(3) These seven double letters He formed, designed, created, and combined into the Stars of the Universe, the days of the week, the orifices of perception in man; and from them he made seven heavens, and seven planets, all from nothingness, and, moreover, he has preferred and blessed the sacred Heptad.

(3) Three mothers, seven double and twelve simple, these are the twenty-two letters with which I H V H Tetragrammaton, that is our Lord of Hosts, exalted, and existed in the ages, whose name is Holy, created three fathers, fire and spirit and water, progressing beyond them, seven heavens with their armies of angels; and twelve limits of the universe.

(4) From two letters, or forms He composed two dwellings; from three, six; from four, twenty-four; from five, one hundred and twenty; from six, seven hundred and twenty; from seven, five thousand and forty; and from thence their numbers increase in a manner beyond counting; and are incomprehensible. These seven are Planets of the Universe, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars; the seven days are the days of creation; and these an the seven gateways of a man, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and a mouth, through which he perceives by his senses.

(1) THE Seventh spirit of God in the divine power is the corpus or body, which is generated out of the other six spirits, wherein all heavenly figures subsist, and wherein all things image and form themselves, and wherein all beauty and joy rise up.

(45) The seven qualifying or fountain spirits have their compacted or incorporated body out of nature, that is, out of the seventh nature-spirit in the divine power; which in this book I call the Salitter of God, or the Comprehensibility, wherein the heavenly figures or shapes arise.

(53) These three dominions or regimens are the whole man, together with flesh and spirit; and they have severally, for their beginning and dominion or government, a sevenfold form, after the kind and manner of the seven spirits of God, or of the seven planets.

(30) Summary The student must not fall into the error of supposing that man really has seven separate and distinct souls, either tied together like a bundle of twigs, or else worn as one would wear seven overcoats, one over the other. The symbol is only figurative, and must not be construed literally. There are not seven selves in man—but only One Self concealed by seven veils, each of which while serving to conceal the real nature of the Self yet serves to disclose the presence and power thereof to some degree. It is as if seven planes of variously colored glass, ranging from the darkest to the almost-transparent and colorless, were to be placed before a brilliant light. The darker glass would almost entirely obscure the Light, though yet revealing its presence in some of its rays; the next lighter would reveal more, and obscure less; and so on to the last in which the obscuration was but slight, and the revelation almost perfect. All illustrations of this ineffable fact of the Eternal are, by the very nature of things, imperfect, faulty, and misleading if taken too literally.

(46) And that is a spirit, as all the rest of the seven spirits are, only the other six are an incomprehensible being therein; for the divine power generateth itself in the comprehensibility of the seventh nature-spirit, as it were hidden or concealed, and incomprehensible to the creatures.

(6) Now the seventh form, or the seventh spirit in the divine power, is nature, or the issue or exit from the other six. For the astringent quality attracteth the Salitter together, or the fabric or product of all the six spirits, even as a magnet or loadstone attracteth to itself the Salitter of the iron; and when it is attracted together, then it is a comprehensibility, in which the six spirits of God qualify, act or operate in an incomprehensible way or manner.

(3) The “Thirty-six,” who have the name of Horoscopes, are in the [self] same space as the Fixed Stars; of these the essence-chief, or prince, is he whom they call Pantomorph, or Omniform, who fashioneth the various forms for various species. The “Seven” who are called spheres, have essence-chiefs, that is, [have each] their proper rulers, whom they call [all together] Fortune and Heimarmenē, whereby all things are changed by nature’s law; perpetual stability being varied with incessant motion. The Air, moreover, is the engine, or machine, through which all things are made—(there is, however, an essence-chief of this, a second [Air])—mortal from mortal things and things like these.

(9) And God-the-Mind, being male and female both, as Light and Life subsisting, brought forth another Mind to give things form, who, God as he was of Fire and Spirit, formed Seven Rulers who enclose the cosmos that the sense perceives. Men call their ruling Fate.

(18) These seven generatings in all are none of them the first, the second, or the third, or last, but they are all seven, every one of them, both the first, second, third, fourth, and last. Yet I must set them down one after another, according to a creaturely way and manner, otherwise thou couldst not understand it: For the Deity is as a wheel with seven wheels made one in another, wherein a man seeth neither beginning nor end. Now observe:

(8) The seven senses (prâna) also spring from him, the seven lights (acts of sensation), the seven kinds of fuel (objects by which the senses are lighted), the seven sacrifices (results of sensation), these seven worlds (the places of the senses, the worlds determined by the senses) in which the senses move, which rest in the cave (of the heart), and are placed there seven and seven.

(33) I see them all seven very well, but when I speculate into them, then the spirit riseth up in the middlemost fountain or wellspring, where the spirit of life generateth itself, which goeth now upwards, now downwards, it cannot apprehend all the seven spirits in one thought, or at once, but only in part.

(7) This seventh spirit has a colour and condition or kind of its own, as all the other spirits have; for it is the body of all the spirits, wherein they generate themselves as in a body: Also out of this spirit all figures, shapes and forms are imaged or fashioned; moreover, the angels also are created out of it, and all naturality stands therein.

(77) But seeing the power of all the seven spirits stood in this one, therefore also all the seven were kindled in the wrath, but yet only in the outward and comprehensible qualification or constitution.

(19) So now, in the same sound that is gone forth (which now subsisteth, being dried) is the power of all the six qualifying or fountain spirits, and it is as it were the seed of the other six spirits, which they have there compact-ed or incorporated together, and made one spirit thereof, and which has the quality of all the spirits: and that is the seventh spirit of God in the divine power.

(60) The first dominion or regimen stands or consisteth in the body of all things, that is, in the whole deep, or the being or essence of all beings or essences, which has, in all corners and places thereof, in itself the seven spirits in possession, or in propriety indivisibly, or irresistibly, for its proper own.

(67) But all the seven are one in another as one spirit; as this may be conceived in man, who has several thoughts, because of the operation of the seven spirits of God, which keep and reside in the human body.

(85) The seventh qualifying or fountain spirit of God is the qualifying or fountain spirit of nature: for the other six do generate the seventh; and the seventh, when it is generated, is then as it were the mother of the seven, which encompasseth the other six, and generateth them again: for the corporeal and natural being consisteth in the seventh. Observe here the Sense.