(15) And thus also the first bitter Sting or Prickle, or the first Bitterness (after the Light is kindled, and that the first Birth stands in Perfection,) generates again out of its own Quality an or Source springs up in a new Fire or Life, having the Condition and Property of all the Qualities, and yet the Bitterness in this new Sprout is chief est among all the Qualities; so that there is a bitter Bitterness, a bitter Tartness, a bitter Water-Spirit, a bitter Sound, a bitter Fire, a bitter Love, yet all perfectly in the rising up of great Joy.

(30) But the Sweetness is like Oil or Fire, wherein the Flash continually kindles itself, so that it shines: But the Oil being sweet, and mingled with the Matrix of the Water, therefore the shining Light is steady, [constant and fixed,] and sweet: But seeing it cannot, in the Nature of the Water, continue to be an Oil only (because of the Infection of the Water) therefore it becomes thick; and the [Nature or] Kind of the Fire colours it red; and this is the Blood and the Tincture in a Creature, wherein the noble Life stands. Of the Death and of the Dying. The Gate of Affliction and of Misery.

(4) Verily, while he does not there taste, he is verily tasting, though he does not taste (what is [usually] to be' tasted) x; for there is no cessation of the tasting of a taster, because of his imperishability [as a taster]. It is not, however, a second thing, other than himself and separate, that he may taste.

(46) Now the Will or the Desiring in the Dryness cannot reach the Light; and therein consists the Anguish in the Will [Longing] after the Light; and the Anguish is attractive, and in the Attracting is the Woe, and the Woe makes the Anguish greater, so that the Anguish in the Harshness attracts much more, and this Attracting in the Woe is the bitter [Sting or] Prickle, or the Bitterness of the Woe; and the Anguish reaches after the [Sting or] Prickle with attracting, and yet cannot comprehend it, because it resists, and the more the Anguish attracts, the more the [Sting or] Prickle raves and rages.

(51) And in this Joy, in the Water-Spring, [or Source,] the pleasant Source of the bottomless Love rises up, and all that rises up there is the second Principle: For the whole Begetting or Generating falls into a glorious Love; for the Harshness now loves the Light dearly, because it is so refreshing, chearly, and beautiful; for from this pleasant Refreshing it becomes thus sweet, courteous, and humble [or lowly;] and the Bitterness now loves the Harshness, because it is no more dark, nor so strongly [eagerly or fiercely] attractive to itself, but is sweet, mild, pure, and light.

(9) This is as was mentioned before; the Harshness is the Prima Materia, or first Matter, which is strong, and very eagerly and earnestly attractive, that is Sal: The Bitterness is nin the strong Attracting, for the Spirit sharpens itself in the strong Attracting, so that it becomes wholly aching, [anxious or vexed.] For Example, in Man, when he is enraged, how his Spirit attracts itself, which makes him bitter [or sour,] and trembling; and if it be not suddenly withstood and quenched, we see that the Fire of Anger kindles in him so, that he burns in Malice, and then presently a to be revenged. Purpose.

(7) [...] to mix with the [...]. For if a thought of lust enters into a virgin man, he has already become contaminated. And their gluttony cannot mix with moderation. For if the chaff is mixed with the wheat, it is not the chaff that is contaminated, but the wheat. For since they are mixed with each other, no one will buy her wheat, because it is contaminated. But they will coax him, "Give us this chaff!", seeing the wheat mixed with it, until they get it and throw it with all other chaff, and that chaff mixes with all other materials. But a pure seed is kept in storehouses that are secure. All these things,then, we have spoken.

(44) But when it becomes false, so that its Essences flatter with the Spirit of the great World, and desire the Fulness of the World, viz. 1. [In] the [sour] Harshness [desire] much Wealth [or Riches,] to eat and drink much, and to fill themselves continually.

(2) 'Water when drunk becomes threefold; its grossest portion becomes water, its middle portion blood, its subtilest portion breath.

(3) 'That which is the subtile portion of water, when drunk, rises upwards, and becomes breath.

(66) Timaeus: and because of these properties all such are called “pungent.” Again, when particles already refined by putrefaction, entering into the narrow veins, are symmetrical with the particles of earth and air contained therein, so that they cause them to circulate round one another and ferment, then, in thus fermenting they change round and pass into fresh places, and thereby create fresh hollows which envelop the entering particles. By this means, the air being veiled in a moist film,

(15) And when the Taste has tried it, and if it be good for the Essences of the Soul, then it gives it to the Feeling, which must try what Quality it is of, whether hot or cold, hard or soft, thick or thin, and then the Feeling a sends it into the Heart, [presenting it] before the Flash of the Life, and before the King of the Light of Life; and the Will of the Mind pierces further into that Thing, a great Depth, and sees what is therein, [considering] how much it will receive and take in of that Thing, and when it is enough, then the Will gives it to the Spirit of the Soul, viz. to the eternal Emperor, who brings it (with his strong and austere Might) out of the Heart, in the Sound upon the Tongue under the Roof of the Mouth, and there the Spirit distinguishes according to the Senses, as the Will has discovered [or manifested] it, and the Tongue distinguishes it in the Noise.

(45) Prato saith: It behoves you all, O Masters, when those bodies are being dissolved, to take care lest they be burnt up, as also to wash them with sea water, until all their salt be turned into sweetness, clarifies, tinges, becomes tincture of copper, and then goes off in flight! Because it was necessary that one should become tingeing, and that the other should be tinged, for the spirit being separated from the body and hidden in the other spirit, both become volatile.

Therefore the Wise have said that the gate of flight must not be opened for that which would flee, (or that which does not flee),* by whose flight death is occasioned, for by the conversion of the sulphureous thing into a spirit like unto itself, either becomes volatile, since they are made aeriform spirits prone to ascend in the air. But the Philosophers seeing that which was not volatile made volatile with the volatiles, iterated these to a body like to the non-volatiles, and put them into that from which they could not escape.* They iterated them to a body like unto the bodies from which they were extracted, and the same were then digested. But as for the statement of the Philosopher that the tingeing agent and that which is to be tinged are made one tincture, it refers to a spirit concealed in another humid spirit.

Know also that one of the humid spirits is cold, but the other is hot, and although the cold humid is not adapted to the warm humid, nevertheless they are made one.

Therefore, we prefer these two bodies, because by them we rule the whole work, namely, bodies by not-bodies, until incorporeals become bodies, steadfast in the fire, because they are conjoined with volatiles, which is not possible in any body, these excepted. For spirits in every wise avoid bodies, but fugitives are restrained by incorporeals. Incorporeals, therefore, similarly flee from bodies; those, consequently, which do not flee are better and more precious than all bodies. These things, therefore, being done, take those which are not volatile and join them; wash the body with the incorporeal until the incorporeal receives a non-volatile body; convert the earth into water, water into fire, fire into air, and conceal the fire in the depths of the water, but the earth in the belly of the air, mingling the hot with the humid, and the cold with the dry. Know, also, that Nature overcomes Nature, Nature rejoices in Nature, Nature contains Nature.

(2) This, however, raises a problem deserving investigation in itself: what has happened when a definite magnitude of water becomes air, and how do we explain the increase of volume? But for the present we must be content with the matter thus far discussed out of all the varied controversy accumulated on either side.

It remains for us to make out on our own account the true explanation of the phenomenon of mixing, without regard to the agreement or disagreement of that theory with any of the current opinions mentioned.

When water runs through wool or when papyrus-pulp gives up its moisture why is not the moist content expressed to the very last drop or even, without question of outflow, how can we possibly think that in a mixture the relation of matter with matter, mass with mass, is contact and that only the qualities are fused? The pulp is not merely in touch with water outside it or even in its pores; it is wet through and through so that every particle of its matter is drenched in that quality. Now if the matter is soaked all through with the quality, then the water is everywhere in the pulp.

"Not the water; the quality of the water."

But then, where is the water? and why is there a change of volume? The pulp has been expanded by the addition: that is to say it has received magnitude from the incoming substance but if it has received the magnitude, magnitude has been added; and a magnitude added has not been absorbed; therefore the combined matter must occupy two several places. And as the two mixing substances communicate quality and receive matter in mutual give and take so they may give and take magnitude. Indeed when a quality meets another quality it suffers some change; it is mixed, and by that admixture it is no longer pure and therefore no longer itself but a blunter thing, whereas magnitude joining magnitude retains its full strength.

But let it be understood how we came to say that body passing through and through another body must produce disintegration, while we make qualities pervade their substances without producing disintegration: the bodilessness of qualities is the reason. Matter, too, is bodiless: it may, then, be supposed that as Matter pervades everything so the bodiless qualities associated with it- as long as they are few- have the power of penetration without disintegration. Anything solid would be stopped either in virtue of the fact that a solid has the precise quality which forbids it to penetrate or in that the mere coexistence of too many qualities in Matter produces the same inhibition.

If, then, what we call a dense body is so by reason of the presence of many qualities, that plenitude of qualities will be the cause .

If on the other hand density is itself a quality like what they call corporeity, then the cause will be that particular quality.

This would mean that the qualities of two substances do not bring about the mixing by merely being qualities but by being apt to mixture; nor does Matter refuse to enter into a mixing as Matter but as being associated with a quality repugnant to mixture; and this all the more since it has no magnitude of its own but only does not reject magnitude.

(27) Thus you see that there is an eternal Root which affords this; and if you could bring the Colours and Vegetation or Growing into it, yet you could not bring the Smell and Virtue into it; and thus you will find in the Original of the Smell and of the Taste there must be another Principle, which the Stock itself is not, for that Principle has its Original from the Light of Nature.

(11) Behold now, when the Bitterness, or the bitter Sting [or Prickle,] (which in the Original was so very bitter, raging and tearing, when it took its Original in the Harshness,) attains this clear Light, and tastes now the Sweetness in the Harshness, which is its Mother, then it is so joyful, and cannot rise or swell so any more, but it trembles and rejoices in its Mother that bare it, and triumphs like a joyful Wheel in the Birth. And in this Triumph the Birth attains the fifth Form, and then the fifth Source springs up, viz. the friendly Love; and so when the bitter Spirit tastes the sweet Water, it rejoices in its Mother [the sour tart Harshness,] and so refreshes and strengthens itself therein, and makes its Mother stirring zin great Joy; where then there springs up the sweet Water-Spirit a very sweet pleasant Source or Fountain: For the Fire-Spirit (which is the Root of the Light, which was a strong [fierce rumbling Shriek, Crack, or] Terror in the Beginning) that now rises up very lovely, pleasantly and joyfully. The divine everlasting Gates or Doors, by which we have Entrance to the Deity,

(66) Timaeus: results from an opposite condition. Whenever the composition of the particles which enter into the moist parts is naturally akin to the state of the tongue, they oil its roughened parts and smooth it, contracting the parts that are unnaturally dilated or dilating those that are contracted, and thus settling them all, so far as possible, in their natural condition; and every such remedy of the forcible affections, being pleasant and welcome to everyone, is called “sweet.”

(65) Timaeus: are all termed “bitter”; while those which have a property less strong than the alkaline, being detergent in a moderate degree, seem to us to be “saline,” and more agreeable, as being devoid of the rough bitterness. And those which share in the heat of the mouth and are made smooth thereby, when they are fully inflamed and are themselves in turn burning the part which heated them, fly upwards because of their lightness towards the senses of the head and cut all the parts on which they impinge;

(11) Now the Sourness (in its Lust or great Longing [or Panting] after the Light) attracts continually, and in its own Substance it is nothing else but a vehement Hunger, very dry, and as [a Vacuum or] nothing at all, a desiring Will, as the Darkness after the Light; and its Hunger, or Attracting, makes the Bitterness, the Woe [or Lamentation] that it cannot be satiated, or mollified, from whence the Anguish rises, so that the Will, or Prickle, [or Sting] is rubbed, [or struck] in itself, from the Lust of the Desiring, and it will not yield itself to the dark Nothing, or dead Will, but sets its Desire and Anguish, and also its [eager or] strong Will so very hard towards the hidden Light of God, that thereby the Will becomes a twinkling Flash, like a sparkling or crackling Fire, whereby the Sourness, that is so very aching, is continually filled, and as it were deadened, whereby the sour Spirit comes to be soft, sweet, and material, even Water.

(31) But if it puts its Will forward into Meekness (viz. into the Obedience of God) then it is in the Source [or of the Quality and Property] of the Heart of God, and receives divine Virtue, and then all its rough Essences become angelical and joyful; and then its rough Essences are very serviceable to it, and are better and more profitable to it, than that it were altogether sweet in the Originality; in which [being sweet] there would be no Strength, nor such mighty Power as in the harsh, bitter, and fiery [Essences.]