(35) For the body is the incorporated or compacted spirit of nature, and encompasseth or encloseth the other six spirits; these generate themselves in the body, just as it is in the Deity.

(6) It is exalted, the soul of Rā in the Amenta, his body is blessed there; the powers praise him in the bounds of the Tuat, Teb Temt who rests in his covering

(29) In these six spirits now stands the spirit of life, and the will or reason and thoughts of all the creatures; and all arts, inventions, formings and imagings of all that which stands in the spirit in the incomprehensibility.

(12) I am Rā, who proceedeth from Nu, and my soul is divine. I am he who produceth food, but I execrate what is wrong

(21) O ye gods, O ye Glorified who precede Rā, and who escort his soul, tow me as you tow him, in the same way as you conduct Rā and tow those in the sky. I am the lofty power in the Amenta

(13) Since the superior (or spiritual) center is in the midst of the other two, its analogue in the physical body is the heart--the most spiritual and mysterious organ in the human body. The second center (or the link between the superior and inferior worlds) is elevated to the position of greatest physical dignity--the brain. The third (or lower) center is relegated to the position of least physical dignity but greatest physical importance--the generative system. Thus the heart is symbolically the source of life; the brain the link by which, through rational intelligence, life and form are united; and the generative system--or infernal creator--the source of that power by which physical organisms are produced. The ideals and aspirations of the individual depend largely upon which of these three centers of power predominates in scope and activity of expression. In the materialist the lower center is the strongest, in the intellectualist the higher center; but in the initiate the middle center--by bathing the two extremes in a flood of spiritual effulgence--controls wholesomely both the mind and the body.

(4) And there is no difference here, but only such as is between the body and soul in man; and so the body signifieth or resembleth the seven qualifying spirits of the Father; and the soul signifieth or resembleth the only begotten Son of God the Father. ["The spirit of the soul signifieth or representeth the heart of God; and the soul the eye of God in the first Principle; as is declared in " our third book, Concerning the Threefold Life of Man."]

(2) But as to Sense and all things similar, I will set forth the whole discourse when [I explain] concerning Spirit. For man is the sole animal that is twofold. One part of him is simple: the [man] “essential,” as say the Greeks, but which we call the “form of the Divine Similitude.” He also is fourfold: that which the Greeks call “hylic,” [but] which we call “cosmic”; of which is made the corporal part, in which is vestured what we just have said is the divine in man, —in which the godhead of the Mind alone, together with its kin, that is the Pure Mind’s senses, findeth home and rest, its self with its own self, as though shut in the body’s walls.

(9) I am arrayed and equipped with thy Words of Power, O Rā; with that which is above and with that which is below me

(29) The Mind of the Eternal Father said into Three, governing all things by Mind.

(83) For if the government of the spirits were the same in one man as in another, then we should all have one will and form; but all seven are in the power of thy compacted incorporated spirit, which spirit is the SOUL.

(93) But in this hard, severe and cold power stands [i.e. consisteth] the corporeal essence or the body, wherein the spirit of life generateth itself; and out of that same spirit the light and the understanding [generate themselves]; and then through these the senses and the trial or testing of all powers ariseth.

(2) While these three higher Planes of Consciousness are included in the Rosicrucian symbol of the seven Planes of Consciousness, i.e., the seven linked circles, the Rosicrucians have also a special symbol by which they seek to indicate these three wonderful higher Planes of Consciousness, viz.: the symbol of the three linked circles (see illustration ). It will be noticed here, also, that each of the circles are linked with the two on either side of it,—the circumference of each circle extending over that of the two others on either side of it; this indicates that each Plane of Consciousness is blended with the others, a truth which will be made more apparent as we progress without commentary on the teaching in this chapter.

(20) Said over a Boat of four cubits in length, painted green. And let a starry sky be made, clean and purified with natron and incense. And see thou make an image of Rā upon a tablet of light green colour at the prow of the Boat. And see thou make an image of the Deceased whom thou lovest, that he may be made strong in this boat, and that his voyage be made in the Bark of Rā, and that Rā himself may look upon him. Do not do this for any one except for thine own self, thy father and thy son. And let them be exceedingly cautious for themselves. The Deceased acquireth might with Rā, and made to possess power among the gods, who regard him as one of themselves, and when men or the Dead see him they fall upon their faces. He is seen in the Netherworld as the image of Rā

(1) These same are father, mother, and offspring. The father is Mind. The mother is Speech. The offspring is Breath. l

(12) Now I know very well, that I shall not only in Part be as it were dumb or obscure to the desirous Reader, but also tedious, and he will be somewhat troubled at me, in that I have written of the eternal Mother (wherein the divine Essence stands;) and that I now write, that this Matrix is inanimate and void of Understanding, out of which also a Principle void of Understanding is generated; as is plain before our Eyes, that in this World there is no true Understanding, either in the Stars, or in the Elements; and also in all its Creatures there is but an Understanding to qualify [or to operate,] to nourish itself, and to increase, as the Matrix in itself is.

(42) In the middle region of the Table appears the all-form-containing personified Spiritual Essence--the source and substance of all things. From this proceed the lower worlds as nine emanations in groups of three (the Ophionic, Ibimorphous, and Nephtæan Triads). Consider in this connection the analogy of the Qabbalistic Sephiroth, or the nine spheres issuing from Kether, the Crown. The twelve Governors of the Universe (the Mendesian, Ammonian, Momphtæan, and Omphtæan Triads)--vehicles for the distribution of the creative influences, and shown in the upper region of the Table-are directed in their activities by the Divine Mind patterns existing in the archetypal sphere, The archetypes are abstract patterns formulated in the Divine Mind and by them all the inferior activities are controlled.

(4) If we had to ascertain the nature of body and the place it holds in the universe, surely we should take some sample of body, say stone, and examine into what constituents it may be divided. There would be what we think of as the substrate of stone, its quantity- in this case, a magnitude; its quality- for example, the colour of stone. As with stone, so with every other body: we should see that in this thing, body, there are three distinguishable characteristics- the pseudo-substance, the quantity, the quality- though they all make one and are only logically trisected, the three being found to constitute the unit thing, body. If motion were equally inherent in its constitution, we should include this as well, and the four would form a unity, the single body depending upon them all for its unity and characteristic nature.

The same method must be applied in examining the Intellectual Substance and the genera and first-principles of the Intellectual sphere.

But we must begin by subtracting what is peculiar to body, its coming-to-be, its sensible nature, its magnitude- that is to say, the characteristics which produce isolation and mutual separation. It is an Intellectual Being we have to consider, an Authentic Existent, possessed of a unity surpassing that of any sensible thing.

Now the wonder comes how a unity of this type can be many as well as one. In the case of body it was easy to concede unity-with-plurality; the one body is divisible to infinity; its colour is a different thing from its shape, since in fact they are separated. But if we take Soul, single, continuous, without extension, of the highest simplicity- as the first effort of the mind makes manifest- how can we expect to find multiplicity here too? We believed that the division of the living being into body and soul was final: body indeed was manifold, composite, diversified; but in soul we imagined we had found a simplex, and boldly made a halt, supposing that we had come to the limit of our course.

Let us examine this soul, presented to us from the Intellectual realm as body from the Sensible. How is its unity a plurality? How is its plurality a unity? Clearly its unity is not that of a composite formed from diverse elements, but that of a single nature comprising a plurality.

This problem attacked and solved, the truth about the genera comprised in Being will thereby, as we asserted, be elucidated also.

(2) In this Fourth Aphorism of Creation, the Rosicrucian is directed to apply his attention to the concept of the World Soul—the First Manifestation of the Eternal Parent—as a One Manifesting as Many; a Unity manifesting as Diversity; an Identical manifesting as Variety: yet, notwithstanding such manifestations, remaining ever One, Unity, and Identical.

(27) Man has four vehicles (or mediums) of expression by means of which the spiritual Ego contacts the external universe: the physical nature, the vital nature, the emotional nature, and the mental nature. Each of these partakes in principle of one of the primary elements, and the four creatures assigned to them by the Qabbalists caused the cross to be symbolic of the compound nature of man.