(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.)

(59) Now we pray thus, Our Father [which art] in Heaven, hallowed (or sanctified) be thy Name. And in the first of Genesis it is written, God created the Heaven out of the Midst of the Water, by which is [meant or] understood the Heaven of the third Principle: And yet indeed he has created it out of his own Heaven wherein he dwells. Thus you may easily find, that the Birth of the Holy Deity stands in the Source of Water, and the powerful Spirit is moreover the Former, Framer, and Fashioner therein.

(21) Rabbi Yochanan said: The angels were created on the second day. It is therefore written (Psalm 104:3), "He rafters His upper chambers with water..." It is then written (Psalm 104:4), "He makes the winds His angels, His ministers from flaming fire." Rabbi Levitas ben Tavros said: All, even Rabbi Yochanan, agree that the water already existed. But it was on the second day that "He raftered His upper chambers with water." – the one who "makes the clouds his chariot," and the one who "walks on the wings of the wind." But His messengers were not created until the fifth day.

(23) Therefore, my beloved Soul, be lively, and see what thy noble Bridegroom has left thee in his Testaments for a Legacy; as namely, in the Baptism, the Water of his Covenant, flowing from his holy original Body. Whereas we in this World, viz. in the external Birth of his Body, do acknowledge four Things, namely, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, wherein our earthly Body consists; so likewise in the heavenly Body there are four such Things. The Fire is the Enkindling of the divine Desire. The Water is that which the Fire desires, whence it becomes meek, and a Light. The Air is the joyful Spirit which blows up the Fire, and makes in the Water the Motion. And the Earth is the true Essence which is born in the three Elements, and is rightly called Ternarius Sanctus [the Sacred Ternary,] in which the Tincture is brought forth in the Light of the Meekness; and therein also is born the holy Blood out of the Water, being an Oil of the Water, in which the Light shines, and the Spirit of Life consists.

(2) for on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before Him — the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctifi- cation, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds,* and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices8 and of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer, and of all the spirits of His creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, eventide (and night), and the light, dawn and day, which He hath prepared in the know- ledge of His h,eart.

(2) And on that day He created for them all the seas according to their separate gathering-places, and all the rivers, and the gatherings of the waters in the mountains and on all the earth, and all the lakes, and all the dew of the earth, and the seed which is sown, and all sprouting things, and fruit-bearing trees, and trees of the wood, and the garden of Eden, in Eden, and all (plants after their kind). These four great works God created on the third day.

(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.

(53) 4. The three Mothers, א מ ש, in the universe are: air, water, and fire. Heaven was created from the elementary fire (or ether) ש, the earth, comprising sea and land, from the elementary water, מ, and the atmospheric air from the elementary air, or spirit, א, which establishes the balance among them. Thus were all things produced.

(2) And thereupon we saw His works, and praised Him, and lauded before Him on account of all His works ; for seven great works did He create on the first day. a, And on the second day1 He created the firmament in the midst of the waters, and the waters were divided on that day — half of them went up above and half of them went down * below the firmament (that was) in the midst over the* face of the whole earth. And this was the only work (God) created on the second day.

(49) And the Spirit of the eternal Essences (which has Understanding and Knowledge, and also the Trial and Proving of every Thing, in which the Source [or active Property or Quality] which is in Man, consists) that was breathed into him, by the Wisdom of God, through the driving Will, which goes forward, out of the eternal Mind, out of the opened Gates of the Deep, through the Word, [together] with the moving Spirit of God. And he had the Touch of the Center of the Abyss [viz.'] the eternal Source a behind him, as a Band, and before him, the Heart and Light of God, as a Glance of the Joy and Kindling of Paradise, which springs up in the Essences with the Light of the Joy; and beneath him [he had] the four Elements in the Budding out of the Limbus which was in him.

(49) 6. He created a reality out of Nothing. He called the nonentity into existence and hewed colossal pillars from intangible air. This has been shown by the example of combining the letter א (A) with all the other letters, and all the other letters with א. By speaking He created every creature and every word by the power of One Name. As an illustration, consider the twenty-two elementary substances from the primitive substance of א. The production of every creature from the twenty-two letters is proof that they are in reality the twenty-two parts of one living body.

(53) The four Elements of this World, together with the Sun and Stars, could not qualify [or mix] with him; he drew no Air into him; but the Spirit of God (in the Virgin) was his Breathing, and [his] Kindling of the Fire in the Spirit.

(77) Out of and from the same body of the seven spirits of God are all things made and produced, all angels, all devils, the heaven, the earth, the stars, the elements, men, beasts, fowls, fishes; all worms, wood, trees, also stones, herbs and grass, and all whatsoever is. Question.

(5) [Thereon] out of the Light [...] a Holy Word (Logos) descended on that Nature. And upwards to the height from the Moist Nature leaped forth pure Fire; light was it, swift and active too. The Air, too, being light, followed after the Fire; from out of the Earth-and-Water rising up to Fire so that it seemed to hang therefrom. But Earth-and-Water stayed so mingled with each other, that Earth from Water no one could discern. Yet were they moved to hear by reason of the Spirit-Word (Logos) pervading them.

(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.

(32) Timaeus: had had to come into existence as a plane surface, having no depth, one middle term would have sufficed to bind together both itself and its fellow-terms; but now it is otherwise: for it behoved it to be solid of shape, and what brings solids into unison is never one middle term alone but always two. Thus it was that in the midst between fire and earth God set water and air, and having bestowed upon them so far as possible a like ratio one towards another—air being to water as fire to air, and water being to earth as air to water, —he joined together and constructed a Heaven visible and tangible. For these reasons

(6) Now, to fill fully each desire of thine, Return I to elucidate one place, In order that thou there mayst see as I do. Thou sayst: 'I see the air, I see the fire, The water, and the earth, and all their mixtures Come to corruption, and short while endure; And these things notwithstanding were created;' Therefore if that which I have said were true, They should have been secure against corruption. The Angels, brother, and the land sincere In which thou art, created may be called Just as they are in their entire existence; But all the elements which thou hast named, And all those things which out of them are made, By a created virtue are informed.

(34) God produced the wind, the earth, the fire, and blood, and by these he announces his secret.

(49) For the human flesh is and resembleth nature in the body of God, which is generated from the other six qualifying or fountain spirits, wherein the qualifying or fountain spirits generate themselves again, and shew forth themselves infinitely, wherein forms and images rise up, and wherein the heart of God, or the holy clear Deity in the middle or central seat, generateth itself above nature, in that centre wherein the light of life riseth up.

(103) And then the Word stood against him, in the Center of the Heaven; and he stood (in the Root of the Fierceness) against the Word; for his Spirit went out of the Gate of the Center of Heaven, and stood in the Source [or active Property] of the Original of the Creation in the fierce Root of the Fire, and desired the Out-Birth out of the holy Element (which also stood in the Kindling in the Fierceness) viz. the four Elements.