(4) E'en with these words His aspect changed, and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light - sweet, joyous [Light]. And I became transported as I gazed. But in a little while Darkness came settling down on part [of it], awesome and gloomy, coiling in sinuous folds, so that methought it like unto a snake. And then the Darkness changed into some sort of a Moist Nature, tossed about beyond all power of words, belching out smoke as from a fire, and groaning forth a wailing sound that beggars all description. [And] after that an outcry inarticulate came forth from it, as though it were a Voice of Fire.

(47) And we must further a consider, that when the Shriek [or Crack] makes its Dwelling-house, in its strong Breaking-through, out of the Gate of the anxious Darkness, viz. the Tongue, that the Shriek [or Crack] has not then yet seen the Virgin; but when it reflected [or shined] back again into the Heart, into the opened Darkness, and found her so habitable, there then first sprung up its Joy, and Pleasantness, and it became paradisical, and desired not [to go] into the Tongue again, but into the Head, and [desired] there to have its Region out of the Source of the Heart. Therefore the Tongue ought not in all [or altogether] to be believed, for it sits not in the heavenly Region, as the friendly pleasant Virtue [does;] but it has its Region in the Crack and Flash, and the Flash is as near the hellish Region, as the Crack is, for they are both generated in the Sharpness of the Stars, in the Essences, and the Tongue speaks both Lyes and Truth; in which of the two the Spirit arms itself, according to that it speaks: Also it many Times speaks Lies in great Men; when it is armed from the Essences, then it speaks in the Crack, like a Rider in his [haughty, surly, vaunting State,] or high Mindedness. The Life of the Soul. The Gate.

(70) Thus now the Habitation of Man's Sound, wherein the Understanding is, must be from Eternity, although indeed in the Fall of Adam, Man has set himself in the Corruptibility, and in great Want of Understanding, as shall follow here. In like Manner also we find concerning the Smelling; for if the Spirit did not stand in the Sound, then no Smell of any Thing would press [or pierce] into the Essences; for the Spirit would be whole and swelled. But it standing thus in the Gate of the broken Darkness in the Crack and in the Sound, therefore all Virtues of all Things press in into that Gate, and try themselves by one another, and what the Essences of the Spirit love, that it desires, and draws the same into the Tincture; and then Hands and Mouth fall to it, and stuff it into the Stomach, into the outward Court of the four Elements, from whence the earthly Essences of the Stars and Elements feed. 7 1. And the Taste also is a Trying, and Attracting of the Tincture in the Essences of the Spirit. And so the Feeling also, if the Spirit of Man with its Essences did not stand in the Sound, there would be no Feeling; for when the sour Essences draw to them, then they awaken the bitter Prickle [or Sting] in the Fire-flash, which stirs itself, either by Griping, Thrusting, or Striking, and thereupon in all driving the bitter Prickle in the Fire-flash is awakened; and therein stands the Moving; [and] all in the Tincture.

(95) And there the Word, or the Treader upon the Serpent, stood in the new regenerated Element, in the Soul of Abel, in the Center, in the Gate of the Deep, and did break the Serpent's Head (that is, the Kingdom of the Fierceness) of its Might; for the Head signifies the strong Might of the fierce Anger. And there the Love of God (out of the Heart of God) P let itself into the Hell of the Anger, and smothered the kindled Fire of the poor Soul in the Love again; and here the first Work was proved, according as was promised from God to Adam and Eve.

(5) And the Lord opened ^evgnflood-gates^ of heaven, And the mouths of the fountains of the great deep, seven mouths in number.

(70) And when he raised up his Imagination, then he kindled to himself the Source or Root of the Fire, and then when the Root of the Fire sought for the Water, (viz. the true Mother of the Eternal Nature,) it found the stern [or tart astringent] Harshness, and the Mother in the aching Death; and the bitter Sting [or Prickle] formed the Birth to be a fierce raging Serpent, very terrible in itself, rising up in the indissoluble Band, an eternal Enmity, a Will striving against itself, an eternal Despair of all Good; [the bitter Sting also formed] the Mind to be a breaking striking Wheel, having its Will continually aspiring to the Strength of the Fire, and to destroy the Heart of God, and yet could never at all be able to reach it.

(16) Thereon [I say: Teach on], O Mind of me, for I myself as well am amorous of the Word (Logos). The Shepherd said: This is the mystery kept hid until this day. Nature embraced by Man brought forth a wonder, oh so wonderful. For as he had the nature of the Concord of the Seven, who, as I said to thee, [were made] of Fire and Spirit - Nature delayed not, but immediately brought forth seven "men", in correspondence with the natures of the Seven, male-female and moving in the air. Thereon [I said]: O Shepherd, ..., for now I'm filled with great desire and long to hear; do not run off. The Shepherd said: Keep silence, for not as yet have I unrolled for thee the first discourse (logoi). Lo! I am still, I said.

(2) "And the word took me to himself, from the spirit, in the first cloud of the hymen of nature. And I put on this of which the majesty and the unconceived spirit made me worthy. And the threefold unity of my garment appeared in the cloud, by the will of the majesty, in a single form. And my likeness was covered with the light of my garment. And the cloud was disturbed, and it was not able to tolerate my likeness. It shed the first power, which it had taken from the spirit—that which shone on him from the beginning, before I appeared in the word to the spirit. The cloud would not have been able to tolerate both of them. And the light that came forth from the cloud passed through silence until it came into the middle region. And by the will of the majesty, the light mixed with him, that is, the spirit that exists in silence, which had been separated from the spirit of light. It was separated from the light by the cloud of silence. The cloud was disturbed. It was he who gave rest to the flame of fire. He humbled the dark womb that she might not reveal other seed from the darkness. He kept them back in the middle region of nature in their position, which was in the cloud. They were troubled because they did not know where they were. For still they do not possess the universal understanding of the spirit.

(36) But the Reader must not here understand it, as if the Word for this Incarnation at this Time did first come down, out of the highest Heaven above the Stars, hither beneath, and became Man, as the World teaches in Blindness. No; but the Word, which God spoke in Paradise to Adam and Eve, concerning the Treader upon the Serpent, (which imaged [or imprinted] itself in the Door of the Light of Life, standing in the Center of the Gate of Heaven, and waiting perceptibly in the Minds of the holy Men, even till this Time) that same Word is become Man; and that same divine Word is again entered into the Virgin of the divine Wisdom, which was given to the Soul of Adam near the Word, to be a Light, and a i Handmaid as to the Word.

(83) Here now we find, that they heard the Voice of God in the Garden; for the Element, which is before God, wherewith Man qualifies [or mixes,] that did tremble because of Sin; and Sin was manifested in the Element of the Mind, first in Adam and Eve, and then Fear and Terror fell into the Essences of the Soul; for the first Principle in the [fierce] Sternness was stirred, so that [Principle] got (as a Man may say) Fuel for its Source of Fire. And it is risen up in the Kindling, in a Contrariety of Will, in the Essences, where one Form has continually opposed the other, viz. the sour Tartness, and the Cold, with their Attracting, have awakened the bitter Stinging and Tormenting in the Essences of the Tincture of the Blood in the Spirit; and the bitter Raging and Rising has awakened the Fire.

(17) In such wise than, as I have said, the generation of these seven came to pass. Earth was as woman, her Water filled with longing; ripeness she took from Fire, spirit from Aether. Nature thus brought forth frames to suit the form of Man. And Man from Light and Life changed into soul and mind - from Life to soul, from Light to mind. And thus continued all the sense-world's parts until the period of their end and new beginnings.

(2) "This is the spirit of light who has come in them. And by the will of the majesty the spirit gazed up at the infinite light, that his light may be pitied and the likeness may be brought up from Hades. And when the spirit had looked, I flowed out—I, the son of the majesty—like a wave of light and like a whirlwind of the immortal spirit. And I blew from the cloud of the hymen upon the astonishment of the unconceived spirit. The cloud separated and cast light upon the clouds. These separated so that the spirit might return. Because of this the mind took shape. Its rest was shattered. For the hymen of nature was a cloud that cannot be grasped; it is a great fire. Similarly, the afterbirth of nature is the cloud of silence; it is an august fire. And the power that was mixed with the mind—it, too, was a cloud of nature that was joined with the darkness that had aroused nature to unchastity. And the dark water was a frightful cloud. And the root of nature, which was below, was crooked, since it is burdensome and harmful. The root was blind to the bound light, which was unfathomable because it had many appearances.

(2) "And the voice of the word was heard saying through the majesty of the unconceived spirit, 'Look, the power has been completed. The one who was revealed by me appeared in the spirit.'

(3) Now when God was to create the World, and all things therein, he had no other a Matter to make it of, but his own which has neither Beginning nor End, and his Greatness and Depth is all. Yet a Spirit does nothing but ascend, flow, move, and continually generate itself, and in itself has chiefly a threefold Manner of Form in its Generating or Birth, vis. Bitterness, Harshness, and cHeat, and these three Manner of Forms are neither of them the first, second, nor third; for all these three are but one, and each of them generates the second and third. For between Harshness and Bitterness, Fire is generated: and the Wrath of the Fire is the Bitterness or Sting itself, and the Harshness is the Stock or Father of both these, and yet is generated of them both; for a Spirit is like a Will, Sense, [or Thought,] which rises up, and in its Rising beholds,perfects, and generates itself.

(10) Here observe, the Shriek or Crack of the Fire is kindled in the Anguish in the Brimstone Spirit, and then the Shriek flies up triumphantly; and the aching, or anxious Harshness, or Brimstone- Spirit, is made thin and sweet by the Light. For as the Light or the Flash becomes clearer or brighter from the Crack of the Fire in the vanquished harsh Tartness, and loses its wrathful fierce Property, so the Tartness loses its Authority by the Infection or Mixture of the Light, and is made thin or transparent, and sweet by the white Light: For in the Original the Harshness or Astringency was altogether dark, and aching with Anguish, by Reason of its hardness and attracting; but now it is wholly light, and thereupon it loses its own Quality or Property, and out of the wrathful Harshness there comes to be an Essence that is sharp, and the Light makes the Sharpness altogether sweet. The Gates of God.

(10) For as all in the Fiat was held and created according to the [Will of the] a Fashioner, which was the sole and total Workmaster in all Things, in the seven Spirits of Nature, which broke nothing when he fashioned it, nor threw one [Part] from the other when he had made it, but every Thing separated itself, and stood in the Source of its own Essences, so there shall not need much Blustering, Thunder and Lightning, and Breaking, as this World in Babel teaches, but every Thing perishes in itself; the Source [or Flowing forth] of the Elements ceases, as a Man when he dies [ceases from working,] and all passes into its Ether [or Receptacle.] 1 1. And at the Time (before this Fabric [of Heaven and Earth] perishes and passes into its Ether) comes the Judge of the Living and the Dead; there all Men must see him in his, and in their Flesh; and all the Dead must rise through his Voice, and stand before him; and there the angelical World shall be manifested. And all the Generations of the Earth (which are not comprehended in the Body of Christ) shall howl, and then they shall be separated into two Flocks; and the Sentence of Christ passes over all, both Good and Bad; and there will be Howling, Trembling, Yelling, Roaring, and cursing themselves, the Children cursing their Parents, and wishing that they had never been born.

(49) And the Spirit of the eternal Essences (which has Understanding and Knowledge, and also the Trial and Proving of every Thing, in which the Source [or active Property or Quality] which is in Man, consists) that was breathed into him, by the Wisdom of God, through the driving Will, which goes forward, out of the eternal Mind, out of the opened Gates of the Deep, through the Word, [together] with the moving Spirit of God. And he had the Touch of the Center of the Abyss [viz.'] the eternal Source a behind him, as a Band, and before him, the Heart and Light of God, as a Glance of the Joy and Kindling of Paradise, which springs up in the Essences with the Light of the Joy; and beneath him [he had] the four Elements in the Budding out of the Limbus which was in him.

(20) So now a Spirit is nothing else but a Springing Will, and in the Will there is the Anguish to the Birth, and in the Anguish the Fire generates itself, and in the Fire the Light, and from the Light the Will becomes friendly, pleasant, mild, and sweet, and in the sweet Will the Kingdom and the Glory generates itself. Thus the Light keeps the Might [or Power;] and if that be put out, then the Virtue [or Power] and Glory ceases, and the Kingdom also.

(22) And we find greater Mysteries yet in Evidence of the horrible Fall; for after that the four Elements had thus set themselves every one in a several Region, then they made themselves Lords over the Spirit of the Soul, which was generated out of the Essences, and they have taken it into their Power, and qualify with it. The Fire, viz. the mightiest of them, has taken it into its Region [or Jurisdiction] in the Heart; and there it must mkeep, and the Blossom and Light thereof goes out of the Heart, and moves upon the Heart, as the kindled Light of a Candle, where the Candle resembles the fleshly Heart, with the Essences out of which the Light shines. And the Fire has set itself over the Essences, and continually reaches after the Light, and it supposes that it has the Virgin, viz. the divine Virtue [or Power.]

(5) "Nature, which had been disturbed, immediately arose from the idle waters. For her ascent was shameful. And nature took to herself the power of fire. She became strong because of the light of the spirit that was in nature. Her likeness appeared in the water in the form of a frightful beast with many faces, which is crooked below. A light went down to chaos filled with mist and dust, in order to harm nature. And the light of astonishment in the middle region came to it after he cast off the burden of the darkness. He rejoiced when the spirit arose. For he looked from the clouds down at the dark waters upon the light that was in the depths of nature.