The Tree of Good and Evil Knowledge

 

     

Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, aus dem 16ten und 17ten Jahrhundert. 

Erstes Heft. Aus emem alten Mscpt. zum erstenmal ans Licht gestelit. Altona, 1785. 

Gedruckt und verlegt von J. D. U. Eckhardt. Zweites Heft. Altona, 1788.

This 18th century compendium, drew on 17th century alchemical sources such as Adrian von Mynsich, with mystical pieces from Valentin Weigel, and Abraham von Franckenberg's works on Jacob Boehme. It was an important and influential source of Rosicrucian ideas, albeit filtered thtough an 18th century perspective.

One page from this book and an English translation

The Tree of Good and Evil Knowledge

THERE IS ONE TREE bearing two kinds of fruits.Its name is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.Like its name,are its fruits: namely, good and bad fruits of life and death, of love and hate,of light and darkness.This tree was put before Adam,and even if he had in his innocence the liberty to look upon it as a tree of God's wonders.God's prohibition did not allow him to place his desire in it and eat of it, but threatened that (if he would do so) he would die from its fruit. For this was a tree of division where good and evil battled with each other: but in a battle there can be no life: For battle brings forth destruction,and destruction brings forth death,life lives in the sweet unity of love.Therefore,when Adam ate from this tree,a battle started within him, and in this battle he lost his life.

Nevertheless wretched men will not learn through such fall and damage.His desire is still for that tree and its fruits.Man is always desirous to have the division of manifold things,and man is always battling,when he could return to the unity of simplicity,if he only would come in peace.

Life's light stands in the middle to point out to men the way to this first rest, and the Father in the heaven lets his Sun rise over good and evil: But everything grows after its own fashion,and man is only too apt to look upon the stars of the manifoldness,and in his own discretion,to choose them for his ladders, though they make him stray many times from the true light,and detain him in the whirlpool of uncertainty.This whirlpool of uncertainty leads more and more out of the innermost face of the Sun into the outer (world) and can find neither end nor place of rest,unless it leads from the outer (world) back again and seeks the beginning,from which all the smaller star-lights originated.

There is also among 7 stars,hardly one turning its rays inward to direct the searching mind to Bethlehem, and amongst 7 eyes winding around the whirlpool of searching desire is hardly one which stands towards the Sabbath in the innermost; but the restless movement of the working days move them through all spheres, and even if they take a look at God's wonders, they only look upon the surface and every eye looks upon that which is shown through its own desire.

God made man to live in an eternal Sabbath, he should not work, but let God work in him, he should not take with his own hands,but only receive what God bestowed plentifully upon His mercy.But man left the Sabbath,and wanted to work himself,raised his hand against the law to take in his own desire what he should not have taken.

Therefore, God let him fall, and since he had despised the quiet, he had to feel painfully the restlessness.In such restlessness of life all children of man still extend their hands,trying to grasp their pleasures. And as is their understanding and will,so is their grasping.Some grasp for the good, some grasp for the evil.Some grasp for the fruit,some only for the leaves,some for a branch with fruits and leaves on it.And they derive pleasure from the things they have grasped, these poor fools do not know that all their pain and labor had only been a Studium particulare.They grasp for pieces, where they could obtain the whole. 

They seek for quiet and cannot find it; for they look from the outside into the restlessness of movement, which dwells in the inner solitude of the inner Centri,and though one may grasp more than the other,it is still piece-work.At times there may be one amongst 7 hands coming near the secret and it grasps the whole stem of the tree at that point where all the divided branches return to unity. 

But even this hand is still far from the roots of the tree, only grasping and holding the secret from the outside and cannot yet see it from the inside.For the root of this tree is understood only by the eye of wisdom, standing in the Centro of all spheres.

These roots go from the visible world of mingled good and evil, into the sphere of the invisible world.This eye looks with the greatest peace upon the wonders of all movements and also looks through all the other eyes,wandering about outside of the rest in the unrest, all those eyes which want to see for themselves without the right eye of wisdom,from which they have received all their seeing-power.

This eye can prove all spirits, how intelligent, pure and acute they be.It understands the sources of good and evil. Plain before it is light and darkness.It understands time and eternity,visible and invisible,present and future things, earthly and heavenly things, things of the body and things of the spirit, high and deep, outwardliness and inwardliness.

And nevertheless, none of these things are disturbed by it,for the eye lives in the Centro of peace, where everything stands in equality outside of any strife, and whatever it sees it possesses.For in the Centro of its peace is its kingly throne, everything being subject to it. 

Therefore, dear man! If thou wouldst return to right understanding and right peace, cease from thy works and let God alone work in thee,so that the eye of wisdom will open in thine own self and thou wilt attain a studio particulari ad universale and One find All.

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Seek the Rosicross into the Spiritual World and not in matter