(17) Mark what John says: In the Beginning of the Creation, and before the Times of the World, was the Word, and the Word was God, and in the Word was the Light, and it shone in the Darkness, and the Darkness could not comprehend the Light. Wherein may be clearly understood, that the eternal Light is God; and that it has its eternal Original in the eternal Virtue or Power; and that it is the eternal Word which shone in the Darkness. Seeing then that Word created all Things in all Places, therefore it was in all Places, for without it was nothing made.

(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.

(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.

(7) Now says Moses; And God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light. This Light now was the fifth Form in the Matrix. For the fifth Essence was not yet created in the Matrix, nor separated till the fourth Day, when God created the Sun and Stars out of it, and separated the Light from the Darkness; where then the Light got the Virtue of the Glance, or Splendor, into itself for its own, and the Root of the Fire in the Center remained hidden in the Darkness.

(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.

(6) Now when God on the first Day had gathered together the Lump of the Earth in the great Deep of this World, then the Deep became purified, yet [the Deep between the Firmament and the Earth, though it was cleansed from Dregs, was] dark, and had no Light in the Matrix; but the fifth Essence, that is, the fifth Form in the Matrix, shined as a Fire, wherein the Spirit of God with the Fiat moved upon the watery Matrix; and the Earth was naked, bare, and void; neither had it so much as one Spire of Grass.

(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.

(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.

(21) Thus you [may] see how God created all Things out of Nothing, but only out of Himself; and yet the i Out-Birth is not from his Essence, [or Substance,] but it has its Original from the Darkness. The Source of the Darkness is the first Principle, and the Virtue [or Power] of the Light is the second Principle, and the Out-Birth, [generated] out of the Darkness by the Virtue of the Light, is the third Principle; and that is not called God: God is only the Light, and the Virtue of the Light, and that which goes forth out of the Light is the Holy Ghost.

(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.

(40) This was the unsearchable Purpose of God in his Will; and therefore he thus created all Things; and after this Time, there will be nothing but only Light and Darkness; where the Source [or Property] remains in each of them, as it has been from Eternity, where the one shall not comprehend the other, as it has also not been done from Eternity.

(25) In this [Garden] now the Image of God stood altogether free. It might embrace [and take] what it would, only the Tree of Temptation, that was forbidden. There he was forty Days in the paradisical Knowledge, Joy, and Habitation, where yet there was neither Day nor Night to him, but only the Eternity; he saw with his Eyes [from or] out of the divine Power [and Virtue.] There was in him no Shutting of his Eyes; he had no Need of the Sun at all, yet all Things must serve and be subject to him. The Out-Birth [or Production] of the four Elements did not touch him; there was no Sleep in him, nor Pain, nor Fear. A thousand Years were to him but as a Day; he was such an Image as shall rise at the last Day; there will rise no other Image than that which God created in the Beginning, therefore consider it well.

(22) The Sun is the Goddess in the third Principle; in the created World (understand, in the material Virtue) it went forth out of the Darkness in the Anguish of the Will, in the Way and Manner of the eternal Birth. For when God set the Fiat in the Darkness, then the Darkness received the Will of God, and was impregnated P for the Birth. The Will causes the [sour] Harshness, the Harshness causes the Attracting, and the Stirring of the Attracting to Mobility causes the Bitterness, which is the Woe, and the Woe causes the Anguish, and the Anguish causes the Moving, Breaking, and Rising up. Now the sour Harshness cannot endure the Stirring, and therefore attracts the harder to itself; and the Bitterness or the Attracting will not endure to be stayed, but breaks and stings so very hard in the Attracting, that it stirs up the Heat, wherein the Flash springs up, and the dark [Sourness or] Harshness is affrighted by the Flash, and in the Shriek the Fire kindles, and in the Fire the Light. Now there would be no Light if the Shriek in the Hardness had not been, but there would have remained nothing but Fire; yet the Shriek in the Harshness of the Fire kills the hard Harshness, so that it sinks down as it were to the Ground, and becomes as it were dead and soft; and when the Flash perceives itself in the Harshness, then it is affrighted much more, because it finds the Mother so very mild, and half dead in Weakness; and so in this Shriek its fiery Property becomes white, soft, and mild, and it is the Kindling of the Light, wherein the Fire is changed into a white Clarity, [Glance, Luster, or Brightness.]

(27) That Light has wrought in the Knowledge, and in the Understanding, and generated a Similitude of its Substance; and the Substance which wrought was the Fiat, and the Fiat formed the Similitude which was generated out of the Will, and made it visible; and the Similitude was generated out of the Darkness, out of the eternal Nothing; and yet Something was there, viz. the Originality of the Anguish, out of which the eternal Will generates itself from Eternity.