(32) If [about] to be born as a male, the feeling of itself being a male dawneth upon the Knower, and a feeling of intense hatred towards the father and of jealousy and attraction towards the mother is begotten. If [about] to be born as a female, the feeling of itself being a female dawneth upon the Knower, and a feeling of intense hatred towards the mother and of intense attraction and fondness towards the father is begotten. Through this secondary cause — [when] entering upon the path of ether, just at the moment when the sperm and the ovum are about to unite — the Knower experienceth the bliss of the simultaneously-born state, during which state it fainteth away into unconsciousness. [Afterwards] it findeth itself encased in oval form, in the embryonic state, and upon emerging from the womb and opening its eyes it may find itself transformed into a young dog. Formerly it had been a human being, but now if it have become a dog it findeth itself undergoing sufferings in a dog's kennel; or [perhaps] as a young pig in a pigsty, or as an ant in an ant-hill, or as an insect, or a grub in a hole, or as a calf, or a kid, or a lamb, from which shape there is no [immediate] returning. Dumbness, stupidity, and miserable intellectual obscurity are suffered, and a variety of sufferings experienced. In like manner, one may wander into hell, or into the world of unhappy ghosts, or throughout the Six Lokas, and endure inconceivable miseries.

(35) Behold, thou reasonable Soul, to thee I speak, and not to the Body, thou only apprehendest it:- When the Birth is thus continually generated, then every Form has a Center to the Regeneration; for the whole divine Essence [or Substance] stands in continual and in eternal P Generating (but unchangeably) like the Mind of Man, the Thoughts being continually generated out of the Mind, and the Will and Desiring out of the Thoughts. Out of the Will and Desirousness [is] the Work [generated] which is made a Substance, in the Will, and then the Mouth and Hands, go on to perform what was substantial in the Will.

(2) Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that soul is the author of all living things, that it has breathed the life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the creatures of the air, the divine stars in the sky; it is the maker of the sun; itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and conducts all that rhythmic motion; and it is a principle distinct from all these to which it gives law and movement and life, and it must of necessity be more honourable than they, for they gather or dissolve as soul brings them life or abandons them, but soul, since it never can abandon itself, is of eternal being.

How life was purveyed to the universe of things and to the separate beings in it may be thus conceived:

That great soul must stand pictured before another soul, one not mean, a soul that has become worthy to look, emancipate from the lure, from all that binds its fellows in bewitchment, holding itself in quietude. Let not merely the enveloping body be at peace, body's turmoil stilled, but all that lies around, earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air and the very heavens. Into that heaven, all at rest, let the great soul be conceived to roll inward at every point, penetrating, permeating, from all sides pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all gold, so the soul entering the material expanse of the heavens has given life, has given immortality: what was abject it has lifted up; and the heavenly system, moved now in endless motion by the soul that leads it in wisdom, has become a living and a blessed thing; the soul domiciled within, it takes worth where, before the soul, it was stark body- clay and water- or, rather, the blankness of Matter, the absence of Being, and, as an author says, "the execration of the Gods."

The Soul's nature and power will be brought out more clearly, more brilliantly, if we consider next how it envelops the heavenly system and guides all to its purposes: for it has bestowed itself upon all that huge expanse so that every interval, small and great alike, all has been ensouled.

The material body is made up of parts, each holding its own place, some in mutual opposition and others variously interdependent; the soul is in no such condition; it is not whittled down so that life tells of a part of the soul and springs where some such separate portion impinges; each separate life lives by the soul entire, omnipresent in the likeness of the engendering father, entire in unity and entire in diffused variety. By the power of the soul the manifold and diverse heavenly system is a unit: through soul this universe is a God: and the sun is a God because it is ensouled; so too the stars: and whatsoever we ourselves may be, it is all in virtue of soul; for "dead is viler than dung."

This, by which the gods are divine, must be the oldest God of them all: and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves that same value which we have found soul to be, honourable above all that is bodily. For what is body but earth, and, taking fire itself, what is its burning power? So it is with all the compounds of earth and fire, even with water and air added to them?

If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself.

(8) Our Life in the Mother's Body has its Beginning wholly, as is above mentioned, and stands there now in the Quality of the Sun and Stars, where then, with the Kindling of the Light, a Center springs up again, where instantly the noble Tincture thus generates itself (out of the Light, out of the joyful Essences of the [sour] harsh, bitter, and fiery Kind [or Quality,]) and sets the Spirit of the Soul in a great pleasant Habitation: And the three i Essences (viz. Harshness, Bitterness, and Fire) are in the Kindling of the Life so very fast bound one to another, that they cannot (in Eternity) be separated one from another, and the Tincture is their eternal House, wherein they dwell, which [House] they themselves generate from the Beginning unto Eternity, which again gives them Life, Joy, and Lust [or Delight.] The strong Gate of the indissoluble Band of the Soul.

(11) But mark the Depth, in a Similitude which I set down thus; the harsh Spring in the Original is the Mother out of which the other five Springs are generated, viz. Bitterness, Fire, Love, Sound, and Water. Now these are Members of this Birth [of their Mother,] and without them there would be nothing but an anguishing dark Vale [or vacuum,] where there could be no Mobility, nor any Light or Life: But now the Life is born in her by the kindling of the Light, and then she rejoices in her own Property, and labours in her own tart sour Quality to generate again; and in her own Quality there rises a Life again, and a Center opens itself again, and the Life comes to be generated again out of her in a six-fold Form, yet not in any such Anguish as at the Beginning, but in great Joy.

(34) This I have here shown very briefly and summarily, and not according to all the Circumstances, that it might thereby be somewhat understood [by the Way, what] the Life [is.] In its due Place all shall be explained at large, for herein is very much contained, and there might be great Volumes written of it; but I have set down only this, that the Overcoming and the Sleep might be apprehended. The Gate [or Explanation] of the heavenly Tincture, how it was in Adam before the Fall, and how it shall be in us after this Life.

(4) Which what it finds there active doth attract Into its substance, and becomes one soul, Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves. And that thou less may wonder at my word, Behold the sun's heat, which becometh wine, Joined to the juice that from the vine distils. Whenever Lachesis has no more thread, It separates from the flesh, and virtually Bears with itself the human and divine; The other faculties are voiceless all; The memory, the intelligence, and the will In action far more vigorous than before. Without a pause it falleth of itself In marvellous way on one shore or the other; There of its roads it first is cognizant. Soon as the place there circumscribeth it, The virtue informative rays round about, As, and as much as, in the living members. And even as the air, when full of rain, By alien rays that are therein reflected, With divers colours shows itself adorned, So there the neighbouring air doth shape itself Into that form which doth impress upon it Virtually the soul that has stood still.

(38) And it highly concerns us to know and apprehend, that when the Seed is sown in the Matrix, and that it is drawn together by the Fiat (when the Stars and the outward Elements set themselves in [the Dominion,] and that the Love and Meekness is extinguished; for there comes to be a fierce Substance in the Stopping [or Congealing] of the Tincture) that before the Kindling of the Light of Life, in the Child, there is no heavenly Creature. And although kit be figured [or shaped] with all the Forms [or Parts] of the Body, yet notwithstanding the heavenly Image is not therein, but the bestial. And if that Body perishes [corrupts, or breaks] before the Kindling of the Spirit of the Soul in the springing up of the Life, then nothing of this Figure appears before God on the Day of the Restitution, but its Shadow and Shape; for it has yet had no Spirit.

(7) Now bodies matter [-made] are in diversity. Some are of earth, of water some, some are of air, and some of fire. But they are all composed; some are more [composite], and some are simpler. The heavier ones are more [composed], the lighter less so. It is the speed of Cosmos' Course that works the manifoldness of the kinds of births. For being a most swift Breath, it doth bestow their qualities on bodies together with the One Pleroma - that of Life.

(28) For behold, when the Gate of this World in the Child is made ready, so that the Child is [become] a living Soul out of the Essences, and now [henceforth] sees only [by or] in the Light of the Sun, and not in the Light of God, then comes the true Artificer, instantly in the Twinkling of an Eye, when the Light of the Life kindles, and figures [that which is] his; for the Center breaks forth in all the three Principles. First, there are the four Essences in the Fiat in the stern Might of God, which there are the Child' own, the Worm of its Soul, which stands there in the House of the great Anxiety, as in the Originality. For the Seed is sown in the Will, and the Will receives the Fiat in the Tincture, and the Fiat draws the Will to it inwardly, Or give himself into the Imagination. and outwardly [draws] the Seed to a rMass; for the inward and outward Artificer is there.

(14) And now when we consider how the temporary and transitory Life is generated, we find that the Soul is a Cause of all the it there would not be one Member [to, or] of the Life of Man generated. For when we search [into] the Beginning and Kindling of Life, we find strongly with clear Evidences all Manner of [Faculties or] Members; so that when the clear Light of the Soul kindles, then the Fiat stands in very great Joy, and in the Twinkling of an Eye does in the Matrix separate the Pure from the Impure, of which the Tincture of the Soul in the Light is the Worker, which there renews it, but the Fiat creates it.

(18) The eternal Generating is an unbeginning Birth, and it has neither Number nor End, and its Depth is bottomless, and the Band of Life incorruptible: The syderial and elementary Spirit cannot discern it, much less comprehend it; it only feels it, and sees a Glimpse of it in the Mind; which [Mind] is the Chariot of the Soul, upon which it rides in the first Principle in its own Seat in the Father's eternal Generating [or Begetting;] for its own Substance is altogether crude, without a Body, and yet it has the Form of the Body in its own spiritual Form, understand according to the Image; which Soul, if it be regenerated in the Light of God, it sees in the Light of the Father, (which Light is his Glance, Luster, or Son,) in the eternal Birth, wherein it lives and remains eternally.

(1) [This chapter is supplementary to chapter iii.] Those who understand the conditions of life devote no attention to things which life cannot accomplish. Those who understand the conditions of destiny devote no attention to things over which knowledge has no control. For the due nourishment of our physical frames, certain things are needful. Yet where such things abound, the physical frame is not always nourished. For the preservation of life it is necessary that there should be no abandonment of the physical frame. Yet where the physical frame is not abandoned, life does not always remain. Life comes, and cannot be declined. It goes, and cannot be stopped. But alas! the world thinks that to nourish the frame is enough to keep life. And if indeed it is not enough, what then is the world to do? Although not enough, it must still be done. It cannot be neglected. For if one is to neglect the physical frame, better far to retire at once from the world. By renouncing the world, one gets rid of the cares of the world. The result is a natural level, which is equivalent to a re-birth. And he who is re-born is near.

(36) Thus also is the eternal Birth, wherein the Virtue [or Power] is continually generated from Eternity; and out of the Virtue the Light; and the Light causes and makes the Virtue. And the Light shines in the eternal Darkness, and makes in the eternal Mind the [desiring] and attracting Will; so that the Will Well-spring. in the Darkness generates the Thoughts, the Lust and the Desiring, and the Desiring is the attracting of the Virtue, and in the Attracting of the Virtue is the Mouth that expresses the Fiat, and the Fiat makes the Materia [or Matter,] and the Spirit separates it, and forms it according to the Thoughts.

(53) And there begins the unfathomable [or unsearchable] Multiplication; for the flowing and springing Spirit, that proceeds from the first and second Principle, confirms, fixes and establishes all; and in the whole Birth it is as a Growing or Multiplying uin one Will; and the Birth attains here the seventh Form, vis. the Multiplication into an Essence of Love. And in this Form consists Paradise, or the Kingdom of God, or the numberless divine Birth, out of one only Essence xinto all Essences.

(2) And immediately nature was divided into four parts. They became clouds that varied in their appearance. They were called hymen, afterbirth, power, and water. And the hymen and the afterbirth and the power were chaotic fires. And the mind was drawn from the midst of the darkness and the water—since the mind was in the midst of nature and the dark power—in order that the harmful waters might not cling to it. Because of this, nature was divided, according to my will, in order that the mind may return to its power, which the dark root, mixed with the mind, had taken from it. And the dark root appeared in the womb. At the division of nature the dark root separated from the dark power, which it possessed from the mind. The mind went into the midst of the power—this was the middle region of nature.

(2) With respect to the powers, therefore, which remain in the heavens in the divine bodies themselves, there can be no doubt that all of them are similar. Hence, it remains that we should discuss those powers which are thence transmitted to us, and are mingled with generation. These, therefore, descend with invariable sameness for the salvation of the universe, and connectedly contain the whole of generation after the same manner. They are likewise impassive and immutable, though they proceed into that which is mutable and passive. For generation being multiform, and consisting of different things, receives the one of the Gods, and that in them which is without difference, with hostility and partibility, conformably to its own contrariety and division. It also receives that which is impassive, passively; and, in short, participates of them according to its own proper nature, and not according to their power. As, therefore, that which is generated [or has a subsistence in becoming to be,] participates of being generatively, and body participates of the incorporeal, corporeally; thus, also, the physical and material substances which are in generation, participate of the immaterial and etherial bodies, which are above nature and generation, in a confused and disorderly manner. Hence they are absurd who attribute colour, figure, and contact to intelligible forms, because the participants of them are things of this kind; as likewise are those who ascribe depravity to the celestial bodies, because their participants sometimes produce evils.

(6) Seeing then we clearly see and understand, that we have our Beginning altogether Earthly, and are sown in a Field (as Grain is sown in the Earth) where our Life springs up, grows, and at length flourishes, as Corn [or Grain] does out of the Earth; where we can know in us nothing but an earthly Life; yet we see very well that the Constellations and Elements qualify [or work] in us, and nourish, drive, govern, and guide us, also fill us and bring us up, and so preserve our Life a While, and then break it again, and turn it to Dust and Ashes; like all Beasts, Trees, Plants, and all [Things] that grow; but we see not how it is with us afterwards, whether all be ended with it, or whether we go with our Spirit and Conversation into another Life; and therefore it is most necessary to learn, and to seek the right Way.

(17) In the soul sleep a strange process occurs, namely, the preparation for the sloughing off of the lower sheaths of the soul, leaving it free to enter the life on the Astral Plane clad only in the garments of its highest stage of spiritual attainment reached by it. Each soul awakens on the Astral Plane prepared to dwell on the plane of its highest and best, leaving the rest behind it. It awakens on the plane in which the highest and best in itself is given a chance to develop and expand, and to make progress, for the soul may, and does, make great progress in these between-births sojourns on the Astral Plane.

(17) As we have, in the Beginning of this Book, mentioned the eternal Birth in the Originality, so we have mentioned the Birth of the Essences, and the seven Spirits of the eternal Nature; and therein we showed how there is a Cross-Birth in the eternal Birth in the fourth Form, where the Essences in the turning Wheel make a Cross-Birth, because they cannot go out from themselves, but that the eternal Birth is every where so in all Things, in the Essence of all Essences.