(8) But what must we do? How lies the path? How come to vision of the inaccessible Beauty, dwelling as if in consecrated precincts, apart from the common ways where all may see, even the profane?

He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy. When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards That they tell of. For if anyone follow what is like a beautiful shape playing over water- is there not a myth telling in symbol of such a dupe, how he sank into the depths of the current and was swept away to nothingness? So too, one that is held by material beauty and will not break free shall be precipitated, not in body but in Soul, down to the dark depths loathed of the Intellective-Being, where, blind even in the Lower-World, he shall have commerce only with shadows, there as here.

"Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland": this is the soundest counsel. But what is this flight? How are we to gain the open sea? For Odysseus is surely a parable to us when he commands the flight from the sorceries of Circe or Calypso- not content to linger for all the pleasure offered to his eyes and all the delight of sense filling his days.

The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come, and There is The Father.

What then is our course, what the manner of our flight? This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use.

(2) Nor is it without cause the Muses’ choir hath been sent down by Highest Deity unto the host of men; in order that, forsooth, the terrene world should not seem too uncultured, had it lacked the charm of measures, but rather that with songs and praise of men accompanied with music, He might be lauded,—He who alone is all, or is the Sire of all; and so not even on the earths, should there have been an absence of the sweetness of the harmony of heavenly praise.

(2) A sage, whose habit it was to ponder over the meaning of things, went to Ocean and asked why it wore a garment of blue, since this was the colour of mourning, and why did it boil without fire?

Ocean replied to the man of contemplation: ' I am troubled because I am separated from my friend. Because of my insufficiency I am not worthy of him, so I put on a garment of blue as a sign of the remorse I feel. In my distress the beaches of my lips are dried up, and because of the fire of my love I am in a turmoil. Could I find but a single drop of the celestial water of Kausar, I should be in possession of the gate of eternal life. Lacking this drop I shall die from desire with the thousand others who perish on the way.'

(64) Only thou must not think that the angelical kingdom with its creatures was so rolled, wheeled and turned round about, as now the stars are, which are only powers, and in regard of the birth or geniture of this world are thus wheeled or turned about, whose birth or geniture stands in the moving, boiling anguish in evil and good, in corruption and redemption, till the end of this enumeration, or till the last day. Now observe:

(37) The light or the heart of God taketh not its original barely from the wild rough stars, where, indeed, love and wrath are in each other, but out of or from the seat where the meek water of life is continually generated.

(1) The Heron came in all haste and at once began to speak about himself. ' My charming house is near the sea among the lagoons, where none hears my song. I am so inoffensive that no one complains of me. Sad and melancholy, I stand pensively on the salt sea's verge, my heart filled with longing for the water, for if there were none what would become of me! But since I am not one of those who dwell in the sea, I am like to die, my lips parched, on its shore. Though the waters boil and the waves break at my feet, I cannot swallow a single drop; yet if the ocean should lose even a little of its water my heart would burn with vexation. For a creature such as I my passion for the sea is enough. I have not the strength to go in quest of the Simurgh, so I ask to be excused. How could one like me, who seeks only a drop of water, possibly attain union with the Simurgh?'

Said the Hoopoe: 'O ignorant of the sea, don't you know that it is full of crocodiles and other dangerous creatures? Sometimes its water is bitter, sometimes salt; sometimes it is calm, sometimes boisterous; always changing, never stable; sometimes it flows, sometimes it ebbs. Many great ones have been swallowed up in its abyss. The diver in its depths holds his breath lest he should be thrown up like a straw. The sea is an element devoid of loyalty. Do not trust it or it will end by submerging you. It is resdess because of its love for its friend. Sometimes it rolls great billows, sometimes it roars. Since the sea cannot find what it desires, how will you find

there a resting place for your heart! The ocean is a rill which rises in the way that leads to its friend; why then should you remain here content, and not strive to see the face of the Simurgh?'

(11) And let no one fancy that we honour the Name of Love beyond the Oracles, for it is, in my opinion, irrational and stupid not to cling to the force of the meaning, but to the mere words; and this is not the characteristic of those who have wished to comprehend things Divine, but of those who receive empty sounds and keep the same just at the ears from passing through from outside, and are not willing to know what such a word signifies, and in what way one ought to distinctly represent it, through other words of the same force and more explanatory, but who specially affect sounds and signs without meaning, and syllables, and words unknown, which do not pass through to the mental part of their soul, but buzz without, around their lips and ears, as though it were not permitted to signify the number four, by twice two, or straight lines by direct lines, or motherland by fatherland, or any other, which signify the self-same thing, by many parts of speech. We ought to know, according to the correct account, that we use sounds, and syllables, and phrases, and descriptions, and words, on account of the sensible perceptions; since when our soul is moved by the intellectual energies to the things contemplated, the sensible perceptions by aid of sensible objects are superfluous; just as also the intellectual powers, when the soul, having become godlike, throws itself, through a union beyond knowledge, against the rays of the unapproachable light, by sightless efforts. But, when the mind strives to be moved upwards, through objects of sense, to contemplative conceptions, the clearer interpretations are altogether preferable to the sensible perceptions, and the more definite descriptions are things more distinct than things seen; since when objects near are not made clear to the sensible perceptions, neither will these perceptions be well able to present the things perceived to the mind. But that we may not seem, in speaking thus, to be pushing aside the Divine Oracles, let those who libel the Name of Love (Ἔρωτος) hear them. "Be in love with It," they say, "and It will keep thee--Rejoice over It, and It will exalt thee--Honour It, in order that It may encompass thee,"--and whatever else is sung respecting Love, in the Word of God.

(20) There seemeth to be a blue or azure sphere above the stars, whereby the place of this world is closed and shut out from the holy heaven, as men have thought hitherto; yet it is not so, but it is the superior water of nature, which is much brighter than the water below the moon. And now when the sun shineth through the deep, then it is as it were of a lightblue or azure colour.

(41) "The fourth and fifth leaves therefore, were without any writing, all full of fair figures enlightened, or as it were enlightened, for the work was very exquisite. First he painted a young man with wings at his ancles, having in his hand a Caducean rod, writhen about with two serpents, wherewith he struck upon a helmet which covered his head. He seemed to my small judgment, to be the God Mercury of the pagans: against him there came running and flying with open wings, a great old man, who upon his head had an hour glass fastened, and in his hand a book (or syrhe) like death, with the which, in terrible and furious manner, he would have cut off the feet of Mercury. On the other side of the fourth leaf, he painted a fair flower on the top of a very high mountain which was sore shaken with the North wind; it had the foot blue, the flowers white and red, the leaves shining like fine gold: and round about it the dragons and griffons of the North made their nests and abode.

(4) But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place.

As it is not for those to speak of the graceful forms of the material world who have never seen them or known their grace- men born blind, let us suppose- in the same way those must be silent upon the beauty of noble conduct and of learning and all that order who have never cared for such things, nor may those tell of the splendour of virtue who have never known the face of Justice and of Moral-Wisdom beautiful beyond the beauty of Evening and of dawn.

Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul's sight- and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth.

This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen; and this the Souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love- just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.

(22) That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those Beings in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon it. Every one of those Beings exists for itself but becomes an object of desire by the colour cast upon it from The Good, source of those graces and of the love they evoke. The soul taking that outflow from the divine is stirred; seized with a Bacchic passion, goaded by these goads, it becomes Love. Before that, even Intellectual-Principle with all its loveliness did not stir the soul; for that beauty is dead until it take the light of The Good, and the soul lies supine, cold to all, unquickened even to Intellectual-Principle there before it. But when there enters into it a glow from the divine, it gathers strength, awakens, spreads true wings, and however urged by its nearer environing, speeds its buoyant way elsewhere, to something greater to its memory: so long as there exists anything loftier than the near, its very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the giver of that love. Beyond Intellectual-Principle it passes but beyond The Good it cannot, for nothing stands above That. Let it remain in Intellectual-Principle and it sees the lovely and august, but it is not there possessed of all it sought; the face it sees is beautiful no doubt but not of power to hold its gaze because lacking in the radiant grace which is the bloom upon beauty.

Even here we have to recognise that beauty is that which irradiates symmetry rather than symmetry itself and is that which truly calls out our love.

Why else is there more of the glory of beauty upon the living and only some faint trace of it upon the dead, though the face yet retains all its fulness and symmetry? Why are the most living portraits the most beautiful, even though the others happen to be more symmetric? Why is the living ugly more attractive than the sculptured handsome? It is that the one is more nearly what we are looking for, and this because there is soul there, because there is more of the Idea of The Good, because there is some glow of the light of The Good and this illumination awakens and lifts the soul and all that goes with it so that the whole man is won over to goodness, and in the fullest measure stirred to life.

(43) Now it was the Love that became Man, and had put on our human Soul; and the Soul was enlightened from the Love, and stood with its Root in the Anger, as in the strong Might of the Father; and now the new Man in the Love commended the Soul to the Father into his Might, and yielded up the earthly Life, [which proceeded] from the Constellations and Elements, viz. the Kingdom of this World; and so the Soul now stood no more in the Kingdom of this World, in the Source of Life, but it stood in Death; for the Kingdom of this World, the Blower up [of Life] the Air, was gone.

(13) Though Men must not cast the Pearl in the Way that the Beasts may tread it under Foot, much less must Men throw it among the Grains [or Husks] to be devoured by the Swine; (for that would not be beneficial to the wanton World, because that seeks nothing thereby but to misuse itself therewith; for the Devil whom the World serves teaches it, when it learns the Ground of the Heaven, and of the Stars, to will presently to be a God, as Lucifer did:) Yet I will write somewhat of the Beginning and Virtue or Power of the Stars, (because Man and all Or the wise Men's Masters, or Teachers. Creatures live in the Virtue, Working, and Essences of them, and that every Creature receives its Property from them,) for the Sake of him that seeks, who would willingly fly from the bestial Man, and would fain live in the true Man, who is the Image and Similitude of God; for to such it is very highly necessary to be known; also for the Lily's Sake which grows in the Tree of the sour Wrath towards the North in the Matrix.

(5) Would that it were possible for thee to get thee wings, and soar into the air, and, poised midway 'tween earth and heaven, behold the earth's solidity, the sea's fluidity (the flowings of its streams), the spaciousness of air, fire's swiftness, [and] the coursing of the stars, the swiftness of heaven's circuit round them [all]! Most blessed sight were it, my son, to see all these beneath one sway - the motionless in motion, and the unmanifest made manifest; whereby is made this order of the cosmos and the cosmos which we see of order.

(41) Observe, as has been often mentioned, that as in the Fiat, in the aching Matrix (viz. the dark Harshness, [or Sourness]) the fire rose up in the Breaking- wheel in the Kindling; and that in the fiery, the Light of the Sun, and of all the Stars [sprung up,] (which is [done] in the harsh Matrix, which from the Light is become thin, lowly, and material Water,) and the pleasant Source of Love [sprung up,] so that one Form vehemently loves the other, in Respect of the kind, meek Light, which was come into all Forms. So now the soft Meekness was become a new Child, which was not the dark Originality in the anguishing Nature. But this Child was the Paradise, yet seeing it stood not in the Materia [or Matter,] therefore the Matrix of the Harshness could not comprehend it; but nit yielded itself forth very desirously, and longing with great Earnestness (according to the Fire and Bitterness) to comprehend the pleasant Source of Love, and yet could not comprehend it, for it was paradisical; and thus it still stood in great Longing, and generated Water. Part.

(13) For observe it, although now in the Harshness there be Bitterness, Fire, Sound, Water, and that out of the springing Vein of the Water there flows Love (or Oil) from whence the Light arises and shines; yet the Harshness retains its first Property, and the Bitterness its Property, the Fire its Property, the Sound or the Stirring its Property, and the overcoming the first harsh or tart Anguish, (viz. the returning down back again) or the Water-Spirit, its Property, and the springing Fountain, the pleasant Love, which is kindled by the Light in the tart or sour Bitterness, (which now is the sweet [Source or] springing Vein of Water,) its property; and yet this is no separable Essence parted asunder, but all one whole Essence or Substance in one another. And each Form or Birth takes its own Form, Virtue, Working and Springing up from all the Forms; and the whole Birth now retains chiefly but these four Forms in its generating or bringing forth; viz. the rising up, the falling down, and then through the turning [of the Wheel in the sour, harsh,] tart Essence, the putting forth on this Side, and on that Side, on both Sides like a Cross; or, as I may so say, the going forth from the Point [or Center] towards the East, the West, the North and the South: For from the Stirring, Moving, and Ascending of the Bitterness in the Fire-Flash, there exists a cross Birth. For the Fire goes forth upward, the Water downward, and the Essences of the Harshness sideways.

(14) So he who hath the whole authority o'er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o'er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through the Harmony, breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God's fair form. And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God's own Form, she smiled with love; for 'twas as though she'd seen the image of Man's fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth. He in turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her, in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came act, and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason. And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely around him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.

(4) followed by a thundering peal, without end and without beginning, now dying, now living, now sinking, now rising, on and on without a moment's break. And so you were afraid. "When I played again, it was the harmony of the Yin and Yang, lighted by the glory of sun and moon; now broken, now prolonged, now gentle, now severe, in one unbroken, unfathomable volume of sound. Filling valley and gorge, stopping the ears and dominating the senses, adapting itself to the capacities of things,—the sound whirled around on all sides, with shrill note and clear. The spirits of darkness kept to their domain. Sun, moon, and stars, pursued their appointed course. When the melody was exhausted I stopped; if the melody did not stop, I went on. You would have sympathised, but you could not understand. You would have looked, but you could not see. You would have pursued, but you could not overtake. You stood dazed in the middle of the wilderness, leaning against a tree and crooning, your eye conscious of exhausted vision, your strength failing for the pursuit, and so unable to overtake me. Your frame was but an empty shell. You were completely at a loss, and so you were amazed. "Then I played in sounds which produce no amazement, the melodious law of spontaneity, springing forth like nature's countless buds, in manifold but formless joy, as though poured forth to the dregs, in deep but soundless bass. Beginning nowhere, the melody rested in void; some would say dead, others alive, others real, others ornamental, as it scattered itself on all sides in never to be anticipated chords.

(9) Now these two Gates are in one another; the nethermost goes into the Abyss, and the uppermost goes into Paradise; and a third Gate comes to these two, out of the Element with its four Productions, and presses in together with the Fire, Air, Water, and Earth; and their Kingdom is the Sun and Stars, which qualify with the first Will; and their Desire is to be filled, to swell, and to be great. These draw into them, and fill the Chamber of the Deep, [viz.] the free and naked Will in the Mind; they bring the Glimpse [or Glance] of the Stars into the Gate of the Mind, and qualify with the Sharpness of the Glimpse [or Flash;] they fill the broken Gates of the Darkness with Flesh, and wrestle continually with the first Will (from whence they are gone forth) for the Kingdom [or Dominion,] and yield themselves up to the first Will, as to their Father, which willingly receives their Region [or Dominion.] For he is obscure and dark, and they are rough and sour, also bitter and cold; and their Life is a seething Source of Fire, wherewith they govern in the Mind, in the Gall, Heart, Lungs, and Liver, and in all Members [or Parts] of the whole Body, and Man is their own; the Spirit which stands in the Flash brings the Constellation into the Tincture of its Property, and infects the Thoughts, according to the Dominion of the Stars; they take the Body and tame it, and bring their bitter Roughness into it.

(27) And therefore when a Man sleeps, so that the Tincture rests, then there are no Thoughts in the Spirit; but the Constellation Air, or Receptacle. rumbles in the Elements, and beats into the Brains what shall (through their Operation) come to pass, which yet is often broke again by another Conjunction, so that it comes not to effect; besides, it can show nothing exactly, except it comes by a Conjunction of Planets and fixed Stars, and that only goes forward, but it represents all [in an] earthly [Manner,] according to the Spirit of this World; so that where the syderial Spirit should speak of Men, it often speaks of Beasts, and continually represents the Contrary; as the earthly Spirit fancies from the starry Spirit, so he dreams.