(50) The first Principle (viz. the Darkness) takes the fierce and sudden Fire-flash; and so when the re-comprehended Will, in the first Will of the first attracted Darkness of the Harshness, discovers itself, and breaks the Darkness in the Flash, then the harsh dark Fire-flash remains in the first Will, and stands over the Heart, in the Gall, and kindles the Fire in the Essences of the Heart. 5 1. And the second Principle retains its Light for itself, which is the pleasant Habitation, which shines there, where the Darkness is broken, [or dispelled,] wherein the courteous loving Virtue, and the Pleasantness arises, from whence the Shriek [or Crack] in the strong Might becomes so very joyful, and turns its forcible Rushing into a joyful Trembling; where then the Fire-flash of the first Principle sticks to i it, which causes its Trembling. But its Source [or active Property] is Pleasantness and Joy, that cannot sufficiently be described; happy are they that find it [by Experience.]

(2) As it is mentioned above, so the Life in the Anguish, with the Kindling of the Light, takes its Beginning from the Glance of the Sunshine, from the Spirit of the Stars and Elements in the great Anguish, where Death and Life wrestle one with the other. For when Man departed from Paradise into another Birth (viz. into the Spirit of this World, into the Quality of the Sun, Stars, and Elements) then the paradisical [Vision or] Seeing ceased, [or was extinguished,] where Man sees from the divine Virtue, without [Need of] the Sun and Stars; where the Springing up of the Life is in the Holy Ghost, and the Light of God is the Glance of the Spirit, from whence he sees; which went out; for the Spirit of the Soul went into the Principle of this World.

(25) Now thus the eternal Light, and the Virtue of the Light, or the heavenly Paradise, moves in the eternal Darkness; and the Darkness cannot comprehend the Light; for they are two several Principles; and the Darkness longs after the Light, because that the Spirit beholds itself therein, and because the divine Virtue is manifested in it. But though it has not comprehended the divine Virtue and Light, yet it has continually with great Lust lifted up itself towards it, till it has kindled the Root of the Fire in itself, from the Beams of the Light of God; and there arose the third Principle: And it has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the dark Matrix, by the Speculating of the Virtue for Power] of God. But when the kindled Virtue in this springing up [of the third Principle] in the Darkness became fiery, then God put the Fiat therein, and by the moving Spirit, which goes forth in the Virtue of the Light, created the fiery Source in a bodily Manner, and severed it from the Matrix, and the Spirit called the fiery created Properties Stars, for their Quality.

(22) The Sun is the Goddess in the third Principle; in the created World (understand, in the material Virtue) it went forth out of the Darkness in the Anguish of the Will, in the Way and Manner of the eternal Birth. For when God set the Fiat in the Darkness, then the Darkness received the Will of God, and was impregnated P for the Birth. The Will causes the [sour] Harshness, the Harshness causes the Attracting, and the Stirring of the Attracting to Mobility causes the Bitterness, which is the Woe, and the Woe causes the Anguish, and the Anguish causes the Moving, Breaking, and Rising up. Now the sour Harshness cannot endure the Stirring, and therefore attracts the harder to itself; and the Bitterness or the Attracting will not endure to be stayed, but breaks and stings so very hard in the Attracting, that it stirs up the Heat, wherein the Flash springs up, and the dark [Sourness or] Harshness is affrighted by the Flash, and in the Shriek the Fire kindles, and in the Fire the Light. Now there would be no Light if the Shriek in the Hardness had not been, but there would have remained nothing but Fire; yet the Shriek in the Harshness of the Fire kills the hard Harshness, so that it sinks down as it were to the Ground, and becomes as it were dead and soft; and when the Flash perceives itself in the Harshness, then it is affrighted much more, because it finds the Mother so very mild, and half dead in Weakness; and so in this Shriek its fiery Property becomes white, soft, and mild, and it is the Kindling of the Light, wherein the Fire is changed into a white Clarity, [Glance, Luster, or Brightness.]

(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.

(28) I. First, there arose the fire-crack, or the mobility in the heat; and that is the beginning of life in the chamber of death. II. After this, secondly, the light in the unctuosity or fatness of the water became shining in the heat; and that is now the sun. III. Thirdly, when now the light of the sun had affected or possessed the whole body of the sun, then the power of life, which rose up out of the first affecting or possessing, ascended, as when wood is kindled, or when fire is struck out of a stone.

(3) Ever illuminated, receiving light unfailing, the All-Soul imparts it to the entire series of later Being which by this light is sustained and fostered and endowed with the fullest measure of life that each can absorb. It may be compared with a central fire warming every receptive body within range.

Our fire, however, is a thing of limited scope: given powers that have no limitation and are never cut off from the Authentic Existences, how imagine anything existing and yet failing to receive from them?

It is of the essence of things that each gives of its being to another: without this communication, The Good would not be Good, nor the Intellectual-Principle an Intellective Principle, nor would Soul itself be what it is: the law is, "some life after the Primal Life, a second where there is a first; all linked in one unbroken chain; all eternal; divergent types being engendered only in the sense of being secondary."

In other words, things commonly described as generated have never known a beginning: all has been and will be. Nor can anything disappear unless where a later form is possible: without such a future there can be no dissolution.

If we are told that there is always Matter as a possible term, we ask why then should not Matter itself come to nothingness. If we are told it may, then we ask why it should ever have been generated. If the answer comes that it had its necessary place as the ultimate of the series, we return that the necessity still holds.

With Matter left aside as wholly isolated, the Divine Beings are not everywhere but in some bounded place, walled off, so to speak; if that is not possible, Matter itself must receive the Divine light .

(1) This is the truth. As from a blazing fire sparks, being like unto fire, fly forth a thousandfold, thus are various beings brought forth from the Imperishable, my friend, and return thither also.

(50) Then the fourth Form in the Center of the Soul broke forth there where the Spirit of the Soul was created, [viz.] between the fourth and fifth Form in the Center, near the Heart of God; and so the fourth Form was in the Glance in the Darkness, out of which the World was created, which in its Form parts itself in its Center into the five Parts in its Rising, till [it attains] to the Light of the Sun. For the Stars also in their Center are generated betwixt the fourth and the fifth Form, and the Sun is the P Spring of the fifth Form in the Center; as in the eternal Center, the Heart and the Light of God [is,] which has no Ground; but this [Center] of the Stars and Elements has its Ground in the fourth Form in the dark Mind, in the Rising up of the awakened [or kindled] Flash of the Fire.

(4) "And when the soul shall have said this, the receivers of the Light fly with it on high and lead it into the æons of the Fate, it giving every region its apology and its seals,--which I will tell you at the expansion of the universe. And it giveth the counterfeiting spirit to the rulers and telleth them the mystery of the bonds with which it is bound to it, and sayeth unto them: There have ye your counterfeiting spirit! I come not to your region from this moment onwards. I have become a stranger unto you for ever. And it giveth every one his seal and his apology. "And when the soul shall have said this, the receivers of the Light fly with it on high and lead

(23) Then again was heard the voice of Poimandres, but His form was not revealed: "I Thy God am the Light and the Mind which were before substance was divided from spirit and darkness from Light. And the Word which appeared as a pillar of flame out of the darkness is the Son of God, born of the mystery of the Mind. The name of that Word is Reason. Reason is the offspring of Thought and Reason shall divide the Light from the darkness and establish Truth in the midst of the waters. Understand, O Hermes, and meditate deeply upon the mystery. That which in you sees and hears is not of the earth, but is the Word of God incarnate. So it is said that Divine Light dwells in the midst of mortal darkness, and ignorance cannot divide them. The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life. As the darkness without you is divided against itself, so the darkness within you is likewise divided. The Light and the fire which rise are the divine man, ascending in the path of the Word, and that which fails to ascend is the mortal man, which may not partake of immortality. Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality."

(24) And thence a Fiery Whirlwind drawing down the brilliance of the flashing flame, penetrating the abysses of the Universe; for from thence downwards do extend their wondrous rays.

(20) So now a Spirit is nothing else but a Springing Will, and in the Will there is the Anguish to the Birth, and in the Anguish the Fire generates itself, and in the Fire the Light, and from the Light the Will becomes friendly, pleasant, mild, and sweet, and in the sweet Will the Kingdom and the Glory generates itself. Thus the Light keeps the Might [or Power;] and if that be put out, then the Virtue [or Power] and Glory ceases, and the Kingdom also.

(100) For its birth also has a beginning out of all powers, and therefore with its light and heat it is again one spirit and heart in the whole body of this world.

(10) Understand it thus, as the Spirit moved this Matrix, so the Matrix wrought, and in the Kindling from the Spirit of God in the fifth Form of the Matrix, the fiery Heaven of the Constellations did exist, which is a mere Quinta Essentia, or Quintessence, born in the fifth Form of the Matrix, in which Place the Light has its Original; out of which at last the Sun is born [or brought forth,] wherewith the third Principle becomes opened and manifested, which [Sun] now is the Life in the third Principle, and the Opener of the Life of every Life in the Matrix, in this Place, or Locus; as the Heart of God in Paradise, in the immaterial Heaven and Birth, opens the eternal Power of God, wherein the eternal Life continually springs up, and wherein the eternal Wisdom continually shines. Thus also the Light of the Sun (which is sprung up in the inanimate Matrix) by the [flowing, hovering, or] moving Spirit in the Matrix, opens the third Principle of this material World, which is the third and beginning Principle; which as to this Form takes an End, and returns into its Ether in the End of this Enumeration, as the Scripture witnesses. 1 1. And then all in this third Principle remains again in the first Matrix; only that which has been sown in this Principle, and that has its Original out of Paradise, out of Heaven, and out of the second Principle, (viz. Man,) that continues, eternally in the Matrix. And if he has in this [Life's] Time attained the second Principle, so that he is born therein, it is well with him; but if he has not, then he shall remain still eternally in the Matrix, yet not reach the Light of God.

(5) Then the darkness together with Hades took the fire. And he (the darkness) will release from himself what is mine. His eyes were not able to endure my light. After the spirits and the waters moved, the remainder came into being: the whole aeon of the creation, and their . The fire came forth from them and the Power came in the midst of the powers. And the powers desired to see my image. And the soul became its replica.

(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.

(12) And how does this image set to its task immediately after it comes into being?

By memory of what it has seen?

But it was utterly non-existent, it could have no vision, either it or the Mother they bestow upon it.

Another difficulty: These people come upon earth not as Soul-Images but as veritable Souls; yet, by great stress and strain, one or two of them are able to stir beyond the limits of the world, and when they do attain Reminiscence barely carry with them some slight recollection of the Sphere they once knew: on the other hand, this Image, a new-comer into being, is able, they tell us- as also is its Mother- to form at least some dim representation of the celestial world. It is an Image, stamped in Matter, yet it not merely has the conception of the Supreme and adopts from that world the plan of this, but knows what elements serve the purpose. How, for instance, did it come to make fire before anything else? What made it judge fire a better first than some other object?

Again, if it created the fire of the Universe by thinking of fire, why did it not make the Universe at a stroke by thinking of the Universe? It must have conceived the product complete from the first; the constituent elements would be embraced in that general conception.

The creation must have been in all respects more according to the way of Nature than to that of the arts- for the arts are of later origin than Nature and the Universe, and even at the present stage the partial things brought into being by the natural Kinds do not follow any such order- first fire, then the several other elements, then the various blends of these- on the contrary the living organism entire is encompassed and rounded off within the uterine germ. Why should not the material of the Universe be similarly embraced in a Kosmic Type in which earth, fire and the rest would be included? We can only suppose that these people themselves, acting by their more authentic Soul, would have produced the world by such a process, but that the Creator had not wit to do so.

And yet to conceive the vast span of the Heavens- to be great in that degree- to devise the obliquity of the Zodiac and the circling path of all the celestial bodies beneath it, and this earth of ours- and all in such a way that reason can be given for the plan- this could never be the work of an Image; it tells of that Power next to the very Highest Beings.

Against their will, they themselves admit this: their "outshining upon the darkness," if the doctrine is sifted, makes it impossible to deny the true origins of the Kosmos.

Why should this down-shining take place unless such a process belonged to a universal law?

Either the process is in the order of Nature or against that order. If it is in the nature of things, it must have taken place from eternity; if it is against the nature of things, then the breach of natural right exists in the Supreme also; evil antedates this world; the cause of evil is not the world; on the contrary the Supreme is the evil to us; instead of the Soul's harm coming from this sphere, we have this Sphere harmed by the Soul.

In fine, the theory amounts to making the world one of the Primals, and with it the Matter from which it emerges.

The Soul that declined, they tell us, saw and illuminated the already existent Darkness. Now whence came that Darkness?

If they tell us that the Soul created the Darkness by its Decline, then, obviously, there was nowhere for the Soul to decline to; the cause of the decline was not the Darkness but the very nature of the Soul. The theory, therefore, refers the entire process to pre-existing compulsions: the guilt inheres in the Primal Beings.

(17) But seeing the light in the outermost birth was extinguished, the heat also was captivated in the comprehensibility or palpability, and could no more generate its life. From thence death came into nature, so that nature or the corrupt earth could no more help it, and thereupon another creation of light must needs follow, or else the earth would have been an eternal indissolvable death; but now the earth generateth or bringeth forth fruit in the power and kindling of the created light. Now one might ask, What is the condition then of this twofold birth or geniture? Is God then extinguished in the kindling of the wrath-fire, in the place of this world, so that nothing else is there but a mere wrath-fire? Or is the one only God become a twofold God? Answer.

(26) "In this manner it was accomplished, O Hermes: The Word moving like a breath through space called forth the Fire by the friction of its motion. Therefore, the Fire is called the Son of Striving. The Workman passed as a whirlwind through the universe, causing the substances to vibrate and glow with its friction, The Son of Striving thus formed Seven Governors, the Spirits of the Planets, whose orbits bounded the world; and the Seven Governors controlled the world by the mysterious power called Destiny given them by the Fiery Workman. When the Second Mind (The Workman) had organized Chaos, the Word of God rose straightway our of its prison of substance, leaving the elements without Reason, and joined Itself to the nature of the Fiery Workman. Then the Second Mind, together with the risen Word, established Itself in the midst of the universe and whirled the wheels of the Celestial Powers. This shall continue from an infinite beginning to an infinite end, for the beginning and the ending are in the same place and state.