(30) But the Sweetness is like Oil or Fire, wherein the Flash continually kindles itself, so that it shines: But the Oil being sweet, and mingled with the Matrix of the Water, therefore the shining Light is steady, [constant and fixed,] and sweet: But seeing it cannot, in the Nature of the Water, continue to be an Oil only (because of the Infection of the Water) therefore it becomes thick; and the [Nature or] Kind of the Fire colours it red; and this is the Blood and the Tincture in a Creature, wherein the noble Life stands. Of the Death and of the Dying. The Gate of Affliction and of Misery.

(4) An abundance of nutriment is noxious to the body; but the body is preserved when the soul is disposed in a becoming manner.

(19) For as the exhalations which arise from the earth, and from marshes, gather into mists and cloudy masses; so the vapours of fleshly lusts bring on the soul an evil condition, scattering about the idols of pleasure before the soul.

(84) And so instead of the paradisical Joy and Refreshment, there has been a mere Brimstone-Spirit, which stands in Anguish and Trembling, of Corruption [or Fragility,] which kindles the Tincture of the Blood, wherein Tearing, Stinging, and Tormenting is wrought; and if the Fire in the Brimstone-Spirit be too much kindled, then it burns the Tincture up, and the Light of Life goes out, and then the Body falls away to be a dead-Carcase; and if the tart Sourness be kindled too much by the hard Attracting and Holding, then also the Light of Life goes out, and the Body perishes; so also of the Water; if the Tincture kindles itself in the Meekness, then it becomes windy, gross, swelled, wholly dark, also infectious.and corrupt, wherein the Flash of the Life is as a pricking Thorn. And so Man's Life is every where begirt with Enemies, and the poor Soul is always in a close Prison fettered with many Chains, and is continually in Fear that (when the Body shall [die or] break) it may fall into the Kingdom of the Executioner, the Devil.

(28) But the gross Body cannot see into it, because it belongs not to [Paradise,] it belongs to the Earth, and must putrify, or rot, and rise in a new Virtue [or Power,] (which is like Paradise) in Christ, at the End of Days; and then it also may dwell in Paradise, and not before: It must lay off the third Principle; [viz.] this Skin, [Fleece or Covering,] which Father Adam and Mother Eve are got into, in which they supposed they should be wise when they should wear all the three Principles manifested in them; if they had rather worn two hidden in them, and had stayed in the cone, it had been good for us, of which further about the Fall.

(1) Farther still, therefore, we must not disdain to add what follows; that we frequently perform something to the Gods who are the inspective guardians of body, and to good dæmons, for the sake of the necessary use of the body; as, for instance, when [by sacrifices] we purify it from ancient stains, or liberate it from diseases, and fill it with health, or remove from it heaviness and torpor, or procure for it any other good. In this case, therefore, we evidently must not busy ourselves with the body in an intellectual and incorporeal manner. For the body is not adapted to participate of modes of this kind; but, obtaining things which are allied to itself, it is meliorated and purified by bodies. The rites of sacrifices, therefore, will necessarily, for a purpose of this kind, be corporeal-formed; partly cutting off what is superfluous in us; partly supplying us with that of which we are in want; and partly leading into symmetry and order such things in us as are immoderately disturbed. We also frequently engage in sacred operations, entreating superior beings to grant us such things as are adapted to the wants of human life. And these are such as preserve the body in health, or pertain to those things which we procure for the sake of the body.

(16) If, then, in the deluge all sinful flesh perished, punishment having been inflicted on them for correction, we must first believe that the will of God, which is disciplinary and beneficent, saves those who turn to Him. Then, too, the more subtle substance, the soul, could never receive any injury from the grosser element of water, its subtle and simple nature rendering it impalpable, called as it is incorporeal. But whatever is gross, made so in consequence of sin, this is cast away along with the carnal spirit which lusts against the soul.

(6) The water which thou seest springs not from vein Restored by vapour that the cold condenses, Like to a stream that gains or loses breath; But issues from a fountain safe and certain, Which by the will of God as much regains As it discharges, open on two sides. Upon this side with virtue it descends, Which takes away all memory of sin; On that, of every good deed done restores it. Here Lethe, as upon the other side Eunoe, it is called; and worketh not If first on either side it be not tasted. This every other savour doth transcend; And notwithstanding slaked so far may be Thy thirst, that I reveal to thee no more,

(17) For it says, I am the Spirit, and the Life, I will dwell in the Virgin; and the [sour] harsh Fiat attracts all to it, and makes it a Mesch, [Massa, Concretion,] and moreover [it makes it] Flesh; and the Fire keeps the uppermost Region, viz. the Heart: For the four Elements separate themselves by their Strife, and every one of them makes itself a several Region; and the Fiat makes all to be Flesh: Only the Air would have no Flesh; for it said, I dwell in no House; and the Fiat said, I have created thee, thou art mine, and closed it in with an Inclosure, that is, the Bladder.

(43) The perfection of the powers of the bodily vesture comes through the wearing away of impurities, and through fervent aspiration.

(14) First the King gives it to the Eyes, to see whether it be Good or Evil; and the Eyes give it to the Ears, to hear from whence it comes, whether out of a true, or out of a false Region, and whether it be a Lie or Truth; and the Ears give it to the Nose, (the Smell,) that must smell, whether that which is brought in (and stands before the King) comes out of a good or uevil Essence; and the Nose gives it to the Taste, which must try whether it be pure or impure, and therefore the Taste has the Tongue, that it may spit it out again if it be impure; but if it be a Thought to [be expressed in] a Word, then the Lips are the Door-keepers, which must keep it shut, and not let the Tongue forth, but must bring it into the Region of the Air, into the Nostrils, and not into the Heart, and stifle it, and then it is dead.

(1) IF we consider ourselves in our right Reason, and behold the Kingdom of this World, in which we stand with our Flesh and Blood, also with our Reason and Senses, then we find very well, that we have the Substance and Stirring of it in us; for we are its very proper own. Now all whatsoever we think, do, and purpose in the outward Man, that the Spirit of this World does in us Men; for the Body is nothing else but the Instrument thereof, wherewith it performs its Work; and we find, that as all other Instruments (which are generated from the Spirit of this World) decay, corrupt, and turn to Dust, so also our earthly Body, wherein the Spirit of this World works [and acts] for a While.

(1) When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power. And when he sees it pious is and just,—he suffers it to rest in spots appropriate to it. But if he find it soiled with stains of evil deeds, and fouled with vice,—he drives it from Above into the Depths, and hands it o’er to warring hurricanes and vortices of Air, of Fire, and Water.

(20) As with bodily pain and pleasure so with the bodily desires; their origin, also, must be attributed to what thus stands midway, to that Nature we described as the corporeal.

Body undetermined cannot be imagined to give rise to appetite and purpose, nor can pure soul be occupied about sweet and bitter: all this must belong to what is specifically body but chooses to be something else as well, and so has acquired a restless movement unknown to the soul and by that acquisition is forced to aim at a variety of objects, to seek, as its changing states demand, sweet or bitter, water or warmth, with none of which it could have any concern if it remained untouched by life.

In the case of pleasure and pain we showed how upon distress follows the knowledge of it, and that the soul, seeking to alienate what is causing the condition, inspires a withdrawal which the member primarily affected has itself indicated, in its own mode, by its contraction. Similarly in the case of desire: there is the knowledge in the sensation and in the next lower phase, that described as the "Nature" which carries the imprint of the soul to the body; that Nature knows the fully formed desire which is the culmination of the less formed desire in body; sensation knows the image thence imprinted upon the Nature; and from the moment of the sensation the soul, which alone is competent, acts upon it, sometimes procuring, sometimes on the contrary resisting, taking control and paying heed neither to that which originated the desire nor to that which subsequently entertained it.

But why, thus, two phases of desire; why should not the body as a determined entity be the sole desirer?

Because there are two distinct things, this Nature and the body, which, through it, becomes a living being: the Nature precedes the determined body which is its creation, made and shaped by it; it cannot originate the desires; they must belong to the living body meeting the experiences of this life and seeking in its distress to alter its state, to substitute pleasure for pain, sufficiency for want: this Nature must be like a mother reading the wishes of a suffering child, and seeking to set it right and to bring it back to herself; in her search for the remedy she attaches herself by that very concern to the sufferer's desire and makes the child's experience her own.

In sum, the living body may be said to desire of its own motion in a fore-desiring with, perhaps, purpose as well; Nature desires for, and because of, that living body; granting or withholding belongs to another again, the higher soul.

(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.

(15) And when the Taste has tried it, and if it be good for the Essences of the Soul, then it gives it to the Feeling, which must try what Quality it is of, whether hot or cold, hard or soft, thick or thin, and then the Feeling a sends it into the Heart, [presenting it] before the Flash of the Life, and before the King of the Light of Life; and the Will of the Mind pierces further into that Thing, a great Depth, and sees what is therein, [considering] how much it will receive and take in of that Thing, and when it is enough, then the Will gives it to the Spirit of the Soul, viz. to the eternal Emperor, who brings it (with his strong and austere Might) out of the Heart, in the Sound upon the Tongue under the Roof of the Mouth, and there the Spirit distinguishes according to the Senses, as the Will has discovered [or manifested] it, and the Tongue distinguishes it in the Noise.

(71) Bracus* saith: How elegantly Mundus hath described this sulphureous water! For unless solid bodies are destroyed by a nature wanting a body, until the bodies become not-bodies, and even as a most tenuous spirit, ye cannot [attain] that most tenuous and tingeing soul, which is hidden in the natural belly. And know that unless the body be withered up and so destroyed that it dies, and unless ye extract from it its soul, which is a tingeing spirit, ye are unable to tinge a body therewith.

(31) Thus the noble Life in the Tincture stands in great Danger, and has hourly to expect the [Corruption, or Destruction, Breaking, or] Dissolution; for as soon as the Blood (wherein the Spirit lives) flows out [or passes away,] the Essence [breaks, or] dissolves, and the Tincture flies away like a Glance or Shadow; and then the source [or Springing up] of the Fire is out, and the Body becomes stiff.

(1) After another manner, also, this doubt may be dissolved. For in men, indeed, who are detained in matter, bodies deprived of life produce a certain stain; because that which is not alive inserts a certain defilement in that which is living, in the same manner as the impure in that which is pure, and that which is in privation in that which is in habit; and also because that which is dead produces a certain pollution, through a physical aptitude to a worse condition, in consequence of having possessed the power of dying. But a dead body cannot produce any defilement in a dæmon who is perfectly incorporeal, and does not receive any corruption. For it is necessary that he should transcend a corruptible body, and not participate of any representation of corruption from it. And thus much in answer to the contrariety of the doubt.

(1) Since men live but for a very short period, if their life is compared with the whole of time, they will make a most beautiful journey as it were, if they pass through life with tranquillity. This however they will possess in the most eminent degree, if they accurately and scientifically know themselves, viz. if they know that they are mortal and of a fleshly nature, and that they have a body which is corruptible and can be easily injured, and which is exposed to every thing most grievous and severe, even to their latest breath. And in the first place, let us direct our attention to those things which happen to the body; and these are pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, phrensy, gout, stranguary, dysentery, lethargy, epilepsy, putrid ulcers, and ten thousand other diseases.

But the diseases which happen to the soul are much greater and more dire than these. For all the iniquitous, evil, illegal, and impious conduct in the life of man, originates from the passions of the soul. For through preternatural immoderate desires many have become subject to unrestrained impulses, and have not refrained from the most unholy pleasures, arising from being connected with daughters or even mothers. Many also have been induced to destroy their fathers, and their own offspring. But what occasion is there to be prolix in narrating externally impending evils, such as excessive rain, drought, violent heat and cold; so that frequently from the anomalous state of the air, pestilence and famine are produced, and all-various calamities, and whole cities become desolate?

Since therefore many such-like calamities are impendent, we should neither be elevated by the possession of corporeal goods, which may rapidly be consumed by the incursions of a small fever, nor with what are conceived to be prosperous external circumstances, which frequently in their own nature perish more rapidly than they accede. For all these are uncertain and unstable, and are found to have their existence in many and various mutations; and no one of them is permanent, or immutable, or stable, or indivisible. Hence well considering these things, and also being persuaded, that if what is present and is imparted to us, is able to remain for the smallest portion of time, it is as much as we ought to expect; we shall then live in tranquillity and with hilarity, generously bearing whatever may befal us.