(34) And therefore thus we say of Mary; She has comprehended the holy heavenly eternal Virgin of God, and put on the holy and pure Element, [together] with the Paradise, and yet was truly she was not called a holy pure Virgin according to her earthly Birth; the Flesh which she had from Joachim and Anna was not pure, without Spot; but her Holiness and Purity is according to the heavenly a Virgin. Besides, she brought not the heavenly Virgin to her out of her own Ability; for the Angel said to her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Power of the most High shall over-shadow thee; therefore the holy [Thing] that shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God.

(52) You must understand, Mary was to conceive in the Body, viz. in her own Body, not in a strange assumed [Body,] as the Unenlightened (who apprehend not the Kingdom of God) might interpret our Writings to mean. Besides, it is not the Ground neither, which the Ancients and those heretofore have set down (which yet went very high) as if Mary from Eternity had been hidden in Ternario Sancto [the holy Ternary or Trinity,] and that she entered at that Time only in Anna, as into a Case, [or House,] and was not of the Seed of Joachim, and Blood of Anna. They say, she was an eternal Virgin out of the Trinity, of whom Christ was born; because he came not out of the Flesh and Blood of any Man, and as himself witnesses, that he was not of this World, but was come from Heaven. He says, That he came forth from God, and must return again to God; and to Nicodemus he said, No one goes into Heaven, but the Son of Man which is come from Heaven, and who is in Heaven.

Some said Mary became pregnant by the holy spirit. They are wrong and do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever get pregnant by a woman? Mary is the virgin whom none of the powers defiled. This is greatly repugnant to the Hebrews, who are the apostles and apostolic persons. This virgin whom none of the powers defiled [wishes that] the powers would defile themselves.

(25) Stories like the foregoing represent the incrustations that have attached themselves to the body of Christianity during the centuries. The popular mind itself has been the self-appointed guardian and perpetuator of these legends, bitterly opposing every effort to divest the faith of these questionable accumulations. While popular tradition often contains certain basic elements of truth, these elements are usually distorted out of all proportion. Thus, while the generalities of the story may be fundamentally true, the details are hopelessly erroneous. Of truth as of beauty it may be said that it is most adorned when unadorned. Through the mist of fantastic accounts which obscure the true foundation of the Christian faith is faintly visible to the discerning few a great and noble doctrine communicated to the world by a great and noble soul. Joseph and Mary, two devout and holy-minded souls, consecrated to the service of God and dreaming of the coming of a Messiah to serve Israel, obeyed the injunctions of the high priest of the Essenes to prepare a body for the coming of a great soul. Thus of an immaculate conception Jesus was born. By immaculate is meant clean, rather than supernatural.

(74) She became not pregnant save after sexual pleasure, Can a garden bloom without the spring? Pregnant women and their teeming wombs So every tree which nurtures its fruits Has been, like Mary, impregnated by the Unseen King. Though fire's heat be hidden in the midst of water, Though the heat of the fire be working unseen, In like manner, the members of those enjoying "union" Become big with child, viz., with forms of "states" and "words." Gazing on the beauty of these forms they stand agape,

On account of this it is said concerning her that she said, I am part of my mother, and I am the mother. I am the wife, I am the virgin. I am pregnant. I am the midwife. I am the one who comforts during labor pains. My husband produced me, and I am his mother, and he is my father and my lord. He is my potency; what he desires he speaks with reason. I am becoming, but I have borne a lordly man. Now these things were revealed by the will of Sabaoth and his Christ to the souls who will come to the fashioned bodies of the authorities. Concerning these the holy voice said, “Multiply and flourish to rule over all the creatures.” And these are the ones who are taken captive by the chief creator according to their destinies, and thus they were locked in the prisons of the fashioned bodies until the consummation of the age.

(69) Yet Men cannot say, that Mary was born out of a barren Womb, although the Body of Anna was unfruitful, which was from the Council of God; in that they were honest [virtuous] People, fearing God, that their Tincture might not be defiled, because they were to generate that which the Lord would highly bless. God knew how to open it in due Time, and that in old Age, when the wanton Lust of this World from the Elements was extinguished, as in Sarah, Abraham's Wife.

(31) Therefore we set it down here according to our Knowledge, that the pure chaste Virgin, in which God was born [or generated,] is the chaste Virgin [that is] in the Presence of God, and it is an eternal Virgin; before ever Heaven and Earth was created, it was put itself into Mary, in her Incarnation, and her new Man was in the holy Element of God; and therefore she was the blessed among all Women, and the Lord was with her, as the Angel said.

(92) Seeing, then that the Soul of her Child was in the Holy Trinity, what dost thou think here? Seeing it went forth out of the Mother's Essences, whether might not the Holiness of the Child (especially his high Light) in the Mother shine bright and gloriously? And whether this Mother may not rightly stand upon the Moon, and despise that which is earthly, as is to be seen in the Revelation [of St. John?]

(83) If now thou wilt behold the Virgin Mary, with her son Jesus Christ, then thou shalt find that she has been justified and saved through her Son; although she is come into great Perfection, as a bright Morning-Star, above other Stars. And therefore also the Angel called her blessed among Women, and said; The Lord is with thee: But she has not the divine Omnipotence.

(86) And as the Child is another Person than the Mother, and as the Child's Soul is not the Soul of the Mother, so also here in this Place. For the outward Virgin could not comprehend, that she did bear the Saviour of the World; but she committed that (in her Virgin-chastity) to God; whatsoever he did with her, she would still be contented with it.

(64) And this now is the heavenly Virgin, of which the Spirit of God spoke, in the wise men of old; and Ternarius Sanctus is our true Body in the a Image which we have lost, which now the Heart of God has taken to him for a Body; and this noble Body (as also the Virgin of God) was put upon Mary, not as a Garment, but very powerfully in her Essences, and yet incomprehensibly as to the Essences of this World of Flesh and Blood in the Body of Mary, but comprehensible as to the Soul of Mary; for the Soul passed into the holy Ternary; and yet she could not so be severed from the fierce Wrath, but that was to be in the Breaking of the earthly Body from the heavenly, in the Death of Christ.

(65) Thus the Word in the holy Ternary let itself into the Earthliness, and received to it a true Soul out of the Essences of the Soul of Mary (like all other Men) in the Time, viz. in the End of three Months, not out of the holy Ternary, but our Soul; yet not our Body, wherein the Kingdom of this World and Sin did stick.

(93) For she bore the Saviour of all the World, without any earthly Mixture; and she is also a Virgin of Chastity, highly blessed by her Son Jesus Christ, in the divine Light and Clarity, rmore than the Heavens, like the princely Thrones of the Angels. For out of her went forth the Body, which attracts all Members to it, which are the Children of God in Christ. And therefore her Glance [Luster or Brightness] is above the Glance of Heaven; and the Glance of her Soul is in the Holy Trinity, where all other Children of Adam (which are born [or begotten] in Christ) are also Members therein, in that one Christ Jesus.

(39) For Christ brought no strange Soul out of Heaven with him, into the highly blessed heavenly pure Virgin; but as all Souls are generated, so Christ also received his Soul in his Body, though in his undefiled Body of Holiness, which was become Mary's own. For we must say, that the pure Element in the her original Soul) consists. The most precious Gate.

(38) You are to know, that as Mary did bear the heavenly Image, viz. a new Man born out of the Mercy of God in the old earthly [Man,] viz. in the Kingdom of this World, which Kingdom she had in her as her own, which yet did not comprehend the new Man; so also the Word of God entered into the Body of the Virgin Mary, into the heavenly Matrix, into the eternal Virgin of God, and that [Word] in that [eternal Virgin of God] became a heavenly Man, out of the paradisical holy pure Element, in the Person of the new regenerated Man of the Virgin Mary, and (with his eternal Deity) was together generated in the Beginning, of the own proper Soul of Mary, and with his Entrance of his Deity has brought the Soul of Mary again into the holy Father; so that the Souls of Men (which were gone out from the Deity) were new-born again in the Soul of Christ, and begotten to the Heart of God.

(37) We cannot say, that the heavenly Virgin of the Mercy of God (viz. that which entered into Mary out of the Council of God) is become earthly; but we say, that the Soul of Mary has comprehended the heavenly Virgin; and that the heavenly Virgin has put the heavenly new pure Garment of the holy Element out of the chaste Virgin of God, viz. out of the [Barmhertzigkeit, Mercifulness, or] Mercy of God, on to the Soul of Mary, as a new regenerated Man; and in that same she has conceived the Saviour of all the World, and borne him into this World. Therefore he said to the Jews, / am from above, but you are from beneath, and of this World. I am not of this World. And he said also to Pilate, My Kingdom is not of this World. This ought highly to be considered.

(3) Mary continued again and said: "My Lord, but if on the other hand they who have received the mysteries of the First Mystery, turn and transgress, and if they come out of the body before they have repented, will they inherit the kingdom or not, because indeed they have received the gift of the First Mystery?" And the Saviour answered and said unto Mary: "Amēn, amēn, I say unto you: All men who shall receive the mysteries of the Ineffable, blessed indeed are the souls which shall receive of those mysteries; but if they turn and transgress and come out of the body before they have repented, the judgment of those men is sorer than all the judgments, and it is exceedingly violent, even if those souls are new and it is their first time for coming into the world. They will not return to the changes of the bodies from that hour onwards and will not be able to do anything, but they will be cast out into the outer darkness and perish and be non-existent for ever."

(2) And the Saviour answered and said unto Mary: "A righteous man who is perfected in all righteousness and who hath never committed any sin of any kind, and such an one who never hath received mysteries of the Light, if the time is at hand when he goeth forth out of the body, then straightway come the receivers of one of the great triple-powers,--those among whom there is a great [one],--snatch away the soul of that man from the hands of the retributive receivers and spend three days circling with it in all the creatures of the world. After three days they lead it down into the chaos, so as to lead it into all the chastisements of the judgments and to dispatch it to all the judgments. The fires of the chaos do not trouble it greatly; but they will trouble it partly for a short time. "And with haste they take pity on it quickly, to lead it up out of the chaos and lead it on the way of the midst through all the rulers. And they [ sc. the rulers] do not chastize it in their harsh judgments, but the fire of their regions troubleth it partly. And if it shall be brought into the region of Yachthanabas, the pitiless, then will he indeed not be able to chastize it in his evil judgments, but he holdeth it fast a short time, while the fire of his chastisements troubleth it partly. And again they take pity on it quickly, and lead it up out of those regions of theirs and they do not bring it into the æons, so that the rulers of the æons do not carry it away ravishingly; they bring it on the way of the sun and bring it before the Virgin of Light. She proveth it and findeth that it is pure of sins, but letteth them not bring it to the Light, because the sign of the kingdom of the mystery is not with it. But she sealeth it with a higher seal and letteth it be cast down into the body into the æons of righteousness,--that body which will be good to find the signs of the mysteries of the Light and inherit the Light-kingdom for ever. "If on the contrary he hath sinned once or twice or thrice, then will he be cast back into the world again according to the type of the sins which he hath committed, the type of which I will tell you when I shall have told you the expansion of the universe. "But amēn, amēn, I say unto you: Even if a righteous man hath committed no sins at all, he cannot possibly be brought into the Light-kingdom, because the sign of the kingdom of the mysteries is not with him. In a word, it is impossible to bring souls into the Light without the mysteries of the Light-kingdom."

(36) Therefore we say of Mary, that she has received the heavenly Pledge, which was unknown to Nature, and which she (in her outward Man) knew not at all, viz. the heavenly chaste Virgin of God; and in that [she received] the eternal Word of God the Father, which continues eternally in the Father; out of which the Holy Ghost goes forth eternally, wherein the whole Deity is comprehended.