(37) "The earthquake being past, there shall follow afire, that will consume the earthly rubbish, and discover the treasure, but as yet you cannot see it. After all these things and near the daybreak there shall be a great calm, and you shall see the Day-Star arise and the dawning will appear, and you shall perceive a great treasure. The chiefest thing in it, and the most perfect, is a certain exalted tincture, with which the world (if it served God and were worthy of such gifts) might be tinged and turned into most pure gold.

(42) For the earthly and corrupt nature has continually laboured from the beginning of its creation to this day to bring forth heavenly forms or shapes in the earth, as also in man and beasts; as men very well see that every year new arts are invented and brought to light, which has been constantly so from the beginning to this time.

(13) Thou hast a similitude of this, in that the earth and stones are proceeded out of the incomprehensibility.

(1) When we had crossed the threshold of the door Which the perverted love of souls disuses, Because it makes the crooked way seem straight, Re-echoing I heard it closed again; And if I had turned back mine eyes upon it, What for my failing had been fit excuse? We mounted upward through a rifted rock, Which undulated to this side and that, Even as a wave receding and advancing. "Here it behoves us use a little art," Began my Leader, "to adapt ourselves Now here, now there, to the receding side." And this our footsteps so infrequent made, That sooner had the moon's decreasing disk Regained its bed to sink again to rest, Than we were forth from out that needle's eye; But when we free and in the open were, There where the mountain backward piles itself, I wearied out, and both of us uncertain About our way, we stopped upon a plain More desolate than roads across the deserts. From where its margin borders on the void, To foot of the high bank that ever rises, A human body three times told would measure;

(76) When now the wrathful fire-flash awakened, and roused up the spirits of nature, which stand in death in the earth, and made them moveable by its fierce terror or crack, then the spirits began, according to their peculiar divine right, to generate themselves, as they had done from eternity, and form, figure or frame a body together, according to the innate, instant qualities of that place.

(85) But when the lump of the earth was pressed and compacted together, then thereby the water came to be squeezed and pressed forth: But where the water was enclosed and pressed in with the astringent quality by hard rocks, there it is yet in the earth still, and has since that time worn and made some great holes or veins for its passage.

(60) Therefore also is the terror or crack now so swelling and trembling; for it moveth the whole birth, and rubbeth itself therein, till it kindleth the fire in the hard fierceness, from whence the light taketh its original. Then the trembling crack becometh enlightened with the meekness of the light, and goeth in the birth or geniture up and down, and crossways, both upwards and downwards, like a wheel made with seven wheels one in another.

(2) As, then, playing at ball not only depends on one throwing the ball skilfully, but it requires besides one to catch it dexterously, that the game may be gone through according to the rules for ball; so also is it the case that teaching is reliable when faith on the part of those who hear, being, so to speak, a sort of natural art, contributes to the process of learning. So also the earth co-operates, through its productive power, being fit for the sowing of the seed. For there is no good of the very best instruction without the exercise of the receptive faculty on the part of the learner, not even of prophecy, when there is the absence of docility on the part of those who hear. For dry twigs, being ready to receive the power of fire, are kindled with great ease; and the far-famed stone attracts steel through affinity, as the amber tear-drop drags to itself twigs, and the lump sets chaff in motion. And the substances attracted obey them, influenced by a subtle spirit, not as a cause, but as a concurring cause.

(41) And there mine eyes saw the secrets of the lightning and of the thunder, and the secrets of the winds, how they are divided to blow over the earth, and the secrets of the clouds and dew, and there I saw from whence they proceed in that place and from whence they saturate the dusty earth.

(63) Timaeus: For if two masses are lifted up simultaneously by a single effort, the smaller will necessarily yield more and the larger less, owing to its resistance, to the force exerted; and the large mass will be said to be “heavy” and moving “down,” the small light and moving “up.” Now this is just what we ought to detect ourselves doing in our region here. Standing on the earth and detaching various earthy substances, and sometimes pure earth, we pull them into the dissimilar air by force and against nature, since both these kinds cleave to their own kindred;

(69) Therefore we must consider, that the Noise in the Tincture of Man is [of a] higher [Nature] than [that] in the Beasts; for Man searches and distinguishes all Things which give a Sound, and knows from whence it comes, and how it exists, which the Beasts cannot do, but stare at it, and knows not what it is; whereby it may be understood, that the Original of Man, is out of the Eternal, because he can distinguish all Things that in the Out-Birth came out of the Eternal. And hence it is, that the Body (seeing all Things out of the eternal Nothing are caused to be Something which is comprehensible [or palpable,] and yet there, that Nothing is not a mere Nothing, but is a Source) after the Corrupting shall stand in the eternal Figure, and not in the Spirit, because it is not out of the eternal Spirit; for otherwise, if it were out of the [eternal] Spirit, then it should also search out the Beginning of every Thing, as [well as] Man, who in his Sound receives and distinguishes all Things.

(82) Now when the bitter fire-crack was captivated by the light, then the light in its own power pressed yet higher in the deep, till it reached into the hard and cold seat of nature. And there the power of the first going forth or rising up from the sun could not get higher, but sitting, stayed there corporeally, and took possession of that place for a habitation.

(60) For when the lightning lightens, the thunder utters its voice, and the spirit enforces a pause during the peal, and divides equally between them; for the treasury of their peals is like the sand, and each one of them as it peals is held in with a bridle, and turned back by the power of the spirit, and pushed forward according to the many quarters of the earth. And the spirit of the sea is masculine and strong, and according to the might of his strength he draws it back with a rein, and in like manner it is driven forward and disperses amid all the mountains of the earth.

(7) Just as a man has two parents, and four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents, and sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on until when, say, forty generations are calculated the numbers of ancestors run into many millions--so it is with the number of causes behind even the most trifling event or phenomena, such as the passage of a tiny speck of soot before your eye. It is not an easy matter to trace the bit of soot hack to the early period of the world's history when it formed a part of a massive tree-trunk, which was afterward converted into coal, and so on, until as the speck of soot it now passes before your vision on its way to other adventures. And a mighty chain of events, causes and effects, brought it to its present condition, and the later is but one of the chain of events which will go to produce other events hundreds of years from now. One of the series of events arising from the tiny bit of soot was the writing of these lines, which caused the typesetter to perform certain work; the proofreader to do likewise; and which will arouse certain thoughts in your mind, and that of others, which in turn will affect others, and so on, and on, and on, beyond the ability of man to think further-and all from the passage of a tiny bit of soot, all of which shows the relativity and association of things, and the further fact that "there is no great; there is no small, in the mind that causeth all."

(29) Then first is discerned the glance or splendour, and out of the splendour the fire-crack, and after the fire-crack the power of the kindled body; and the light, with the power of the body, elevateth itself instantly above the crack, and ruleth or reigneth much higher, deeper and more powerfully than the fire-crack.

(14) And I went in till I drew nigh to a wall which is built of crystals and surrounded by tongues of fire: and it began to affright me. And I went into the tongues of fire and drew nigh to a large house which was built of crystals: and the walls of the house were like a tesselated floor (made) of crystals, and its groundwork was of crystal.

(86) After this flash the power of the light shot nimbly after it, like a meek elevated life, and overtook the fire-crack, and mitigated it, so that it became somewhat weaker, and could break no farther through the deep, but stayed trembling.

(2) “In what attitude of mind should it be diligently explained to others? Not assuming the permanency or the reality of earthly phenomena, but in the conscious blessedness of a mind at perfect rest. And why? Because, the phenomena of life may be likened unto a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, the glistening dew, or lightning flash, and thus they ought to be contemplated.”

(2) 'The wind is without body, the cloud, lightning, and thunder are without body (without hands, feet, &c.) Now as these, arising from this heavenly ether (space), appear in their own form, as soon as they have approached the highest light,

(1) Tzŭ Ch'i of Nan-kuo sat leaning on a table. Looking up to heaven, he sighed and became absent, as though soul and body had parted. Yen Ch'êng Tzŭ Yu, who was standing by him, exclaimed, "What are you thinking about that your body should become thus like dry wood, your mind like dead ashes? Surely the man now leaning on the table is not he who was here just now." "My friend," replied Tzŭ Ch'i, "your question is apposite. To-day I have buried myself.... Do you understand?... Ah! perhaps you only know the music of Man, and not that of Earth. Or even if you have heard the music of Earth, you have not heard the music of Heaven." "Pray explain," said Tzŭ Yu. "The breath of the universe," continued Tzŭ Ch'i, "is called wind. At times, it is inactive. But when active, every aperture resounds to the blast. Have you never listened to its growing roar? "Caves and dells of hill and forest, hollows in huge trees of many a span in girth;—these are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like beam-sockets, like goblets, like mortars, like ditches, like bogs. And the wind goes rushing through them, sniffing, snoring, singing, soughing, puffing, purling, whistling, whirring, now shrilly treble, now deeply bass, now soft, now loud; until, with a lull, silence reigns supreme. Have you never witnessed among the trees such a disturbance as this?"