(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.

(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.

(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.

(10) And thus yet the one must be parted from the other, viz. the Kingdom of this World, which is a Root, or Stirrer up of the Root of the Fierceness, and therefore it was necessary that God should pass with the new Body into the Separation of the Root, and of the Kingdom of this World, as into the Death of the Fierceness, and should destroy Death, and spring with its own Virtue and Power through Death, as a Flower springs out of the Earth, and so hold the inward Fierceness captive xin his own Virtue of the new Body. 1 1. And this we understand of Christ, who is truly entered in such a Manner, and has taken the strong Anger (and the Devil in it) captive, and has sprung with his holy heavenly Body through Death, and has destroyed Death, so that the eternal Life springs forth through Death; and thus Death was taken captive by the new eternal Body, and it is an eternal Imprisonment; so that an eternal Life is grown in Death, and the new Body treads upon the Head of Death, and of the Fierceness; the Property of Death stands in the Prison of the new eternal Life.

(13) After this Manner you may understand how he destroyed Death, by the Springing of the eternal Life in the Deity through Death; and you may understand how the new Body in the Love of God holds the eternal Source of the Anger captive, for the Love is the Prison [of the Anger,] for the Source of the Anger cannot enter into the Love, but continues only by itself, as it was from Eternity, and therein the Devils are imprisoned; for the Light of God strikes them down, they neither can nor dare behold that Light in Eternity; a Principle is between; for the Love springs forth in the Center of the Soul, and therein the Holy Trinity appears, [or shines.]

(12) The three Regions receive every one of them their Light, with the Springing up of the Tincture in the Blood; and each [Region] keeps its Tincture. The Region of the Stars keeps the Light of the Sun; and the first Principle [keeps] the Fire-flash; and the Essences of the holy Souls receive the most dear and precious Light of the Virgin, yet in this Body only her Rays, wherewith the fights in the Mind against the crafty Assaults of the Devil, as St. Peter witnesses. And although the dear Light stays for a While in many in the new Birth [or Regeneration,] yet it is not steady in the House of the Stars and Elements, in the outward Birth, but it dwells in its [own] Center in the Mind. The Gate of \ Speech.

(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.

(2) As it is mentioned above, so the Life in the Anguish, with the Kindling of the Light, takes its Beginning from the Glance of the Sunshine, from the Spirit of the Stars and Elements in the great Anguish, where Death and Life wrestle one with the other. For when Man departed from Paradise into another Birth (viz. into the Spirit of this World, into the Quality of the Sun, Stars, and Elements) then the paradisical [Vision or] Seeing ceased, [or was extinguished,] where Man sees from the divine Virtue, without [Need of] the Sun and Stars; where the Springing up of the Life is in the Holy Ghost, and the Light of God is the Glance of the Spirit, from whence he sees; which went out; for the Spirit of the Soul went into the Principle of this World.

(45) And thus the Body of Christ (on the Soul) was the pure Element before God, out of which the Sun of this World is generated, and the same Body included the whole World, and then the Nature of this World trembled, and the stony Rocks cleft in sunder; for the fierce wrathful Death had (in the Fiat) congealed and concreted the stony Rocks together; and now the holy Life went into the fierce wrathful Death, whereupon the Stones did cleave asunder, to show that the Life stood up again in Death, and sprung forth through Death.

(9) But because the Soul stood with its most inward Root in the Abyss of Hell, and according to the Kingdom of this World in the hard [frozen] Death, so that (if the Flesh and Blood, as also the Dominion of the Stars, should leave it) then it would continue inwardly in a Hardness, wherein there is no Source [or active Property,] and itself, in its own Property, would be but in the Fierceness of the Originality, in great Misery; therefore it was necessary, not only for God to come into the Soul, and generate it to the Light, (for there was Danger, that the Soul with its Imagination might go forth out of the Light again,) but also for God to assume a human Soul, from our Soul, and a new heavenly Body, out of the first glorious Body before the Fall, and put it on to the Soul, with the old earthly Body hanging on it, not only as a Garment, but really [united as one] in the Essences; so that it must be a Creature, that is, the whole God, with all the three Principles.

(36) But the Reader must not here understand it, as if the Word for this Incarnation at this Time did first come down, out of the highest Heaven above the Stars, hither beneath, and became Man, as the World teaches in Blindness. No; but the Word, which God spoke in Paradise to Adam and Eve, concerning the Treader upon the Serpent, (which imaged [or imprinted] itself in the Door of the Light of Life, standing in the Center of the Gate of Heaven, and waiting perceptibly in the Minds of the holy Men, even till this Time) that same Word is become Man; and that same divine Word is again entered into the Virgin of the divine Wisdom, which was given to the Soul of Adam near the Word, to be a Light, and a i Handmaid as to the Word.

(7) "When, therefore, the time of the chastisements of that soul in the judgments of the rulers of the midst shall be completed, the counterfeiting spirit leadeth the soul up out of all the regions of the rulers of the midst and bringeth it before the light of the sun according to the commandment of the First Man, Yew, and bringeth it before the judge, the Virgin of Light. And she proveth that soul and findeth that it is a sinning soul, and ceaseth her light-power into it for its standing-upright and because of the body and the community of sense,--the type of which I will tell you at the expansion of the universe. And the Virgin of Light sealeth that soul and handeth it over to one of her receivers and will have it cast into a body which is suitable to the sins which it hath committed. "And amēn, I say unto you: They will not discharge that soul from the changes of the body until it hath yielded its last circuit according to its merit. Of all these then will I tell you their type and the type of the bodies into which it will be cast according to the sins of each soul. All this will I tell you when I shall have told you the expansion of the universe."

(44) And now there was nothing more on the Soul, but only that which itself is (in its own eternal Root) in the Father. And here we should have remained in the Anger, in the dark Hell, but the bright Father in his Glory took the Soul to him, into the Trinity. Now the Soul was clothed with the Love in the Word, which made the angry Father (in the innermost Source of the Soul) pleasant, and reconcilable, and so in this Moment (in the Essences of the Soul) the lost Paradise sprung up again; whereupon the Earth trembled, [viz. the Out-Birth out of the Element,] and the Sun, the King of the Life of the third Principle, lost its Light; for there rose up another Sun in Death; understand, in the Anger of the Father the Love was shining like a bright Morning-Star.

(2) "And the word took me to himself, from the spirit, in the first cloud of the hymen of nature. And I put on this of which the majesty and the unconceived spirit made me worthy. And the threefold unity of my garment appeared in the cloud, by the will of the majesty, in a single form. And my likeness was covered with the light of my garment. And the cloud was disturbed, and it was not able to tolerate my likeness. It shed the first power, which it had taken from the spirit—that which shone on him from the beginning, before I appeared in the word to the spirit. The cloud would not have been able to tolerate both of them. And the light that came forth from the cloud passed through silence until it came into the middle region. And by the will of the majesty, the light mixed with him, that is, the spirit that exists in silence, which had been separated from the spirit of light. It was separated from the light by the cloud of silence. The cloud was disturbed. It was he who gave rest to the flame of fire. He humbled the dark womb that she might not reveal other seed from the darkness. He kept them back in the middle region of nature in their position, which was in the cloud. They were troubled because they did not know where they were. For still they do not possess the universal understanding of the spirit.

(4) "He then, who shall receive the one and only word of that mystery, which I have told you, if he cometh forth out of the body of the matters of the rulers, and if the retributive receivers come and free him from the body of matter of the rulers,--that is those [receivers] who free from the body all out-going souls,--when, therefore, the retributive receivers free the soul which hath received this one and only mystery of the Ineffable, which I have just told you, then will it straightway, if it be set free from the body of matter, become a great light-stream in the midst of those receivers, and the receivers will be exceedingly afraid of the light of that soul, and the receivers will be made powerless and fall down and desist altogether for fear of the great light which they have seen. "And the soul which receiveth the mystery of the Ineffable, will soar into the height, being a great light-stream, and the receivers will not be able to seize it and will not know how the way is fashioned upon which it will go. For it becometh a great light-stream and soareth into the height, and no power is able to hold it down at all, nor will they be able to come nigh it at all. "But it will pass through all the regions of the rulers and all the regions of the emanations of the Light, and it will not give answers in any region, nor giveth it any apologies, nor giveth it any tokens; neither will any power of the rulers nor any power of the emanations of the Light be able to come nigh that soul. But all the regions of the rulers and all the regions of the emanations of the Light,--every one singeth unto it praises in their regions, in fear of the light of the stream which envelopeth that soul, until it passeth through them all, and goeth to the region of the inheritance of the mystery which it hath received,--that is to the mystery of the One and Only, the Ineffable,--and until it becometh one with its Limbs. Amēn, I say unto you: It will be in all the regions in the time a man shooteth an arrow.

(90) Now the heavenly [Body] must overcome the earthly, that the earthly may be as it were dead and impotent, and that the heavenly may xkeep the Dominion. And now as Adam stood in the Angle (between Love and Wrath) when he was tempted, there stood both Kingdoms against him, and pulled at him; and as God the Father (direct forward in his reconciled Will) is the Kingdom of Heaven, and the clear Deity; and backward (in the eternal Root of Nature) there is his Wrath and Anger, and yet both of them are in the eternal Father; and as in the eternal Nature of the Wrath, the Light or the Kingdom of Heaven is not known, and also in the eternal Light, the Kingdom of Fierceness and Wrath is not known, because each Kingdom is in itself, so is the Soul of Man also; it has Kingdoms in it, in which it a trades, in that it stands. If it trades in the Kingdom of Heaven, then the Kingdom of Hell is dead in it; not that it is ceased, but the Kingdom of Heaven is predominant, and the Kingdom of Fierceness is changed into Joy; so also, if it trades in the Kingdom of Wrath, then that is predominant, and the Kingdom of Heaven is as it were dead; although indeed (in itself it does not vanish) yet the Soul is not in it.

(17) Therefore must Christ in his Temptation overcome the Kingdom of the Anger, and this external Birth; and by his Entrance into Death, he broke the Head of the Serpent, viz. the Devil, and all Devils, and took them captive. Thou must understand it thus; That the inward Element (which comprises the whole Body of this World) became Christ's eternal Body; for the whole Deity, in the Word and the Heart of God, entered thereinto, and espoused itself to remain therein to all Eternity; and this same Deity became a Creature, even such a Creature as can be everywhere, as the Deity itself; and this same Creature has captivated all Devils in the Kingdom of this World. And all Men who with their Mind draw near to this Christ, and desire him in right Earnest, they are drawn by the Spirit of the Father, (viz. of the clear and pure Deity) into the Humanity of Christ, that is, into the pure Element before the Trinity. And if they continue steadfast, and do not again depart from God into the Desire of the Devil, then the precious Pearl, viz. the Light of God, is sown in their Soul, which [Light] attracts to itself the precious Body of Jesus Christ, with Paradise, and the Kingdom of Heaven. And thus the right new man (Christus) grows on the Soul in the heavenly Virgin of God's Wisdom, in the Holy Ternary, in the Kingdom of Heaven. And thus such a Man is according to the new Man in Heaven in the Body of Jesus Christ, and as to the old earthly Man, which hangs unto the holy [Man,] he is in this World in the House of Sin, and the Deity actuates the new Humanity, and the Spirit of this World the old, until he puts him off in Death; for he is a Man in Heaven, born in the Mercy of God in the Body of Jesus Christ.

(5) "But if that man hath received no mysteries and is not sharing in the words of truth,--if he who accomplisheth that mystery, speaketh that mystery over the head of a man who cometh forth out of the body and who hath received no mysteries of the Light, and shareth not in the words of truth,--amēn, I say unto you: That man, if he cometh forth out of the body, will be judged in no region of the rulers, nor can he be chastized in any region at all, nor will the fire touch him, because of the great mystery of the Ineffable which is with him. "And they will hasten quickly and hand him over one to another in turn and lead him from region to region and from order to order, until they bring him before the Virgin of Light, while all the regions are in fear of the mystery and the sign of the kingdom of the Ineffable which is with him. "And if they bring him before the Virgin of Light, then the Virgin of Light will see the sign of the mystery of the kingdom of the Ineffable which is with him; the Virgin of Light marvelleth and proveth him, but suffereth them not to bring him to the Light, until he accomplisheth the total citizenship of the light of that mystery, that is the purities of the renunciation of the world and also of the total matter therein. "The Virgin of Light sealeth him with a higher seal, which is this [ . . .? ], and letteth him in that month in which he hath come out of the body of matter, light down into a body which will be righteous and find the godhead in truth and the higher mysteries, so that he may inherit them and inherit the Light eternal, which is the gift of the second mystery of the First Mystery of the Ineffable.

(26) And as the Prophets have written of it, so the new Man, (which is born to us of God) is the Son of the Virgin, not of earthly Flesh and Blood, also not of the Seed of Man, but conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of a pure divine chaste Virgin, and (in this World) revealed [or manifested] in our Flesh and Blood, and is entered with his holy Body into Death, and has separated the earthly [Body,] together with the Might of the Anger, from the holy Element, and has restored the Soul again, and has opened the Gate to the Light of God again, so that the averted Soul can (with the Essences of the Father in the holy Will) reach the Light of God again.

(2) Invoking then Jesus, the Paternal Light, the Real, the True, "which lighteth every man coming into the world," "through Whom we have access to the Father," Source of Light, let us aspire, as far as is attainable, to the illuminations handed down by our fathers in the most sacred Oracles, and let us gaze, as we may, upon the Hierarchies of the Heavenly Minds manifested by them symbolically for our instruction. And when we have received, with immaterial and unflinching mental eyes, the gift of Light, primal and super-primal, of the supremely Divine Father, which manifests to us the most blessed Hierarchies of the Angels in types and symbols, let us then, from it, be elevated to its simple splendour. For it never loses its own unique inwardness, but multiplied and going forth, as becomes its goodness, for an elevating and unifying blending of the objects of its care, remains firmly and solitarily centred within itself in its unmoved sameness; and raises, according to their capacity, those who lawfully aspire to it, and makes them one, after the example of its own unifying Oneness. For it is not possible that the supremely Divine Ray should otherwise illuminate us, except so far as it is enveloped, for the purpose of instruction, in variegated sacred veils, and arranged naturally and appropriately, for such as we are, by paternal forethought.