(164) Which is a very great Mystery, and has been also kept secret from all men since the beginning of the world till now: which I will demonstrate and describe plainly in its due place. Now observe the Form and Posture of Heaven.

(14) But that we may so speak of the Heaven, that the Reader might come to understand what that [Heaven] is which God then created, [consider] what Moses writes of it. God made a Firmament between the Waters, and separated the Waters beneath the Firmament from the Waters above the Firmament, and the Firmament he called Heaven, which is very right; but hitherto it has been very ill understood.

(4) Some naturalists [scientists] or artists have undertaken to measure that height and distance, and have produced many strange and monstrous devices. Indeed, before this my knowledge and revelation of God, I held that only to be the true heaven, which in a round circumference and sphere, very azure of a light blue colour, extends itself above the stars, supposing that God had therein his peculiar being, and did rule only in the power of his holy spirit in this world.

(29) But that the place of this world is not called heaven, and that there is a firmament or fast enclosure between the upper heaven above us, has this understanding or meaning, as followeth.

(116) This, as is mentioned above, is that fair, bright and holy heaven, which is thus in the total Deity, and which has neither beginning nor end, whither no creature with its sense can reach.

(32) Therefore the upper heaven closeth itself so far in its outermost birth or geniture, and reacheth so far as the wrath of God reacheth, and so far as the government or dominion of Lucifer has reached, for the corrupted or perished birth or geniture cannot comprehend the pure.

(30) The upper heaven compriseth the two kingdoms, that of Michael, and that of Uriel, with all the holy angels that are not fallen with Lucifer, and that heaven continueth as it was from eternity, before the angels were created.

(110) For this now is the true heaven of nature, which is out of or from God, wherein the holy angels dwell, and out of which they were created in the beginning.

(1) When from thence he has risen upwards, he neither rises nor sets. He is alone, standing in the centre. And on this there is this verse:

(38) Thou sailest over the Heaven, thou travellest over earth and in splendour thou reachest the zenith; the two divisions of Heaven are in obeisance to thee, and yield adoration to thee

(136) Now I speak here not only of the heaven above the earth, but this stirring and birth or geniture was also in the earth, and everywhere.

(63) Timaeus: it would never be carried away to the extremities because of their uniformity in all respects; nay, even were a man to travel round it in a circle he would often call the same part of it both “above” and “below,” according as he stood now at one pole, now at the opposite. For seeing that the Whole is, as we said just now, spherical, the assertion that it has one region “above” and one “below” does not become a man of sense. Now the origin of these names and their true meaning which accounts for our habit of making these verbal distinctions even about the whole Heaven,

(15) Now observe, the Heaven is the whole Deep so far as the Ethera, or Skies have given up themselves to the Birth of this World, and that Heaven is the Matrix, out of which Earth, Stones, and the material Water are generated. And there God separated the material Water from the Matrix; and here it is very plainly discerned, that the material Water is as it were dead, or has Death in it; for it could not abide in the moving Mother, but was created [to be] upon the Globe of the Earth, and God called it Sea, [Meer;] in which [Word] is understood in the Language of Nature, as it were a Springing [or Growing] in Death, or a Life in Corruption: Although herein I shall be as one that is dumb to the Reader, yet I know it very well, and I am very well satisfied therewith. But because the bestial Man is not worthy to know it, therefore I will not here cast the Pearl before the Swine; but for the Children of God, which will be benefited by it, the Spirit of God will certainly teach and instruct them in it. Note.

(8) If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

(27) And he dreamt that night, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold, the angels of the Lord ascended and descended on it : and behold, the Lord stood upon it.

(60) Thus now the Heaven in this Forming or Framing, and the Framing and Generating out of it in infinitum, or endlessly, is the Paradise of God, as the highly worthy Moses writes: The Spirit of God moved upon the Water, in the Framing [Forming or Fashioning] of the World. This is, and continues so in its Eternity, that the Spirit of God (in the Birth of the Son of God) moves upon the Water; for he is the Virtue, or Power, and the Out-Flowing of the Father, out of the kindled Light- Water, out of the Water and Light of God.

(60) The gate of the Deity in the upper heaven is no other, also no brighter, than it is in this world: And where can there be greater joy than in that place, where every hour and moment there cometh to Christ beautiful, loving, dear, newborn children and angels, who are pressed or penetrated through death into life?

(60) And the other angel who went with me and showed me what was hidden told me what is first and last in the heaven in the height, and beneath the earth in the depth, and at the ends of the heaven, and on the foundation of the heaven.

(1) AFTER this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the Spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.

(55) Moreover, when Stephen saw the heaven opened, and the Lord JESUS at the right hand of God, there his spirit did not first swing itself up aloft into the upper heaven, but it penetrated or pressed into the innermost birth or geniture, wherein heaven is everywhere.