(9) For it is written, you must be born anew through the Water and the Spirit, or else you shall not see the Kingdom of God. This Birth must be done within you: The Heart, or the Son of God must arise in the Birth of your Life; and then the Saviour Christ is your faithful Shepherd, and you are in Him, and He in you, and all that He and his Father have is yours, and none shall pluck you out of his Hands; and as the Son (viz. the Heart of the Father) is one [with the Father,] so also the new Man is one in the Father and the Son, one Virtue or Power, one Light, one Life, one eternal Paradise, one eternal heavenly Birth, one Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and thou his Child.

(9) This initiation, then, of the holy birth in God, as in symbols, has nothing unbecoming or irreverent, nor anything of the sensible images, but (contains) enigmas of a contemplation worthy of God, likened to physical and human images. For how should it appear misleading? Even when the very divine meaning of the things done is passed over in silence, the divine Instruction might convince, religiously pursuing as it does the good life of the candidate, enjoining upon him the purification from every kind of evil, through a virtuous and Divine life, by the physical cleansing through the agency of water in a bodily form. This symbolic teaching then of the things done, even if it had nothing more divine, would not be without religious value, as I think, introducing a discipline of a well-regulated life, and. suggesting mysteriously, through the total bodily purification by water, the complete purification from the evil life.

(14) But if any would attain Salvation, he must be born again, through the Water in the Center of the Birth of Life, which springs up in the Center of the Light of God; for which End God the Father has by his Son commanded Baptism, that so we might have a Law, and a remarkable Sign of Remembrance, signifying how a Child void of Understanding receives an outward Sign, and the inward Man the Power and the new Birth in the Center of the Birth of Life; and that there arises the Confirmation, which the Light of God brought into Adam, when the Light of God the Father, in the Center of the fifth Form of the Birth of the Life of Adam, broke forth or sprung up. Thus it is both in the Baptism of an Infant or Child, and also in the repenting Convert, that in Christ returns again to the Father.

(75) xThey make no Intercession for thee, neither does it avail any Thing; for thou must be regenerated anew, through earnest Sorrow and Repentance; thou must light down from off thy Beast, and must go on Foot with Christ over the Brook Kedron, into his Sufferings and Death; and through him thou must rise again out of his Grave; thou thyself must come to this. Another cannot save thee; thou must enter into the Birth of Jesus Christ, and with him be conceived by the Holy Ghost; thy Soul must in the Word, and in the new Man Christ, in the [one eternal] Element, be born [or brought forth] out of the four Elements into the Water of the Element of eternal Life; thy antichristian feigned Fables help thee not; for it is said, Such Belief as People have, such a God also they have to bless them.

(15) One of the most profound doctrines of the pagan philosophers concerned the Universal Savior-God who lifted the souls of regenerated men to heaven through His own nature. This concept was unquestionably the inspiration for the words attributed to Jesus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me." In an effort to make a single person out of Jesus and His Christos, Christian writers have patched together a doctrine which must be resolved back into its original constituents if the true meaning of Christianity is to be rediscovered. In the Gospel narratives the Christos represents the perfect man who, having passed through the various stages of the "World Mystery" symbolized by the thirty-three years, ascends to the heaven sphere where he is reunited with his Eternal Father. The story of Jesus as now preserved is--like the Masonic story of Hiram Abiff--part of a secret initiatory ritualism belonging to the early Christian and pagan Mysteries.

(15) And consider attentively, I pray, with what appropriateness the holy symbols are presented. For since death is with us not an annihilation of being, as others surmise, but the separating of things united, leading to that which is invisible to us, the soul indeed becoming invisible through deprivation of the body, and the body, through being buried in earth in consequence of one of its bodily changes, becoming invisible to human ken, appropriately, the whole covering by water would be taken as an image of death, and the invisible tomb. The symbolical teaching, then, reveals in mystery that the man baptized according to religious rites, imitates, so far as Divine imitation is attainable to men, by the three immersions in the water, the supremely Divine death of the Life-giving Jesus, Who spent three days and three nights in the tomb, in Whom, according to the mystical and secret teaching of the sacred text, the Prince of the world found nothing.

(28) Christ begun the Use of the Baptism by John, who was his Fore-runner, and John was born into this World before Christ, which has its Signification, therefore open thy Eyes. As the Water is in the Originality, and a Cause and Beginning of the Life, and [then] in the Water (by the Tincture) the Sulphur is first generated, wherein the Life becomes stirring, and the a Tincture generates again the Sulphur and the Water, wherein afterwards the Blood in the Tincture comes to be; thus now, as the Beginning of the Life is, so must also the Order in the Regeneration be, that the poor Soul first receives the Water of eternal Life, and be baptized therein, and then God gives it the Grain of Mustard-Seed of the Pearl, that so, if it receive the same, it may become a new Fruit in God.

(45) And that you may rightly and properly understand us; we [mean or] understand here no strange Christ, who is not our Brother; as himself said at his Resurrection, Go to my Brethren, and your Brethren, and tell them, I go to my God and to your God. As indeed the Body (which we here carry about us) is not the Image of God, which God created; for the Kingdom of this World puts its Image upon us, when Adam consented to yield to it; and we (if we be regenerated) are not at Home in this World with our new Man; as Christ said to his Disciples, / have called you out of this World, that you shall be where I am; and Saint Paul says, Our Conversation (as to the new Man) is in Heaven. Thus we understand also, that our Immanuel, [who is] the most holy of all, with his true Image of God (wherein also our true Image of God does consist) is not of this World; but as the old mortal Man (from the Kingdom of this World) hangs to us, so our mortal Man also hung to the Image of God in Christ, which he drew from his Mother Mary, as the pure Element [draws] the Kingdom of this World [to it.]

(44) But in the new Man (which we attract onto our Souls in the Bosom of the Virgin) we shall spring and flourish again; and therein is no Necessity nor Death, for the Kingdom of this World passes away. Therefore he that has not this Image in the new Birth, shall, in the Restoration of the Spirit of the eternal Nature, have the Image of what his Heart and Confidence has been set upon here [put upon him;] for every Kingdom images [or figures] its Creatures, according to the Essences which were grown here in their Will.

(47) Therefore it can only be done here in this Life (while thy Soul sticks in the Will of the Mind) so that thou breakest open the Gate of the Deep, and pressest in to God through a New Birth; for here thou hast the highly worthy noble Virgin of the divine Love for thy Assistance, who leads thee in through the Gate of the noble Bridegroom, who stands in the Center in the parting Mark, between the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom of Hell, and generates thee in the Water and Life of his Blood and Death, and therein drowns and washes away thy false [or evil] Works, so that they follow thee not [in such a Source and Property,] that thy Soul be not infected therein, but according to the first Image in Man before the Fall, as a new, chaste, and pure noble Virgin's Image, without any Knowledge of thy untowardness [or Vices,] which thou hadst here.

(14) In this sense the New Birth of man is the focus towards which all creation strives, because man is the image of God after the likeness of which the world is created. All time strives towards eternity or the timeless Now, out of which it issued at creation. The merely temporal life in itself is a negation of real being, because it depends on itself and not on the deepest foundation of life; therefore also natural love is cramped finite and defective.

It must through grace be lifted to the highest sphere of existence, and attain to freedom outside the narrow confines of the natural. Thereby love becomes real love, because only that is real which is comprehended and loved in its essence. Only by grace man comes from the temporal and transitory to be one with God. This lifting of manifoldness to unity is the supreme aim of ethics; by thus the divine birth is completed on the side of man.

(14) It is by no means improbable that Jesus Himself originally propounded as allegories the cosmic activities which were later con fused with His own life. That the Χριστός, Christos, represents the solar power reverenced by every nation of antiquity cannot be controverted. If Jesus revealed the nature and purpose of this solar power under the name and personality of Christos, thereby giving to this abstract power the attributes of a god-man, He but followed a precedent set by all previous World-Teachers. This god-man, thus endowed with all the qualities of Deity, signifies the latent divinity in every man. Mortal man achieves deification only through at-one-ment with this divine Self. Union with the immortal Self constitutes immortality, and he who finds his true Self is therefore "saved." This Christos, or divine man in man, is man's real hope of salvation--the living Mediator between abstract Deity and mortal humankind. As Atys, Adonis, Bacchus, and Orpheus in all likelihood were originally illumined men who later were confused with the symbolic personages whom they created as personifications of this divine power, so Jesus has been confused with the Christos, or god-man, whose wonders He preached. Since the Christos was the god-man imprisoned in every creature, it was the first duty of the initiate to liberate, or "resurrect, " this Eternal One within himself. He who attained reunion with his Christos was consequently termed a Christian, or Christened, man.

(48) Thou will ask, What is the New Regeneration? Or how is that done in Man? Hear and see, stop not thy Mind, let not thy mind be filled by the Spirit of this World, with its Might and Pomp. Take thy Mind, and break through [the Spirit of this World] entirely, incline thy Mind into the kind Love of God; make thy Purpose earnest and strong, to break through the Pleasure of this World with thy Mind, and not to regard it; consider that thou art not at Home in this World, but that thou art a strange Guest, captivated in a close Prison, cry and call to him, who has the Key of the Prison; yield thyself up to him, in Obedience, Righteousness, Modesty, Chastity, and Truth. And seek not so eagerly after the Kingdom of this World, it will stick close enough to thee without that; and then the chaste Virgin will meet thee in thy Mind highly and deeply, and will lead thee to thy Bridegroom, who has the Key to the Gate of the Deep; thou must stand before him, who will give thee to eat of the heavenly Manna, which will refresh thee, and thou will be strong, and struggle with the Gate of the Deep, and thou wilt break through as the i Day -break; and though thou liest captive here in the Night, yet the Rays of the Break of Day will appear to thee in the Paradise, in which Place thy chaste Virgin stands, waiting for thee with the Joy of the Angels, who will very kindly receive thee in thy new-born Mind and Spirit.

(37) Now says Reason, How is the Baptism then? I perceive nothing but Water, and Words. I answer; Hearken beloved Reason, thy outward Body is in this World only, and therefore outward Water is requisite. But as the hidden Man Christ, with his pure Element, holds the Out-Birth of this World (viz. the four Elements, wherein our Body consists) and as all is his, so he holds also the outward Water, and baptizes with the inward Water of his Element, with the Water of eternal Life, [coming] out of his Body. For the Holy Ghost in the Covenant baptizes with the inward Water, and the Minister baptizes with the outward; the outward [Man] receives the earthly elementary Water, and the Soul [receives] the Water of the Washing in the Regeneration.

(16) Next, they throw garments, white as light, over the man initiated. For by his manly and Godlike insensibility to contrary passions, and by his persistent inclination towards the One, the unadorned is adorned, and the shapeless takes shape, being made brilliant by his luminous life. But the perfecting unction of the Muron makes the man initiated of good odour, for the holy perfecting of the Divine birth unites those who have been perfected to the supremely Divine Spirit. Now the overshadowing which makes intelligibly of a good savour, and perfect, as being most unutterable, I leave to the mental consciousness of those who are deemed worthy of the sacred and deifying participation of the Holy Spirit within their mind. At the conclusion of all, the Hierarch calls the man initiated to the most Holy Eucharist, and imparts to him the communion of the perfecting mysteries.

(13) Yet it is not possible to hold, conjointly, qualities thoroughly opposed, nor that a man who has had a certain fellowship with the One should have divided lives, if he clings to the firm participation in the One; but he must be resistless and resolute, as regards all separations from the uniform. This it is which the teaching of the symbols reverently and enigmatically intimates, by stripping the proselyte, as it were, of his former life, and discarding to the very utmost the habits within that life, makes him stand naked and barefoot, looking away towards the west, whilst he spurns, by the aversion of his hands, the participations in the gloomy baseness, and breathes out, as it were, the habit of dissimilarity which he had acquired, and professes the entire renunciation of everything contrary to the Divine likeness. When the man has thus become invincible and separate from evil, it turns him towards the east, declaring clearly that his position and recovery will be purely in the Divine Light, in the complete separation from baseness; and receiving his sacred promises of entire consort with the One, since he has become uniform through love of the truth. Yet it is pretty evident, as I think, to those versed in Hierarchical matters, that things intellectual acquire the unchangeableness of the Godlike habit, by continuous and persistent struggles towards one, and by the entire destruction and annihilation of things contrary. For it is necessary that a man should not only depart from every kind of baseness, but he must be also bravely obdurate and ever fearless against the baneful submission to it. Nor must he, at any time, become remiss in his sacred love of the truth, but with all his power persistently and perpetually be elevated towards it, always religiously pursuing his upward course, to the more perfect mysteries of the Godhead.

(1) Here then, too, O excellent son, after the images, I come in due order and reverence to the Godlike reality of the archetypes, saying here to those yet being initiated, for the harmonious guidance of their souls, that the varied and sacred composition of the symbols is not without spiritual contemplation for them, as merely presented superficially. For the most sacred chants and readings of the Oracles teach them a discipline of a virtuous life, and previous to this, the, complete purification from destructive evil; and the most Divine, and common, and peaceful distribution of one and the same, both Bread and Cup, enjoins upon them a godly fellowship in character, as having a fellowship in food, and recalls to their memory the most Divine Supper, and arch-symbol of the rites performed, agreeably with which the Founder of the symbols Himself excludes, most justly, him who had supped with Him on the holy things, not piously and in a manner suitable to his character; teaching at once, clearly and Divinely, that the approach to Divine mysteries with a sincere mind confers, on those who draw nigh, the participation in a gift according to their own character.