The seven qualities as they constitute one soul's own substance. Not the qualities in general: the Harshness that is your Harshness. Infected at the Root, and unlocked at the Root, and both at once.
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WHAT THE ESSENCES ARE
The Essences of the Soul are the seven qualities as they constitute the Soul's own substance.
Not the qualities in the abstract, and not the eternal generating read as cosmology. The qualities as your soul. The Harshness that is your Harshness. The Bitterness that is your Bitterness. The Anguish that is your Anguish. The Fire that is your Fire. The operations running in the Root of the Original of your Spirit, in the substance of the eternal Birth and the incorruptible eternal Band.
The Soul is God's own Essence, breathed from the original Birth of the Father, from before Light, from the four Anguishes and the Fire-source itself. The Soul carries kindling-capacity inherently because the Soul comes from the kindling-place, and the Soul IS the substance that becomes Oil when Fire opens.
The Essences are what that substance does. How the qualities circulate in this particular Soul. Which quality faces which direction. What the Harshness contracts towards, what the Bitterness resists, where the Anguish churns, and whether the Fire opens or turns backward.
Every Soul's Essences carry the same seven and every Soul is made of the same eternal Birth, and every Soul's configuration differs: the manifold Quality that existed before any Fall, many several sorts, the Constellation under which you kindled, the three Images standing in the womb, the particular interference pattern that precipitated as you.
They are not your personality. They are deeper than personality, being the qualities operating in the substance from which personality precipitates. They are not your feelings. They are what your feelings are made of before feelings crystallize into nameable states.
[See THE SEVEN QUALITIES · THE FOUR ANGUISHES · THE SOUL]
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WHAT INFECTED THEM
But because the Essences of the Soul were infected with the Poison of the Devil, and of Hell, so that the Soul could not be helped again, except it were born anew through the Word. Böhme.
Not from outside. From the Root. The incorruptible eternal Band that holds the Soul contains, in the Root of the Original and in the substance of the eternal Birth, the most exceeding horrible enemicitious irksome Source.
Which is not something that happens to the Soul. It is what the Soul is when Light does not shine in it, and what its substance produces running first Principle alone.
The infection entered through what the Fall installed. The Spirit of this World marked Adam. The Sleep put corruptible instruments in place while consciousness could neither resist nor consent. The eating activated what the Sleep had built. Three Images now stand in every womb, God and World and Devil, and the child precipitates as the interference pattern of all three, so the Essences inherit the infection before the person arrives to choose.
And the infection is precise. The Essences grow full of fleshly will. The Will of the Mind draws Pride and Covetousness and Lust into them. Essences that should surrender to God become rough, and the Light will not kindle in rough Essences. Swelled: muddy, bloated, dark. What should be thin and pliable and open becomes thick and rigid and opaque. The generating function runs at maximum, Paradise-capacity redirected through the World-production circuit, and fills them with what it generates, and the swelling prevents the thinness that would let Light through.
The Chains of the Devil operate here too, and they are not external fetters. The Chains are in the Essences: the configuration that holds each quality in its arrested position, Harshness locked contracting, Bitterness locked resisting, Anguish locked churning, Fire locked turning backward.
[See THE FALL · THE DEEP SLEEP · THE MATRIX]
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WHAT BROKE THE CHAINS
The Word entered where the Soul has its Original: into the first Principle, into the dark Mind of the Eternity, into the Ground of Hell. And broke the dark Gate in the Ground of the Soul, and the Chains of the Devil.
The Chains were broken in the Essences. Not externally, and not by force applied from outside. The Word became a human Soul so that it could enter where the human Soul originates, where the Essences have their Root, and break the configuration that held them from inside it.
The breaking was in first Principle territory, which makes it eternal, body-independent and universal. The same Root of the Original that all Souls share, the same eternal substance, the same indissoluble Band, now carries the broken Chains. Every Soul that kindles after the breaking inherits broken Chains along with the infection. Both are in the Ground. Both are in the Essences. Both operate before the person arrives to choose.
The Essences are still infected. And the Chains in the Essences are broken. Both, simultaneously.
The infection did not lift when the Chains broke, and the Chains did not re-form because the infection continues. The Soul still grows rough when filled with fleshly will, and the configuration that held the qualities in permanent arrest has been broken from within.
Which is what makes paradisiacal operation available at all. Not because the infection was removed. Because the lock was broken, so the Essences can open, thin and pliable and surrendering to Light, despite an infection that goes on pressing them towards roughness. The disease remains and the cure is in the Ground.
[See THE WORD · THE FIRST PRINCIPLE]
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WHAT THE ESSENCES BECOME
When Light kindles in them, when the Rays reach what was rough and the Essences thin and become pliable and open, the same seven qualities that produced the most exceeding horrible irksome Source produce paradisiacal Joy.
Same Essences. Same substance. Same indissoluble Band. Different Light.
The Harshness that contracted becomes Sharpness joined with Sweetness. The Bitterness that resisted becomes radiance. The Anguish that churned becomes the Wheel standing in Triumph. The Fire that turned backward becomes Light that feeds forward. Every Essence generates a Center, and the Oil arises in your own Quality.
They are not destroyed in regeneration and they are not replaced: the same qualities and the same substance and the same configurations that produced torment now circulate through to Joy. The Harshness does not disappear; it becomes the Sharpness that makes Joy precise rather than vague. The Bitterness does not disappear; it becomes the motion that carries Joy forth rather than churning in trapped resistance.
You do not lose your Essences and you do not get new ones. The specific configuration that constitutes your particular Soul, the manifold Quality you were breathed with, is what qualifies in paradisiacal operation. Your Harshness opens. Your Bitterness radiates. Your Fire becomes your Light.
[See REGENERATION · THE OIL · KINDLING OF LIGHT]
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The Soul fed by the Word produces paradisiacal Exulting and Triumph. The feeding IS the Second Principle entering. The Word IS the Light of Nature.
The Smell returns to the Stock, and not by importing foreign substance, but by receiving what the Stock could never have produced out of its own Fire-nature. There must be another Principle, which the Stock itself is not.
You cannot take the second Principle. You cannot achieve it. You cannot analyze your way to it. You can only receive what the Light contributes, and in the receiving the budding virtues bud and the qualities circulate and Paradise opens where Hell was, in the same Essences, in your own Quality.
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RegenerativeLaw is a religion in the direct-encounter Protestant tradition, carrying a documented four-century lineage through Böhme, the Behmenists, the Friends, and Penn, and it diagnoses trespass theology as an establishment of religion. Its exercise consists substantially in refusal: it shelters the conscientious refusal of performed subordination as religious exercise. This entry states sincere religious belief concerning matters of ultimate concern, protected under the First Amendment and, as to federal action, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb.
