(34) When God had finished this on the fourth Day, he saw it, and considered it, and it was good, as Moses writes. Then God desired in his external Will, that this Kingdom or Principle [of this World] should also be creaturely, like the perfect paradisical Kingdom, that there should be living Creatures therein. And the Will set the Virtue (that is, the Word) in the Fiat; and then the Matrix generated all manner of [living] Creatures on the fifth Day, every one after its Kind. You must understand by the word Kind, as many various [Forms] as the Matrix is [of;] as you may observe it in the Constellation.

(1) THE creatures inhabiting the water, air, and earth were held in veneration by all races of antiquity. Realizing that visible bodies are only symbols of invisible forces, the ancients worshiped the Divine Power through the lower kingdoms of Nature, because those less evolved and more simply constituted creatures responded most readily to the creative impulses of the gods. The sages of old studied living things to a point of realization that God is most perfectly understood through a knowledge of His supreme handiwork--animate and inanimate Nature.

(11) Then the Formative Mind ([at-oned] with Reason), he who surrounds the spheres and spins them with his whorl, set turning his formations, and let them turn from a beginning boundless unto an endless end. For that the circulation of these [spheres] begins where it doth end, as Mind doth will. And from the downward elements Nature brought forth lives reason-less; for He did not extend the Reason (Logos) [to them]. The Air brought forth things winged; the Water things that swim, and Earth-and-Water one from another parted, as Mind willed. And from her bosom Earth produced what lives she had, four-footed things and reptiles, beasts wild and tame.

(68) But when, in these two days, the creation of heaven and of earth was completed, and the heaven was made in the heart of the water, for a difference or distinction between the light of God and the wrath of God, then, on the third day, through the terror or crack of the fire-flash, which rose up in the heart of the water, and presseth through death, incomprehensibly as to death, there sprang up all manner of ideas, forms and figures, as was done before the time of the kindled wrath.

(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.

(3) And every God by his own proper power brought forth what was appointed him. Thus there arose four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and those that in the water dwell, and things with wings, and everything that beareth seed, and grass, and shoot of every flower, all having in themselves seed of again-becoming. And they selected out the births of men for gnosis of the works of God and attestation of the energy of Nature; the multitude of men for lordship over all beneath the heaven and gnosis of its blessings, that they might increase in increasing and multiply in multitude, and every soul infleshed by revolution of the Cyclic Gods, for observation of the marvels of Heaven and Heaven's Gods' revolution, and of the works of God and energy of Nature, for tokens of its blessings, for gnosis of the power of God, that they might know the fates that follow good and evil [deeds] and learn the cunning work of all good arts.

(85) And the hard, spoiled or corrupt matter, which had wrought forth itself in the kindled seven qualifying or fountain-spirits, was driven together, from whence the earth and stones came to be, and, after that, all the creatures were created out of the kindled Salitter of the seven spirits of God.

(1) Immediately the wooden figures were annihilated, destroyed, broken up, and killed. A flood was brought about by the Heart of Heaven; a great flood was formed which fell on the heads of the wooden creatures. Of tzité the flesh of man was made, but when woman was fashioned by the Creator and the Maker, her flesh was made of rushes. These were the materials the Creator and the Maker wanted to use in making them.

(2) Every existing creature manifests some aspect of the intelligence or power of the Eternal One, who can never be known save through a study and appreciation of His numbered but inconceivable parts. When a creature is chosen, therefore, to symbolize to the concrete human mind some concealed abstract principle it is because its characteristics demonstrate this invisible principle in visible action. Fishes, insects, animals, reptiles, and birds appear in the religious symbolism of nearly all nations, because the forms and habits of these creatures and the media in which they exist closely relate them to the various generative and germinative powers of Nature, which were considered as prima-facie evidence of divine omnipresence.

(8) There are also legends to the effect that long before the appearance of human beings there existed a race or species of composite creatures which was destroyed by the gods. The temples of antiquity preserved their own historical records and possessed information concerning the prehistoric world that has never been revealed to the uninitiated. According to these records, the human race evolved from a species of creature that partook somewhat of the nature of an amphibian, for at that time primitive man had the gills of a fish and was partly covered with scales. To a limited degree, the human embryo demonstrates the possibility of such a condition. As a result of the theory of man's origin in water, the fish was looked upon as the progenitor of the human family. This gave rise to the ichthyolatry of the Chaldeans, Phœnicians, and Brahmins. The American Indians believe that the waters of lakes, rivers, and oceans are inhabited by a mysterious people, the "Water Indians."

(10) Seeing then that the eternal Wisdom of God (viz. in the chaste Virgin of the divine Virtue) had discovered itself in the Principle of this World, in which Place the great Prince Lucifer stood in the Heaven, in the second Principle, therefore the same Discovering was eternal, and God desired to shed forth the Similitude out of the Essences, which the Fiat created according to the Kind of every Essence, that they should (after the Breaking [or Dissolution] of the outward Substance) be a Figure and Image in Paradise, and a Shadow of this Substance. 1 1. And that there should go nothing in Vain out of the Substance of God, therefore God created Beasts, Fowls, Fishes, Worms, Trees and Herbs out of all Essences; and besides [created] also figured Spirits out of the Quinta Essentia, in the Elements, that so, after the completing of the Time (when the Out-Birth [shall] go into the Ether) they should appear before him, and that his eternal Wisdom in his Works of Wonder might he known.

(2) "And my garment of fire, according to the will of the majesty, went down to what is strong, and to the unclean portion of nature that the power of darkness was covering. And my garment rubbed nature in her covering. And her unclean femininity was strong. And the wrathful womb came up and made the mind dry, resembling a fish that has a drop of fire and a power of fire. And when nature had cast off the mind, she was troubled and wept. When she was hurt and in her tears, she cast off the power of the spirit and remained as I am. I put on the light of the spirit and rested with my garment on account of the sight of the fish. And that the deeds of nature might be condemned, since she is blind, manifold animals came out of her, in accordance with the number of the fleeting winds. All of them came into being in Hades, searching for the light of the mind that took shape. They were not able to stand up against it. I rejoiced over their ignorance.

(29) For when the Matrix became dthin again, dead and vanquished from the risen Light, then the material [Matrix] turned to Water, as we may perceive; and in this Kindling before the Light of the Sun (when the Matrix was still in the harsh Fierceness) the Matrix attracted that which was wrought together into the dark Earth, which before the Time of the Creation was but fiery Heaven, in the fifth Form in the Matrix, by the Fiat which the Father spoke through his Heart or Son, by and in the going forth of his Spirit, who there, upon the Matrix in the fifth Form, framed the fiery Heaven, as the highly worthy Moses has clearly written of it. For the Matrix is the Water-Spirit in the Original, in the first Form; and now when it became material in the Place of this World, then the Spirit moved upon the Water in the heavenly Matrix, which is immaterial, (from whence the material Water is generated), and so formed the Creatures.

(141) Yet it shall be treated of all along in this whole book, in all the articles and parts thereof; but you shall find it more particularly in that part concerning the creation of the creatures, as also concerning the creation of heaven and earth and of all things, which will be fitter to be done then, and more easily apprehended by the Reader. Now observe:

(13) And ten nights and days rain was produced by him in that manner, and the poison and venom of the noxious creatures which were in the earth were, all mixed up in the water, and the water became quite salt, because there remained in the earth some of those germs which noxious creatures ever collect.

(10) Second, from the Spirit he made Air and formed for speech twenty-two letters, three of which are mothers, A, M, SH, seven are double, B, G, D, K, P, R, T, and twelve are single, E, V, Z, CH, H, I, L, N, S, O, Tz, Q, but the spirit is first among these. Third, Primitive Water. He also formed and designed from his Spirit, and from the void and formless made earth, even as a rampart, or standing wall, and varied its surface even as the crossing of beams. Fourth, from the Water, He designed Fire, and from it formed for himself a throne of honor, with Auphanim, Seraphim, Holy Animals, and ministering Angels, and with these he formed his dwelling, as is written in the text "Who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire." (Psalm civ. 4.)

(14) According to many scattered fragments extant, man's lower nature was symbolized by a tremendous, awkward creature resembling a great sea serpent, or dragon, called leviathan. All symbols having serpentine form or motion signify the solar energy in one of its many forms. This great creature of the sea therefore represents the solar life force imprisoned in water and also the divine energy coursing through the body of man, where, until transmuted, it manifests itself as a writhing, twisting monster---man's greeds, passions, and lusts. Among the symbols of Christ as the Savior of men are a number relating to the mystery of His divine nature concealed within the personality of the lowly Jesus.

(6) Now when God on the first Day had gathered together the Lump of the Earth in the great Deep of this World, then the Deep became purified, yet [the Deep between the Firmament and the Earth, though it was cleansed from Dregs, was] dark, and had no Light in the Matrix; but the fifth Essence, that is, the fifth Form in the Matrix, shined as a Fire, wherein the Spirit of God with the Fiat moved upon the watery Matrix; and the Earth was naked, bare, and void; neither had it so much as one Spire of Grass.

A voice called from the exalted heavenly realm, The human exists and the human child. The first ruler, Yaldabaoth, heard the voice and thought it had come from his mother. He did not realize its source. The holy perfect mother-father, the complete forethought, the image of the invisible one, being the father of everything, through whom everything came into being, the first human— this is the one who showed them, and appeared in human shape. The entire realm of the first ruler quaked, and the foundations of the abyss shook. The bottom of the waters above the material world was lighted by this image that had appeared. When all the authorities and the first ruler stared at this appearance, they saw the whole bottom as it was illuminated. And through the light they saw the shape of the image in the water.

(145) Thus you may understand what the creation of heaven and earth signifieth and is, also what God made on the first day. Though indeed the first three days were not distinguished or severed asunder by evening and morning, but a time is to be reckoned and accounted as of twentyfour hours, as there is on high above the moon such a time and day.