(15) But its Body (which is the true Image of God, which God created) stands before the clear Deity, and is in and out of the holy pure Element; and the Limbus of the Element (out of which the Essences generate) is the Paradise, an Habitation of God the Holy Trinity. Thus was Man an Image and Similitude before God, wherein God dwells, in which (through his eternal Wisdom) he would manifest his Wonders.

(33) Now these three Kingdoms were in Adam, and also without him; and in the Essences there was a mighty Strife, all drew as well in Adam as without Adam, and would fain have him; for he was a great Lord [come] out of all the [Powers or] Virtues of Nature. The Heart of God desired to have him in Paradise, and [would] dwell in him; for it said, it is my Image and Similitude. And the Kingdom of Wrath [and of the fierce Tartness] would also have him; for it said, he is mine, and he is [proceeded] out of my Fountain, out of the eternal Mind of the Darkness; I will be in him, and he shall live in my Might, for he is generated out of [that which is] mine, I will, through him, shew great and strong Power. The Kingdom of this World said, he is mine; for he bears my Image, and he lives in [that which is] mine, and I in him; he must be obedient to me, I will tame him and compel him, I have all my Members in him, and he in me; I am greater than he, he must be my Householder, I will show my fair Wonders and Virtues in him, he must manifest my Wonders and Virtues, he shall keep and manage my Herds, I will cloathe him with my fair Glory; as now it is to be seen.

(3) And every God by his own proper power brought forth what was appointed him. Thus there arose four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and those that in the water dwell, and things with wings, and everything that beareth seed, and grass, and shoot of every flower, all having in themselves seed of again-becoming. And they selected out the births of men for gnosis of the works of God and attestation of the energy of Nature; the multitude of men for lordship over all beneath the heaven and gnosis of its blessings, that they might increase in increasing and multiply in multitude, and every soul infleshed by revolution of the Cyclic Gods, for observation of the marvels of Heaven and Heaven's Gods' revolution, and of the works of God and energy of Nature, for tokens of its blessings, for gnosis of the power of God, that they might know the fates that follow good and evil [deeds] and learn the cunning work of all good arts.

(73) Before the times of the creation he sat in the Salitter of the earth, when the Salitter was yet thin or transparent, and stood in a heavenly, holy birth or geniture, and he was in the whole kingdom of this world, therein was neither earth nor stones, but a heavenly seed, which was generated out of the seven qualifying or fountain spirits of nature; for in the kingdom of this world sprang up heavenly fruits, forms and ideas, which were a pleasant, delightful food of angels.

(4) For he can neither see nor comprehend nor apprehend the light and holy generation or production, which stands in the water of the heaven, but he can see the generation or production only which stands in the astringent, bitter, sour and hot quality, from whence existed the outermost birth or geniture, which is his royal fort or castle.

Afterward he created an angelic assembly —thousands, myriads without number belong to it—that was like the assembly in the eighth heaven, and a first-born called Israel, that is, the one who sees god, and also another called Jesus Christ, who is like the savior above in the eighth heaven and who sits at his right upon an excellent throne. But at his left the virgin of the holy spirit sits upon a throne praising him. And the seven virgins stand before her, with thirty lyres and harps and trumpets in their hands, glorifying him. And all of the armies of angels glorify him and praise him. But he sits on a throne concealed by a great light-cloud. And there was no one with him in the cloud except Sophia, the daughter of Pistis, teaching him about all those that exist in the eighth heaven, so that the likeness of those might be created, in order that his kingdom might continue until the consummation of the heavens of chaos and their powers. Now, Pistis Sophia separated him from the darkness and summoned him to her right, but the chief creator she put at her left. Since that day right has been called justice, but left has been called injustice. Moreover, because of this they all received a realm in the assembly of justice, and injustice is set over all their creations.

(13) This [Image] is not the Heart of God, but it reaches into the Heart of God, and it receives Virtue, Light and Joy from the Heart and Light of God. For it is in the eternal Will of the Father, out of which he [the Father] continually generates his Heart and Word from Eternity; and ehis Essences, which, in the Element of his Body, viz. [in the Element] of Ignorance in the eternal Wonders of God now breathed into him, they (in respect of the high triumphing Light, out of the Heart and Light of God) were Paradise; his Meat and Drink was Paradise, out of the Element, in his Will; whereby then he drew the Virtue of the eternal Wonders of God into him, and generated the Noise [Voice] Sound, or the eternal Hymn of the eternal Wonders of God, out of himself before the Will; and all this stood before the chaste, high, noble, and blessed Virgin, the divine Wisdom, in a pleasant Sport, and was the right Paradise.

(25) In this [Garden] now the Image of God stood altogether free. It might embrace [and take] what it would, only the Tree of Temptation, that was forbidden. There he was forty Days in the paradisical Knowledge, Joy, and Habitation, where yet there was neither Day nor Night to him, but only the Eternity; he saw with his Eyes [from or] out of the divine Power [and Virtue.] There was in him no Shutting of his Eyes; he had no Need of the Sun at all, yet all Things must serve and be subject to him. The Out-Birth [or Production] of the four Elements did not touch him; there was no Sleep in him, nor Pain, nor Fear. A thousand Years were to him but as a Day; he was such an Image as shall rise at the last Day; there will rise no other Image than that which God created in the Beginning, therefore consider it well.

(34) 4th. Fire (ether) He drew forth from the water. He engraved and established by it the Throne of Glory. He fashioned the Seraphim, the Ophanim, and the Holy Living Creatures (Cherubim?), as His ministering angels; and with (of) these three He formed His habitation, as it reads: "Who made His angels spirits, His ministers a flaming fire." (Psalms civ. 4.)

(3) "And all rulers and all authorities and all angels therein were thrown all together into agitation because of the great light which was on me. And they gazed at the radiant vesture of light with which I was clad, and they saw the mystery which contains their names, and they feared most exceedingly. And all their bonds with which they were bound, were unloosed and every one left his order, and they all fell down before me, adored and said: 'How hath the lord of the universe passed through us without our knowing?' And they all sang praises together to the interiors of the interiors; but me they saw not, but they saw only the light. And they were in great fear and were exceedingly agitated and sang praises to the interiors of the interiors.

(136) His court, province, place, region or quarters, wherein he dwelt with his whole army or company, and wherein he is become a creature, and which was his kingdom, is the created heaven and this world, wherein we dwell with our King JESUS CHRIST.

(11) I think, therefore, that those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All; they perceived that, though this Soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is elaborated, a place especially capable of receiving some portion or phase of it, something reproducing it, or representing it, and serving like a mirror to catch an image of it.

It belongs to the nature of the All to make its entire content reproduce, most felicitously, the Reason-Principles in which it participates; every particular thing is the image within matter of a Reason-Principle which itself images a pre-material Reason-Principle: thus every particular entity is linked to that Divine Being in whose likeness it is made, the divine principle which the soul contemplated and contained in the act of each creation. Such mediation and representation there must have been since it was equally impossible for the created to be without share in the Supreme, and for the Supreme to descend into the created.

The Intellectual-Principle in the Supreme has ever been the sun of that sphere- let us accept that as the type of the creative Logos- and immediately upon it follows the Soul depending from it, stationary Soul from stationary Intelligence. But the Soul borders also upon the sun of this sphere, and it becomes the medium by which all is linked to the overworld; it plays the part of an interpreter between what emanates from that sphere down to this lower universe, and what rises- as far as, through soul, anything can- from the lower to the highest.

Nothing, in fact, is far away from anything; things are not remote: there is, no doubt, the aloofness of difference and of mingled natures as against the unmingled; but selfhood has nothing to do with spatial position, and in unity itself there may still be distinction.

These Beings are divine in virtue of cleaving to the Supreme, because, by the medium of the Soul thought of as descending they remain linked with the Primal Soul, and through it are veritably what they are called and possess the vision of the Intellectual Principle, the single object of contemplation to that soul in which they have their being.

(1) "For I said these things to you, Shem, that you might know that my likeness, the son of the majesty, is from my infinite thought, since I am for him a universal likeness that does not lie, and I am above every truth and am the origin of the word. His appearance is in my beautiful garment of light, which is the voice of the immeasurable thought. We are that single, sole light that came into being. He appeared in another root in order that the power of the spirit might be raised from feeble nature. For by the will of the great light I came forth from the exalted spirit down to the cloud of the hymen without my universal garment.

(23) But now the holy God would not let this place of his body (understand the space or room of this world) stand in eternal darkness and ignominy, and leave it to the devils for their proper own, but generated a new regimen or dominion of light, and of all the seven qualifying or fountain spirits of the Deity; which the devil could neither apprehend, nor lay hold on, nor touch; neither was it useful or profitable to him at all.

(1) And Jesus continued again in his discourse and said unto his disciples: "Hearken concerning the things which befell me among the rulers of the twelve æons and all their rulers and their lords and their authorities and their angels and their archangels. When then they had seen the vesture of light which was about me, they and their unpaired, then every one of them saw the mystery of his name, that it was on my vesture of light, which was about me. They fell down all together, adored the vesture of light which was about me, and cried out all together, saying: 'How hath the lord of the universe passed through us without our knowing it?' And they all sang praises together to the interiors of the interiors. And all their triple-powers and their great forefathers and their ungenerated and their self-generated and their generated and their gods and their light-sparks and their light-bearers--in a word all their great ones--saw the tyrants of their region, that their power was diminished in them. And they were in weakness and themselves fell into great and immeasurable fear. And they gazed on the mystery of their name on my vesture, and they had set out to come and adore the mystery of their name which was on my vesture, and they could not because of the great light which was about me; but they adored a little removed from me, and they adored the light of my vesture and all cried out together, singing praises to the interiors of the interiors.

(2) "And the word took me to himself, from the spirit, in the first cloud of the hymen of nature. And I put on this of which the majesty and the unconceived spirit made me worthy. And the threefold unity of my garment appeared in the cloud, by the will of the majesty, in a single form. And my likeness was covered with the light of my garment. And the cloud was disturbed, and it was not able to tolerate my likeness. It shed the first power, which it had taken from the spirit—that which shone on him from the beginning, before I appeared in the word to the spirit. The cloud would not have been able to tolerate both of them. And the light that came forth from the cloud passed through silence until it came into the middle region. And by the will of the majesty, the light mixed with him, that is, the spirit that exists in silence, which had been separated from the spirit of light. It was separated from the light by the cloud of silence. The cloud was disturbed. It was he who gave rest to the flame of fire. He humbled the dark womb that she might not reveal other seed from the darkness. He kept them back in the middle region of nature in their position, which was in the cloud. They were troubled because they did not know where they were. For still they do not possess the universal understanding of the spirit.

(134) Whereby in the heavenly pomp such fair beauteous forms, ideas, figures and vegetations always spring up, as also various colours and fruits; and this the qualifying or fountain spirits of God do in God, as a holy play, sport or scene. Now behold!

(7) And as the Son of God is generated in the midst or centre of the seven spirits of God, and is the life and Heart of the seven spirits of God, so there was one angelical king created in the midst or centre of his circumference, sphere, extent or region out of nature, also out of nature's heaven, out of the power of all the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, and that now was the heart in one host, and he had in him the quality, might, power and strength of his whole host, and was the fairest among them, or of them all.

(19) Thus, my very precious Mind, apprehend it right. This same Throne was made in Time (when the Time of his Covenant was revealed) an angelical Principality in the Mercy of God, in the holy pure Element, in the sacred Ternary, that is, in the holy Earth, wherein the Deity is substantially known; so that the whole Mercy of God (which is unmeasurable, and every where in the sacred Ternary; which is likewise so great in the holy Element, that it comprises Heaven and this World) became a Man; that is, a substantial Similitude of the Spirit of the Trinity, in which Likeness the Trinity dwells with complete fullness; and in this great angelical Throne and Principality stood in the Beginning, and from Eternity the Aspect in the infinite Multiplicity proceeding from all the Essences in the Limbus of the Father, and became truly illustrate [or manifest] in the Time of the Promise.

(12) And so now God created the Image, and Similitude, out of the eternal Element, in which the eternal Wonders are originally, and [God] breathed into him the Spirit of the Essences, out of his eternal original Will, out of the broken Gate of the Deep, through where the Wheel of the Stirring and Breaking-through stands in the eternal Mind, which reaches the clear, true, and pure Deity of the Heart of God.