(9) The third Day God, by the Fiat, divided the Waters upon the Earth, and created them for several Places, that there might be a Dwelling upon the Earth, and so the Earth became dry. Now when this was done, then God did seek the Creature, and the Eternal Father said, (that is, he wrought through the Son, who is his Heart and Glance,) [or Luster,] in the Fiat, in the Earth; and there budded the Life through Death, and Grass, Herbs, and all Manner of Trees and Plants sprung up, every one according to the eternal Source, as it had been before. Thus every Essence became visible, and God manifested his manifold Virtue with the manifold Herbs, Plants, and Trees, so that every one that does but look upon them, may see the eternal Power, Virtue, and Wisdom of God therein; if he be born of God, he may know in every Spire of Grass, his Creator in whom he lives. Thus in this Time sprung up all that grew [or was] in the Earth. the Man Christ's remaining in Death till the third Day, and his bringing of Life out of the Earth. the Author's or no.

(5) [Thereon] out of the Light [...] a Holy Word (Logos) descended on that Nature. And upwards to the height from the Moist Nature leaped forth pure Fire; light was it, swift and active too. The Air, too, being light, followed after the Fire; from out of the Earth-and-Water rising up to Fire so that it seemed to hang therefrom. But Earth-and-Water stayed so mingled with each other, that Earth from Water no one could discern. Yet were they moved to hear by reason of the Spirit-Word (Logos) pervading them.

(12) For the Spring of the great Anguish, which was in the Beginning before the Light, in the [tart] Harshness, from which the bitter Sting or Prickle is generated, that is now in the sweet Fountain of the Love in the Light changed from the Water- Spirit, and from Bitterness or Stinging is now become the Fountain or Spring of the Joy in the Light. Thus now henceforth the Fire-flash is the Father of the Light, and the Light shines in him, and is now the only Cause of the moving Birth, and of the Birth of the Love. That which in the Beginning was the raking Source, is now S U L, or the Oil of the lovely pleasant Fountain, which presses through all the Fountains, so that from hence the Light is kindled.

(23) Therefore, my beloved Soul, be lively, and see what thy noble Bridegroom has left thee in his Testaments for a Legacy; as namely, in the Baptism, the Water of his Covenant, flowing from his holy original Body. Whereas we in this World, viz. in the external Birth of his Body, do acknowledge four Things, namely, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, wherein our earthly Body consists; so likewise in the heavenly Body there are four such Things. The Fire is the Enkindling of the divine Desire. The Water is that which the Fire desires, whence it becomes meek, and a Light. The Air is the joyful Spirit which blows up the Fire, and makes in the Water the Motion. And the Earth is the true Essence which is born in the three Elements, and is rightly called Ternarius Sanctus [the Sacred Ternary,] in which the Tincture is brought forth in the Light of the Meekness; and therein also is born the holy Blood out of the Water, being an Oil of the Water, in which the Light shines, and the Spirit of Life consists.

(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.

(19) You must also mark the Form of the Water-Spirit; when that generates its like, so that it is predominant in its Regeneration or second Birth, and that a Center is awakened in it, (which itself in its own Essence does not awaken, but the other Fountain- Spirits do it therein,) it [the Water-Spirit] is still and quiet as a meek Mother, and suffers the other to sow their Seed into it, and to awaken the Center in it, so that the Fire rises up, from whence the Life is moved. In this [Form] the fire is not a hot burning [scorching] Fire, but cool, mild, soft and sweet; and the Bitterness is no Bitterness, but cool, mild, budding, and flowing forth, from whence the Forming [or Figuring and beauteous Shape] in the heavenly Glory proceeds, and is a most beautiful Substance; for the Sound also in this Birth flows forth most pleasantly and harmoniously, all as it were palpably or feelingly, or in a Similitude, as a Word that comes to be an Essence, or a comprehensible Substance. For in this Regeneration that is brought to pass in the Water-Spirit, (that is, in the true Mother of the Regeneration of all the Fountain-Spirits,) all is as it were comprehensible or substantial; although no Comprehensibility must be understood here, but Spirit.

(6) So I became before that latest fire, While it was said, "Why dost thou daze thyself To see a thing which here hath no existence? Earth in the earth my body is, and shall be With all the others there, until our number With the eternal proposition tallies. With the two garments in the blessed cloister Are the two lights alone that have ascended: And this shalt thou take back into your world." And at this utterance the flaming circle Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling Of sound that by the trinal breath was made, As to escape from danger or fatigue The oars that erst were in the water beaten Are all suspended at a whistle's sound. Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed, When I turned round to look on Beatrice, That her I could not see, although I was Close at her side and in the Happy World!

(89) Then the water began to run down into these, till the earth became visible; but that vessel settled on the earth, and the darkness retired and light appeared.

(2) And on the third day a He commanded the waters to pass from off the face of the whole earth into one place, and the dry land to appear.

(20) And if you open the Eyes of your Mind, you will see that Fire is in Water, as may be seen in a Storm of Lightening, and yet it is no durable Fire, though it be true Fire, which sets Houses on Fire, and burns them. So also you may see that there goes forth from it a mighty forcible Air, and that they are in one another; and besides, you see that Water is generated in the Storm.

(1) In the beginning nothing whatsoever was here. This [world] was covered over with death, with hunger — for hunger is death. Then he made up his mind (manas): ' Would that I had a self!' So he went on (acarat) praising (arcau). From him, while he was praising, water was produced. 'Verily, while I was praising, I had pleasure (ka) \ ' thought he, This, indeed, is the tfTv&tf-nature of what pertains to brightness (arkya). Verily, there is pleasure for him who knows thus that ar/ca-naturc of what pertains to brightness. 2* The water, verily, was brightness. That which was the froth of the water became solidified. That became the earth. On it he [i.e. Death] tortured himself ( Vsram}. When he had tortured himself and practised austerity, his heat (tejas) and essence (rasa) turned into fire.

(5) "Nature, which had been disturbed, immediately arose from the idle waters. For her ascent was shameful. And nature took to herself the power of fire. She became strong because of the light of the spirit that was in nature. Her likeness appeared in the water in the form of a frightful beast with many faces, which is crooked below. A light went down to chaos filled with mist and dust, in order to harm nature. And the light of astonishment in the middle region came to it after he cast off the burden of the darkness. He rejoiced when the spirit arose. For he looked from the clouds down at the dark waters upon the light that was in the depths of nature.

(44) And when the Light of the Sun appeared in the fierce [Sourness or] Harshness, then the Harshness became thin and a sweet, even Water, and the Fierceness in the Fire-flash was extinguished by the Water, so that the Anger stood still, yet the Will could not rest, but went forth in the Mother, out of the Water, and moved itself, which is the Air: And that which the fierce Sourness had attracted to it, that was thrust out of the Element, in the Water, as you see that the Earth swims in the Water.

(6) I come from the Lake of Flame, from the Lake of Fire, and from the Field of Flame, and I live

(1) Verily, it carried Speech over as the first. When that was freed from death, it became fire. This fire, when it has crossed beyond death, shines forth.

(20) And so it [the Sun] makes a Triumphing, or Rising [to be] in the Matrix of the Water, always like a Seething; for the Stars cast their Virtue [or Influence] in the Matrix of the Water, as being therein; in like Manner also now the Matrix of the Root or Mother, Water is continually seething and rising, from whence comes the Regimen [or Dominion] of the Sun and Stars, and also of the Elements, rules in all Creatures, and it is a Blossom or Bud from them, and without their Power, there would be in this World, in the third Principle, no Life, nor Mobility, in any Manner of Thing, nothing excepted.

(22) Then out of the imprisoned Light a mysterious and Holy Word came forth and took its stand upon the smoking waters. This Word--the Voice of the Light--rose out of the darkness as a great pillar, and the fire and the air followed after it, but the earth and the water remained unmoved below. Thus the waters of Light were divided from the waters of darkness, and from the waters of Light were formed the worlds above and from the waters of darkness were formed the worlds below. The earth and the water next mingled, becoming inseparable, and the Spiritual Word which is called Reason moved upon their surface, causing endless turmoil.

(21) And now when the Body of the Soul, in the fourth Form, was come to be a Mass out of the Water, with a Mixture of the other Forms, then stuck all Essences, out of the fourth Form, upon the Soul, and it was captivated with this Body; and it had continued in an eternal Prison, if the eternal Word had not instantly given itself into the Center of the fifth Form, as was manifested in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

(4) That water extinguishes fire and fire consumes other things should not astonish us. The thing destroyed derived its being from outside itself: this is no case of a self-originating substance being annihilated by an external; it rose on the ruin of something else, and thus in its own ruin it suffers nothing strange; and for every fire quenched, another is kindled.

In the immaterial heaven every member is unchangeably itself for ever; in the heavens of our universe, while the whole has life eternally and so too all the nobler and lordlier components, the Souls pass from body to body entering into varied forms- and, when it may, a Soul will rise outside of the realm of birth and dwell with the one Soul of all. For the embodied lives by virtue of a Form or Idea: individual or partial things exist by virtue of Universals; from these priors they derive their life and maintenance, for life here is a thing of change; only in that prior realm is it unmoving. From that unchangingness, change had to emerge, and from that self-cloistered Life its derivative, this which breathes and stirs, the respiration of the still life of the divine.

The conflict and destruction that reign among living beings are inevitable, since things here are derived, brought into existence because the Divine Reason which contains all of them in the upper Heavens- how could they come here unless they were There?- must outflow over the whole extent of Matter.

Similarly, the very wronging of man by man may be derived from an effort towards the Good; foiled, in their weakness, of their true desire, they turn against each other: still, when they do wrong, they pay the penalty- that of having hurt their Souls by their evil conduct and of degradation to a lower place- for nothing can ever escape what stands decreed in the law of the Universe.

This is not to accept the idea, sometimes urged, that order is an outcome of disorder and law of lawlessness, as if evil were a necessary preliminary to their existence or their manifestation: on the contrary order is the original and enters this sphere as imposed from without: it is because order, law and reason exist that there can be disorder; breach of law and unreason exist because Reason exists- not that these better things are directly the causes of the bad but simply that what ought to absorb the Best is prevented by its own nature, or by some accident, or by foreign interference. An entity which must look outside itself for a law, may be foiled of its purpose by either an internal or an external cause; there will be some flaw in its own nature, or it will be hurt by some alien influence, for often harm follows, unintended, upon the action of others in the pursuit of quite unrelated aims. Such living beings, on the other hand, as have freedom of motion under their own will sometimes take the right turn, sometimes the wrong.

Why the wrong course is followed is scarcely worth enquiring: a slight deviation at the beginning develops with every advance into a continuously wider and graver error- especially since there is the attached body with its inevitable concomitant of desire- and the first step, the hasty movement not previously considered and not immediately corrected, ends by establishing a set habit where there was at first only a fall.

Punishment naturally follows: there is no injustice in a man suffering what belongs to the condition in which he is; nor can we ask to be happy when our actions have not earned us happiness; the good, only, are happy; divine beings are happy only because they are good.

(19) Now the Cross-Birth is the Middlemost in the Essences, yet before the Fire; it stands in the anxious Death in the Fierceness of the Hell, as you may read before; for from the fierce Flash in the Brimstone- spirit, the Fire comes forth, and in the Flash the Light, and the Fierceness itself makes the Brimstone- spirit and out of that (in the Light) comes Water, as is before mentioned. Now then the Soul of Man is discovered in the Flash, as a Spirit, and held by the Fiat, and so is created or generated, and was brought in itself into the fifth Form of the Birth, as into the Love, where then it was an Angel in the Light of God.