(3) From him (when entering on creation) is born breath, mind, and all organs of sense, ether, air, light, water, and the earth, the support of all.

(13) This vital energy has its origin in the spiritual body of the earth. Every created thing has two bodies, one visible and substantial, the other invisible and transcendent. The latter consists of an ethereal counterpart of the physical form; it constitutes the vehicle of archæus, and may be called a vital body. This etheric shadow sheath is not dissipated by death, but remains until the physical form is entirely disintegrated. These "etheric doubles, "seen around graveyards, have given rise to a belief in ghosts. Being much finer in its substances than the earthly body, the etheric double is far more susceptible to impulses and inharmonies. It is derangements of this astral light body that cause much disease. Paracelsus taught that a person with a morbid mental attitude could poison his own etheric nature, and this infection, diverting the natural flow of vital life force, would later appear as a physical ailment. All plants and minerals have an invisible nature composed of this "archæus," but each manifests it in a different way.

(43) The Lungs signify the Earth, and are also of the same Quality.

(2) Air is, therefore, twofold in nature-tangible atmosphere and an intangible, volatile substratum which may be termed spiritual air. Fire is visible and invisible, discernible and indiscernible--a spiritual, ethereal flame manifesting through a material, substantial flame. Carrying the analogy further, water consists of a dense fluid and a potential essence of a fluidic nature. Earth has likewise two essential parts--the lower being fixed, terreous, immobile; the higher, rarefied, mobile, and virtual. The general term elements has been applied to the lower, or physical, phases of these four primary principles, and the name elemental essences to their corresponding invisible, spiritual constitutions. Minerals, plants, animals, and men live in a world composed of the gross side of these four elements, and from various combinations of them construct their living organisms.

(69) The Earth has just such Qualities and qualifying or fountain Spirits, as the Deep above the Earth, or as Heaven has, and all of them together belong to one only Body; and the whole or universal God is that one only Body. But that thou doest not wholly and fully see and know him, Sins are the Cause, with, and by which, thou in this great divine Body liest shut up in the dead or mortal Flesh, and the Power or Virtue of the Deity is hidden from thee, even as the Marrow in the Bones is hidden from the Flesh.

(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

(75) But now in both of them, viz. in the Earth and in thy Flesh, there is the Light of the clear Deity hidden, and it breaks through, and generates to itself a Body according to the Kind of each Body; for Man according to his Body, and for the Earth, according to its Body; for as the Mother is, so also is the Child.

(27) If the earth transmits the generative soul to growing things- or retains it while allowing a vestige of it to constitute the vegetal principle in them- at once the earth is ensouled, as our flesh is, and any generative power possessed by the plant world is of its bestowing: this phase of the soul is immanent in the body of the growing thing, and transmits to it that better element by which it differs from the broken off part no longer a thing of growth but a mere lump of material.

But does the entire body of the earth similarly receive anything from the soul?

Yes: for we must recognize that earthly material broken off from the main body differs from the same remaining continuously attached; thus stones increase as long as they are embedded, and, from the moment they are separated, stop at the size attained.

We must conclude, then, that every part and member of the earth carries its vestige of this principle of growth, an under-phase of that entire principle which belongs not to this or that member but to the earth as a whole: next in order is the nature , concerned with sensation, this not interfused but in contact from above: then the higher soul and the Intellectual-Principle, constituting together the being known as Hestia and Demeter - a nomenclature indicating the human intuition of these truths, asserted in the attribution of a divine name and nature.

(6) Verily, of created things here earth is the essence; of earth, water; of water, plants; of plants, flowers; of flowers, fruits; of fruits, man (purusa); of man, semen.

(26) The whole Body of this World is as a Man's Body, for it is surrounded in its utmost Circle with the Stars and risen Powers of Nature; and in that Body the seven Spirits of Nature govern, and the Heart of Nature stands in the Midst or Center.

(35) For the Body is the incorporated or compacted Spirit of Nature, and encompasses or incloses the other six Spirits; these generate themselves in the Body, just as it is in the Deity.

(1) These same are the three worlds. This [terrestrial] world is Speech. The middle [atmospheric] world is Mind. That [celestial] world is Breath.

(32) The Interior, or Hollowness in the Body of Man, is, and signifies the Deep betwixt the Stars and the Earth.

(80) The Earth is the Fruit of the seventh Spirit of God, which is Nature or Corporeity, wherein the other six Spirits generate themselves again, and figure or frame the Salitter of the seventh Spirit into infinite Sorts of Forms or Shapes; so that the Earth also generates its Seed, which is the Fruit of Vegetation, as is apparent to the Eye.

(1) Whatever is unknown is a form of Breath, for Breath is unknown. Breath, having become this, helps him. n. Of this Speech the earth is the body. Its light-form is this [terrestrial] fire. As far as Speech extends, so far extends the earth, so far this fire. v

(29) Now when this Conference (which is spiritual, between the three Elements, Fire, Air, and Water,) was perceived by the Spirit of the Earth (viz. the Essences in the Region of the Lungs) then ait comes at last (when the Habitation or the Court was already built for the Children of the Earth) and says to the three Elements; Wherefore will you take the Body for the Spirit? Will you take the Children of the Earth, and feed upon them? I am their Spirit, and am pure; I can strengthen the Essences of the Soul with my Virtue and Essences, and uphold them well, take me in.

(2) All things descend from Heaven to Earth, to Water and to Air. ’Tis Fire alone, in that it is borne upwards, giveth life; that which [is carried] downwards [is] subservient to Fire. Further, whatever doth descend from the above, begetteth; what floweth upwards, nourisheth. ’Tis Earth alone, in that it resteth on itself, that is Receiver of all things, and [also] the Restorer of all genera that it receives. This Whole, therefore, as thou rememberest, in that it is of all,—in other words, all things, embraced by nature under “Soul” and “World,” are in [perpetual] flux, so varied by the multiform equality of all their forms, that countless kinds of well-distinguished qualities may be discerned, yet with this bond of union, that all should seem as One, and from “One” “All.” III

(27) For the Water which rests on the Earth, is as a corrupt, perished, and mortal or dead Being, or Thing, as the Earth is, and belongs also to the outermost Birth, which with its Comprehensibility, or as to its Palpability, stands in Death, even as the Earth and Stones do.

(74) Behold the Mystery of the Earth; as that generates or brings forth, so must thou generate or bring forth. The Earth is not that Body, which grows or sprouts forth, but is the Mother of that Body; as also thy Flesh is not the Spirit, but the Flesh is the Mother of the Spirit.

(2) This earth is honey for all creatures, and all creatures are honey for this eaith. This shining, immortal Person who is in this earth, and, with reference to oneself, this shining immortal Person who is in the body — he, indeed, is just this Soul (Atman), this Immortal, this Brahma, this All.