(7) Thus they spoke while they saw and invoked the coming of the sun, the arrival of day; and at the same time that they saw the rising of the sun, they contemplated the Morning Star, the Great Star, which comes ahead of the sun, that lights up the arch of the sky and the surface of the earth, and illuminates the steps of the men who had been created and made.

(13) And there in the Center, in the paradisical Matrix, and in the paradisical Heaven, the Spirit of God stood in his own eternal Seat, neither did it depart from thence, and moved upon the material Water with the Fiat, and there formed the Heaven, which was created out of the Midst of the watery Matrix; and he separated the Root of the Darkness from the Light in the Matrix, in which Darkness the Devils remained, and they have not comprehended the Matter in the Matrix, nor the new Light, which sprung up in the Matrix. And so with this Creation and Separation the Length of one Day was finished, and out of the Beginning and End, and Morning and Evening, was the first Day, as Moses writes.

(14) Moses writes; God said, Let there be Light in the Firmament of Heaven, which may separate and distinguish Day and Night, and be for Signs, for Times and Seasons, for Days and Years; and to be for Lights in the Firmament of Heaven, to shine upon the Earth; and it was so. And God made two great Lights, the greater Light to rule the Day, and the lesser Light to rule the Night: Also he made the Stars. And God set them in the Firmament of Heaven, that they might shine upon the Earth, and rule the Day and the Night, and separate the Light from the Darkness.

(2) And on the fourth day He created the sun and the moon and the stars, and set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon all the earth, and to rule over the day and the night, and divide the light from the darkness.

(14) Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

(17) Sun and Moon - one* the day, the other the night, bow to the dust in adoration; and from their worship comes their movement. It is God who has spread out the day in whiteness, it is he who has folded up the night and blackened it.

(2) for on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before Him — the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctifi- cation, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds,* and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices8 and of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer, and of all the spirits of His creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, eventide (and night), and the light, dawn and day, which He hath prepared in the know- ledge of His h,eart.

(4) Before the sun rose, damp and muddy was the surface of the earth, before the sun came up; but then the sun rose, and came up like a man. And its heat was unbearable. It showed itself when it was born and remained fixed [in the sky] like a mirror. Certainly it was not the same sun which we see, it is said in their old tales.

(10) The sun does not thine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings, and much less this fire. When he shines, everything shines after him; by his light all this is lighted.

(13) And) mankind beheld the Sun-god 1 in the gate of his going forth

(75) As Adam went out of the clear Light of God into the dark Kingdom of this World, and the Soul of Adam stood between two dark Principles (as between Death and Hell) and grew up in the Body, so also would Christ (in his growing Body) rise up from the Dead at Midnight, and make the Night in his holy Body to be a clear eternal Day, whereinto no Night ever came, but the Light of God the Father and of the Lamb shone therein.

(83) And when I had gone forth below and seen the heaven, and the sun rising in the east, and the moon setting in the west, and a few stars, and the whole earth, and everything as †He had known† it in the beginning, then I blessed the Lord of judgement and extolled Him because He had made the sun to go forth from the windows of the east, †and he ascended and rose on the face of the heaven, and set out and kept traversing the path shown unto him.

(18) Now that Word had no Matter out of which it made any Thing, but it created all Things out of the Darkness, and brought them to Light, that it might shine forth, appear, and present itself. For in it was the Life, and it gave the Life to the Creature, and the Creature is out of its Virtue, and the Virtue became material, and the Light shines therein, and the material Virtue cannot comprehend it, for that is in Darkness. But seeing the material Virtue cannot comprehend the Light, which from Eternity shines in the Darkness; therefore God has given that [material Virtue] another Light, which proceeds out of the Virtue, (viz. the Sun,) which shines in the Creature, that so the Creature is manifested in the Light.

(3) Now because this Birth [of the Sun] has a Beginning through the Will of God, and enters again into its Ether, therefore it has not the Virtue or Power of the Wisdom; but it continually works according to its Kind, it vivifies and kills; what it does, it does [not regarding whether it be] evil, crooked, lame, or good, beautiful or potent, it causes to live and to die, it affords Power and Strength, and destroys the same again; and all this without any premeditated Wisdom; whereby it may be perceived, Or Nature, that it is not the divine Providence and Wisdom itself, as the Heathens supposed, and foolishly relied upon the Virtue thereof.

(80) [And in those days the sun shall be seen and he shall journey in the evening †on the extremity of the great chariot† in the west] And shall shine more brightly than accords with the order of light.

(58) And there shall be a light that never endeth, And to a limit (lit. 'number') of days they shall not come, For the darkness shall first have been destroyed, [And the light established before the Lord of Spirits] And the light of uprightness established for ever before the Lord of Spirits.

(16) Thou completest the hours of the Night, according as thou hast measured them out. And when thou hast completed them according to thy rule, day dawneth

(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.

(21) God, who is the eternal Light, he is the eternal Will; he shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness has comprehended the Will: And in that Will (which has comprehended the Darkness) the Anguish rises up, and in the sour [harsh] Anguish the Fire, and in the Fire the Light, and out of the Light [comes] the Virtue [or Power,] and out of the Virtue the Kingdom. So now out of the Fire [came] the Constellations, and moreover the Sun, and out of the Virtue came the Heaven; and the Kingdom is God's. All this was in the first Will in the Creation, one with another; wherein God severed the fiery Will from the mild Will of the Light, and called the fiery [Will] Stars, and the mild [Will] Heaven, in respect of the Virtue of each of them.

(6) Therefore though we speak of the Creation of the World, as if we had been by as present, and had seen it, none ought to marvel at it, nor hold it for impossible. For the Spirit that is in us, which one Man inherits from the other, that was breathed out of the Eternity into Adam, that same Spirit has seen it all, and in the Light of God it sees it still; and there is nothing that is far off, or unsearchable: For the eternal Birth, which stands hidden in the Center of Man, that does nothing [that is] new, it knows, works and does even the same that ever it did from Eternity; it labours for the Light and for the Darkness, and works in great Anguish; but when the Light shines therein, then there is mere Joy and Knowledge in its Working.