(65) Each quality goeth forth from itself into the others, and toucheth or stirreth the others, that is, it affecteth the others, whereby the other qualities get the will of this quality; that is, they prove the sharpness and spirit of this, as to what is in it, and always mix with it continually.

(7) Following the terms of the symbol, it may be said that the Infinite Unmanifest involves itself first in the garment of Elemental Substance, or wraps itself in the veil thereof. Elemental Substance, in the sense in which the term is used by the Rosicrucians in this connection, is a very subtle, tenuous form of substance—a form of substance which may be regarded as the "ancestor" of the most subtle form of matter known to science today. It lies far back of the plane of the electrons, ions, or corpuscles of which matter (as commonly known) is composed.

(54) Now when the light shineth through the astringent, contracted body of nature, and mitigateth it, then the mild, beneficent welldoing generateth itself in the body, and then the hard power grows very mild, and melteth, as ice in the heat of the sun, and is extenuated or rarefied, as water is in the air; and yet the stock of nature, as to the heavenly comprehensibility, remaineth the same.

(89) Such substance the qualities always bring to pass with the heat in the stalk, and the stalk always grows farther, and always one storm or assault is held after another, whereby the stalk always getteth more knots, and still spreadeth forth its branches farther and farther.

(33) In this rising up the astringent quality becometh meek, light, thin or transparent and pleasant or lovely, and obtaineth its life, whose original riseth up out of the heat in the sweet water, and this now is the true fountain or wellspring of love. Observe this in the deep Sense.

(2) those things that are difficult to distinguish you might distinguish, and those things that are unknown to the multitude you might know, and that you might be restored to that which is yours, which was already intact and so needs no restoration.

(74) Now when these are imaged or formed, there it [the astringent quality] lies as a corporeal, springing, boiling mobility, for it moveth or boileth through and in the bitter quality in itself, as in its own imaged, formed or framed body; but without the heat, which is the spirit of nature [or nature-spirit], it has as yet no life to growing, vegetation, springing or spreading abroad.

(28) This is thus in the original of the quality in itself; but in the midst, in the rising up of this fierce spirit, this [same] spirit is caught and mitigated in the sweet water, where its fierce source or fountain is changed into a trembling, bitter, and greenish colour, like a greenish duskiness, and it retaineth in itself the condition and property of all three qualities, viz. of the fiery, the astringent and the sweet; and so from these three existeth the fourth quality, viz. the bitter.

(7) I. The Plane of the Elements On this Plane of Consciousness is manifested the actions and reactions between the subtle elements of which all material forms are composed. Here occurs the play between the atoms, the electrons, the ions, the corpuscles, and the still more tenuous particles of substance of which science has as yet no knowledge. And, going still further back, it may be said that on this plane occurs the play of phases of substance as much more tenuous and subtle than the electrons as the latter are more tenuous than the atoms. Little can be said concerning these practically unknown forms and phases of matter, although the occult teachings are quite full of them.

(3) Discern what size the water is, that it is immeasurable (and) incomprehensible, both its beginning and its end. It supports the earth; it blows in the air where the gods and the angels are. But in him who is exalted above all these there is the fear and the light, and in him are my writings revealed. I have given them as a service to the creation of the physical things, for it is not possible for anyone to stand without that One, nor is it possible for the aeon to live without him. It is he who possesses what is in him by discerning (it) in purity.

(70) From whence existeth the hard tone, and in that rising up or climbing, it is environed and fixed in the astringent quality, so that it becometh a body which subsisteth.

(29) Its Essence is the Flash in the Circle [or Circumference] of the Springing of the Life, which in the Water makes the Glance and Shining; and its Root is the Fire; and the Stock is the [sour] Harshness. Now the Flash separates the Bitterness and Harshness from the Water; so that the Water becomes soft, [fluid] and clear, wherein then the Sight of all Creatures does consist, so that the Spirit in the Flash in the Matrix of the Water does see; and the Flash stands therein like a Glance, [or Luster,] and fills the Spirit of the Essences; from which the Essence draws vehemently to itself; for it is the [sour] Harshness, and the Flash continually separates the Darkness from the Light, and the Impure from the Pure; and there now stands the divine Virtue [or Power:] And the divine Glance continually imagines [or imprints] itself in the pure, from which the [sour] strong [Property] is separated out from Nature; and the divine Glance makes the Pure Sweet; for it mingles itself, [or infects] there.

(8) The division into elements must, in short, be abandoned, especially in regard to Sensible Substance, known necessarily by sense rather than by reason. We must no longer look for help in constituent parts, since such parts will not be substances, or at any rate not sensible substances.

Our plan must be to apprehend what is constant in stone, earth, water and the entities which they compose- the vegetal and animal forms, considered purely as sensibles- and to confine this constant within a single genus. Neither Matter nor Form will thus be overlooked, for Sensible Substance comports them; fire and earth and the two intermediaries consist of Matter and Form, while composite things are actually many substances in one. They all, moreover, have that common property which distinguishes them from other things: serving as subjects to these others, they are never themselves present in a subject nor predicated of any other thing. Similarly, all the characteristics which we have ascribed to Substance find a place in this classification.

But Sensible Substance is never found apart from magnitude and quality: how then do we proceed to separate these accidents? If we subtract them- magnitude, figure, colour, dryness, moistness- what is there left to be regarded as Substance itself? All the substances under consideration are, of course, qualified.

There is, however, something in relation to which whatever turns Substance into qualified Substance is accidental: thus, the whole of fire is not Substance, but only a part of it- if the term "part" be allowed.

What then can this "part" be? Matter may be suggested. But are we actually to maintain that the particular sensible substance consists of a conglomeration of qualities and Matter, while Sensible Substance as a whole is merely the sum of these coagulations in the uniform Matter, each one separately forming a quale or a quantum or else a thing of many qualities? Is it true to say that everything whose absence leaves subsistence incomplete is a part of the particular substance, while all that is accidental to the substance already existent takes independent rank and is not submerged in the mixture which constitutes this so-called substance?

I decline to allow that whatever combines in this way with anything else is Substance if it helps to produce a single mass having quantity and quality, whereas taken by itself and divorced from this complementary function it is a quality: not everything which composes the amalgam is Substance, but only the amalgam as a whole.

And let no one take exception on the ground that we produce Sensible Substance from non-substances. The whole amalgam itself is not True Substance; it is merely an imitation of that True Substance which has Being apart from its concomitants, these indeed being derived from it as the possessor of True Being. In the lower realm the case is different: the underlying ground is sterile, and from its inability to produce fails to attain to the status of Being; it remains a shadow, and on this shadow is traced a sketch- the world of Appearance.

(94) And now this matter in the fourth melting looks like silver or gold, but it is not yet fixed [subsistent], nor is it tough or malleable and pure enough; its body indeed is subsistent, but not the spirit.

(87) Nature has likewise manifested or revealed so much to man, that he knoweth how he may melt away the strange or heterogene matter from every qualifying or fountain spirit's strange infected innate birth or geniture; whereby that qualifying or fountain spirit might remain chief in its own primacy.

(10) Let this, then, be, for the uninitiated, a conducting guidance of the soul, which separates, as is meet things sacred and uniform from multiplicity, and apportions the harmonious elevation to the Orders severally in turn. But we, who have ascended by sacred gradations to the sources of the things performed, and have been religiously taught these (sources), shall recognize of what moulds they are the reliefs, and of what invisible things they are the likenesses. For, as is distinctly shewn in the Treatise concerning "Intelligible and Sensible," sacred things in sensible forms are copies of things intelligible, to which they lead and shew the way; and things intelligible are source and science of things hierarchical cognizable by the senses.

(16) When each of the entities bound up with the pseudo-substance is taken apart from the rest, the name of Quality is given to that one among them, by which without pointing to essence or quantity or motion we signify the distinctive mark, the type or aspect of a thing- for example, the beauty or ugliness of a body. This beauty- need we say?- is identical in name only with Intellectual Beauty: it follows that the term "Quality" as applied to the Sensible and the Intellectual is necessarily equivocal; even blackness and whiteness are different in the two spheres.

But the beauty in the germ, in the particular Reason-Principle- is this the same as the manifested beauty, or do they coincide only in name? Are we to assign this beauty- and the same question applies to deformity in the soul- to the Intellectual order, or to the Sensible? That beauty is different in the two spheres is by now clear. If it be embraced in Sensible Quality, then virtue must also be classed among the qualities of the lower. But merely some virtues will take rank as Sensible, others as Intellectual qualities.

It may even be doubted whether the arts, as Reason-Principles, can fairly be among Sensible qualities; Reason-Principles, it is true, may reside in Matter, but "matter" for them means Soul. On the other hand, their being found in company with Matter commits them in some degree to the lower sphere. Take the case of lyrical music: it is performed upon strings; melody, which may be termed a part of the art, is sensuous sound- though, perhaps, we should speak here not of parts but of manifestations : yet, called manifestations, they are nonetheless sensuous. The beauty inherent in body is similarly bodiless; but we have assigned it to the order of things bound up with body and subordinate to it.

Geometry and arithmetic are, we shall maintain, of a twofold character; in their earthly types they rank with Sensible Quality, but in so far as they are functions of pure Soul, they necessarily belong to that other world in close proximity to the Intellectual. This, too, is in Plato's view the case with music and astronomy.

The arts concerned with material objects and making use of perceptible instruments and sense-perception must be classed with Sensible Quality, even though they are dispositions of the Soul, attendant upon its apostasy.

There is also every reason for consigning to this category the practical virtues whose function is directed to a social end: these do not isolate Soul by inclining it towards the higher; their manifestation makes for beauty in this world, a beauty regarded not as necessary but as desirable.

On this principle, the beauty in the germ, and still more the blackness and whiteness in it, will be included among Sensible Qualities.

Are we, then, to rank the individual soul, as containing these Reason-Principles, with Sensible Substance? But we do not even identify the Principles with body; we merely include them in Sensible Quality on the ground that they are connected with body and are activities of body. The constituents of Sensible Substance have already been specified; we have no intention whatever of adding to them Substance bodiless.

As for Qualities, we hold that they are invariably bodiless, being affections arising within Soul; but, like the Reason-Principles of the individual soul, they are associated with Soul in its apostasy, and are accordingly counted among the things of the lower realm: such affections, torn between two worlds by their objects and their abode, we have assigned to Quality, which is indeed not bodily but manifested in body.

But we refrain from assigning Soul to Sensible Substance, on the ground that we have already referred to Quality those affections of Soul which are related to body. On the contrary, Soul, conceived apart from affection and Reason-Principle, we have restored to its origin, leaving in the lower realm no substance which is in any sense Intellectual.

(4) And then that becomes greater which comprehends and knows than that which is comprehended and known. But if it descends to its nature it is less, for the incorporeal natures have not associated with any magnitude; thus endowed, they are everywhere and they are nowhere, since they are greater than every magnitude and less than every exiguity."

(107) But when the bitter quality riseth up therein, then it divideth and formeth itself, as if it were alive or lively, or as if the life did rise up there, in a greenish flourishing manner and form, like a green flash of lightning, to speak after the manner of men, so that it dazzleth a man's eyes, and blindeth him.

(27) Accordingly, while the definition is explanatory of the essence of the thing, it is incapable of accurately comprehending its nature. By means of the principal species, the definition makes an exposition of the essence, and almost has the essence in the quality.