(45) Now, since thou hast thy reason, and art not like the apple on the tree, but art created an angel and the similitude or image of God, instead of the expulsed devils, and knowest how thou canst with thy astral birth, in the part of love, qualify or unite with the word of God, therefore thou canst, in the centre of the word, set or put thy animated or soulish birth into heaven, and thou canst with thy soul, even with thy living body in this dead or mortal palpability, rule with God in heaven.

(47) Thus thou hast a real description of heaven: And though perhaps thou canst not in thy reason conceive it, yet I can very well conceive it; therefore consider rationally and seriously what God is.

(4) To those who assert that creation is the work of the Soul after the failing of its wings, we answer that no such disgrace could overtake the Soul of the All. If they tell us of its falling, they must tell us also what caused the fall. And when did it take place? If from eternity, then the Soul must be essentially a fallen thing: if at some one moment, why not before that?

We assert its creative act to be a proof not of decline but rather of its steadfast hold. Its decline could consist only in its forgetting the Divine: but if it forgot, how could it create? Whence does it create but from the things it knew in the Divine? If it creates from the memory of that vision, it never fell. Even supposing it to be in some dim intermediate state, it need not be supposed more likely to decline: any inclination would be towards its Prior, in an effort to the clearer vision. If any memory at all remained, what other desire could it have than to retrace the way?

What could it have been planning to gain by world-creating? Glory? That would be absurd- a motive borrowed from the sculptors of our earth.

Finally, if the Soul created by policy and not by sheer need of its nature, by being characteristically the creative power- how explain the making of this universe?

And when will it destroy the work? If it repents of its work, what is it waiting for? If it has not yet repented, then it will never repent: it must be already accustomed to the world, must be growing more tender towards it with the passing of time.

Can it be waiting for certain souls still here? Long since would these have ceased returning for such re-birth, having known in former life the evils of this sphere; long since would they have foreborne to come.

Nor may we grant that this world is of unhappy origin because there are many jarring things in it. Such a judgement would rate it too high, treating it as the same with the Intelligible Realm and not merely its reflection.

And yet- what reflection of that world could be conceived more beautiful than this of ours? What fire could be a nobler reflection of the fire there than the fire we know here? Or what other earth than this could have been modelled after that earth? And what globe more minutely perfect than this, or more admirably ordered in its course could have been conceived in the image of the self-centred circling of the World of Intelligibles? And for a sun figuring the Divine sphere, if it is to be more splendid than the sun visible to us, what a sun it must be.

(34) Neither can I declare it unto thee in any other manner; for I must write as if the generating or geniture of God had or took a beginning when things came to be thus; but I write here very, really true and precious dear words, which the spirit alone understands. Now observe the Gates of God.

(13) Now when this is done, then thou art as the whole or total God, who himself is heaven, earth, stars, and the elements, and hast also such a regimen or dominion in thee, and art also such a person, as the whole God in the place of this world. Now thou sayest, How shall I understand this? For the kingdom of God and the kingdom of hell and of the devil are distinct one from the other, and cannot be one body. Also the earth and stones are not God; nor the heaven, stars and elements; much less can a man be God; for if so, he could not be rejected by God. Here I will, by degrees, tell thee the ground of all, one thing after another; therefore keep the question in mind. Of the astral Birth or Geniture, and of the Birth or Geniture of God.

(2) God, the ruler of the realms and the powers, divided us in wrath, and then we became two beings. And the glory in our hearts left us, me and your mother Eve, along with the first knowledge that breathed in us. And glory fled from us and entered another great realm. Your mother Eve and I didn't come from this realm. But knowledge entered into the seed of great eternal beings. For this reason I myself have called you by the name of that person who is the seed of the great generation or its predecessor. After those days the eternal knowledge of the god of truth withdrew from me and your mother Eve. Then we learned about the inanimate as we did about human beings. We recognized the god who created us. We were not strangers to his powers. And we served him in fear and slavery. After these events our hearts darkened, and I slept in my heart's darkened thought.

(22) Wherefore, my son, thou shouldst give praise to God and pray that thou mayst have thy mind Good Mind. It is, then, to a better state the soul doth pass; it cannot to a worse. Further there is an intercourse of souls; those of the gods have intercourse with those of men, and those of men with souls of creatures which possess no reason. The higher, further, have in charge the lower; the gods look after men, men after animals irrational, while God hath charge of all; for He is higher than them all and all are less than He. Cosmos is subject, then, to God, man to the Cosmos, and irrationals to man. But God is o'er them all, and God contains them all. God's rays, to use a figure, are His energies; the Cosmos's are natures, the arts and sciences are man's. The energies act through the Cosmos, thence through the nature-rays of Cosmos upon man; the nature-rays [act] through the elements, man [acteth] through the sciences and arts.

(13) Therefore it has a beginning in man, but none in God; and therefore I must also write in a creaturely manner, or else thou canst not understand it.

(27) "Then the downward-turned and unreasoning elements brought forth creatures without Reason. Substance could not bestow Reason, for Reason had ascended out of it. The air produced flying things and the waters such as swim. The earth conceived strange four-footed and creeping beasts, dragons, composite demons, and grotesque monsters. Then the Father--the Supreme Mind--being Light and Life, fashioned a glorious Universal Man in Its own image, not an earthy man but a heavenly Man dwelling in the Light of God. The Supreme Mind loved the Man It had fashioned and delivered to Him the control of the creations and workmanships.

(29) Now as man in his outward being is corrupted, and as to his fleshly birth or geniture is in the wrath of God, and is moreover also an enemy of God, and yet is but one man, and not two; and on the other hand, in his spiritual birth or geniture he is a child and heir of God, who ruleth and liveth with God, and qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth with the innermost birth or geniture of God; thus also is the place of this world come to be.

(4) Behold! thou unapprehensive man, I will shew thee the true ground of the Deity. If this whole or universal being be not God, then thou art not God's image. If he be any other or strange God, then thou hast no part in him: For thou art created out of this God, and livest in this very God, and this very God continually giveth thee power or virtue, and blessing, also meat and drink, out of himself; also all thy knowledge stands in this God, and when thou diest, then thou art buried in this God.

(52) I see not this knowledge with my fleshly eyes, but with those eyes wherein life generateth itself in me; in that seat the gates of heaven and hell stand open to me, and the new man speculateth into the midst or centre of the astral birth or geniture, and to him the inner and outermost gate stands open.

(9) O nobly-born, these realms are not come from somewhere outside [thyself]. They come from within the four divisions of thy heart, which, including its centre, make the five directions. They issue from within there, and whine upon thee. The deities, too, are not come from somewhere else: they exist from eternity within the faculties of thine own intellect. Know them to be of that nature.

(9) Behold! that is the true one only God, out of whom thou art created, and in whom thou livest; and when thou beholdest the deep, and the stars, and the earth, then thou beholdest thy God, and in that same thou livest, and also art, or hast thy being therein; and that same God also governeth or ruleth thee, and also out of or from that same God thou hast thy senses, and thou art a creature out of or from him and in him; else thou hadst been nothing, or wouldst never have been.

(93) Thus thou seest what God is, and how his love and wrath have been from eternity, also how his birth or geniture is: And now thou canst not say that thou art not in God, or dost not live in God, or that God is any strange thing which thou canst not come at, but must confess, that where thou art, there is the gate of God.

(81) And also the place of the created world, even unto heaven, as also the deep where now the earth is, all that was a pure and holy Salitter, wherein the seven spirits of God were complete and pleasant, as now [they are] in heaven, although they are still complete and full in this world. But observe the circumstances rightly.

(95) Hearken, Friend, there belongeth more than so to this; thy animated or soulish spirit must first qualify, operate or unite with the innermost birth or geniture in God, and stand in the light, that it may rightly know and understand the astral birth or geniture, and that it may have a free and open gate into all the births or genitures; otherwise thou wilt not be able to write a holy and true philosophy, but a philosophy full of lice and fleas, as it were, and so thou wilt be found a mocker against God.

But when the chief creator saw the likeness of Pistis in the waters, he grieved, especially when he heard her voice, which was like the first voice that called to him out of the water. When he knew that this was the one who named him, he groaned and was ashamed on account of his transgression. And when he actually knew that an enlightened, immortal human existed before him, he was greatly disturbed, because previously he had said to all the gods and their angels, “I am god and there is no other god but me.” For he had been afraid that they might know that another existed before him and condemn him. But he, like a fool, despised the condemnation and acted recklessly, and said, “If something exists before me, let it appear so that we might see its light.” And immediately, look, light came out of the eighth heaven above and passed through all the heavens of the earth. When the chief creator saw that the light was beautiful as it shone forth, he was amazed and very much ashamed. When the light appeared, a human likeness, which was very wonderful, was revealed within it; and no one saw it except the chief creator alone and the forethought who was with him. But its light appeared to all the powers of the heavens. Therefore they were all disturbed by it.

(20) But the innermost kernel, which is the Deity, that they can nowhere comprehend, for the wrath of the fire lies before it, as a strong wall, and this wall must be broken down with a very strong storm or assault, if the astral spirits will see into it. But the door stands open to the animated or soulish spirit, for it [the animated or soulish spirit] is withheld by nothing, but is as God himself is, in his innermost birth or geniture. Now then it might be asked, How then shall I understand myself in or according to the threefold birth or geniture in nature? The depth!

(19) For that spirit springeth up out of all the powers of the angel, and goeth up into the mind, where it has five open doors; there it can look round about and see whatsoever is in God, and also whatsoever is in itself.