(43) Now it was the Love that became Man, and had put on our human Soul; and the Soul was enlightened from the Love, and stood with its Root in the Anger, as in the strong Might of the Father; and now the new Man in the Love commended the Soul to the Father into his Might, and yielded up the earthly Life, [which proceeded] from the Constellations and Elements, viz. the Kingdom of this World; and so the Soul now stood no more in the Kingdom of this World, in the Source of Life, but it stood in Death; for the Kingdom of this World, the Blower up [of Life] the Air, was gone.

(12) And so the Woman (in whom the eternal Life springs) stands upon the earthly Moon, and despises that which is earthly, for that which is earthly perishes; and then there remains (of that which is earthly) the hard [frozen] Death; and so now the Word of God (as a living a Fountain) is entered into Death, and has generated the Soul in itself, and springs forth out of the Soul through Death like a new Flower; and that Flower is the new Body in Christ.

(4) And now if we look round about us every where, upon Heaven and Earth, the Stars and Elements, yet we can see and know no Way [or Passage] where we may go to our Rest; we see no other than the Way of the Entrance in of our Life, and then of the End of our Life, where our Body goes into the Earth, and all our Labour (also our Arts and Glory) is inherited by another, who also vexes himself therewith for a While, and then follows after us; and that continues so from the Beginning of the World to its End.

(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.

(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.

(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.

(3) That earth again is the body in man, for in it the vital airs (prânas , which are everything) rest, and do not go beyond.

(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.

(16) And now as we understand, that Man (with the Similitude wherein God dwells) is not merely at Home in this World, much Hurts, or moves. less in the stinking Carcase, so it is manifest (in that we are so very blind as to Paradise) that our first Parents (with their Spirit) are gone out of the heavenly Paradise into the Spirit of this World, where then the Spirit of this World instantly captivated their Body, and made it earthly, so that Body and Soul are perished; and now we have the pure Element no more for our Body, but the Out-Birth, (viz. the four Elements, with the Dominion of the Stars) and the Sun only is the Light of the Body; also this Body does not belong to the Deity. God does not discover himself in the stinking Carcase [or Corpse,] but in the holy Man, in the pure Image which he created in the Beginning.

(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.

(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.

(5) We can in our Misery never know where our Spirit abides when the Body breaks, and comes to be a Carcase, except we be again new-born out of this World, so we may dwell in this World as to our Body, and as to our Mind in another eternal perfect new Life, wherein our Spirit and Mind put on a new Man, wherein it must and shall live eternally; and then we first know what we are, and where our Home is.

(3) And of the matter stored beneath it , the Father made of it a universal body, and packing it together made it spherical - wrapping it round the life - [a sphere] which is immortal in itself, and that doth make materiality eternal. But He, the Father, full-filled with His ideas, did sow the lives as in a cave, willing to order forth the life with every kind of living. So He with deathlessness enclosed the universal body, that matter might not wish to separate itself from body's composition, and so dissolve into its own [original] unorder. For matter, son, when it was yet incorporate , was in unorder. And it doth still retain down here this [nature of unorder] enveloping the rest of the small lives - that increase-and-decrease which men call death.

(11) And now it may very exactly be understood by the Essences and Property of the Soul, that in this House of Flesh (where it is as it were generated) it is not at Home; and its horrible Fall may be also understood [thereby.] For it has no Light in itself of its own, it must borrow its Light from the Sun; which indeed springs up along with it in its Birth, but that is corruptible, and the Worm of the Soul is not so; and it is seen that when a Man dies it goes out. And if then the divine Light be not again generated in the Center, then the Soul remains in the eternal Darkness, in the eternal anguishing [Source or] Quality of the Birth, where nothing is to be found in the kindled Captive. Fire, but a horrible Flash of Fire, in which [Source, Property, or] Quality, also the Devils dwell; for it is the first Principle.

(7) That this world has neither beginning nor end but exists for ever as long as the Supreme stands is certainly no novel teaching. And before this school rose it had been urged that commerce with the body is no gain to a Soul.

But to treat the human Soul as a fair presentment of the Soul of the Universe is like picking out potters and blacksmiths and making them warrant for discrediting an entire well-ordered city.

We must recognize how different is the governance exercised by the All-Soul; the relation is not the same: it is not in fetters. Among the very great number of differences it should not have been overlooked that the We lies under fetter; and this in a second limitation, for the Body-Kind, already fettered within the All-Soul, imprisons all that it grasps.

But the Soul of the Universe cannot be in bond to what itself has bound: it is sovereign and therefore immune of the lower things, over which we on the contrary are not masters. That in it which is directed to the Divine and Transcendent is ever unmingled, knows no encumbering; that in it which imparts life to the body admits nothing bodily to itself. It is the general fact that an inset , necessarily shares the conditions of its containing principle , and does not communicate its own conditions where that principle has an independent life: thus a graft will die if the stock dies, but the stock will live on by its proper life though the graft wither. The fire within your own self may be quenched, but the thing, fire, will exist still; and if fire itself were annihilated that would make no difference to the Soul, the Soul in the Supreme, but only to the plan of the material world; and if the other elements sufficed to maintain a Kosmos, the Soul in the Supreme would be unconcerned.

The constitution of the All is very different from that of the single, separate forms of life: there, the established rule commanding to permanence is sovereign; here things are like deserters kept to their own place and duty by a double bond; there is no outlet from the All, and therefore no need of restraining or of driving errants back to bounds: all remains where from the beginning the Soul's nature appointed.

The natural movement within the plan will be injurious to anything whose natural tendency it opposes: one group will sweep bravely onward with the great total to which it is adapted; the others, not able to comply with the larger order, are destroyed. A great choral is moving to its concerted plan; midway in the march, a tortoise is intercepted; unable to get away from the choral line it is trampled under foot; but if it could only range itself within the greater movement it too would suffer nothing.

(10) And the Matrix of the Earth stood still till the third Day, as it were in Death, in respect of the great Storm: But in the Fiat the Life sprung up through Death, and the eternal Virtue [or Power] and Wisdom of God (which has formed itself together in the Fiat) discovered itself on the blossoming Earth, where the Similitude of the paradisical World may be clearly seen.

(1) IF we consider the Separation and the Springing forth in the third Principle of this World, how the starry Heaven should spring up, and how every Star has a peculiar Form and Property in itself, in every of which a several Center is observed, so that every One of them is fixed [or steady] and Master [or Guider] of itself, and that every One of them rules in the Matrix of this World, and works and generates in the Matrix after their Kind; and then afterwards if we consider the Sun, which is their King, Heart, and Life, without whose Light and Virtue, they could neither act nor effect any Thing, but remain in the hard dark Death; and this World would be nothing but a fierce rough Hardness; and further, if we consider the Elements of Fire and Water, [and observe] how they continually generate one in another, and then how the Constellations rule in them, as in their own Propriety; and also consider what the Mother is, from whence all these Things must proceed; then we shall come to see the Separation, and the eternal Mother, the i Genetrix of all Things.

(10) Man's Image born of a Woman, here in this Life, is in a threefold Form, and stands in three Principles [or Beginnings;] viz. the Soul, that has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the strong and sour Might of the Eternity; and it swims [or moves] between two Principles, begirt with the third [Principle;] it reaches with its original Root into the Depth of the Eternity, in the Source [or Quality] where God the Father from Eternity enters (through the Gates of the Breaking through, and Opening) in himself, into the Light of Joy; and it is in the Band, where God calls himself a jealous, angry and austere God, and is a Sparkle out of the Omnipotence, appearing in the great Wonders of the Wisdom of God, through the dear Virgin of Chastity; and with the Form of the first Principle [it stands] in the Gate of the Sourness of Eternity [mingled, united, or] qualified with the Region of the Sun and Stars, and begirt with the four Elements; and the holy Element (viz. the Root of the four Elements) that is the Body of the Soul, in the second Principle, in the Gate [before or] towards God; and according to the Spirit of this World, the Region of the Stars is the Body of the Soul; and the Production of the four Elements is the Source-house, [or House of Operation,] or the Spirit of this World, which kindles the Region, so that it [springs forth or] operates. 1 1. And thus the Soul lives in such a threefold Source [or working Quality,] being bound with three Cords, and is drawn of all three. The first Cord is the Band of Eternity, generated in the Rising up of the Anxiety, and reaches the Abyss of Hell. The second Cord is the Kingdom of Heaven, generated through the Gates of the Deep in the Father, and regenerated out of the Birth of Sins, through the Humanity of Christ, and there the Soul also (in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God) is tied up, and is drawn by the dear Virgin, in the Word of God. The third Cord is the Kingdom of the Stars, qualifying [or mingling] with the Soul, and it is hard drawn and held by the four Elements, and carried and led by them.

(7) So that when the Heaven, and the Birth of the Elements are spoken of, it is not a Thing afar off, or that is distant from us, that is spoken of; but we speak of Things that are done in our Body and Soul; and there is nothing nearer us than this Birth, for we live and move therein, as in the House of our Mother; and when we speak of Heaven, we speak of our native Country, which the enlightened Soul can well see, though indeed such Things are hidden from the Body.

(19) The World Soul, at the Dawn of the Cosmic Day, may be said to be like a dreamer freshly awakened from a deep sleep, and striving to regain consciousness of himself. It does not know what it is, nor does it know that it is but an Idea of the Eternal Parent. If it could express its thought in words it would say that it has always been, but had been asleep before that moment. It feels within itself the urge toward expression and manifestation, along unconscious and instinctive lines—this urge being a part of its nature and character and implanted into it by the content of the Idea of the Eternal Parent which brought it into being. Like the newborn babe, it struggles for breath and begins to move its limbs. And as it struggles and moves, there comes to it a response from all of its nature, and its active life begins. And here we leave the World Soul, for the moment, struggling for breath and striving to move its limbs (figuratively speaking, of course). Its future is related in the succeeding Aphorisms.