"They found me, the son of the majesty, in front of the womb that has many forms. I put on the beast and laid before her a great request that heaven and earth might come into being, so that the whole light might rise up. For in no other way could the power of the spirit be saved from bondage except that I appear to her in animal form. Therefore she was gracious to me as if I were her son. And on account of my request, nature arose, since she possesses the power of the spirit and the darkness and the fire. For she had taken off her forms. When she had cast it off, she blew upon the water. The heaven was created. And from the foam of heaven the earth came into being. And at my wish it brought forth all kinds of food in accordance with the number of the beasts. And it brought forth dew from the winds on account of you and those who will be conceived the second time upon the earth. For the earth possessed a power of chaotic fire. Therefore it brought forth every seed. And when the heaven and the earth were created, my garment of fire arose in the midst of the cloud of nature and shone upon the whole world until nature became dry. The darkness that was the earth's garment was cast into the harmful waters. The middle region was cleansed from the darkness. But the womb grieved because of what had happened. She perceived, in her parts, water like a mirror. When she perceived it, she wondered how it had come into being. Therefore she remained a widow. It also was astonished that it was not in her. For still the forms possessed a power of fire and light. The power remained, that it might be in nature until all the powers are taken away from her. For just as the light of the spirit was completed in three clouds, it is necessary also that the power that is in Hades be completed at the appointed time. For, because of the grace of the majesty, I came forth to her from the water for the second time. For my face pleased her. Her face also was glad.

(79) Out of the anguishing chamber in the body of this world, out of the seven spirits of God, are risen or sprung forth the stars, which kindle the body of this world; and out of or from the body the fruit or seed generateth itself, which is the water, fire, air and earth.

(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.

(2) "This is the spirit of light who has come in them. And by the will of the majesty the spirit gazed up at the infinite light, that his light may be pitied and the likeness may be brought up from Hades. And when the spirit had looked, I flowed out—I, the son of the majesty—like a wave of light and like a whirlwind of the immortal spirit. And I blew from the cloud of the hymen upon the astonishment of the unconceived spirit. The cloud separated and cast light upon the clouds. These separated so that the spirit might return. Because of this the mind took shape. Its rest was shattered. For the hymen of nature was a cloud that cannot be grasped; it is a great fire. Similarly, the afterbirth of nature is the cloud of silence; it is an august fire. And the power that was mixed with the mind—it, too, was a cloud of nature that was joined with the darkness that had aroused nature to unchastity. And the dark water was a frightful cloud. And the root of nature, which was below, was crooked, since it is burdensome and harmful. The root was blind to the bound light, which was unfathomable because it had many appearances.

(66) Behold, when God said, Let there be light, then the light in the powers of nature, or the seven spirits of God, rose up, and the firmament of heaven, which stands in the Word, in the heart of the water, between the astral and the outermost birth or geniture, was closed or shut up by or with the Word and heart of the water, and the astral birth is the place of the parting mark or limit, which stands half in heaven and half in the wrath.

(70) But now the earth was the Salitter, which was cast up out of the innermost birth and stood in death: But when the fire-flash, through the word, rose up in the water, then it was a terror or crack, from which existed the mobility in death; and that mobility, in all the seven spirits, is now the astral birth or geniture. The Depth. Understand this aright.

(25) And now as the whole earth was, together with the word, so was the fruit also; but the word remained in the centre of the heaven, which is also in this place hiddenly; and this birth or geniture caused the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, out of or from the outermost, corrupt and dead birth or geniture, to form the body; and itself, viz. the Word or Heart of God, remained in its heavenly seat, sitting on the throne of majesty, and filled the astral and also the mortal birth or geniture, but to them was the holy life altogether incomprehensible.

(31) In this tone riseth up the power of all the six spirits, and becometh a palpable body, to speak after an angelical manner, and subsisteth in the power of the other six spirits, and in the light; and this is the body of nature, wherein all heavenly creatures, ideas, figures and sprouts or vegetations are imaged or fashioned. The Holy Gates.

(42) For the outermost birth of the water cannot comprehend the innermost birth of the water which is called heaven, and which is made out of the midst or centre of the water. ["Heaven is the firmament, viz. the fire-sea, or sea of fire, out of the seven spirits of nature, out of which the stars, as a quintessence, were concreted, incorporated or created by the Word FIAT: It has or containeth both fire and water, and hangeth in itself inwardly on the first Principle, and will bring its wonders, with or as to the figure of them, into the eternal; but its birth or geniture fadeth or passeth away."]

(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.

(17) Various considerations explain why the Souls going forth from the Intellectual proceed first to the heavenly regions. The heavens, as the noblest portion of sensible space, would border with the least exalted of the Intellectual, and will, therefore, be first ensouled first to participate as most apt; while what is of earth is at the very extremity of progression, least endowed towards participation, remotest from the unembodied.

All the souls, then, shine down upon the heavens and spend there the main of themselves and the best; only their lower phases illuminate the lower realms; and those souls which descend deepest show their light furthest down- not themselves the better for the depth to which they have penetrated.

There is, we may put it, something that is centre; about it, a circle of light shed from it; round centre and first circle alike, another circle, light from light; outside that again, not another circle of light but one which, lacking light of its own, must borrow.

The last we may figure to ourselves as a revolving circle, or rather a sphere, of a nature to receive light from that third realm, its next higher, in proportion to the light which that itself receives. Thus all begins with the great light, shining self-centred; in accordance with the reigning plan this gives forth its brilliance; the later existents add their radiation- some of them remaining above, while there are some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour of the object they illuminate. These last find that their charges need more and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship is so intent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never thinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with the vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their charges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are fettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for the realm of Nature.

If every living being were of the character of the All-perfect, self-sufficing, in peril from no outside influence the soul now spoken of as indwelling would not occupy the body; it would infuse life while clinging, entire, within the Supreme.

(6) "So I appeared that I might get an opportunity to go down to the nether world, to the light of the spirit that was burdened, that I might protect him from the evil of the burden. And through his looking down at the dark region the light once more came up, that the womb might again come up from the water. The womb came up by my will. Guilefully, the eye opened. And the light, which had appeared in the middle region and which had separated from the astonishment, rested and shone upon her. And the womb saw things she had not seen before, and she rejoiced joyfully in the light, although this one that appeared in the middle region, in her wickedness, is not hers. When the light shone upon her, and the womb saw things she had not seen, and she was brought down to the water, she was thinking that she had reached the power of light. And she did not know that her root was made idle by the likeness of the light, and that it was to the root that he had run.

(20) But when the two spirits, the spirit of the mobility and the spirit of the life, were risen up out of the place of the sun, through the kindling of the water, then the meekness, as a seed of the water, pressed downward in the chamber of death, with the power of light, with a very gentle and friendly affection or influence; from whence existed the love of life, or the planet Venus. But thou must here understand this high Thing.

(39) But hearken, Friend, tarry yet a little while, and then give the bestial body for food to the worms: But when the total God shall kindle the seven spirits of God in the corrupted earth, then, if that same Salitter which thou sowest in the earth will not be capable of the fire, then thy qualifying or fountain spirits, which thou didst sow in thy lifetime, and which are sown in thy departure from hence, will rise again in the same Salitter which thou hast sown, and will triumph therein, and become a body again.

(90) Now behold! As in the deep of this world, through the kindling of the stars, a seed is generated out of the body of the dark deep, like the creaturely body, so also in like manner, in man's house of flesh there is generated a seed, according to the eternal birthright of the seven qualifying or fountain spirits.

(21) Behold, the first, innermost and deepest birth or geniture stands in the centre, and is the heart of the Deity, which is generated by the qualifying or fountain spirits of God; and this birth or geniture is the light, which yet, though it be generated out of the qualifying or fountain spirits, no qualifying or fountain spirit of itself alone can comprehend, but every qualifying or fountain spirit comprehendeth only its own instanding, innate place or seat in the light; but all the seven spirits jointly together comprehend the whole light, for they are the father of the light.

(31) And all natures from the Immortal One, from Unbegotten to the revelation of chaos, are in the light that shines without shadow and (in) ineffable joy and unutterable jubilation. They ever delight themselves on account of their glory that does not change, and the rest that is not measured, which cannot be described or conceived among all the aeons that came to be and their powers. But this much is enough. All I have just said to you, I said in the way that you might accept, until the one who need not be taught appears among you, and he will speak all these things to you joyously and in pure knowledge.

(1) "Because of you, the image of the spirit appeared in the earth and the water. For you are like the light. You possess a share of the winds and the demons and a thought from the light of the power of the astonishment. For everything that he brought forth from the womb upon the earth was not a good thing for her, but it was her groan and her pain, because of the image that appeared in you from the spirit. For you are exalted in your heart. And it is a blessing, Shem, if a portion is given to someone and he departs from the soul to go to the thought of the light. For the soul is a burden to the darkness, and those who know where the root of the soul came from will be able to grope after nature also. For the soul is a work of unchastity and an object of scorn to the thought of light. For I am the one who revealed concerning all that is unconceived.

(163) Here the spirit went forth, and as he was generated in the heart, so he went forth now at the mouth; but how welcome a guest he was before God, and in God, also before the holy angels of the other kingdoms, I leave to thee to consider of.

(15) Now the body of God, as to this world, could not remain in death, so God moved himself with his seven qualifying or fountain spirits to the birth or geniture. But thou must understand this high thing rightly.