rooted in the substance of God, is a {189} battleground of strife, an
endless Armageddon. Both within and without the world is woven of
mixed strands, a warp of darkness and a woof of light, and all beings
possessed of will are thus actors in a mighty drama of eternal
significance, with exits, not only at the end of the Fifth Act but
throughout the play, through two gates into two worlds which are both
all the time present here and now.

[1] _Aurora_, xxi. 60-62.

[2] Swinburne, _Erechtheus_.

[3] See _Fifteenth Epistle_, 25.

[4] _Fifth Epistle_, 50.

[5] Like Paracelsus, he uses "sulphur" in a symbolic way to represent
an active energy of the universe and a form of will in man. In a
similar way, "mercury" stands for intelligence and spirit, and "salt"
is the symbol for substance. No one could find in a chemist's shop the
salt or sulphur that Boehme talks about!

[6] There is a fine saying about Dante in the Ottimo Commento: "I, the
writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other
than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say for
him what they were not wont to say for other poets."

[7] _Sig. re._ ix. 1-3. Paracelsus said, "Everything is the product of
one creative effort," and, "There is nothing corporeal that does not
possess a soul."

[8] _The Supersensual Life_, p. 44.

[9] Paracelsus and others used the term _Mysterium magnum_ to denote
the original, but unoriginated, matter out of which all things were
made. "Mysterium" is anything out of which something germinally
contained in it can be developed.

[10] _Mysterium magnum_, xxix. 1-2.

[11] _Forty Questions_, i. 57.

[12] _Sig. re._ ii. 4-15, and iii. 1-10.

[13] _The Threefold Life of Man_, iii. 2.

[14] _Aurora_, iii. 35-39.

[15] _Ibid._ vi. 6-8; _Clavis_, 18-29.

[16] _Sig. re._ xvi. i.

[17] _Aurora_, xiii. 48-57; _Myst. mag._ viii. 31; _The Three
Principles_, iv. 66.

[18] _Sig. re._ xv. 38.

[19] _Myst. mag._ viii. 27.

[20] _Myst. mag._ xxix. 1-10.

[21] _The Three Principles_, iv. 68-74; _The Threefold Life_, iv. 33.

[22] _Myst. mag._ ix. 3-8.

[23] _Aurora_, Preface 84.

[24] Christopher Walton, _Notes and Materials for a Biography of Wm.
Law_ (London, 1854), 55.

[25] The great passages in which Boehme expounds the seven qualities
are found in the _Aurora_, chaps. viii.-xi.; _Sig. re._ chap. xiv.;
_The Clavis_, 54-132; though they are more or less definitely stated or