[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.