(5) Not in the guise that man o'ercometh man, But conquers it because it will be conquered, And conquered conquers by benignity. The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth Cause thee astonishment, because with them Thou seest the region of the angels painted. They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest, Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered. For one from Hell, where no one e'er turns back Unto good will, returned unto his bones, And that of living hope was the reward,— Of living hope, that placed its efficacy In prayers to God made to resuscitate him, So that 'twere possible to move his will. The glorious soul concerning which I speak, Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay, Believed in Him who had the power to aid it; And, in believing, kindled to such fire Of genuine love, that at the second death Worthy it was to come unto this joy. The other one, through grace, that from so deep A fountain wells that never hath the eye Of any creature reached its primal wave,

(93) But, that afterwards the astringent and bitter qualities awaken behind, and coimage afterwards to the framing of the word, signifieth that indeed all is as it were one body, but the heaven and the Holy Spirit, together with the heart of God, has its proper seat to itself; and the devil, together with the wrath of God, can comprehend neither the Holy Spirit nor the heaven; but the devil, together with the wrath, hangeth in the outward birth in the word, and the wrath helpeth to image all in the outermost birth in this world, all whatsoever that stands in the comprehensibility or palpability; just as the astringent and bitter qualities afterwards rouse themselves behind to the framing of the word, and qualify, operate or unite therewith.

(73) Now when the heaven was made for a distinction or partition between the light of God and the kindled corruption of the body of this world, then was the body of this world a dark valley, and had no light besides the heaven that could have shone forth in the outward body; all powers stood as it were captivated in death, and were in great anguish, till they had heated themselves in the midst or centre of the body.

(615) who had been great criminals: they were just, as they fancied, about to return into the upper world, but the mouth, instead of admitting them, gave a roar, whenever any of these incurable sinners or some one who had not been sufficiently punished tried to ascend; and then wild men of fiery aspect, who were standing by and heard the sound, seized and carried them off; and Ardiaeus and others they bound head and foot and hand, and threw them down and flayed them with scourges, and dragged them along the road at the side, carding them on thorns like wool, and declaring to the passers-by what were their crimes, and that 8 they were being taken away to be cast into hell.’ And of all the many terrors which they had endured, he said that there was none like the terror which each of them felt at that moment, lest they should hear the voice; and when there was silence, one by one they ascended with exceeding joy. These, said Er, were the penalties and retributions, and there were blessings as great. Now when the spirits which were in the meadow had tarried seven days, on the eighth they were obliged to proceed on their journey, and, on the fourth day after, he said that they came to a place where they could see from above a line of light, straight as a column, extending right through the whole heaven and through the earth, in colour resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer; another day’s journey brought them to the place, and there, in the

(129) For at the very hour when Lucifer elevated himself the Father was moved to wrath in the qualifying or fountain spirits against the legions of Lucifer; and the Heart of God hid itself in the firmament of heaven, where the Salitter, effect, product or fabric of the corporeity was burning already; for without or distinct from the light is the dark chamber of death.

(2) ’Twixt Heaven and Earth, upon the waves of Cosmos, is it dragged in contrary directions, for ever racked with ceaseless pains ; so that in this its deathless nature doth afflict the soul, in that because of its unceasing sense, it hath the yoke of ceaseless torture set upon its neck. Know, then, that we should dread, and be afraid, and [ever] be upon our guard, lest we should be entangled in these [toils]. For those who do not now believe, will after their misdeeds be driven to believe, by facts not words, by actual sufferings of punishment and not by threats.

(4) So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its presidency to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed are thus far in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the soul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this, it abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the one, for a thing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has drifted away from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.

With this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the enchaining in body: the soul has lost that innocency of conducting the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.

It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.

But in spite of all it has, for ever, something transcendent: by a conversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the shackles and soars- when only it makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.

All this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he distinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as "parts," and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial, they must of necessity experience birth.

Of course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be understood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations; what is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as coming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are transferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and definite form are eternal.

(50) But if thou fightest and strivest with the devil, and keepest the gate of love in thy astral birth, and so departest from hence as to the body, then thy soul remaineth in the word quite hidden from the devil, and reigneth with God, even unto the day of the restitution of that which was lost.

(71) For instead of thy heaven thou hast the wrath-devil sitting there; but if thou breakest through, then he must get him gone, and the Holy Ghost ruleth and reigneth in that seat; and in the other part, viz. the fierceness, the devil tempteth thee, for it is his nest; and the Holy Ghost opposeth him, and the new man lies in his own heaven, hidden under the protection of the Holy Ghost, and the devil knoweth not the new man, for he is not in the devil's house, but in heaven, in the firmament of God.

(11) We will now explain, in detail, to the best of our ability, certain works of God, of which we spoke. For I am not competent to sing all, much less to know accurately, and to reveal their mysteries to others. Now whatever things have been sung and ministered by the inspired Hierarchs, agreeably to the Oracles, these we will declare, as far as attainable to us, invoking the Hierarchical inspiration to our aid. When, in the beginning, our human nature had thoughtlessly fallen from the good things of God, it received, by inheritance, the life subject to many passions, and the goal of the destructive death. For, as a natural consequence, the pernicious falling away from genuine goodness and the transgression of the sacred Law in Paradise delivered the man fretted with the life-giving yoke, to his own downward inclinations and the enticing and hostile wiles of the adversary--the contraries of the divine goods; thence it pitiably exchanged for the eternal, the mortal, and, having had its own origin in deadly generations, the goal naturally corresponded with the beginning; but having willingly fallen from the Divine and elevating life, it was carried to the contrary extremity,--the variableness of many passions, and lead astray, and turned aside from the strait way leading to the true God,--and subjected to destructive and evil-working multitudes--naturally forgot that it was worshipping, not gods, or friends, but enemies. Now when these had treated it harshly, according to their own cruelty, it fell pitiably into danger of annihilation and destruction; but the boundless Loving-kindness of the supremely Divine goodness towards man did not, in Its benevolence, withdraw from us Its spontaneous forethought, but having truly participated sinlessly in all things belonging to us, and having been made one with our lowliness in connection with the unconfused and flawless possession of Its own properties in full perfection, It bequeathed to us, as henceforth members of the same family, the communion with Itself, and proclaimed us partakers of Its own beautiful things; having, as the secret teaching holds, loosed the power of the rebellious multiplicity, which was against us; not by force, as having the upper hand, but, according to the Logion, mystically transmitted to us, "in judgment and righteousness." The things within us, then, It benevolently changed to the entire contrary. For the lightless within Our mind It filled with blessed and most Divine Light, and adorned the formless with Godlike beauties; the tabernacle of our soul It liberated from most damnable passions and destructive stains by a perfected deliverance of our being which was all but prostrate, by shewing to us a supermundane elevation, and an inspired polity in our religious assimilation to Itself, as far as is possible.

(73) And this firmament of heaven is his throne or footstool, and the qualifying or fountain spirits of his natural body rule in the whole body of this world, and all is tied, bound or united with them, all whatsoever that stands in the astral birth in the part of love: The other part of this world is tied, bound and united with the devil.

(34) Now then, seeing the devils kindled their own bodies, intending thereby to domineer over the whole Deity, therefore the creator also, in his wrath, kindled this third spirit, or this third birth or geniture in nature, and imprisoned the devil therein, and made an eternal lodging therein for him, that he might not be higher than the whole God. ["Understand, in the outward sources or qualities; for the outermost of all, is also the innermost of all."]

(3) Dense clouds do not appear, nor rarefied, Nor coruscation, nor the daughter of Thaumas, That often upon earth her region shifts; No arid vapour any farther rises Than to the top of the three steps I spake of, Whereon the Vicar of Peter has his feet. Lower down perchance it trembles less or more, But, for the wind that in the earth is hidden I know not how, up here it never trembled. It trembles here, whenever any soul Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it. Of purity the will alone gives proof, Which, being wholly free to change its convent, Takes by surprise the soul, and helps it fly. First it wills well; but the desire permits not, Which divine justice with the self-same will There was to sin, upon the torment sets. And I, who have been lying in this pain Five hundred years and more, but just now felt A free volition for a better seat. Therefore thou heardst the earthquake, and the pious Spirits along the mountain rendering praise Unto the Lord, that soon he speed them upwards."

(2) "And all the rulers and all those who are in the Fate, were thrown into agitation and fell on one another and were in exceeding great fear on seeing the great light that was about me. And they gazed on my vesture of light and saw the mystery of their name on my vesture and fell into still greater agitation; and they were in great fear, saying: 'How hath the lord of the universe passed through us without our knowing?' And all the bonds of their regions and of their orders and of their houses were unloosed; they all came at once, fell down, adored before me and sang praises all together to the interiors of the interiors, being in great fear and great agitation.

(110) Here thou seest once more how the kingdom of God and the kingdom of hell hang one to the other, as one body, and yet the one cannot comprehend the other. For the second birth, viz. the heat, light, love, and the sound or tone, is hidden in the outermost, and makes the outward moveable, so that the outward gathereth itself together, and generateth a body.

(114) And then there riseth up the striving or fighting fire in man, just as it rose up in heaven with Michael and Lucifer, and so the poor soul comes to be miserably crushed, stretched, tormented and put upon the rack.

(61) The devil can reach half into this birth, so far as the wrath comprehendeth or reacheth, but no deeper, and thus far goeth his dwelling, but no deeper. Therefore the devil cannot know how the other part in this birth has a root; and so far man is come in his knowledge, from the beginning of the world to this time, since his fall. But the other root, called the heaven, the spirit has kept hidden and concealed from man till this time, lest the devil should have learned it from man, and should have strowed poison into it for man before his eyes.

(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.

(619) was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children. But when he had time to reflect, and saw what was in the lot, he began to beat his breast and lament over his choice, forgetting the proclamation of the prophet; for, instead of throwing the blame of his misfortune on himself, he accused chance and the gods, and everything rather than himself. Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was a matter of habit only, and he had no philosophy. And it was true of others who were similarly overtaken, that the greater number of them came from heaven and therefore they had never been schooled by trial, whereas the pilgrims who came from earth having themselves suffered and seen others suffer, were not in a hurry to choose. And owing to this inexperience of theirs, and also because the lot was a chance, many of the souls exchanged a good destiny for an evil or an evil for a good. For if a man had always on his arrival in this world dedicated himself from the first to sound philosophy, and had been moderately fortunate in the number of the lot, he might, as the messenger reported, be happy here, and also his journey to another life and return to this, instead of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly. Most curious, he said, was the spectacle—sad and laughable and strange; for the choice of the souls

(119) For if heaven had not, as a firmament, been shut up in the mass, between the Heart of God and the corporeal, qualifying or fountain spirits of the mass, then the mass might have kindled the soul from or by its own power; as it happened with the holy angels.