(94) For when the light is generated, it is generated in the midst or centre of the body, as a heart or spirit out of all powers; and there it stands and remaineth in the place where it had its beginning, and goeth forth through all the powers.

(28) I. First, there arose the fire-crack, or the mobility in the heat; and that is the beginning of life in the chamber of death. II. After this, secondly, the light in the unctuosity or fatness of the water became shining in the heat; and that is now the sun. III. Thirdly, when now the light of the sun had affected or possessed the whole body of the sun, then the power of life, which rose up out of the first affecting or possessing, ascended, as when wood is kindled, or when fire is struck out of a stone.

(4) That (essence) flowed forth and went towards the sun . And that forms what we call the red (rohita) light of the rising sun.

(12) For the Spring of the great Anguish, which was in the Beginning before the Light, in the [tart] Harshness, from which the bitter Sting or Prickle is generated, that is now in the sweet Fountain of the Love in the Light changed from the Water- Spirit, and from Bitterness or Stinging is now become the Fountain or Spring of the Joy in the Light. Thus now henceforth the Fire-flash is the Father of the Light, and the Light shines in him, and is now the only Cause of the moving Birth, and of the Birth of the Love. That which in the Beginning was the raking Source, is now S U L, or the Oil of the lovely pleasant Fountain, which presses through all the Fountains, so that from hence the Light is kindled.

(100) For its birth also has a beginning out of all powers, and therefore with its light and heat it is again one spirit and heart in the whole body of this world.

(4) But what slipped from our view in the midst of our discourse, the Good is Cause of the celestial movements in their commencements and terminations, of their not increasing, not diminishing, and completely changeless, course, and of the noiseless movements, if one may so speak, of the vast celestial transit, and of the astral orders, and the beauties and lights, and stabilities, and the progressive swift motion of certain stars, and of the periodical return of the two luminaries, which the Oracles call "great," from the same to the same quarter, after which our days and nights being marked, and months and years being measured, mark and number and arrange and comprehend the circular movements of time and things temporal. But, what would any one say of the very ray of the sun? For the light is from the Good, and an image of the Goodness, wherefore also the Good is celebrated under the name of Light; as in a portrait the original is manifested. For, as the goodness of the Deity, beyond all, permeates from the highest and most honoured substances even to the lowest, and yet is above all, neither the foremost outstripping its superiority, nor the things below eluding its grasp, but it both enlightens all that are capable, and forms and enlivens, and grasps, and perfects, and is measure of things existing, and age, and number, and order, and grasp, and cause, and end; so, too, the brilliant likeness of the Divine Goodness, this our great sun, wholly bright and ever luminous, as a most distant echo of the Good, both enlightens whatever is capable of participating in it, and possesses the light in the highest degree of purity, unfolding to the visible universe, above and beneath, the splendours of its own rays, and if anything does not participate in them, this is not owing to the inertness or deficiency of its distribution of light, but is owing to the inaptitude for light-reception of the things which do not unfold themselves for the participation of light. No doubt the ray passing over many things in such condition, enlightens the things after them, and there is no visible thing which it does not reach, with the surpassing greatness of its own splendour. Further also, it contributes to the generation of sensible bodies, and moves them to life, and nourishes, and increases, and perfects, and purifies and renews; and the light is both measure and number of hours, days, and all our time. For it is the light itself, even though it was then without form, which the divine Moses declared to have fixed that first Triad of our days. And, just as Goodness turns all things to Itself, and is chief collector of things scattered, as One-springing and One-making Deity, and all things aspire to It, as Source and Bond and End, and it is the Good, as the Oracles say, from Which all things subsisted, and are being brought into being by an all-perfect Cause; and in Which all things consisted, as guarded and governed in an all-controlling route; and to Which all things are turned, as to their own proper end; and to Which all aspire --the intellectual and rational indeed, through knowledge, and the sensible through the senses, and those bereft of sensible perception by the innate movement of the aspiration after life, and those without life, and merely being, by their aptitude for mere substantial participation; after the same method of its illustrious original, the light also collects and turns to itself all things existing--things with sight -- things with motion--things enlightened--things heated--things wholly held together by its brilliant splendours--whence also, Helios, because it makes all things altogether (ἀολλῆ), and collects things scattered. And all creatures, endowed with sensible perceptions, aspire to it, as aspiring either to see, or to be moved and enlightened, and heated, and to be wholly held together by the light. By no means do I affirm, after the statement of antiquity, that as being God and Creator of the universe, the sun, by itself, governs the luminous world, but that the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the foundation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Deity.

(25) Now thus the eternal Light, and the Virtue of the Light, or the heavenly Paradise, moves in the eternal Darkness; and the Darkness cannot comprehend the Light; for they are two several Principles; and the Darkness longs after the Light, because that the Spirit beholds itself therein, and because the divine Virtue is manifested in it. But though it has not comprehended the divine Virtue and Light, yet it has continually with great Lust lifted up itself towards it, till it has kindled the Root of the Fire in itself, from the Beams of the Light of God; and there arose the third Principle: And it has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the dark Matrix, by the Speculating of the Virtue for Power] of God. But when the kindled Virtue in this springing up [of the third Principle] in the Darkness became fiery, then God put the Fiat therein, and by the moving Spirit, which goes forth in the Virtue of the Light, created the fiery Source in a bodily Manner, and severed it from the Matrix, and the Spirit called the fiery created Properties Stars, for their Quality.

(7) Our investigation may be furthered by enquiring: Whether light finally perishes or simply returns to its source.

If it be a thing requiring to be caught and kept, domiciled within a recipient, we might think of it finally passing out of existence: if it be an Act not flowing out and away- but in circuit, with more of it within than is in outward progress from the luminary of which it is the Act- then it will not cease to exist as long as that centre is in being. And as the luminary moves, the light will reach new points- not in virtue of any change of course in or out or around, but simply because the act of the luminary exists and where there is no impediment is effective. Even if the distance of the sun from us were far greater than it is, the light would be continuous all that further way, as long as nothing checked or blocked it in the interval.

We distinguish two forms of activity; one is gathered within the luminary and is comparable to the life of the shining body; this is the vaster and is, as it were, the foundation or wellspring of all the act; the other lies next to the surface, the outer image of the inner content, a secondary activity though inseparable from the former. For every existent has an Act which is in its likeness: as long as the one exists, so does the other; yet while the original is stationary the activity reaches forth, in some things over a wide range, in others less far. There are weak and faint activities, and there are some, even, that do not appear; but there are also things whose activities are great and far-going; in the case of these the activity must be thought of as being lodged, both in the active and powerful source and in the point at which it settles. This may be observed in the case of an animal's eyes where the pupils gleam: they have a light which shows outside the orbs. Again there are living things which have an inner fire that in darkness shines out when they expand themselves and ceases to ray outward when they contract: the fire has not perished; it is a mere matter of it being rayed out or not.

But has the light gone inward?

No: it is simply no longer on the outside because the fire is no longer outward going but has withdrawn towards the centre.

But surely the light has gone inward too?

No: only the fire, and when that goes inward the surface consists only of the non-luminous body; the fire can no longer act towards the outer.

The light, then, raying from bodies is an outgoing activity of a luminous body; the light within luminous bodies- understand; such as are primarily luminous- is the essential being embraced under the idea of that body. When such a body is brought into association with Matter, its activity produces colour: when there is no such association, it does not give colour- it gives merely an incipient on which colour might be formed- for it belongs to another being with which it retains its link, unable to desert from it, or from its activity.

And light is incorporeal even when it is the light of a body; there is therefore no question, strictly speaking, of its withdrawal or of its being present- these terms do not apply to its modes- and its essential existence is to be an activity. As an example: the image upon a mirror may be described as an activity exercised by the reflected object upon the potential recipient: there is no outgoing from the object ; it is simply that, as long as the object stands there, the image also is visible, in the form of colour shaped to a certain pattern, and when the object is not there, the reflecting surface no longer holds what it held when the conditions were favourable.

So it is with the soul considered as the activity of another and prior soul: as long as that prior retains its place, its next, which is its activity, abides.

But what of a soul which is not an activity but the derivative of an activity- as we maintained the life-principle domiciled in the body to be- is its presence similar to that of the light caught and held in material things?

No; for in those things the colour is due to an actual intermixture of the active element ; whereas the life-principle of the body is something that holds from another soul closely present to it.

But when the body perishes- by the fact that nothing without part in soul can continue in being- when the body is perishing, no longer supported by that primal life-giving soul, or by the presence of any secondary phase of it, it is clear that the life-principle can no longer remain; but does this mean that the life perishes?

No; not even it; for it, too, is an image of that first out-shining; it is merely no longer where it was.

(13) When the lowest point in the scale of Involution was reached, then the Law of Rhythm asserted itself, and the upward climb began—the first movement of Evolution began to manifest itself. And, at this precise point, there was begun the manifestation of what may be termed "individualization," or the forming of centres of activity and consciousness. The World Soul descended into the depth of Involution en masse , and then began to emerge from those depths by an apparent "splitting up" process, in which the active new-born centres of activity began to assert themselves and to move upward toward self-expression. The simpler centres which occultists know to be the centers of activity in the electrons of matter began to form molecules. There was of course manifested the presence of mind within this gross matter—but only the faint glimmerings were manifested, for the gross enveloping sheaths of matter almost smothered the mental principles involved within them.

(29) But- keeping to our illustration, by which the body is warmed by soul and not merely illuminated by it- how is it that when the higher soul withdraws there is no further trace of the vital principle?

For a brief space there is; and, precisely, it begins to fade away immediately upon the withdrawal of the other, as in the case of warmed objects when the fire is no longer near them: similarly hair and nails still grow on the dead; animals cut to pieces wriggle for a good time after; these are signs of a life force still indwelling.

Besides, simultaneous withdrawal would not prove the identity of the higher and lower phases: when the sun withdraws there goes with it not merely the light emanating from it, guided by it, attached to it, but also at once that light seen upon obliquely situated objects, a light secondary to the sun's and cast upon things outside of its path ; the two are not identical and yet they disappear together.

But is this simultaneous withdrawal or frank obliteration?

The question applies equally to this secondary light and to the corporeal life, that life which we think of as being completely sunk into body.

No light whatever remains in the objects once illuminated; that much is certain; but we have to ask whether it has sunk back into its source or is simply no longer in existence.

How could it pass out of being, a thing that once has been?

But what really was it? We must remember that what we know as colour belongs to bodies by the fact that they throw off light, yet when corruptible bodies are transformed the colour disappears and we no more ask where the colour of a burned-out fire is than where its shape is.

Still: the shape is merely a configuration, like the lie of the hands clenched or spread; the colour is no such accidental but is more like, for example, sweetness: when a material substance breaks up, the sweetness of what was sweet in it, and the fragrance of what was fragrant, may very well not be annihilated, but enter into some other substance, passing unobserved there because the new habitat is not such that the entrant qualities now offer anything solid to perception.

May we not think that, similarly, the light belonging to bodies that have been dissolved remains in being while the solid total, made up of all that is characteristic, disappears?

It might be said that the seeing is merely the sequel to some law , so that what we call qualities do not actually exist in the substances.

But this is to make the qualities indestructible and not dependent upon the composition of the body; it would no longer be the Reason-Principles within the sperm that produce, for instance, the colours of a bird's variegated plumage; these principles would merely blend and place them, or if they produced them would draw also on the full store of colours in the sky, producing in the sense, mainly, of showing in the formed bodies something very different from what appears in the heavens.

But whatever we may think on this doubtful point, if, as long as the bodies remain unaltered, the light is constant and unsevered, then it would seem natural that, on the dissolution of the body, the light- both that in immediate contact and any other attached to that- should pass away at the same moment, unseen in the going as in the coming.

But in the case of the soul it is a question whether the secondary phases follow their priors- the derivatives their sources- or whether every phase is self-governing, isolated from its predecessors and able to stand alone; in a word, whether no part of the soul is sundered from the total, but all the souls are simultaneously one soul and many, and, if so, by what mode; this question, however, is treated elsewhere.

Here we have to enquire into the nature and being of that vestige of the soul actually present in the living body: if there is truly a soul, then, as a thing never cut off from its total, it will go with soul as soul must: if it is rather to be thought of as belonging to the body, as the life of the body, we have the same question that rose in the case of the vestige of light; we must examine whether life can exist without the presence of soul, except of course in the sense of soul living above and acting upon the remote object.

(36) But when the light of the sun kindled itself, then the next circle or orb above the sun stood in the fire-crack, (for the sun or the light was shining in the water), and the bitterness ascended also in the fire-crack out of the water. But the light made very great haste after it, and laid hold on the fire-crack; and there it remained as a captive, and became corporeal.

(3) Ever illuminated, receiving light unfailing, the All-Soul imparts it to the entire series of later Being which by this light is sustained and fostered and endowed with the fullest measure of life that each can absorb. It may be compared with a central fire warming every receptive body within range.

Our fire, however, is a thing of limited scope: given powers that have no limitation and are never cut off from the Authentic Existences, how imagine anything existing and yet failing to receive from them?

It is of the essence of things that each gives of its being to another: without this communication, The Good would not be Good, nor the Intellectual-Principle an Intellective Principle, nor would Soul itself be what it is: the law is, "some life after the Primal Life, a second where there is a first; all linked in one unbroken chain; all eternal; divergent types being engendered only in the sense of being secondary."

In other words, things commonly described as generated have never known a beginning: all has been and will be. Nor can anything disappear unless where a later form is possible: without such a future there can be no dissolution.

If we are told that there is always Matter as a possible term, we ask why then should not Matter itself come to nothingness. If we are told it may, then we ask why it should ever have been generated. If the answer comes that it had its necessary place as the ultimate of the series, we return that the necessity still holds.

With Matter left aside as wholly isolated, the Divine Beings are not everywhere but in some bounded place, walled off, so to speak; if that is not possible, Matter itself must receive the Divine light .

(12) There is one vital substance in Nature upon which all things subsist. It is called archæus, or vital life force, and is synonymous with the astral light or spiritual air of the ancients. In regard to this substance, Eliphas Levi has written: "Light, that creative agent, the vibrations of which are the movement and life of all things; light, latent in the universal ether, radiating about absorbing centres, which, being saturated thereby, project movement and life in their turn, so forming creative currents; light, astralized in the stars, animalized in animals, humanized in human beings; light, which vegetates all plants, glistens in metals, produces all forms of Nature and equilibrates all by the laws of universal sympathy--this is the light which exhibits the phenomena of magnetism, divined by Paracelsus, which tinctures the blood, being released from the air as it is inhaled and discharged by the hermetic bellows of the lungs." (The History of Magic.)

(62) And this is the Source of the first Principle, which (without the Light of God) cannot be otherwise, neither can it change or alter itself; for it has been so from Eternity. And out of this Source, the Essences of the Worm of the Soul, in the Time of its creating, were extracted by the Fiat of God, and created in Paradise, [and set] before the Light of God, which enlightened the Fire-flash, and put it into very high Meekness and Humility.

(128) And instantly, in the same moment, the light was generated and rose up out of the seven spirits in the centre of the heart, as a newborn son of the king, which also instantly, in a moment, transfigured the body of all the seven qualifying or fountain spirits from the centre of the heart; and externally from without the light of the Son of God transfigured it.

(9) A great occult teacher has written of this teaching, as follows: "The Esoteric Doctrine teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the Kabala, that the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the 'Days' and the 'Nights' of Brahma. The latter is either 'awake' or 'asleep' * * * Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine Essence from without inwardly, and from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine Essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed, and 'darkness' solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the 'deep.' To use a metaphor from the Secret Books, which will convey the idea more clearly, an out-breathing of the 'unknown essence' produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series, which had no beginning and will have no end." In this connection, the student of Herbert Spencer will find in the ancient occult doctrines and teachings an unsuspected firm basis for the teaching of his modern master. Spencer in his teaching of the universal presence and activity of Rhythm but echoes the old occult teachings on the subject. Note the following from the pen of the modern prophet of Evolution: "Apparently, the universally coexistent forces of attraction and repulsion which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes—produce now an immeasurable period during which the attracting forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion—alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution." The First Aphorism further states: "Light there was not: for the Flame of Spirit was not yet rekindled." This is apt to prove a "hard saying" to those who, having the half-truth only, and not realizing the existence of the other half, have thought of Infinite Reality as being Spirit, of which the Flame is of course the occult and esoteric symbol. But the best ancient wisdom, as voiced by the most careful teachers, have ever taught those qualified to know the whole truth that not only back of Matter, but also back of Spirit, there abides an Eternal and Infinite Essence, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, but which is the unconditioned root and source of both Spirit and Matter. Light and Flame—the two universally recognized esoteric and occult symbols of Spirit—have back of them the "lightless and heatless" Essence of Light and Heat. The Infinite Reality is the Essence of the Spirit Light and Flame—not the Light and Flame itself. The student will be aided in. grasping this truth, if he will contemplate the flame of a lamp, a candle, a gas-flame, or any other kind of physical flame; he will perceive to be present, under and at the centre of the flame, a dark, transparent, "something" which is the "essence" from which the Flame itself proceeds, and upon which it draws for support and sustenance. In occult terminology the counterpart of this on the higher planes of Being is called "the Dark Flame"—it is the Essence of the Flame and Light, and not Flame or Light itself. As an ancient writer has said: "The Essence is the 'spirit of the fire,' and not Fire itself; therefore, the attributes of Fire, i.e., heat, flame, and light, are not the attributes of the Essence, but rather of the Fire of which the Essence is the Cause." Therefore, the Infinite Unmanifest—the sleeping Eternal Parent—must not be thought of by the student as being Spirit, in the sense of the latter term as commonly employed in our thought. Rather is it akin to Pure Space from which the Flame emerges, and in which it is contained. There is close reasoning and distinction here, which will become clear to the student as he proceeds, but which must be noted even now in passing.

(135) The light went forth from the innermost birth or geniture, and kindled itself in the outermost. It gave again to the outermost a natural peculiar light of its own.

(79) And the life of the light breaketh through the death, and generateth to it another body out of death, which is not conformable to, or of the condition of, the water and the dead earth; also it does not get their taste and smell; but the power of the light presseth through, and tempereth or mixeth itself with the power of the earth, and taketh from death its sting, and from the wrath its poisonous, venomous power, and presseth forth up together in the midst or centre of the body, in the growth or vegetation, as a heart thereof.

(32) There was neither stone nor earth therein, neither had it [the third birth or geniture] need of any such created or contracted light as now; but the light generated itself everywhere in the centre, and all stood in the light.

(57) For the light is in the midst or centre of the birth or geniture, and is the place of life wherein the meek life of God is generated from or out of all the powers of the Father, and in the same place the Holy Ghost goeth forth from the Father and the Son.