To those who assert that creation is the work of the Soul after the failing of its wings, we answer that no such disgrace could overtake the Soul of the All. If they tell us of its falling, they must tell us also what caused the fall. And when did it take place? If from eternity, then the Soul must be essentially a fallen thing: if at some one moment, why not before that? We assert its creative act to be a proof not of decline but rather of its steadfast hold. Its decline could consist only in its forgetting the Divine: but if it forgot, how could it create? Whence does it create but from the things it knew in the Divine? If it creates from the memory of that vision, it never fell. Even supposing it to be in some dim intermediate state, it need not be supposed more likely to decline: any inclination would be towards its Prior, in an effort to the clearer vision. If any memory at all remained, what other desire could it have than to retrace the way? What could it have been planning to gain by world-creating? Glory? That would be absurd- a motive borrowed from the sculptors of our earth. Finally, if the Soul created by policy and not by sheer need of its nature, by being characteristically the creative power- how explain the making of this universe? And when will it destroy the work? If it repents of its work, what is it waiting for? If it has not yet repented, then it will never repent: it must be already accustomed to the world, must be growing more tender towards it with the passing of time. Can it be waiting for certain souls still here? Long since would these have ceased returning for such re-birth, having known in former life the evils of this sphere; long since would they have foreborne to come. Nor may we grant that this world is of unhappy origin because there are many jarring things in it. Such a judgement would rate it too high, treating it as the same with the Intelligible Realm and not merely its reflection. And yet- what reflection of that world could be conceived more beautiful than this of ours? What fire could be a nobler reflection of the fire there than the fire we know here? Or what other earth than this could have been modelled after that earth? And what globe more minutely perfect than this, or more admirably ordered in its course could have been conceived in the image of the self-centred circling of the World of Intelligibles? And for a sun figuring the Divine sphere, if it is to be more splendid than the sun visible to us, what a sun it must be.

According to this delineation or prefiguration of the soul, all things in this world are made; for the corrupted soul works or endeavoureth...

The eternal Generating is an unbeginning Birth, and it has neither Number nor End, and its Depth is bottomless, and the Band of Life incorruptible:...

Created was the matter which they have; Created was the informing influence Within these stars that round about them go. The soul of every brute and...

Thus is the Birth (and also the first Original) of all the Creatures; and it standeth yet in such a Birth in the Essence; and after such a Manner it...

The World Soul, at the Dawn of the Cosmic Day, may be said to be like a dreamer freshly awakened from a deep sleep, and striving to regain...

The Soul of Man is generated out of the Gates of the Breaking-through out of the Outward into the Inward, and is gone forth out of the Inward (in the...

Thus now herein is understood, how the divine Essence in the divine Principle has wrought in the Root of the first Principle, which is the Begetter,...

Behold, thou reasonable Soul, to thee I speak, and not to the Body, thou only apprehendest it:- When the Birth is thus continually generated, then...

It is fitting that we explain about the soul of the first human being, that it is from the spiritual Logos, while the creator thinks that it is his,...

Thus also we know, that the Soul is a Spirit, generated out of God the Father, in the Throne and Entrance out of the recomprehended [or reconceived]...

If you lift up your Thoughts and Minds, and ride upon the Chariot of the Soul, as is before mentioned, and look upon yourself, and all Creatures, and...

It likewise possesses the eternity of a similar life and energy in a less degree than dæmons and heroes; yet, through the beneficent will of the...

And now if we will speak of the Soul, and of its Substance and Essences, we must say that it is the roughest [Thing] in Man; for it is the Originality...

With respect to the powers, therefore, which remain in the heavens in the divine bodies themselves, there can be no doubt that all of them are...

But in the Fall of Adam we lost this great Power, when we left Paradise, and went into the third Principle, into the Matrix of this World, which prese...

We set down thus much here, to the End that the Region of his World may be understood. And thus we give the Reader exactly to understand and know how ...

For I am permitted to write as far as of the Originality.

Others have sought to explain the mystery by assuming that THE ALL found itself "compelled" to create, by reason of its own "internal nature"--its...

My Writings must be understood in a creaturely Manner, as the Birth of Man is, who is a Similitude of God. Although it be just so in the eternal Being...

For the Spirit that is in us, which one Man inherits from the other, that was breathed out of the Eternity into Adam, that same Spirit has seen it all...