(48) Thus now when the Virtue of the Life and the Spirit of the second Principle, is generated in the first Originality of the first Principle (viz. in the Gate of the deep Darkness, which the Will of the Virtue of the Virgin, in the fierce earnest Flash of the fierce Might of God, did break, and set itself in the pleasant Habitation) then instantly the Essences of the Stars and Elements, in the Flash of the Springing-up of the Life, pressed in also, yet after the Building of the pleasant Habitation first [made.]

(11) But mark the Depth, in a Similitude which I set down thus; the harsh Spring in the Original is the Mother out of which the other five Springs are generated, viz. Bitterness, Fire, Love, Sound, and Water. Now these are Members of this Birth [of their Mother,] and without them there would be nothing but an anguishing dark Vale [or vacuum,] where there could be no Mobility, nor any Light or Life: But now the Life is born in her by the kindling of the Light, and then she rejoices in her own Property, and labours in her own tart sour Quality to generate again; and in her own Quality there rises a Life again, and a Center opens itself again, and the Life comes to be generated again out of her in a six-fold Form, yet not in any such Anguish as at the Beginning, but in great Joy.

(38) The second birth of this world stands in the life, for it is the astral birth, out of which is generated the third and holy birth or geniture, and therein love and wrath strive the one with the other.

(44) But now the astral birth generateth the animated soulish birth, viz. the third, which stands in the word, wherein the incorporated or compacted word lies hidden in its heaven. ["The Sulphur to the (production of the) soul is the first Principle in the eternal willspirit, and cometh to life in the third Principle, and so liveth between love and wrath, and hangeth to both."]

(17) As we have, in the Beginning of this Book, mentioned the eternal Birth in the Originality, so we have mentioned the Birth of the Essences, and the seven Spirits of the eternal Nature; and therein we showed how there is a Cross-Birth in the eternal Birth in the fourth Form, where the Essences in the turning Wheel make a Cross-Birth, because they cannot go out from themselves, but that the eternal Birth is every where so in all Things, in the Essence of all Essences.

(6) Therefore though we speak of the Creation of the World, as if we had been by as present, and had seen it, none ought to marvel at it, nor hold it for impossible. For the Spirit that is in us, which one Man inherits from the other, that was breathed out of the Eternity into Adam, that same Spirit has seen it all, and in the Light of God it sees it still; and there is nothing that is far off, or unsearchable: For the eternal Birth, which stands hidden in the Center of Man, that does nothing [that is] new, it knows, works and does even the same that ever it did from Eternity; it labours for the Light and for the Darkness, and works in great Anguish; but when the Light shines therein, then there is mere Joy and Knowledge in its Working.

(14) But if now the Essences of the first Principle of the Soul have been so very conversant about [or addicted to] the Kingdom of this World, so that the Essences of the Soul have sought after the Pleasures of this World only, in temporary Honour, Power, and Bravery; then the Soul (or the Essences out of the first Principle) keeps the starry Region to it still, as its dearest Jewel, with a Desire to live therein; but then [the starry Region] has the Mother (viz. the four Elements) no more, and therefore it consumes, with the Time itself, in the Essences out of the first Principle; and so the Essences of the first Principle continue raw, [or naked without a Body.]

(62) And although I have written here, as if it took a Beginning, (writing as it were of the Beginning [and first Springing] of the second Principle, and the Birth of the divine Essence,) yet you must not understand it as having any Beginning; for the eternal Birth is thus, [without Beginning or End,] and that in the Originality; but I write, to the End that Man might learn to know himself, what he is, and what God, Heaven, Angels, Devils, and Hell are, as also what the Wrath of God and Hell- Fire is. For I am permitted to write as far as of the Originality.

(56) But now, from the austere and earnest birth or geniture of the qualifying or fountain spirits of the Father, wherein the zeal or jealousy and the wrath stands, the body of nature always cometh to be, wherein the light of the Son, viz. of the Father's heart stands, incomprehensibly as to nature.

(4) For the created Spirit of Man, which is out of the Matrix of this World, that rules (by the Virtue of the second Principle in the Virtue of the Light) over and in the Virtue of the Spirit of the Stars and Elements very mightily, as in that which is its proper own. But in the Fall of Adam we lost this great Power, when we left Paradise, and went into the third Principle, into the Matrix of this World, which presently held us captive in Restraint. But yet we have the Knowledge [of that Power] by a Glance [or Glimmering,] and we see as through a dim or dark Glass the eternal Birth.

(36) If we would exactly and fundamentally know how, in the deep of this world, the birth or beginning is of the planets and stars, and of the essence of all beings, we must accurately consider the instant or innate birth, or the beginning of life, in man.

(2) Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that soul is the author of all living things, that it has breathed the life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the creatures of the air, the divine stars in the sky; it is the maker of the sun; itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and conducts all that rhythmic motion; and it is a principle distinct from all these to which it gives law and movement and life, and it must of necessity be more honourable than they, for they gather or dissolve as soul brings them life or abandons them, but soul, since it never can abandon itself, is of eternal being.

How life was purveyed to the universe of things and to the separate beings in it may be thus conceived:

That great soul must stand pictured before another soul, one not mean, a soul that has become worthy to look, emancipate from the lure, from all that binds its fellows in bewitchment, holding itself in quietude. Let not merely the enveloping body be at peace, body's turmoil stilled, but all that lies around, earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air and the very heavens. Into that heaven, all at rest, let the great soul be conceived to roll inward at every point, penetrating, permeating, from all sides pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all gold, so the soul entering the material expanse of the heavens has given life, has given immortality: what was abject it has lifted up; and the heavenly system, moved now in endless motion by the soul that leads it in wisdom, has become a living and a blessed thing; the soul domiciled within, it takes worth where, before the soul, it was stark body- clay and water- or, rather, the blankness of Matter, the absence of Being, and, as an author says, "the execration of the Gods."

The Soul's nature and power will be brought out more clearly, more brilliantly, if we consider next how it envelops the heavenly system and guides all to its purposes: for it has bestowed itself upon all that huge expanse so that every interval, small and great alike, all has been ensouled.

The material body is made up of parts, each holding its own place, some in mutual opposition and others variously interdependent; the soul is in no such condition; it is not whittled down so that life tells of a part of the soul and springs where some such separate portion impinges; each separate life lives by the soul entire, omnipresent in the likeness of the engendering father, entire in unity and entire in diffused variety. By the power of the soul the manifold and diverse heavenly system is a unit: through soul this universe is a God: and the sun is a God because it is ensouled; so too the stars: and whatsoever we ourselves may be, it is all in virtue of soul; for "dead is viler than dung."

This, by which the gods are divine, must be the oldest God of them all: and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves that same value which we have found soul to be, honourable above all that is bodily. For what is body but earth, and, taking fire itself, what is its burning power? So it is with all the compounds of earth and fire, even with water and air added to them?

If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself.

(28) For behold, when the Gate of this World in the Child is made ready, so that the Child is [become] a living Soul out of the Essences, and now [henceforth] sees only [by or] in the Light of the Sun, and not in the Light of God, then comes the true Artificer, instantly in the Twinkling of an Eye, when the Light of the Life kindles, and figures [that which is] his; for the Center breaks forth in all the three Principles. First, there are the four Essences in the Fiat in the stern Might of God, which there are the Child' own, the Worm of its Soul, which stands there in the House of the great Anxiety, as in the Originality. For the Seed is sown in the Will, and the Will receives the Fiat in the Tincture, and the Fiat draws the Will to it inwardly, Or give himself into the Imagination. and outwardly [draws] the Seed to a rMass; for the inward and outward Artificer is there.

(59) II. The second birth is the astral, which thou must understand to be the life of the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, wherein now the love and the wrath are against each other; therein stands the upper water, which is a spirit of the life, and therein, or between, is the firmament of heaven, which is made out of the midst or centre of the water.

(52) And here begins the Taste, whereby one continually [tries, tastes, and] proves the other, and with great Desire they mingle one with another, so that there is nothing but a mere courteous Embracing. Thus the Bitterness now rejoices in its Mother, and strengthens itself therein, and for great Joy rises up through all the Essences, and declares to the second Principle, that the loving Child is tborn; to which then all the Essences give Heed and rejoice at that dear Child; from whence the Hearing arises, which is the sixth Form where the Wheel of the Birth stands in Triumph. And in this great Joy the Birth cannot contain itself [within its Bounds,] but expands itself, flowing forth very joyfully, and every Essence [or Substance] generates now again a Center in the second Principle.

(33) That is, the outermost birth or geniture of this world cannot comprehend the outermost birth or geniture of heaven aloft above this world, for they are one to the other as the life and the death, or as a man and a stone are one to the other.

(139) For the outermost birth is nature, and that ought not to reach back into the heart of God, neither can it, but it is the body, in which the qualifying or fountain spirits generate themselves, and shew forth and manifest their birth or geniture by their fruits.

(37) For that life taketh such a beginning and rising, and stands also in such an order, as does the birth or geniture of the essence of all beings in the body of this world.

(12) For the Spring of the great Anguish, which was in the Beginning before the Light, in the [tart] Harshness, from which the bitter Sting or Prickle is generated, that is now in the sweet Fountain of the Love in the Light changed from the Water- Spirit, and from Bitterness or Stinging is now become the Fountain or Spring of the Joy in the Light. Thus now henceforth the Fire-flash is the Father of the Light, and the Light shines in him, and is now the only Cause of the moving Birth, and of the Birth of the Love. That which in the Beginning was the raking Source, is now S U L, or the Oil of the lovely pleasant Fountain, which presses through all the Fountains, so that from hence the Light is kindled.

(57) Now you may well perceive that the Birth of the Sun takes its Original in the Fire, and attains his Personality and Name in the Kindling of the soft, white, and clear Light, which is Himself; and Himself makes the pleasant Smell, Taste, and Satisfaction [or Reconciliation and Well-pleasing] in the Father, and is rightly the Father's Heart, and another Person; for he opens and produces the second Principle in the Father; and his own Essence is the Power or Virtue and the Light; and therefore his is rightly called the Power or Virtue of the Father.