a state of selfishness and propriety; from which is born the dissimilarity of the wills in each of which a CONTRARY is shown.

40. The inner will desires its opposite as a good, the divine will unfolds.

41. But the same natural created will, also desires its likeness by its own capacity; it becomes MATERIAL and dark.

42. Thus all the beings of this world each contain two; the eternal one, divine and spiritual; the other inceptive, natural, temporal and corruptible; two wills reside in the center of each life, one inceptive and natural, the other eternal and spiritual.

43. And these two beings are included in two PRINCIPLES, as the reader can see in the accompanying figures.

44. By means of this discovered background, we can clearly answer the reason that the fall of Lucifer and Adam was not in the good will of God; but that it was born of the creatural will, because Lucifer had withdrawn his free will from the harmony and the divine love, to drive him into the property.

45. Then the darkness became preponderant in him and possessed him.

46. And this false selfish will is the Satan and the Devil, the ancient serpent, the liar, and the murderer who has turned away the world of good and keeps our brothers and sisters of God away day and night. (Apocalypse 12)

47. He is also the fire dragon that Michael fought against, and expelled with his LEGIONS of the Holy Name.

48. The fall of Adam took place the same way, allowing himself to be led astray by the devil’s tricky speeches, which led his creaturely will in a selfish complacency.

49. On this hour, HIS PRINCIPLE of Light, Divine Wisdom, was extinguished in false will, and the third PRINCIPLE awakened in his own imagination, as torture of the constellations and the four elements; the body became rude and animal, and the senses false and terrestrial.

50. Man has become somber, miserable, harsh, coarse, and austere; he has become a perpetual uneasiness, caught in the current of terrestrial powers, seeking in corruption a rest which he never finds.

51. The great love of God came to the rescue of this prisoner’s life which, after such a fall, felt inspired again in the inner ENS, lost in the divine property, and returned to life as by a new influx of unity, of divine love and rest.

52. This is how life can extinguish the pain and worry in the CENTER of the property and sensibility.

53. The first figure of the first chapter shows the reader how man is a true image of God, according to the three principles, and that God is much closer to him in the inner depths than outside of him, in heaven.

54. And that it will be only with the prodigal child who stops his will, his action and his own life, humbles himself in his deepest center, places his senses and his IMAGINATION in the love of Jesus, asks for grace and mercy and does not stop until he has been substantially granted.

55. If he watches in the overnight, if he resists the earthly heart, he will see how the heavenly Father will hasten to his assistance; to rekindle his senses, to support his courage, to kiss his fiery center with love, and to light anew what is still only correct and cold.

56. Apart from this, all is a derision, of which God says, by the prophet: “These people honor me only by their lips, but their heart is far from me”.

57. By nature, we are all children of wrath, although we have been baptized in the death of Christ.

58. The self will first pierces in youth, and introduces its animal life into the marvels of the stars and elements; it lives according to their impulses, in the good and the evil of the pagan essence; it is a pure devil, Satan and dragon of enmity which resists God in its acts and all its conduct.

59. It has no other object than understanding and cannot see beyond the genesis of this external world; it has no other light than the Sun and the stars, as shown in the Figure of the second chapter.

60. And if man does not turn around and does not direct his will in the divine life, the light of the Sun abandons him to death.

61. This is why we notice in so many of the dying, such great anguish and fear of the dark abyss.

62. As soon as man returns his soul to his body, separates himself from the light of reason and introverts his senses, the eternal Word sends him strength, and the Holy Spirit radiates in his understanding.

63. Open the understanding of hidden Wisdom, so that it will immediately recognizes the estrangement of the Christian from the life of JESUS, the error of the senses in the outward service of God, and the Tower of Babel of the many RELIGIONS of the World about God and true worship.

64. This consists, in an introverted and regenerated soul, to pray to God in spirit and in truth, to taste IT, to hear IT, to see IT, and to feel IT.

65. He is baptized and penetrates the fire of Divine Love, he receives the anointing of the Holy Spirit, he is renewed in his senses and his temperament, he can see through three eyes, understand all the Wisdom of God, and become, from a diabolical animal to an angelic animal, and a true image of Jesus, as depicted in the Figures of the Third Chapter.

66. It will change his opinions, hate what he loves, and love what he hates.

67. God makes him understand by illuminating him, that his own will is that dragon of fire of which Apocalypse 12 speaks of, against which the man must battle by the strength of Jesus.

68. Let not his soul and his senses rest in Christ, until the red dragon is conquered, bound, and laid at the feet of Jesus in the inner man, and subject to the will of God in the inner PRINCIPLE of light.

69. It is this combat that God indicated to our first parents: “I will put enmity between you, serpent, and the woman, and between your seed and her seed”. Genesis 3

70. It is this battle that represents the spirit of Jesus in Apocalypse 12, which lasts from Adam to our days, and will continue until the end, for the faithful.

71. For this combat is spiritual, and also between the flesh and the spirit in the senses, and external between the seed of the woman and that of the serpent; I want to communicate to the reader what good God has given me, as far as my own experience can reach.

72. My Christian reader must understand here that I speak of the regenerated soul which is, with the prodigal son, on the road to the house of his dear Father.

73. But for the one who is terrestrial, I have not written anything, and he will understand nothing, because a terrestrial man lives according to the desires of the flesh, and knows only the external hazards.

74. But a regenerated, who breaks with the false carnal desires, and who, of the devilish stall, places his faculties in the Holy of Holies, where God remains and is present to the souls, will be tempted by the Devil, by means of false ideas, of false IMAGINATIONS, then of adverse thoughts and bad wills.

75. For the exterior temperament is partly part of the darkness and part of the Light, as we see in the Figures of the third chapter;

76. He will have to suffer a great deal of evil, and though the Devil cannot see in the luminous part of the souls, he acts in the dark part, on the divisions of the will, determines the disturbance and confusion in the wheel of temperament and prevents the good where he can.

77. Hence Paul and all the saints complain that they often do what they do not want.

78. If we want to understand the background of this spiritual struggle, let us seek in the light of Nature, what is our soul, so that it can result in an instant of love or anger, light or darkness, joy or pain.

79. Faster than lightning, innumerable good and bad thoughts come and go.

80. We will find that it is a willing desire that is held in the shadows, sighing constantly after the light, and it wants to give birth to its desire, in order to be delivered from this stabbing pain, and to reach in itself Paradise or TEMPERAMENT.

81. Or it may rest from her spiritual fatigues and satiate its painful hunger, so that the Will of God may act in it, as has been explained in detail in paragraphs 25-31

82. So someone inexperienced needs more lessons because has to be helped by analogies.

83. The temperament hungers and covets violently to give birth to the Light in him; and the more violent the covetousness, the greater the obscure pain becomes, so that inexperienced souls fall into doubt and their courage weakens.

84. They abandon praying and fighting, as I did myself, and advise my reader not to imitate me.

85. But to conceive another will, to break with this painful darkness, by abandoning the first will.

86. Thus he will learn through prayer and work what these lines cannot express.

87. Ah! As the celestial Sophia presses her ardent fiancé upon her heart, when they meet in the CONJUNCTION of love! This is well known to those who have been invited to this wedding.

88. It is the baptism of fire, where the soul is immersed in the sea of Love, then lit again by the fire of Love, so that the noble and sweet light shines forth in the temperament.

89. Then the fiancé walks with her dear virgin in the garden of roses, and composes bouquets with the flowers of virtues, as all our dear companions have learned in the recent years.

90. They rejoiced in Sophia’s light, sang their love, and all the listeners were INFLAMES and glorified God.

91. However, this Light does not remain constant in the Temperament; the celestial Virgin withdraws into her AETHER and TESTS her fiancé to see if he will be faithful to her in misery as well as in joy, and if he will follow her with perseverance during all the journeys.

92. My friends have been in probation; and soon after having been bound three times, and swearing each other to remain firm in Love and to condemn the smallest thought that would not be Love.

93. The one who proposed the covenant, my first-born son, wishing to guide the others, disregarding my cordial admonitions, threw himself thoughtlessly into furor, and dispersed again what he had solidly gathered.

94. Out of thirty, one remained steadfast, giving his good and his blood, and receiving the seal of the Holy Ghost.

95. The others are, for the most part, the lost dead, having changed the truth into a lie, and having fallen miserably away; there would be much to tell about it if it could be useful to the reader.

96. When a patient wants to heal, he will not take poison, but appropriate medicines.

97. Likewise, if we want to be relieved of God’s anger, which has imprisoned and weakened us in Adam, we must introduce, through a powerful desire, the Love of God into the irritated Fire of our soul.

98. And continue until Love overwhelms anger and TRANSMUTES it and changes to Love.

99. But it costs inexpressible labor and hard struggle for many years before a devil becomes an angel, and the dragon of fire does not let his dues go; it can be seen in Jacob, in Christ in the Garden of Olives, and on the Cross.

100. For to swallow Anger, Love must surrender entirely; the natural self-will trembles, because it does not wish to die, and opposes with such force that God must employ the godly and the impious, to remove all creatures, and to take away all consolation.

101. Until finally ego surrenders itself by dying, and submits itself entirely in full obedience to the Will of God.

102. It is then that the Fire Dragon loses its kingdom and its current throne; Love arises at the death of ego and is placed in the soul at the right hand of God, above the Anger and all its powers.

103. He then reigns in the median PRINCIPLE of the Light, on the igneous backdrop of the first and third PRINCIPLES.

104. Only then does Paradise arise in the soul, the Light shines continually in darkness, the Tempter is expelled and the angels come to us and serve us.

105. Joy, gladness, thanksgiving, and offerings take place, because that which has hidden us and our brothers from God day and night has just been rejected, and because the honor, the power, the kingdom, and the glory of God and his anointed have descended.

106. The Christian reader, however, must know that I do not mean by Love, a fantasy of the selfhood, but Jesus, the eternal SOPHIA, who, after the fall, became the help of our souls, and who has enclosed ESSENTIALITY in the Ens of weakened souls.

107. I must warn my reader, so that he understands that I do not wish to defend the state of marriage at all, nor to diminish it; but just say what I learned and what the Lord has opened to me.

108. We know the lessons which Christ himself has given, and those which the writings of the Apostles have transmitted to us.

109. To deny everything; to give up our own life, for if we want to be perfect disciples, the SPIRITUS MUNDI, which is the righteousness of God, takes into account all the corruptible and even of our earthly life, and takes everything away, up to the shirt, as well what happened to me and to others.

110. Like our master, we have nothing of our own; otherwise we would not triumph in our struggle with the Anger of God; because it is an unrealizable enterprise if we cannot break this chain.

111. However, according to Paul’s rule, 1 Corinthians 7, everyone must keep the state that God calls him to; and it is that I have taken all my life as a capital order.

112. Although different men of valor came to me, promised themselves to SOPHIA, they freely circumcised themselves for her and went away from their wives, with the consent of the latter, they did not come out of the test.

113. They fell back into the earthly MATRIX, cheated on their dear SOPHIA, cruelly deceived us and threw away the good seed; so much so that God had to cut these bushes and these useless thorns.

114. For this reason, let us keep humility, because the gifts of God are diverse.

115. Let each one remain faithful in the little that is he has; will be given to him what he must have; and that he works according to his strengths, as he can.

116. The time of the harvest in the three PRINCIPLES is very admirable; that everyone only views what master they give themselves; I have learned it only from thirty years of struggle, blows, wounds, and suffering.

117. It is about braiding an angelic garland that the celestial SOPHIA will put on the head of all her faithful knights, who have conquered in them the dragon of selfishness, the Anger of God.

118. The like loves the like, it is said; and as it is natural, it is not surprising that Christ loves those who are like him.

119. Since He no longer finds his face in us, since we all became children of Anger, and that we lack Justice, which alone is before God, He sends us his Holy Spirit to awaken the fiancée.

120. And He sends out his angel to look for virgin souls; He takes away His light from his children and invites to the feast the blind, the crippled and the infirm.

121. He embraces and kisses all his guests equally; but no one entrusts in His arms, none leads Him to the hidden bridal chamber, who has not undergone the trial in the desert of the flesh and triumphed over the Tempter.

122. This is what my companions would not believe; they burned with fury and wanted to violate dear SOPHIA; but they made a terrible misstep and lost their angelic crown.

123. That is why, reader, you can consider as useless any other precept that keeps you humble and preserve you from your own exaltation.

124. It is certainly not a small thing to become an angel or child of God, of the Devil one once was, to sit with Christ at the right hand of His Majesty and to judge over his enemies.

125. For this we must be the exact image of Jesus in life, affliction, persecution, poverty, pain, hell and death, which is what the delicate flesh and the blood find very hard, and they prefer a short, fleeting joy to eternal beatitude.

126. It is not good to look at the course of the world, to want to follow with the great multitude the broad way that leads to perdition, rather than to choose with the few the narrow path of the kingdom of heaven.

127. My dear reader, we are given the broad and practicable way, and we are informed that the souls, like the schismatic angels, that their stay does not preserve, will be brought back, and will be made angels of God.

128. And this under the great appearance of supernatural Love; thereupon hard souls risk their lives.

129. Be careful and repeat in your heart the words of Christ; the slave is not better than the master; if they have taken Beelzebub as master, they will not make his slave better. This time of pain is not worthy of the magnificence that must be given to the children of God.

130. The need to cast oneself into God and confide in Him invisible, as if He were visible, comes from God alone, and develops through one long exercise.

131. For when faith is sown in our heart, it is at first small as a mustard seed, and becomes with time a great tree.

132. But as soon as the tree grows a little under the sun, the tempest, the winds and the hail arise, and without yet absorbing the essence of the earth, and so our little faith is strengthened under the cross, tribulations, persecutions and temptations.

133. Christ has erected his kingdom in us, so that we may feel it, taste it, not seek it far away, and not cry out.

134. He promised us that what we would ask in spirit and truth in His name, we would be granted by our Celestial Father.

135. It is impossible for God to lie; therefore, when we ask and do not receive, it is purely by our fault that our soul TINCTURE is not completely placed in God, or that it has an attachment to a terrestrial thing or a creature.

136. A mother dog does not abandon her pupps; how would God leave those who call Him day and night and who trust Him with all their heart?

137. It seems to us, however, in temptation, that Heaven has become solid iron and that God can no longer hear; the soul must not be afraid, nor tremble, nor doubt, nor cease prayer.

138. But persevere with fiery dedication, and fight like Jacob so long that God and man are overwhelmed, and faith and love have triumphed, as we see a wonderful example in Job the patient.

139. And a true fighter has to go as far as that; otherwise, the Cherubim will hold his soul and his senses in doubt and restlessness, and will never let them reach a certainty or escape from the dark prison of Wrath.

140. The one who is armed guards his house and his kingdom. Let us have the hero jesus with us in battle; otherwise we will come to nothing and the Devil will mock us and the Christ in us.

141. There is no more violent or more painful combat, than when the good God is engaged to a good soul and when one lets a bitter root grown in his heart.

142. It results in a separation of the Will of Love unique in many bitter wills; as happened to Heaven with the angels, until finally Lucifer was precipitated with his Legions from Light into the Darkness.

143. This is also the case with my companions, who were dispatched admirably by God, found me in my dwelling, while I lived a very hidden life and thought to remain unknown.

144. They became engaged to SOPHIA and endeavored by all means to arrive at the marriage; some worked hard for ten years.

145. They bound themselves to each other three times, and promised to guard against all bitterness to KEEP such love, and to track down, from the first impulse, the slightest thought which would not be love.

146. And whoever proposed this oath, would never have believed that he would be the first perjurer, and that what he had built in the Love of Jesus would be overthrown in the Wrath; which happened, however, within a short interval.

147. There arose an infernal will and a devil so bitter that they run away from each other, and that manifest Love that existed, was changed into murder, slander, vices, false judgments and persecutions, giving free course to such perversity that far exceeded the good we had done.

148. In return, the Anger was so kindled in Nature that I and a brother remained firm in the process of Christ, our lives were threatened, and we had to fight until we bled against the dragon of the will.

149. And if our faithful hero and ally did not help us, it would have been impossible for us to resist temptation.

150. Because the more we put in their heart the love of SOPHIA, the more they had exalted the angry property of the Dragon; until finally God had to cut the brambles with the scythe so that we would not be tempted above our strengths.

151. This can serve as an instruction to our neighbor for when the Promised One is in front of the door and wonderful movements are made in the Spirit; the foolish virgins will then love one another, they will hate and persecute the Promised One and the wise virgins. (Matthew 25).

152. Our own creative will (when it is lost in the eternal love, in the inner depth, and that it surrenders itself entirely to God, then happens a hunger, petition, sigh, and uninterrupted desire) is an angel of God, a nuptial chariot of the Holy Spirit, SOPHIA’s Fiancé and a work of God the Father.

153. By which He begets and reveals His marvels of Love, by means of the seven spirits or Forms of Nature according to the three PRINCIPLES.

154. And as long as man activates in himself this sacred fire, by the breath of prayer, and makes the flame shine, as long as dear SOPHIA illuminates the soul, and the Devil does not approach it so easily.

155. And although it may well knock at the door of the soul with its poisoned rays, rough and igneous, the spirits immediately stir and send the senses to God.

156. Who arrives at once to help, and it is in the soul a great tumult until the enemy is hunted down.

157. But when the Will itself deviates from the Divine Light, in the innermost depths of the soul, and goes out to the seven spirits of the planets, it turns into an angry, igneous and exalted dragon, the Devil, Satan, the ancient serpent (Revelation 12), who stands up against God and His works, who fights against Him within His dear children, and who is the chariot, the temple, and the abode of the Devil;

158. This is how he mocks God and all good hearts, and can, through their channel, enter this world, which is impossible for him without it.

159. May my reader be cordially urged to seek only to know himself thoroughly; he will certainly find in him the seven-headed dragon and the prostitute;

160. Let him declare war on them, and let him not lay down his arms, let him not seek rest in the flesh until he hastens his enemy from the Celestial temple into the stinking cesspool. Then he will have gained glory before God.

161. God will cast the beast and the prostitute of the exterior world into the hellish pit, when the time has come.

162. The weapons of the Tempter are partly external and corporeal, partly interior and spiritual.

163. Externally, persecution, prison, shackles, outrages, taunts, banishment and death; for he has a right to the exterior life; and if we can leave them, he loses his power.

164. When he has lost this battle and sees that the soul is not afraid of his lion’s skin, he puts on the form of the serpent, places himself under the tree of temptation and presents us with inheritances, rich weddings, honors, high jobs.

165. As he knows how to paint pretty things for our reason! How it charms the soul, the senses and the IMAGINATION to make us bite the tasty apple!

166. He thus causes loss of many good souls who then deplore their loss and their defeat until the end.

167. He tested me for many years with this bait of rotting flesh, until the love of God freed me, and for that he gave me the Celestial Virgin.

168. When this attempt fails, he tries the spiritual elements, pride, ambition, jealousy, anger, and inspires the soul with contempt for the great divine virtues of sanctity;

169. That the soul must stand up, rise above Thrones and despise what does not look like its fiery power.

170. That it must artfully attract the good kindred spirits, malign the one who would want to punish, or kill and throw it to the ground.

171. And when he finds an object, it lights and consumes in the hot Fire all that is not established in love, and so darkens the life and bearing of the soldier of Jesus, that no honest man can recognize it any longer.

172. At the same time, he rushes into the soul with anguish, fear, fright, trembling, doubt, incredulity, lust, etc., and wants to force it to fall on its knees and to beg him for a piece of bread.

173. He presents God as an angry and pitiless Judge, so that heaven and earth seem like a prison where we are crying out, but where help is far away.

174. But God does not allow testing the righteous beyond their strength; and when the measure is full, He sends admirable salvation, turns enemy to friend, or cuts off the weeds.

175. You, dear Reader, can do nothing else in all these trials, than to pray, as I have tirelessly done, and firmly believe that God is Love, and He did not abandon me in need.

176. To Him glory, honor, remembrance, and praise for all Eternity. Amen!

SIXTH CHAPTER

OF PRAYER

1. God has revealed to me in the light of Grace and Nature, and I have learned from my own experience that a pious Christian cannot remain in this world without adversity.

2. Not only being overwhelmed in the outer by the incredible tricks and pitfalls of the demon; but that also carrying also within him his ferocious enemy, that feeds him, makes him expand, and thus exposes himself to great dangers.

3. For the Devil, the World, the Anger of God and his own Flesh attract him into the deep abyss of the Darkness, wanting to extinguish or engulf the little Divine Light lit in his heart, to which the Devil is a sworn enemy.

4. I could not do anything better than to continually throw my own will into the very dear Will of God, and to hold it steadfast with supplications and sighs in the reign of His Holy Spirit.

5. I have undertaken nothing without the prayers and assent of my dear Guide, because I followed a path totally unknown and that lived in Christ, which is contrary and inconceivable to any reason.

6. I had faced many conflicts from natural men; the friends and the enemies rose up against me, considering me a strange innovator, who wished to introduce a strange teaching and method, and quite impracticable to human nature; they looked at me with a malevolent eye, they hated and left me; and I saw that my forebodings had not deceived me.

7. And as I resolved, to avoid the storm, to bury myself in silence, God DIRECTED my conduct differently, and brought me back into the fight.

8. I saw that my will was fighting God’s Will, and as He was becoming too strong, I had to surrender myself fully to Him and let Him act, although my reason could not foresee where He was aiming,

9. Until finally by His compassion, I arrived at a safe harbor; my soul found rest there, and the promoters of my troubles and my doubts were no longer able to reach me.

10. Those who know the heart know the costs, sweat, pain, and ardent prayers;

11. I rejoice greatly and give heartfelt thanks to the Most High for having preserved me as a faithful collaborator among many others.

12. Whoever watches and prays with me, sacrifices his good and his blood, and who has received the reward and the victory of faith, by Jesus; can testify to what has happened to us.

13. The Holy Spirit and the need for prayer are the best masters; and we would not need books and formulas if we all had the same feelings, and if we possessed the prayer of the Holy Spirit.

14. But as there are many concepts, one seeks God in the stars, the other in the air, and very little seek Him in themselves; each one goes his way and prays according to his CONSTELLATION.

15. An animal man does not reach farther than the aerial sky, ANIMA MUNDI, in the elements.

16. Others go a little deeper, they enter the SPIRITUS MUNDI, or in the starry sky, to the Sun; they are forbidden to go further.

17. An evil man enters the world of obsession, because his MAGIC seeks only to produce works and words of darkness, according to the desires of his flesh and his malevolent will.

18. But the regenerated, enters into himself with his MAGIC, in the true Holy Heaven of the TINCTURE of Light, and seizes in his desire the spoken Word or SOPHIA.

19. He produces in all prayers by the FIAT, the Holy Trinity and the celestial wisdom.

20. And he alone prays in the Spirit and in Truth the true God Triune, and his prayer is a yes and amen in heaven and on earth.

21. The others stick to their ordinary words and produce forms of their own will, according to the external desire of life; they do not contain real strength.

22. I have heard many men who are otherwise well-meaning talking about their labors, and they said that they could serve God and pray in the midst of their temporal affairs.

23. Which I did not want to contradict, because not everyone knows how to distinguish God, Nature, and the different DEGREES of the worlds, nor does he justly understand what it is to pray in Spirit and in Truth.

24. We must sympathize with the incomprehension of the ignorant, and look upon Christ, who is our intercessor with the Celestial Father, and who pitied the blind sheep without pastors.

25. There are still, among the true believers, great differences, according as one is fixed or not in the true love, or that one is in a superficial or deep knowledge; which is useless to detail; God is and remains His own giver, provided we ask Him seriously.

26. To pray well is not, according to my experience and my PRACTICE, to say words; it is to destroy the spirit or the will of the soul in God, and it is a begetting of the Holy Trinity and Wisdom, through the seven Forms of Nature.

27. This takes place by the MAGIC or the desire of the Faith; the Will is conceived by a MAGIC of what is asked.

28. As the will is as subtle as a thought, and it needs a body which it can operate, it captures the Word of Christ in its IMAGINATION and penetrates up to God;

29. But desire makes it hard, austere, dark, and anxious; it feels only doubt and negation; it is what, in the beginning before I understood the genesis of God, did not TROUBLE

30. Because I did not want No, but a Yes, and the more I lit up my desire the more I found anxiety, so I had to stop; but after a little while began again, cursing the No and the doubt, and conceived the desire to penetrate the Light of God.

31. The Spirit of God met me in this desire, and the CONJUNCTION lit the Fire by which my anxious will was changed into an amiable joy, I felt a light and was granted.

32. Because everything was then Yes and Amen and I had no more doubts.

33. By this PRACTICE, where God directed me into prayer, I later understood Boehme’s theory of the seven Forms and the three PRINCIPLES.

34. And I know that these readers, if they are not led by God in PRACTICE, hardly understand the profundity.

35. I have experienced that the path that passes through the Wrath of God in the first dark PRINCIPLE, is arid, and not only requires work, but also invincible courage, that man will not find in his own strength.

36. May the dear disciple be forewarned that he must strongly conceive Love in his desire and IMAGINATION.

37. He will thus find courage when Wrath will frighten him, bringing doubt and incredulity; he will be able to accuse them and SPECULATE immediately with his IMAGINATION in Love; he will see how Wrath will weaken and dwindle.

38. At first I had to endure a very harsh shock, because the Wrath had put in my soul a mortal sin against the Holy Spirit, as if I had cursed God.

39. On top of that I fell into an inverted humility, because I had not read Boehme yet and did not know that they were Love, Wrath, God, and the rest.

40. Our description will not be understood from him who is not illuminated; it will be even obscure to him who is not entirely illuminated.

41. Here is an analogy taken in the seed: When it is entrusted to her mother, it must pass through the seven Forms of Nature, before it bears fruit; that’s what no one can deny.

42. Vegetative force determines growth by rain and sun; if there was no MAGNETIC desire in the seed, it would be dead and could not grow.

43. Thus the MAGIC or MAGNETIC desire of the animistic will is the creator and the generator of what the soul has conceived in its IMAGINATION, that is to say of the noble and sweet Light of God.

44. If you have engendered in you that beautiful Light where dwells the Trinity, all your body is luminous and you feel a great joy.

45. But that does not last on the outside; for the red Dragon, this worm of the soul, or the obscure PRINCIPLE, has a violent appetite, and wants to swallow it to satisfy its furious MAGNETIC

46. If you want to have this Light again, you have to engender it again; and it is a violent fight in your soul, between the Light and the Wrath.

47. Which constantly forces you to pray, and leaves you little rest.

48. This struggle lasts until Wrath is sealed and surrenders to Love; from which is born in the soul the great Mercy of God.

49. I speak from my own experience, leaving to each his own, I suffered a lot and I had to stay under the dark domination of the Devil, because the Dragon had risen in my brothers and wanted to engulf in his torrent fury a noble pearl of light;

50. With the help of the faithful Virgin, he could not triumph. May God receive eternal gratitude!

51. When you are taken back by Christ, and regenerated by the Water and the Spirit, you become a priest of the Most High who has the privilege to enter the Holy of Holies.

52. For the Word has been ESSENTIALLY revealed in your heart and through the mouth, and divine incense, the spirit of prayer has been entrusted to you.

53. And you can pray, supplicate, offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving and atonement for all men, Jews, Turks and Pagans, still in the vestibule of the flesh, and present for them your soul to Christ as ANATHEMA ;

54. To envelop yourself in the love of Jesus, and to introduce Him through prayer to quench the acute and igneous hunger of prayer;

55. You must not bury your spiritual treasures in your soul, nor preserve for yourself alone the heavenly gifts; but let your stream of prayers flow for all your brothers, and present to God the first of your fruits of love; so God may Bless you and constantly communicate new strengths.

56. And by this exercise, you will be brought in a year much further into the internal than in many years the other ways; all those with experience will recognize that.

57. Do not go out, return and draw out the love of God, He will direct your prayers and will bring you dear disciples who thank you from the heart as well as God, for having contributed by your work to the salvation of their souls.

58. And even if it happens that their egoism does not go to love, and that it stands up against you with anger and brutality,

59. Remain in the Love of Jesus, never let Him go out of your IMAGINATION and your Will, carry your irascible brothers, and penetrate by the love of your prayer in their Anger, until it goes to the Love of Jesus, and be changed into sweet mercy.

60. You must engender yourself with your Jesus, Love in Anger to revive the irascible brothers in Christ Jesus, the eternal Love.

61. Think that you are God’s, to pray for your brothers, to reconcile them, bring them back and connect them to Him.

62. Let this be your function on this earth, be faithful to it to the end, and magnify Jesus above all power, all greatness, and all kingdoms.

63. And if your own will is opposed to one another, remain calm in your will, and see which side turns the Angel of the grand Council.

64. Because your prayer should not come back empty but express the Will of God.

65. So, dear Reader, whoever you are, know that a true and ESSENTIAL Christian is a worker in the vineyard of the Lord; he fights incessantly with the Anger of God in the Children of unbelief, with the Devil, with reason, which rises in the soul; he overthrows them and strikes right and left, with the sword of the Spirit, all the enemies of Jesus Christ.

66. He has very little rest in this world; he must watch, fast, and pray, so that the Devil of the Abyss does not triumph, and take away his noble Pearl of light, which the Devil hates above all else.

67. That he does not spend his time in laziness and indolence, as the world wrongly believes; and that he does not covet the superfluity of the rich.

68. If he did so, he would have to stay in the world, hoard, trade, buy, sell, run, and live according to the time.

69. He could not leave the world, nor follow Christ in the Regeneration, nor deny all the temporal, until he had no longer enough to cover his shame.

70. In such a life, he becomes stranger to all men, resigns himself to a great earthly poverty, in order to obtain the noble Pearl of the knowledge of God and of himself.

71. The Devil covers him with his black cloak of vices, so that he may not be recognized in this world, and souls may be robbed of him.

72. Certainly the world is not worthy of such souls; that is why God leaves them so hidden that they will not be recognized and torn by the crowd of Devil’s swine.

73. So it is a great Grace that God made to a Rich of the unjust Mammon, when He makes him to help even one of those poor hidden.

74. It is the Spirit of God who operates this, because they are not recognizable externally, they are not dependent on anyone, do not complain, but are happy with what God gives them.

75. For it is His poor and not those of the world; that is why God knows them, as they know Him, seeking to honor and adore Him to their end.

Figures:

• The perfect man (2 boards)
• The ray of the begetting of the image of God in man according to the three principles of the Divine Being.
• The terrestrial man
• The regenerated man

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh

Artwork redone and rejuvenated by Brother Stephen Murtaugh