(39) Leaf 23. The writing at the upper left is, in substance, the Lord's Prayer, with the addition of the words Jesus and Mary at the end. The inverted words in the banner read: "Ye can do nothing without me, for God has so promised, saying 'So be it.'" The text under the angel reads: "By this plague he will be damned who knows he is dead, all cold in a black body. And let this be thy first comfort: then he will burn unto calcination. When I have reduced him within this door, know for certain that I shall be blessed if I shall know how to cultivate the garden." The main part of the leaf is devoted to an elaborate symbolic drawing of alchemical equipment, under which are the words: "The furnace of distillation, congealing, rectification, perfection, fixation: quintessence of the Philosophers." By "quintessence" should be understood the "fifth essence" of the most wise.

(42) Now if any Body would come into the Garden, he must press in through the Sword of Death; though indeed Christ has broken the Sword, so that now we can much easier enter in with our Souls, yet there is a Sword before it still; but he that finds the Way right, him it does not cut very much, for it is blunt, and it is bent; and if the Soul goes but into the Gate into the Center, then it is presently helped by the noble Champion Christ; for he has gotten the Sword into his Hands. He is the slain Lamb of the House of Israel, in the Revelation of John, which took the Book of the first Principle, out of the Hand of the Ancient [of Days] who sat upon the Throne, with his four and twenty Elders, which [Book] had seven Seals, or seven Spirits of the Birth of God, and opened them; where the Elders fell down before him, and worshipped the Lamb that was slain, and gave Praise and Honour to him which sat upon the Throne, because the Champion of the House of Israel had overcome. The seven golden Candlesticks are his Humanity, the seven Stars are his Deity, as the divine i Birth in itself stands in a sevenfold Form, as it is explained in the Beginning of this Book, in the first four Chapters.

(34) The fourteenth chapter opens with the Lamb standing on Mount Zion (the eastern horizon), about Him gathered the 144,000 with the name of God written in their foreheads. An angel thereupon announces the fall of Babylon--the city of confusion or worldliness. Those perish who do not overcome worldliness and enter into the realization that spirit--and not matter--is enduring; for, having no interests other than those which are material, they are swept to destruction with the material world. And St. John beheld One like unto the Son of Man (Perseus) riding upon a cloud (the substances of the invisible world) and bearing in his hand a sharp sickle, and with the sickle the Shining One reaped the earth. This is a symbol of the Initiator releasing into the sphere of reality the higher natures of those who, symbolized by ripened grain, have reached the point of liberation. And there came another angel (Boötes)--Death--also with a sickle (Karma), who reaped the vines of the earth (those who have lived by the false light) and cast them into the winepress of the wrath of God (the purgatorial spheres).

(69) Besides, the Kingdom of Hell, and of [fierce] Wrath, always gape after the Soul, and set their Jaws wide open to devour the captive Soul; which is held fast fettered with two strong Chains; the one of the Kingdom of Hell; the other of the Kingdom of this World; and it is continually led by the heavy, lumpish, bestial, and sickly Body, as a Thief who is often led to the Place of Execution, and still by a Petition reprieved, and laid in Prison again, and the poor Soul must lie thus in Prison the whole Time of the Body; where the Devil on the one Side very suddenly rushes upon it with his devouring Fierceness, Wrath, and Malice, and would carry it into the Abyss. Then instantly [it is beat upon by] the glistering [flattering] World, with Pomp, Bravery, Covetousness, and Voluptuousness of Perdition; presenting [again come upon it] Sickness and Fear, and it is continually trembling and quaking; and when Man goes but in the Dark, how is it amazed, and continually afraid that the Executioner will take it, and tdo Execution upon it! The Gate [or Explanation] of the great Sin, and Contrariety of Will against God, in Man.