(137) Here is cause for the judging World to see, and consider, who condemn Man in his Mother's Body or Womb, whereas they do not know, whither the Wrath-fire of the Parents be fully kindled in the Fruit, or not; and seeing that the Spirit of God moves also in the Darkness which stands yet in quiet Rest, and can easily generate the Darkness to be Light: And moreover the Hour of Man's Birth or Nativity is very helpful and profitable for it; but in many it is very hurtful and obstructive, but not compulsive.

(72) And though the Child is in the Mother's House, and the Mother nourishes the Child with her Food, and the Child could not live without the Mother, yet both the Body and the Spirit, which are generated out of the Seed of the Mother, are the Child's proper own, and it retains its corporeal Right to itself.

(41) Yet I do not say this, as if every Man was holy as he comes from his Mother's Womb, but as the Tree is, so is its Fruit. Yet the Fault is not God's, if a Mother bears or brings forth a Child of the Devil, but the Parent's Wickedness.

(100) Here bring in your Defense, and answer for your Spirit; if not, it will be condemned. For this is God’s Jus, Right or Law, which has no Beginning, that the Child which is generated of the Mother, should be humble before the Mother, and be obedient to her; for it has its Life and Body from the Mother who has generated it.

(120) But it has its Life in its Seat, and that cannot be taken from it, but Death hangs to it in the outermost Birth or Geniture, as also the Wrath in Death; for the Wrath is the Life of Death and of the Devil; and in the Wrath stands also the corporeal Being, or the Bodies of the Devils, but the dead Birth or Geniture is their eternal Dwelling-house. The Depth in the Circle of the Birth or Geniture. Now one might ask, what Manner of Substance has it, or what is the Condition thereof, that the astral Birth of the Earth did begin its qualifying, operating, and generating one Day sooner than the astral in the Deep above the Earth; seeing the Fire in the Deep above the Earth is much sharper and easier to be kindled, than the Fire in the Earth; and seeing also that the Earth must be kindled by the Fire in the Deep above the Earth, else it can bear no Fruit? Answer.

(19) The Ideal Principles entering into Matter as to a Mother affect it neither for better nor for worse.

Their action is not upon Matter but upon each other; these powers conflict with their opponent principles, not with their substrata- which it would be foolish to confuse with the entrant forms- Heat annuls Cold, and Blackness annuls Whiteness; or, the opponents blend to form an intermediate quality. Only that is affected which enters into combinations: being affected is losing something of self-identity.

In beings of soul and body, the affection occurs in the body, modified according to the qualities and powers presiding at the act of change: in all such dissolution of constituent parts, in the new combinations, in all variation from the original structure, the affection is bodily, the Soul or Mind having no more than an accompanying knowledge of the more drastic changes, or perhaps not even that. but the Matter concerned remains unaffected; heat enters, cold leaves it, and it is unchanged because neither Principle is associated with it as friend or enemy.

So the appellation "Recipient and Nurse" is the better description: Matter is the mother only in the sense indicated; it has no begetting power. But probably the term Mother is used by those who think of a Mother as Matter to the offspring, as a container only, giving nothing to them, the entire bodily frame of the child being formed out of food. But if this Mother does give anything to the offspring it does so not in its quality as Matter but as being an Ideal-Form; for only the Idea is generative; the contrary Kind is sterile.

This, I think, is why the doctors of old, teaching through symbols and mystic representations, exhibit the ancient Hermes with the generative organ always in active posture; this is to convey that the generator of things of sense is the Intellectual Reason Principle: the sterility of Matter, eternally unmoved, is indicated by the eunuchs surrounding it in its representation as the All-Mother.

This too exalting title is conferred upon it in order to indicate that it is the source of things in the sense of being their underlie: it is an approximate name chosen for a general conception; there is no intention of suggesting a complete parallel with motherhood to those not satisfied with a surface impression but needing a precisely true presentment; by a remote symbolism, the nearest they could find, they indicate that Matter is sterile, not female to full effect, female in receptivity only, not in pregnancy: this they accomplish by exhibiting Matter as approached by what is neither female nor effectively male, but castrated of that impregnating power which belongs only to the unchangeably masculine.

(38) But seeing the Wrath is in its bodily or corporeal Mother, therefore it cannot set or put it out from the comprehensible or palpable Birth, but must remain with its Body in the Palpability or Comprehensibility in Death.

(71) And though it had them at the Beginning from the Stars, yet they are now its proper own: Just as a Mother when she has the Seed in herself, as long as she has it in her, and that it is a Seed, it is hers; but when the Seed is become a Child, then it is no more the Mother's, but is the Child's proper own.

(43) For the dead or mortal Flesh has encompassed the astral Birth, and Man's Flesh is a dead Carcase, whilst it is yet in the Mother's Body or Womb, and is encompassed with Hell and God's Wrath.

(23) Thus also the Earth brought forth no strange Life, but even that which had been in it from Eternity: And as before the Time of the Wrath it had brought forth heavenly Fruits, which had a holy, pure heavenly Body, and were the Food of Angels, so now it brought forth Fruits, according to its comprehensible, palpable, hard, evil, wrathful, poisonous, venomous, half-dead Kind; for as the Mother was, so were her Children.

(101) Also the Love of the Mother, as long as the Mother lives, is not the Child’s proper own; but the Mother keepes the Child with her in Love, she nourishes it, and puts on it the best and finest Attire which she has, and gives the same to it for its own, that her Joy may be increased by the Child, and that she may have Joy in it.

(139) For the outermost Birth is Nature, and that ought not to reach back into the Heart of God, neither can it, but is the Body, in which the qualifying or fountain Spirits generate themselves, and show forth and manifest their Birth or Geniture by their Fruits.

(74) But the Quality externally without them, or externally without their Bodies, viz. their Mother's, is not their Propriety, as also their Mother is not the Child's Propriety; also the Mother's Food is not the Child's Propriety; but the Mother gives it to the Child out of Love, seeing she has generated the Child.

(12) For as Nature with the working, wrestling, and rising up of its Birth or Geniture stood in the Time of the Kindling, just such a Matter attracted itself together. Now it may be asked: How then is a comprehensible or palpable Son come to be out of an incomprehensible Mother? Answer.

(34) It is just such a Birth as is in Man; the Body is even the Father of the Soul, for the Soul is generated out of the Power of the Body, and when the Body stands in the anguishing Birth or Geniture of God, as the Stars do, and not in the fierce hellish Birth, then the Soul of Man qualifies, mixes, or unites with the pure Deity, as a Member in or of his Body.

(74) Behold the Mystery of the Earth; as that generates or brings forth, so must thou generate or bring forth. The Earth is not that Body, which grows or sprouts forth, but is the Mother of that Body; as also thy Flesh is not the Spirit, but the Flesh is the Mother of the Spirit.

(103) But if nature led them, like the irrational animals, to procreation, yet they were impelled to do it more quickly than. was proper because they were still young and had been led away by deceit. Thus God's judgment against them was just, because they did not wait for his will. But birth is holy. By it were made the world, the existences, the natures, the angels, powers, souls, the commandments, the law, the gospel, the knowledge of God. And "all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls; but the word of the Lord abides" which anoints the soul and unites it with the spirit. Without the body how could the divine plan for us in the Church achieve its end? Surely the Lord himself, the head of the Church, came in the flesh, though without form and beauty, to teach us to look upon the formless and incorporeal nature of the divine Cause. "For a tree of life" says the prophet, "grows by a good desire," teaching that desires which are in the living Lord are good and pure.

(30) It as well generates its Father and Mother, as its Father and Mother generate it; for after that it is corporeally generated, it then with the astringent Quality always generates the Fire again, and the Fire generates Light, and the Light is the Flash, which always generates the Life again in all the qualifying, or fountain Spirits; whence the Spirits have Life, and always generate one another again.

(22) For thus stood the Birth or Geniture of Nature in the Time of the Kindling, and was thus together incorporated in the Earth, and must also in such a Birth spring up again: For it is written; 'That the dead Earth should let the Grass and Herbs, and Trees spring up, each according to its Kind,' that is, according to the Kind and Quality, as it had been from Eternity, and as it had been in the heavenly Quality, Kind and Form. For that is called its own Kind, which is received in the Mother's Body or Womb, and is its own by Right of Nature, as its own peculiar Life. [Gen. 1. 12.]

(49) But it is in its Body very sharp; yet the new Birth, which rises up in the Water of Life, and presses through Death, mitigates it. But it cannot alter the Kernel of the sharp Birth, but is generated out of it, and keeps its holy new Life to itself, and presses through the angry Death, and the angry Death comprehends it not.