The Signature of All Things

mystical visions about plants. Many people considered him an early botanist. Alma’s mother, on the other hand, had considered him a cesspool of residual medieval superstition. So there was considerable conflict of opinion surrounding Jacob Boehme.
    The old cobbler had believed in something he called “the signature of all things”—namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity’s betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love. This is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver-shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. Polygonum , withits spattering of blood-red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh. And so on, ad infinitum. Beatrix Whittaker had always been scornful of this theory (“Most leaves are shaped like livers—are we meant to eat them all?”), and Alma had inherited her mother’s skepticism.
    But now was not the time to speak of skepticism, for again Ambrose was reading Alma’s face. He was searching her expression most desperately, it seemed, for permission to proceed. Again, Alma kept her countenance impassive, although she felt much disturbed. Again, he proceeded.
    “I know that the science of today takes issue with Boehme’s ideas,” he said. “I understand the objections. Jacob Boehme worked in the opposite direction of proper scientific methodology. He lacked the rigor of orderly thinking. His writings were filled with shattered, splintered, mirror-fragments of insight. He was irrational. He was credulous. He saw only what he wished to see. He overlooked anything that contradicted his certainties. He started with his beliefs, then sought to make the facts fit around them. Nobody could rightly call that science.”
    Beatrix Whittaker could not have said it better herself, Alma thought—but again, she merely nodded.
    “And yet . . .” Ambrose trailed off.
    Alma gave her friend time to collect his thoughts. He was quiet for such a long while that she thought perhaps he had decided to end there. But after a long silence, he continued: “And yet Boehme said that God had pressed Himself into the world, and had left marks there for us to discover.”
    The parallel was unmistakable, Alma thought, and she could not help but point it out. “Like a printmaker,” she said.
    At these words, Ambrose spun to look at her, his face flooded with relief and gratitude. “Yes!” he said. “Precisely that. You understand me. You can see what that idea would have meant to me, as a young man. Boehme said that this divine imprimatur is a kind of holy magic, and that this magic is the only theology we will ever need. He believed that we could learn to read God’s prints, but that we must first swing ourselves into the fire.”
    “Swing ourselves into the fire,” Alma repeated, keeping her voice neutral.
    “Yes. By renouncing the material world. By renouncing the church, with its stone walls and liturgies. By renouncing ambition. By renouncing study. By renouncing the desires of the body. By renouncing possessiveness and selfishness. By renouncing even speech! Only then could one see what Godhad seen, at the moment of creation. Only then could one read the messages the Lord had left behind for us. So you see, Alma, I could not become a minister after hearing of this. Nor a student. Nor a son. Nor—it seemed—a living man.”
    “What did you become, instead?” Alma asked.
    “I tried to become the fire. I ceased all activities of normal existence. I stopped speaking. I even stopped eating. I believed that I could survive on sunlight and rain alone. For quite a long while—though it seems impossible to imagine—I tell you that I did survive on sunlight and rain alone. It did not surprise me. I had faith. I had always been the most devout of my mother’s children, you see. Where my brothers possessed logic and reason, I had always felt the Creator’s love more innately. As a child, I used to fall so deeply into prayer that my mother would shake