(133) Indeed the soul had its life before the body, but it stood in the Heart of God, hidden in the mass in heaven, and was a kind of holy seed, qualifying, mixing or uniting with God, which seed is eternal, incorruptible and indestructible; for it was a new and pure seed for an angel and image of God.

(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.

(34) "Then God spoke to the Holy Word within the soul of all things, saying: 'Increase in increasing and multiply in multitudes, all you, my creatures and workmanships. Let him that is endued with Mind know himself to be immortal and that the cause of death is the love of the body; and let him learn all things that are, for he who has recognized himself enters into the state of Good.'

(7) The Father and the Son have one Will, and that Will is the Holy Ghost, Who gives Himself to the soul so that the Divine Nature permeates the powers of the soul so that it can only do God-like works. Just as a spring, which perpetually flows and waters the roots of the flowers, so that the flowers bloom and receive their colours from the water of the spring, so the Godhead imparts Itself to the capacities of the soul that it may grow in the likeness of God. The more that the soul receives of the Divine Nature, the more it grows like It, and the closer becomes its union with God. It may arrive at such an intimate union that God at last draws it to Himself altogether, so that there is no distinction left, in the soul's consciousness, between itself and God, though God still regards it as a creature. Wherefore let yourselves not be misled by the light of nature. The higher the degree of knowledge which the soul attains to in the light of grace, the darker seems to it the light of nature.

If the soul would know the real truth it must examine itself, whether it has withdrawn from all things, whether it has lost itself, whether it loves God purely with His love and nothing of its own at the same time, so that it may not be separated from Him by anything, and whether God alone dwells in it. If it has lost itself, it is as when the Virgin Mary lost Christ. She sought Him for three days, and yet was sure that she would find Him. All the while Christ was in the highest class in the school of His Father, unconscious of His mother's seeking Him. Thus happens it to the noble soul which goes to God to school, and learns there what God is in His essence, and what He is in the Trinity, and what He is in man, and what is most acceptable to Him. St Augustine saith that the righteousness of God in the Godhead and in the Trinity and in all creatures is the source of the chief joy which is in heaven. God in human nature is a lamp of living light, and "the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not." The darkness must ever more flee the light, as the night flees day.

Thus the soul learns to know God's will. St Paul saith, "This is God's will, our sanctification." And this is our sanctification, to know what we were before time; what we are in time, and what we shall be after time. Thus the soul loses itself in these three, and recketh naught of the body, till it comes to it in the temple, and obeys it without murmuring. The Father is a revelation of the Godhead, the Son is an image and countenance of the Father, and the Holy Ghost is an effulgence of that countenance, and a mutual love between Them, and these properties They have always possessed in Themselves. The Three Persons have stooped out of pity down to human nature, and the Son became man, and was the most despised man on the earth, and suffered pain at the hands of the creatures whom He Himself created with the Father, through Whose will He became man. Thus was Christ till His death, and when He rose from the dead then was seen the most despised of all men united with the Godhead in the Person of Christ.

(9) In this choiring, the soul looks upon the wellspring of Life, wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good, root of Soul. It is not that these are poured out from the Supreme lessening it as if it were a thing of mass. At that the emanants would be perishable; but they are eternal; they spring from an eternal principle, which produces them not by its fragmentation but in virtue of its intact identity: therefore they too hold firm; so long as the sun shines, so long there will be light.

We have not been cut away; we are not separate, what though the body-nature has closed about us to press us to itself; we breathe and hold our ground because the Supreme does not give and pass but gives on for ever, so long as it remains what it is.

Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the soul's peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here is living, the true; that of to-day, all living apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that converse it brings forth gods, brings forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God. This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing.

That our good is There is shown by the very love inborn with the soul; hence the constant linking of the Love-God with the Psyches in story and picture; the soul, other than God but sprung of Him, must needs love. So long as it is There, it holds the heavenly love; here its love is the baser; There the soul is Aphrodite of the heavens; here, turned harlot, Aphrodite of the public ways: yet the soul is always an Aphrodite. This is the intention of the myth which tells of Aphrodite's birth and Eros born with her.

The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.

But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.

Those to whom all this experience is strange may understand by way of our earthly longings and the joy we have in winning to what we most desire- remembering always that here what we love is perishable, hurtful, that our loving is of mimicries and turns awry because all was a mistake, our good was not here, this was not what we sought; There only is our veritable love and There we may hold it and be with it, possess it in its verity no longer submerged in alien flesh. Any that have seen know what I have in mind: the soul takes another life as it approaches God; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise, that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This become, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in haste to be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser, so that with our being entire we may cling about This, no part in us remaining but through it we have touch with God.

Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhood or, better, knowing its Godhood, all aflame then- but crushed out once more if it should take up the discarded burden.

(28) For this flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, but is only a seed which is sown into the earth, out of which will grow an impalpable or incomprehensible body, such as the first was before the fall. But the spirit is eternal life, which uniteth, qualifieth or mixeth with God, and comprehendeth the internal Deity in nature.

(3) Among all the others who shared in them, and those who fell and received the light, he came into being exalted, because he had let himself be conceived without sin, stain and defilement. He was begotten in life, being in life because the former and the latter are in passion and changing opinion from the Logos who moved, who established them to be body and soul. He it is has taken to himself the one who came from those whom we previously mentioned.

(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.

(2) Accordingly, in that He was so mighty and so fair, He willed that some one else should have the power to contemplate the One He had made from Himself. And thereon He made man,—the imitator of His Reason and His Love. The Will of God is in itself complete accomplishment; inasmuch as together with His having willed, in one and the same time He hath brought it to full accomplishment. And so, when He perceived that the “essential” [man] could not be lover of all things, unless He clothed him in a cosmic carapace, He shut him in within a house of body,—and ordered it that all [men] should be so,—from either nature making him a single blend and fair-proportioned mixture.

(63) But when he elevated himself, intending to rule the whole Deity with his animated or soulish spirit, then the stock and heart of light, which is the kernel, marrow or pith of love in the sweet water, became a fierce and hotly pursuing fire, source or quality, from whence in the whole body existed a very trembling, burning government and birth or geniture.

(46) For the word is in thy heart [Deut. xxx. 14], [Rom. x. 8], and qualifieth or uniteth with the soul, as if it were one being; and if thy soul stands in the love, then it also is one being. And, thou may say, that according to thy soul thou sittest in heaven, and livest and reignest with God. [Understand, according to the spirit of the soul, with the image out of the animated or soulish fire.]

(10) All power and virtue is in God the Father; and proceedeth also forth from him, as light, heat, cold, soft, gentle, sweet, bitter, sour, astringent or harsh, sound or noise, and much more that is not possible to be spoken or apprehended. All these are in God the Father, one in another as one power, and yet all these powers move in his exit or going forth.

(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.

(2) For in this work, a soul drieth up in it all the root and the ground of sin that will always live in it after confession, be it never so busy. And, therefore, whoso will travail in this work, let him first cleanse his conscience; and afterward when he hath done that in him is lawfully, let him dispose him boldly but meekly thereto. And let him think, that he hath full long been holden therefrom. For this is that work in the which a soul should travail all his lifetime, though he had never sinned deadly. And the whiles that a soul is dwelling in this deadly flesh, it shall evermore see and feel this cumbrous cloud of unknowing betwixt him and God. And not only that, but in pain of the original sin it shall evermore see and feel that some of all the creatures that ever God made, or some of their works, will evermore press in remembrance betwixt it and God. And this is the right wisdom of God, that man, when he had sovereignty and lordship of all other creatures, because that he wilfully made him underling to the stirring of his subjects, leaving the bidding of God and his Maker; that right so after, when he would fulfil the bidding of God, he saw and felt all the creatures that should be beneath him, proudly press above him, betwixt him and his God.

(3) And being conjoined, begins to operate, Coagulating first, then vivifying What for its matter it had made consistent. The active virtue, being made a soul As of a plant, (in so far different, This on the way is, that arrived already,) Then works so much, that now it moves and feels Like a sea-fungus, and then undertakes To organize the powers whose seed it is. Now, Son, dilates and now distends itself The virtue from the generator's heart, Where nature is intent on all the members. But how from animal it man becomes Thou dost not see as yet; this is a point Which made a wiser man than thou once err So far, that in his doctrine separate He made the soul from possible intellect, For he no organ saw by this assumed. Open thy breast unto the truth that's coming, And know that, just as soon as in the foetus The articulation of the brain is perfect, The primal Motor turns to it well pleased At so great art of nature, and inspires A spirit new with virtue all replete,

(57) But seeing the soul, all the while the body had been in death, remained hidden in the word, and seeing the same word also holdeth the earth in the astral birth in the love, therefore it [the soul] qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth through the word, all the time of its hiddenness and secrecy, also with its mother the body, according or as to the astral birth or geniture in the earth, and so body and soul in the word were never separated the one from the other, but live jointly and equally together in God.

(31) And out of this expressing and revealing of Himself unto Himself, ariseth the distinction of Persons. But when God as God is made man, or where God dwelleth in a godly man, or one who is “made a partaker of the divine nature,” in such a man somewhat appertaineth unto God which is His own, and belongeth to Him only and not to the creature. And without the creature, this would lie in His own Self as a Substance or well-spring, but would not be manifested or wrought out into deeds. Now God will have it to be exercised and clothed in a form, for it is there only to be wrought out and executed. What else is it for? Shall it lie idle? What then would it profit? As good were it that it had never been; nay better, for what is of no use existeth in vain, and that is abhorred by God and Nature. However God will have it wrought out, and this cannot come to pass (which it ought to do) without the creature. Nay, if there ought not to be, and were not this and that—works, and a world full of real things, and the like, —what were God Himself, and what had He to do, and whose God would He be? Here we must turn and stop, or we might follow this matter and grope along until we knew not where we were, nor how we should find our way out again.

(6) The one whom he raised up as a light for those who came from himself, the one from whom they take their name, he is the Son, who is full, complete and faultless. He brought him forth mingled with what came forth from him [...] partaking of the [...] the Totality, in accordance with [...] by which each one can receive him for himself, though such was not his greatness before he was received by it. Rather, he exists by himself. As for the parts in which he exists in his own manner and form and greatness, it is possible for to see him and speak about that which they know of him, since they wear him while he wears them, because it is possible for them to comprehend him. He, however, is as he is, incomparable. In order that the Father might receive honor from each one and reveal himself, even in his ineffability, hidden, and invisible, they marvel at him mentally. Therefore, the greatness of his loftiness consists in the fact that they speak about him and see him. He becomes manifest, so that he may be hymned because of the abundance of his sweetness, with the grace of . And just as the admirations of the silences are eternal generations and they are mental offspring, so too the dispositions of the word are spiritual emanations. Both of them admirations and dispositions, since they belong to a word, are seeds and thoughts of his offspring, and roots which live forever, appearing to be offspring which have come forth from themselves, being minds and spiritual offspring to the glory of the Father.

(18) After that there goeth forth out of all the powers of the angel, and also out of the light of the angel, a fountain, which springeth or welleth up in the whole angel; and that is its spirit, which riseth up into all eternity; for in this same spirit is all perception and all knowledge [i.e. understanding] of all powers and of all types and modes [of life] which are in the whole [universal] God.

(19) But the animated or soulish spirit, which qualifieth or uniteth with God, that comprehends it well; but the bestial body attains only a glimpse thereof, just as if it lightened: For thus presenteth itself the innermost birth or geniture of the soul, when it teareth through the outermost birth or geniture in the elevation of the Holy Ghost, and so breaketh through the gates of hell; but the outermost birth presently shuts again; for the wrath of God bolteth up the firmament, and holds it captive in its power.