(78) This is a short entrance or introduction, shewing how one must consider the divine and the natural being. Henceforth I will describe the true ground and depth concerning what God is, and how all things are framed in God's being.

(7) But further, Almighty God is celebrated as justice, as distributing things suitable to all, both due measure, and beauty, and good order, and arrangement, and marking out all distributions and orders for each, according to that which truly is the most just limit, and as being Cause for all of the free action of each. For the Divine Justice arranges and disposes all things, and preserving all things unmingled and unconfused, from all, gives to all existing beings things convenient for each, according to the due falling to each existing thing. And, if we speak correctly, all those who abuse the Divine Justice, unconsciously convict themselves of a manifest injustice. For they say, that immortality ought to be in mortals, and perfection in the imperfect, and imposed necessity in the free, and identity in the variable, and perfect power in the weak, and the temporal should be eternal, and things moveable by nature, unchangeable, and that temporary pleasures should be eternal; and in one word, they assign the properties of one thing to another. They ought to know that the Divine Justice in this respect is really a true justice, because it distributes to all the things proper to themselves, according to the fitness of each existing thing, and preserves the nature of each in its own order and capacity.

(2) 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 similar. Hence, it remains that we should discuss those powers which are thence transmitted to us, and are mingled with generation. These, therefore, descend with invariable sameness for the salvation of the universe, and connectedly contain the whole of generation after the same manner. They are likewise impassive and immutable, though they proceed into that which is mutable and passive. For generation being multiform, and consisting of different things, receives the one of the Gods, and that in them which is without difference, with hostility and partibility, conformably to its own contrariety and division. It also receives that which is impassive, passively; and, in short, participates of them according to its own proper nature, and not according to their power. As, therefore, that which is generated [or has a subsistence in becoming to be,] participates of being generatively, and body participates of the incorporeal, corporeally; thus, also, the physical and material substances which are in generation, participate of the immaterial and etherial bodies, which are above nature and generation, in a confused and disorderly manner. Hence they are absurd who attribute colour, figure, and contact to intelligible forms, because the participants of them are things of this kind; as likewise are those who ascribe depravity to the celestial bodies, because their participants sometimes produce evils.

(2) This mode of solution, therefore, is far superior, which does not suppose that divine works are effected through contrariety, or discrepance, in the way in which generated natures are usually produced; but asserts that every such work is rightly accomplished through sameness, union, and consent. Hence, if we separate from each other that which invokes and that which is invoked, that which commands and that which is commanded, that which is more and that which is less excellent, we shall, in a certain respect, transfer the contrariety of generations to the unbegotten goods of the Gods. But if we despise all such things, as it is just we should, as of an earth-born nature, and ascribe that which is common and simple, as being more honourable, to the powers who transcend the variety which is in the realms of generation, the first hypothesis of these questions will be immediately subverted, so that no reasonable doubt concerning them will be left.

(1) WE find by the divine Providence in all Things, as also in Arts and States, that the Things of this World are all good and profitable, and that only the Devil's Poison brought into them is evil; and so we find also all States [or Conditions,] high and low, come out of one i only Tree, and one always proceeds out of the other, so that the divine Providence comes to help all Things, and so the eternal Wonders (in all the three Principles) are manifested; to which End God brought to Light the Creation of all Things, which from Eternity in themselves stood only in the [Flowing, Budding, or] Springing up, but by the Creation of this World are put into the Wonders.

(12) All things, therefore, He makes, in many [ways]. And what great thing is it for God to make life, soul, and deathlessness, and change, when thou [thyself] dost do so many things? For thou dost see, and speak, and hear, and smell, and taste, and touch, and walk, and think, and breathe. And it is not one man who smells, another one who walks, another one who thinks, and [yet] another one who breathes. But one is he who doth all these. And yet no one of these could be apart from God. For just as, should thou cease from these, thou wouldst no longer be a living thing, so also, should God cease from them (a thing not law to say), no longer is He God.

(17) Or consider it another way: We hold the universe, with its content entire, to be as all would be if the design of the maker had so willed it, elaborating it with purpose and prevision by reasonings amounting to a Providence. All is always so and all is always so reproduced: therefore the reason-principles of things must lie always within the producing powers in a still more perfect form; these beings of the divine realm must therefore be previous to Providence and to preference; all that exists in the order of being must lie for ever There in their Intellectual mode. If this regime is to be called Providence it must be in the sense that before our universe there exists, not expressed in the outer, the Intellectual-Principle of all the All, its source and archetype.

Now if there is thus an Intellectual-Principle before all things, their founding principle, this cannot be a thing lying subject to chance- multiple, no doubt, but a concordance, ordered so to speak into oneness. Such a multiple- the co-ordination of all particulars and consisting of all the Reason-Principles of the universe gathered into the closest union- this cannot be a thing of chance, a thing "happening so to be." It must be of a very different nature, of the very contrary nature, separated from the other by all the difference between reason and reasonless chance. And if the Source is precedent even to this, it must be continuous with this reasoned secondary so that the two be correspondent; the secondary must participate in the prior, be an expression of its will, be a power of it: that higher therefore is without part or interval , is a one- all Reason-Principle, one number, a One greater than its product, more powerful, having no higher or better. Thus the Supreme can derive neither its being nor the quality of its being. God Himself, therefore, is what He is, self-related, self-tending; otherwise He becomes outward-tending, other-seeking- who cannot but be wholly self-poised.

(9) But God is not, as some suppose, beyond the reach of sense-and-thought. It is through superstition men thus impiously speak. For all the things that are, Asclepius, all are in God, are brought by God to be, and do depend on Him - both things that act through bodies, and things that through soul-substance make [other things] to move, and things that make things live by means of spirit, and things that take unto themselves the things that are worn out. And rightly so; nay, I would rather say, He doth not have these things; but I speak forth the truth, He is them all Himself. He doth not get them from without, but gives them out [from Him]. This is God's sense-and-thought, ever to move all things. And never time shall be when e'en a whit of things that are shall cease; and when I say "a whit of things that are", I mean a whit of God. For thigs that are, God hath; nor aught [is there] without Him, nor [is] He without aught.

(9) We do not wish to enter into a consideration of Free Will, or Determinism, in this work, for various reasons. Among the many reasons, is the principal one that neither side of the controversy is entirely right-in fact, both sides are partially right, according to the Hermetic Teachings. The Principle of Polarity shows that both are but Half-Truths the opposing poles of Truth. The Teachings are that a man may be both Free and yet bound by Necessity, depending upon the meaning of the terms, and the height of Truth from which the matter is examined. The ancient writers express the matter thus: "The further the creation is from the Centre, the more it is bound; the nearer the Centre it reaches, the nearer Free is it."

(1) Of the extremes, therefore, one is supreme, transcendent, and perfect; but the other is last in dignity, deficient, and more imperfect. And the former, indeed, is capable of accomplishing all things at once, uniformly in an instant; but the latter is neither able to effect all things, nor at once, nor suddenly, nor impartibly. The former also generates and governs all things, without being inclined towards them; but the latter is naturally disposed to verge, and be converted to the things which it generates and governs. And the former, indeed, as primordial and cause, precedes all things in power; but the latter, being suspended from the will of the Gods, as from a cause, is from eternity consubsistent with it. The former, likewise, according to one vigorous acme, comprehends the ends of all energies and essences; but the latter passes from some things to others, and proceeds from the imperfect to the perfect.

(7) Consider the universe: we are agreed that its existence and its nature come to it from beyond itself; are we, now, to imagine that its maker first thought it out in detail- the earth, and its necessary situation in the middle; water and, again, its position as lying upon the earth; all the other elements and objects up to the sky in due place and order; living beings with their appropriate forms as we know them, their inner organs and their outer limbs- and that having thus appointed every item beforehand, he then set about the execution?

Such designing was not even possible; how could the plan for a universe come to one that had never looked outward? Nor could he work on material gathered from elsewhere as our craftsmen do, using hands and tools; feet and hands are of the later order.

One way, only, remains: all things must exist in something else; of that prior- since there is no obstacle, all being continuous within the realm of reality- there has suddenly appeared a sign, an image, whether given forth directly or through the ministry of soul or of some phase of soul, matters nothing for the moment: thus the entire aggregate of existence springs from the divine world, in greater beauty There because There unmingled but mingled here.

From the beginning to end all is gripped by the Forms of the Intellectual Realm: Matter itself is held by the Ideas of the elements and to these Ideas are added other Ideas and others again, so that it is hard to work down to crude Matter beneath all that sheathing of Idea. Indeed since Matter itself is in its degree, an Idea- the lowest- all this universe is Idea and there is nothing that is not Idea as the archetype was. And all is made silently, since nothing had part in the making but Being and Idea further reason why creation went without toil. The Exemplar was the Idea of an All, and so an All must come into being.

Thus nothing stood in the way of the Idea, and even now it dominates, despite all the clash of things: the creation is not hindered on its way even now; it stands firm in virtue of being All. To me, moreover, it seems that if we ourselves were archetypes, Ideas, veritable Being, and the Idea with which we construct here were our veritable Essence, then our creative power too would toillessly effect its purpose: as man now stands, he does not produce in his work a true image of himself: become man, he has ceased to be the All: ceasing to be man- we read- "he soars aloft and administers the Kosmos entire"; restored to the All he is maker of the All.

But- to our immediate purpose- it is possible to give a reason why the earth is set in the midst and why it is round and why the ecliptic runs precisely as it does, but, looking to the creating principle, we cannot say that because this was the way therefore things were so planned: we can say only that because the All is what it is, therefore there is a total of good; the causing principle, we might put it, reached the conclusion before all formal reasoning and not from any premises, not by sequence or plan but before either, since all of that order is later, all reason, demonstration, persuasion.

Since there is a Source, all the created must spring from it and in accordance with it; and we are rightly told not to go seeking the causes impelling a Source to produce, especially when this is the perfectly sufficient Source and identical with the Term: a Source which is Source and Term must be the All-Unity, complete in itself.

(138) But it must not so be understood as if the Deity were separated from nature; no, but they are as body and soul: Nature is the body, and the heart of God is the soul. Now a man might ask, What kind of light then was it that was kindled? Was it the sun and stars? Answer.

(137) Though it be generated in God and from God, yet it is but the instrument of his handiwork, which cannot apprehend and reach back again to the clear Deity in the deepest birth or geniture, as the flesh cannot apprehend or reach the soul.

(11) Nor do the Laws of Nature become less constant or effective, when we know them, likewise, to be merely mental creations. They are in full effect on the various planes. We overcome the lower laws, by applying still higher ones--and in this way only. But we cannot escape Law or rise above it entirely. Nothing but THE ALL can escape Law--and that because THE ALL is LAW itself, from which all Laws emerge. The most advanced Masters may acquire the powers usually attributed to the gods of men; and there are countless ranks of being, in the great hierarchy of life, whose being and power transcends even that of the highest Masters among men to a degree unthinkable by mortals, but even the highest Master, and the highest Being, must bow to the Law, and be as Nothing in the eye of THE ALL. So that if even these highest Beings, whose powers exceed even those attributed by men to their gods--if even these are bound by and are subservient to Law, then imagine the presumption of mortal man, of our race and grade, when he dares to consider the Laws of Nature as "unreal!" visionary and illusory, because he happens to be able to grasp the truth that the Laws are Mental in nature, and simply Mental Creations of THE ALL. Those Laws which THE ALL intends to be governing Laws are not to be defied or argued away. So long as the Universe endures, will they endure--for the Universe exists by virtue of these Laws which form its framework and which hold it together.

(18) Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is being moved for increase or for decrease. Now that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity that that which lives, should be all same. For being simultaneous, the Cosmos, as a whole, is not subject to change, my son, but all its parts are subject unto it; yet naught [of it] is subject to corruption, or destroyed. It is the terms employed that confuse men. For 'tis not genesis that constituteth life, but 'tis sensation; it is not change that constituteth death, but 'tis forgetfulness. Since, then, these things are so, they are immortal all - Matter, [and] Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever liveth, is composed.

(1) To make the existence and coherent structure of this Universe depend upon automatic activity and upon chance is against all good sense.

Such a notion could be entertained only where there is neither intelligence nor even ordinary perception; and reason enough has been urged against it, though none is really necessary.

But there is still the question as to the process by which the individual things of this sphere have come into being, how they were made.

Some of them seem so undesirable as to cast doubts upon a Universal Providence; and we find, on the one hand, the denial of any controlling power, on the other the belief that the Kosmos is the work of an evil creator.

This matter must be examined through and through from the very first principles. We may, however, omit for the present any consideration of the particular providence, that beforehand decision which accomplishes or holds things in abeyance to some good purpose and gives or withholds in our own regard: when we have established the Universal Providence which we affirm, we can link the secondary with it.

Of course the belief that after a certain lapse of time a Kosmos previously non-existent came into being would imply a foreseeing and a reasoned plan on the part of God providing for the production of the Universe and securing all possible perfection in it- a guidance and partial providence, therefore, such as is indicated. But since we hold the eternal existence of the Universe, the utter absence of a beginning to it, we are forced, in sound and sequent reasoning, to explain the providence ruling in the Universe as a universal consonance with the divine Intelligence to which the Kosmos is subsequent not in time but in the fact of derivation, in the fact that the Divine Intelligence, preceding it in Kind, is its cause as being the Archetype and Model which it merely images, the primal by which, from all eternity, it has its existence and subsistence.

The relationship may be presented thus:

The authentic and primal Kosmos is the Being of the Intellectual Principle and of the Veritable Existent. This contains within itself no spatial distinction, and has none of the feebleness of division, and even its parts bring no incompleteness to it since here the individual is not severed from the entire. In this Nature inheres all life and all intellect, a life living and having intellection as one act within a unity: every part that it gives forth is a whole; all its content is its very own, for there is here no separation of thing from thing, no part standing in isolated existence estranged from the rest, and therefore nowhere is there any wronging of any other, any opposition. Everywhere one and complete, it is at rest throughout and shows difference at no point; it does not make over any of its content into any new form; there can be no reason for changing what is everywhere perfect.

Why should Reason elaborate yet another Reason, or Intelligence another Intelligence? An indwelling power of making things is in the character of a being not at all points as it should be but making, moving, by reason of some failure in quality. Those whose nature is all blessedness have no more to do than to repose in themselves and be their being.

A widespread activity is dangerous to those who must go out from themselves to act. But such is the blessedness of this Being that in its very non-action it magnificently operates and in its self-dwelling it produces mightily.

(16) We maintain, and it is evident truth, that the Supreme is everywhere and yet nowhere; keeping this constantly in mind let us see how it bears on our present enquiry.

If God is nowhere, then not anywhere has He "happened to be"; as also everywhere, He is everywhere in entirety: at once, He is that everywhere and everywise: He is not in the everywhere but is the everywhere as well as the giver to the rest of things of their being in that everywhere. Holding the supreme place- or rather no holder but Himself the Supreme- all lies subject to Him; they have not brought Him to be but happen, all, to Him- or rather they stand there before Him looking upon Him, not He upon them. He is borne, so to speak, to the inmost of Himself in love of that pure radiance which He is, He Himself being that which He. loves. That is to say, as self-dwelling Act and Intellectual-Principle, the most to be loved, He has given Himself existence. Intellectual-Principle is the issue of Act: God therefore is issue of Act, but, since no other has generated Him, He is what He made Himself: He is not, therefore, "as He happened to be" but as He acted Himself into being.

Again; if He preeminently is because He holds firmly, so to speak, towards Himself, looking towards Himself, so that what we must call his being is this self-looking, He must again, since the word is inevitable, make Himself: thus, not "as He happens to be" is He but as He Himself wills to be. Nor is this will a hazard, a something happening; the will adopting the Best is not a thing of chance.

That his being is constituted by this self-originating self-tendence- at once Act and repose- becomes clear if we imagine the contrary; inclining towards something outside of Himself, He would destroy the identity of his being. This self-directed Act is, therefore, his peculiar being, one with Himself. If, then, his act never came to be but is eternal- a waking without an awakener, an eternal wakening and a supra-Intellection- He is as He waked Himself to be. This awakening is before being, before Intellectual-Principle, before rational life, though He is these; He is thus an Act before Intellectual-Principle and consciousness and life; these come from Him and no other; his being, then, is a self-presence, issuing from Himself. Thus not "as He happened to be" is He but as He willed to be.

(6) everyday feelings, such as anger, pain, pleasure, or love. They are thought-concepts, and cannot be recognised by the senses; whereas quality, quantity, etc., are sense-concepts. Just as the ear cannot take cognizance of colour, nor the eye of sound, so, in conceiving of the ultimate realities, God and the soul, we find ourselves in a region in which sense-concepts can bear no part. So much, however, we can see, that, as God is Ruler of the universe, and, being Himself beyond space and time, quantity and quality, governs things that are so conditioned, so that soul rules the body and its members, being itself invisible, indivisible, and not located in any special part. For how can the indivisible be located in that which is divisible? From all this we see how true is the saying of the Prophet, "God created man in His own likeness."

(1) So much then on these matters; but let us now at last, with your good pleasure, approach the most difficult subject in the whole discourse. For the Word of God predicates everything, singly and collectively, respecting the Cause of all, and extols Him both as Perfect and as One. He is then perfect not only as self-perfect, and solitarily separated within Himself, by Himself, and throughout most perfect, but also as super-perfect, as beseems His pre-eminence over all, and limiting every infinitude, and surpassing every term, and by none contained or comprehended; but even extending at once to all, and above all, by His unfailing gratuities and endless energies. But, on the other hand, He is called perfect, both as without increase, and always perfect, and as undiminished, as pre-holding all things in Himself, and overflowing as beseems one, inexhaustible, and same, and super-full, and undiminished, abundance, in accordance with which He perfects all perfect things, and fills them with His own perfection.

(22) Wherefore, my son, thou shouldst give praise to God and pray that thou mayst have thy mind Good Mind. It is, then, to a better state the soul doth pass; it cannot to a worse. Further there is an intercourse of souls; those of the gods have intercourse with those of men, and those of men with souls of creatures which possess no reason. The higher, further, have in charge the lower; the gods look after men, men after animals irrational, while God hath charge of all; for He is higher than them all and all are less than He. Cosmos is subject, then, to God, man to the Cosmos, and irrationals to man. But God is o'er them all, and God contains them all. God's rays, to use a figure, are His energies; the Cosmos's are natures, the arts and sciences are man's. The energies act through the Cosmos, thence through the nature-rays of Cosmos upon man; the nature-rays [act] through the elements, man [acteth] through the sciences and arts.