(27) For the water which resteth on the earth is as corrupt and perished and mortal or dead a being or thing as the earth is, and belongeth also to the outermost birth, which with its comprehensibility, or as to its palpability, stands in death, even as the earth and stones do.

(42) Sings to me in organ tones, 'To him shall we return.' Like a water-lily seek life there! Yea, like that drawer of water, at the risk of life, Water will be his death, yet he still seeks water, And still drinks on, and God knows what is right. O lover, cold-hearted and void of loyalty, Who from fear for your life shun the beloved! O base one, behold a hundred thousand souls Dancing towards the deadly sword of his love: Behold water in a pitcher; pour it out;

(86) But when the sweet water can defend itself no longer, then anguish riseth up in it; just as in man, when he is dying, when the spirit is departing from the body, and so the body yieldeth itself captive as a prisoner to death; just so the water also yieldeth itself captive as a prisoner.

(2) "O Shem, it is necessary that the thought be called by the word so the bondage of the power of the spirit may be saved from the frightful water. And it is blessedness if it is granted someone to contemplate what is exalted, and to know the exalted time and the bondage. For the water is an insignificant body. And people are not released because they are bound in the water, just as from the beginning the light of the spirit was bound.

(5) The meaning is not that he has no power in the elementary water, to possess it; for the outermost corrupted birth or geniture in the elementary water belongeth also to the wrath of God, and death is also therein, as well as in the earth.

(15) And consider attentively, I pray, with what appropriateness the holy symbols are presented. For since death is with us not an annihilation of being, as others surmise, but the separating of things united, leading to that which is invisible to us, the soul indeed becoming invisible through deprivation of the body, and the body, through being buried in earth in consequence of one of its bodily changes, becoming invisible to human ken, appropriately, the whole covering by water would be taken as an image of death, and the invisible tomb. The symbolical teaching, then, reveals in mystery that the man baptized according to religious rites, imitates, so far as Divine imitation is attainable to men, by the three immersions in the water, the supremely Divine death of the Life-giving Jesus, Who spent three days and three nights in the tomb, in Whom, according to the mystical and secret teaching of the sacred text, the Prince of the world found nothing.

(132) And this now is the water of life, which is generated in the light of God out of the hard death. And thus the light of God in the sweet water of heaven brake through the astringent and hard, dark death; and thus the heaven is made out of the midst or centre of the water.

(8) As the flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their name and their form, thus a wise man, freed from name and form, goes to the divine Person, who is greater than the great.

(14) Now therefore we say (as the Scripture informs us) that God dwells in Heaven, and it is the Truth. Now mark, Moses writes, that God created the Heaven out of the Midst of the Waters, and the Scripture says, God dwells in Heaven; therefore we may now observe, that the Water has its Original from the Longing of the eternal Nature after the eternal Light of God; but the eternal Nature is made manifest by the Longing after the Light of God, as is mentioned before; and the Light of God is present every where, and yet remains hidden to Nature; for Nature receives only the Virtue of the Light, and the Virtue is the Heaven wherein the Light of God dwells and is hid, and so shines in the Darkness. The Water is the Materia, or Matter that is generated from the Heaven, and therein stands the third, which again generates a Life, and comprehensible Essence, or Substance, out of itself, viz. the Elements and other Creatures.

(52) For heaven is the heart of the water. Likewise, in all creatures, and in all that is in this world the water is the heart thereof, and nothing can subsist without water, be it in the flesh or out of the flesh, in the vegetables of the earth or in metals and stones, in everything the water is the kernel or the heart.

(38) For that water, at or in the kindling of the wrath, was not apprehended by death, but subsisteth from eternity to eternity, and reacheth to all the ends and parts of or in this world, and is the water of life, which breaketh through death, out of which is built the new body of God in this world.

(52) Will that water run away from the stream? When that water joins the water of the stream It is lost therein, and becomes itself the stream. Its individuality is lost, but its essence remains, I will hang myself upon my lord's palm-tree In excuse for having fled away from him!" Even as a ball rolling along on head and face, The people were all on the alert, expecting That the Prince would burn him or hang him, Saying, "Moth-like he has seen the blaze of the light,

(98) The meaning is not that the water dieth quite; no, that cannot be, but the astringent spirit taketh captive in its cold fire the sweetness or the unctuosity and fatness of the water, and qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth therewith, and makes use thereof for its spirit: Its own spirit being wholly benumbed, and in death, therefore it makes use of the water for its life, and draweth out the water's unctuosity or fatness to itself, and bereaveth the water of its power.

(62) But how can he that swimmeth in a deep water defend himself? He has enough to do to protect himself from the water; and yet nevertheless he is assaulted by the devils.

(1) Out of the water and out of the moon the divine Breath enters him. Verily, that is the divine Breath which, whether moving or not moving, is not perturbed, nor injured. He who knows this becomes the Self of all beings. As is that divinity [i.e. Prajapati], so is he. As all beings favor that divinity, so to him who knows this all beings show favor. Whatever sufferings creatures endure, these remain with them. Only good goes to him. Evil, verily, does not go to the gods. Breath, the unfailing power in a person: like the unwearying world-breath, wind

(7) So also the water of life was separated from the water of death, yet in that manner as that, in this time of the world, they hang the one to the other, as body and soul, and yet neither of them comprehendeth the other. The heaven which was made out of the midst or centre of the water is the cleft between them, so that the comprehensible or palpable water is a death, and the incomprehensible or impalpable is the life.

(4) In the Book of Changes it is said: Heaven created water through the One. That is the true power of the Great One. If a man attains this One he becomes alive; if he misses it he dies, But even if a man lives in the power (air, prana) he does not see the power (air), just as fishes live in water but do not see the water.

(26) Whatsoever he performs, who practises that which is good, is the value of the water of life; since water is not created alike in value, for the undefiled water of Arêdvîvsûr is worth the whole water of the sky and earth of Khvanîras, except the Arag river, created by Aûharmazd.

(101) Then thou seest that the body upon the root is dead also; for when the virtue is gone out of the root, then the body is but a dead carcass and can operate or effect nothing at all. And that is because the astringent spirit and the bitter have killed or destroyed the body of the water and attracted the fatness or unctuosity thereof to themselves; and thus they have drawn or sucked up the spirit thereof into the dead body.

(26) The water also has a fierce deadly spring, for it killeth and consumeth; and so all things that have a life and being must rot and perish in the water.