(14) Whatever form is produced, Ο son of Kunti, in any womb, the Great Nature is its womb, and I am the seed-giving Father.

(1) These same are father, mother, and offspring. The father is Mind. The mother is Speech. The offspring is Breath. l

(41) But it is therefore called the Son, in that it is generated out of the Father, so that it is the Heart of the Father in his powers.

(17) The other name of God is Father, again because He is the that-which-maketh-all. The part of father is to make. Wherefore child-making is a very great and a most pious thing in life for them who think aright, and to leave life on earth without a child a very great misfortune and impiety; and he who hath no child is punished by the daimones after death. And this is the punishment: that that man's soul who hath no child, shall be condemned unto a body with neither man's nor woman's nature, a thing accursed beneath the sun. Wherefore, Asclepius, let not your sympathies be with the man who hath no child, but rather pity his mishap, knowing what punishment abides for him. Let all that has been said then, be to thee, Asclepius, an introduction to the gnosis of the nature of all things.

There is the child of humankind, and there is the child of the child of humankind. The child of humankind is the master, and the child of the child of humankind is the one who creates through the child of humankind. The child of humankind received from God the ability to create. He can also procreate. One who has received the ability to create is a creature, and one who has received the ability to procreate is an offspring. One who creates cannot procreate, but one who procreates can create. One who creates is said to procreate, but the “offspring” are really creatures, because these “offspring” are not children of procreation but [works of creation]. One who creates works openly, and is visible. One who procreates does so [secretly], and is hidden, for one who procreates [is beyond every] image. So then, one who creates does so openly, and one who procreates [produces] offspring secretly.

(7) 'Some enter the womb in order to have a body, as organic beings, others go into inorganic matter, according to their work and according to their knowledge.'

(32) If [about] to be born as a male, the feeling of itself being a male dawneth upon the Knower, and a feeling of intense hatred towards the father and of jealousy and attraction towards the mother is begotten. If [about] to be born as a female, the feeling of itself being a female dawneth upon the Knower, and a feeling of intense hatred towards the mother and of intense attraction and fondness towards the father is begotten. Through this secondary cause — [when] entering upon the path of ether, just at the moment when the sperm and the ovum are about to unite — the Knower experienceth the bliss of the simultaneously-born state, during which state it fainteth away into unconsciousness. [Afterwards] it findeth itself encased in oval form, in the embryonic state, and upon emerging from the womb and opening its eyes it may find itself transformed into a young dog. Formerly it had been a human being, but now if it have become a dog it findeth itself undergoing sufferings in a dog's kennel; or [perhaps] as a young pig in a pigsty, or as an ant in an ant-hill, or as an insect, or a grub in a hole, or as a calf, or a kid, or a lamb, from which shape there is no [immediate] returning. Dumbness, stupidity, and miserable intellectual obscurity are suffered, and a variety of sufferings experienced. In like manner, one may wander into hell, or into the world of unhappy ghosts, or throughout the Six Lokas, and endure inconceivable miseries.

(5) All the seed of the females which issues beforehand, takes a place within the womb, and the seed of the males will remain above it, and will fill the space of the womb; whatever refrains therefrom becomes blood again, enters into the veins of the females, and at the time any one is born it becomes milk and' nourishes him, as all milk arises from the seed of the males, and the blood is that of the females.

(76) Man's child is the soul, which is generated out of the astral birth from or out of the flesh; and the earth's child is the grass, the herbs, the trees, silver, gold, and all mineral ores. Now thou askest, How then shall I do, that I may understand somewhat concerning the birth or geniture of the earth? Answer.

(32) As above said, the visions of males and females in union will appear. If, at that time, one entereth into the womb through the feelings of attachment and repulsion, one may be born either as a horse, a fowl, a dog, or a human being.

(8) (BG 84, 13-17 adds: He is unnameable. He has no human form; for whoever has human form is the creation of another ).

(32) Still, if it be not closed even by that, and thou findest thyself ready to enter the womb, the third method of repelling attachment and repulsion is hereby shown unto thee: There are four kinds of birth: birth by egg, birth by womb, supernormal birth, and birth by heat and moisture. Amongst these four, birth by egg and birth by womb agree in character.

(89) For when Adam spake at the first, he gave names to all the creatures, according to their qualities and innate, instant operations, virtues or faculties. And it is the very language of the total, universal nature, but is not known to every one. For it is a hidden secret mystery, which is imparted to me by the grace of God from the spirit, which has a delight and longing towards me. Now observe:

(12) For as nature, with the working, wrestling and rising up of its birth or geniture, stood in the time of the kindling, just such a matter attracted itself together. Now it may be asked, How then is a comprehensible or palpable son come to be out of an incomprehensible mother? Answer.

(19) The Ideal Principles entering into Matter as to a Mother affect it neither for better nor for worse.

Their action is not upon Matter but upon each other; these powers conflict with their opponent principles, not with their substrata- which it would be foolish to confuse with the entrant forms- Heat annuls Cold, and Blackness annuls Whiteness; or, the opponents blend to form an intermediate quality. Only that is affected which enters into combinations: being affected is losing something of self-identity.

In beings of soul and body, the affection occurs in the body, modified according to the qualities and powers presiding at the act of change: in all such dissolution of constituent parts, in the new combinations, in all variation from the original structure, the affection is bodily, the Soul or Mind having no more than an accompanying knowledge of the more drastic changes, or perhaps not even that. but the Matter concerned remains unaffected; heat enters, cold leaves it, and it is unchanged because neither Principle is associated with it as friend or enemy.

So the appellation "Recipient and Nurse" is the better description: Matter is the mother only in the sense indicated; it has no begetting power. But probably the term Mother is used by those who think of a Mother as Matter to the offspring, as a container only, giving nothing to them, the entire bodily frame of the child being formed out of food. But if this Mother does give anything to the offspring it does so not in its quality as Matter but as being an Ideal-Form; for only the Idea is generative; the contrary Kind is sterile.

This, I think, is why the doctors of old, teaching through symbols and mystic representations, exhibit the ancient Hermes with the generative organ always in active posture; this is to convey that the generator of things of sense is the Intellectual Reason Principle: the sterility of Matter, eternally unmoved, is indicated by the eunuchs surrounding it in its representation as the All-Mother.

This too exalting title is conferred upon it in order to indicate that it is the source of things in the sense of being their underlie: it is an approximate name chosen for a general conception; there is no intention of suggesting a complete parallel with motherhood to those not satisfied with a surface impression but needing a precisely true presentment; by a remote symbolism, the nearest they could find, they indicate that Matter is sterile, not female to full effect, female in receptivity only, not in pregnancy: this they accomplish by exhibiting Matter as approached by what is neither female nor effectively male, but castrated of that impregnating power which belongs only to the unchangeably masculine.

(60) But the male is named Behemoth, who occupied with his breast a waste wilderness named †Dûidâin†, on the east of the garden where the elect and righteous dwell, where my grandfather was taken up, the seventh from Adam, the first man whom the Lord of Spirits created.

(6) Now if thou art of any other matter than God himself, how then canst thou be his child? Or how can the man and king Christ be God's bodily or corporeal Son, whom God has generated or begotten out of his heart?

(7) In nearly all the sacred books of the world can be traced an anatomical analogy. This is most evident in their creation myths. Anyone familiar with embryology and obstetrics will have no difficulty in recognizing the basis of the allegory concerning Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, the nine degrees of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the Brahmanic legend of Vishnu's incarnations. The story of the Universal Egg, the Scandinavian myth of Ginnungagap (the dark cleft in space in which the seed of the world is sown), and the use of the fish as the emblem of the paternal generative power--all show the true origin of theological speculation. The philosophers of antiquity realized that man himself was the key to the riddle of life, for he was the living image of the Divine Plan, and in future ages humanity also will come to realize more fully the solemn import of those ancient words: "The proper study of mankind is man."

(1) 'Of all living things there are indeed three origins only , that which springs from an egg (oviparous), that which springs from a living being (viviparous), and that which springs from a germ.

(8) But that thou may understand what manner of substance and condition all these things and births or genitures have, I will describe all in order one after another, that thou may rightly understand the ground of this Mystery.