Look, now I shall ascend to the perfect realm. I have finished everything for you in your hearing. I have told you everything for you to record and communicate secretly to your spiritual friends. This is the mystery of the unshakable race. The savior communicated this to John for him to record and safeguard. He said to him, Cursed be anyone who will trade these things for a gift, for food, drink, clothes, or anything like this. These things were communicated to John in a mystery, and at once the savior disappeared. Then John went to the other students and reported what the savior had told him. Jesus the anointed Amen

(5) ¶When the messengers of John were departed, Jesus began to speak unto the people concerning John,

(27) When the seventh seal was broken there was silence for the space of half an hour. Then came forth seven angels and to each was given a trumpet. When the seven angels sounded their trumpets--intoned the seven-lettered Name of the Logos--great catastrophes ensued. A star, which was called Wormwood, fell from heaven, thereby signifying that the secret doctrine of the ancients had been given to men who had profaned it and caused the wisdom of God to become a destructive agency. And another star--symbolizing the false light of human reason as distinguished from the divine reason of the initiate--fell from heaven and to it (materialistic reason) was given the key to the bottomless pit (Nature), which it opened, causing all manner of evil creatures to issue forth. And there came also a mighty angel who was clothed in a cloud, whose face was as the sun and his feet and legs as pillars of fire, and one foot was upon the waters and the other upon the land (the Hermetic Anthropos). This celestial being gave St. John a little book, bidding him eat it, which the seer did. The book is representative of the secret doctrine--that spiritual food which is the nourishment of the spirit. And St. John, being "in the spirit," ate his fill of the wisdom of God and the hunger of his soul was appeased.

(24) Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining light: and we were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.

(16) In the second and third chapters St. John delivers to the "seven churches which are in Asia" the injunctions received by him from the Alpha and Omega. The churches are here analogous to the rungs of a Mithraic ladder, and John, being "in the spirit," ascended through the orbits of the seven sacred planets until he reached the inner surface of the Empyrean.

One day when John the brother of James, the sons of Zebedee, went up to the temple, it happened that a Pharisee named Arimanios came up to him and said to him, Where is your teacher, whom you followed? I said to him, He has returned to the place from which he came. The Pharisee said to me, This Nazarene has deceived you badly, filled your ears with lies, closed your minds, and turned you from the traditions of your parents. When I, John, heard this, I turned away from the temple and went to a mountainous and barren place. I was distressed within, and I said, How was the savior selected? Why was he sent into the world by his father? Who is his father who sent him? To what kind of eternal realm shall we go? And what was he saying when he told us, This eternal realm to which you will go is modeled after the incorruptible realm, but he did not teach us what kind of realm that one is? At the moment I was thinking about this, look, the heavens opened, all creation under heaven lit up, and the world shook. I was afraid, and look, I saw within the light a child standing by me. As I was staring, it seemed to be an elderly person. Again it changed its appearance to be a youth. Not that there were several figures before me. Rather, there was a figure with several forms within the light. These forms appeared through each other, and the figure had three forms. The figure said to me, John, John, why are you doubting? Why are you afraid? Are you not familiar with this figure? Then do not be fainthearted. I am with you always. I am the father, I am the mother, I am the child. I am the incorruptible and the undefiled one. Now I have come to teach you what is, what was, and what is to come, that you may understand what is invisible and what is visible; and to teach you about the unshakable race of perfect humankind. So now, lift up your head that you may understand the things I shall tell you today, and that you may relate them to your spiritual friends, who are from the unshakable race of perfect humankind.

(1) Rightly, therefore, the divine apostle says, "By revelation the mystery was made known to me (as I wrote before in brief, in accordance with which, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets." For there is an instruction of the perfect, of which, writing to the Colossians, he says, "We cease not to pray for you, and beseech that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye may walk worthy of the Lord to all pleasing; being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might according to the glory of His power." And again he says, "According to the disposition of the grace of God which is given me, that ye may fulfil the word of God; the mystery which has been hid from ages and generations, which now is manifested to His saints: to whom God wished to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations." So that, on the one hand, then, are the mysteries which were hid till the time of the apostles, and were delivered by them as they received from the Lord, and, concealed in the Old Testament, were manifested to the saints. And, on the other hand, there is "the riches of the glory of the mystery in the Gentiles," which is faith and hope in Christ; which in another place he has called the "foundation." And again, as if in eagerness to divulge this knowledge, he thus writes: "Warning every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man (the whole man) perfect in Christ;" not every man simply, since no one would be unbelieving. Nor does he call every man who believes in Christ perfect; but he says all the man, as if he said the whole man, as if purified in body and soul.

(42) Now if any Body would come into the Garden, he must press in through the Sword of Death; though indeed Christ has broken the Sword, so that now we can much easier enter in with our Souls, yet there is a Sword before it still; but he that finds the Way right, him it does not cut very much, for it is blunt, and it is bent; and if the Soul goes but into the Gate into the Center, then it is presently helped by the noble Champion Christ; for he has gotten the Sword into his Hands. He is the slain Lamb of the House of Israel, in the Revelation of John, which took the Book of the first Principle, out of the Hand of the Ancient [of Days] who sat upon the Throne, with his four and twenty Elders, which [Book] had seven Seals, or seven Spirits of the Birth of God, and opened them; where the Elders fell down before him, and worshipped the Lamb that was slain, and gave Praise and Honour to him which sat upon the Throne, because the Champion of the House of Israel had overcome. The seven golden Candlesticks are his Humanity, the seven Stars are his Deity, as the divine i Birth in itself stands in a sevenfold Form, as it is explained in the Beginning of this Book, in the first four Chapters.

(1) JOHN, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? confessed, I am not the Christ. I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.

(25) ¶But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.

(17) Now if we will lift up our Minds, and seek after the Heaven wherein God dwells, we cannot say that God dwells only above the Stars, and has inclosed himself with the Firmament which is made out of the Waters, in which none can enter except it be opened (like a Window) for him; with which Thoughts Men are altogether befooled [and bewildered.] Neither can we say (as some suppose) that God the Father and the Son are only with Angels in the uppermost inclosed Heaven, and rule only here in this World by the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. All these Thoughts are void of the very Knowledge of God. For then God should be divided and circumscriptive, like the Sun that moves aloft above us, and sends its Light and Virtue to us, whereby the whole Deep becomes light and active all over.

(5) The two disciples heard John speak, and they followed Jesus. He saw them following, and saith,

(11) This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story, the holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not himself attained to see. There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme must- if he only remember- carry its image impressed upon him: he is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no outlooking desire, once this ascent is achieved; reasoning is in abeyance and all Intellection and even, to dare the word, the very self; caught away, filled with God, he has in perfect stillness attained isolation; all the being calmed, he turns neither to this side nor to that, not even inwards to himself; utterly resting he has become very rest. He belongs no longer to the order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty; he has overpassed even the choir of the virtues; he is like one who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple images behind him- though these become once more first objects of regard when he leaves the holies; for There his converse was not with image, not with trace, but with the very Truth in the view of which all the rest is but of secondary concern.

There, indeed, it was scarcely vision, unless of a mode unknown; it was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a renunciation, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose, a meditation towards adjustment. This is the only seeing of what lies within the holies: to look otherwise is to fail.

Things here are signs; they show therefore to the wiser teachers how the supreme God is known; the instructed priest reading the sign may enter the holy place and make real the vision of the inaccessible.

Even those that have never found entry must admit the existence of that invisible; they will know their source and Principle since by principle they see principle and are linked with it, by like they have contact with like and so they grasp all of the divine that lies within the scope of mind. Until the seeing comes they are still craving something, that which only the vision can give; this Term, attained only by those that have overpassed all, is the All-Transcending.

It is not in the soul's nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to utter nothing, never. When the soul begins again to mount, it comes not to something alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is not in nothingness but in itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the order of being; it is in the Supreme.

There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man outgrows Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being. The self thus lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if from that heightened self we pass still higher- image to archetype- we have won the Term of all our journeying. Fallen back again, we awaken the virtue within until we know ourselves all order once more; once more we are lightened of the burden and move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and through the Wisdom in That to the Supreme.

This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.

(12) And I, John, fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me,

(30) Therefore I seriously exhort the Reader, and would have him faithfully warned, as it were with a Preface to this great Mystery, that if he do not understand it, and yet longeth and would fain have the meaning or understanding thereof, that he would pray to God for his Holy Spirit, and that he would enlighten him with the same.

(16) John was begotten by the World through a woman, Elizabeth; and Christ was begotten by the world through a virgin, Mary. What is (the meaning of) this mystery? John was begotten by means of a womb worn with age, but Christ passed through a virgin's womb. When she had conceived, she gave birth to the Savior. Furthermore, she was found to be a virgin again. Why, then do you (pl.) err and not seek after these mysteries, which were prefigured for our sake?

(20) This, then, is the type of "the law and the prophets which were until John; " while he, though speaking more perspicuously as no longer prophesying, but pointing out as now present, Him, who was proclaimed symbolically from the beginning, nevertheless said, "I am not worthy to loose the latchet of the Lord's shoe." For he confesses that he is not worthy to baptize so great a Power; for it behooves those, who purify others, to free the soul from the body and its sins, as the foot from the thong. Perhaps also this signified the final exertion of the Saviour's power toward us - the immediate, I mean - that by His presence, concealed in the enigma of prophecy, inasmuch as he, by pointing out to sight Him that had been prophesied of, and indicating the Presence which had come, walking forth into the light, loosed the latchet of the oracles of the [old] economy, by unveiling the meaning of the symbols.

(5) "Lord, Thy mercy is in the heavens; and Thy truth reacheth to the clouds." For the explanation of the prophetic mysteries had not yet been revealed previous to the advent of the Lord.

(2) ¶There arose a question between some of John's disciples and the Jews. They came unto John, saying, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him.

(4) ¶The next day after, John stood, and two of his disciples; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.