(34) Now [Reason's] Question is; How has Eve received the Soul from Adam? Behold, when God's harsh Fiat took the Rib out of Adam, then it attracted out of all Essences also to it, and the Fiat imaged [formed, imagined, or impressed] itself together therein, [that it might] continually and eternally stay therein. But now the Tincture in Adam was not yet extinguished, but the Soul of Adam sat yet wholly with Might and Virtue [or Power] in the Tincture; only the Virgin was departed: And therefore now the Fiat took the Tincture, and the [sour] harsh Essences mingled [or qualified] with the [sour] harsh Fiat; for it, (viz. the Fiat) and the [Sourness or] Harshness in the Essences, are one Kind of Essence.

(4) So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its presidency to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed are thus far in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the soul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this, it abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the one, for a thing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has drifted away from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.

With this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the enchaining in body: the soul has lost that innocency of conducting the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.

It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.

But in spite of all it has, for ever, something transcendent: by a conversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the shackles and soars- when only it makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.

All this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he distinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as "parts," and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial, they must of necessity experience birth.

Of course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be understood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations; what is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as coming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are transferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and definite form are eternal.

(40) For in the Beginning of the Creation, at the Time when the Earth became material, all was generated out of one only Substance, and there was no more done but a Separation made of one from another: Therefore in every Separation there must needs be always a vehement Hunger of one 1 after another. An Example whereof you have in Propagation; for the Sake whereof the Separation was so made: For you see that there is a Male and a Female; and that the one continually desires Copulation with the other, that they may generate. This is a great hidden Secret. Observe, when the Creator by the Fiat separated the Matrix from the Aquaster [or watery Mother;] for the first Form is heavenly and incorruptible, as long as the Kingdom of this World stands, and the Root of the first Form holds Paradise. vill set it down more intelligibly [or plainly] for the simplest Reader's Sake.

(91) Timaeus: at their second incarnation, into women. And it was for this reason that the gods at that time contrived the love of sexual intercourse by constructing an animate creature of one kind in us men, and of another kind in women; and they made these severally in the following fashion. From the passage of egress for the drink, where it receives and joins in discharging the fluid which has come through the lungs beneath the kidneys into the bladder and has been compressed by the air, they bored a hole into the condensed marrow which comes from the head down by the neck and along the spine

(30) And so God, in his Sleep, made the Woman for him out of himself, by which he must now generate his Kingdom, for now it could not otherwise be. And when he awaked, he saw her, and took her to him and said; This is Flesh of my Flesh, and Bone of my Bone; for Adam was (in his Sleep) become quite another Image; for God had permitted the Spirit of this World in him to make his Tincture weary to Sleep.

(18) But the Spirit of the great World overcame Adam, and put itself in with Force, in Quintam Essentiam, [into the Quintessence,] which there, is the fifth Form, the Extract out of the four Elements and Stars; and there must God create a Woman [or Wife] for Adam out of his Essences, if he must be to fill the Kingdom, according to the Appearing [Discovering, Shining, or Sparkling] of the noble Virgin [with many thousand Thousands,] and build [or propagate] the same. And thus Man became earthly, and the Virgin departed from him in Paradise; and there she warned [called and told] him that he should lay off the Earthliness, and then she would be his Bride and loving Spouse. And now it cannot be otherwise in this World with Man, he must be generated in the Virtue of the outward Constellation and Elements, and live therein till the Earthliness falls away.

(10) Yet as concerning Eve, we must acknowledge that she was created to this corruptible Life, for she is the Woman of this World; and at this Time it could not be otherwise. For the Spirit of this World with its Tincture, had overcome and possessed Adam, so that he fell down into a Sleep, and could not generate out of himself the Image of the Virgin according to the a Discovery of the noble and chaste Virgin, the Wisdom of God which was the Matrix in him, which was joined [or espoused] to him out of the heavenly elementary Woman was given to him, viz. Eve, who (in the Spirit of the World's overcoming) was figured after a bestial Form.

(80) But if Men search very deep, this [that follows they will find] is the very Ground. Eve was the Child in the Matrix of Adam, which Adam (if he had not been overcome) should have generated out of himself, in great Modesty [Purity] and Holiness; but because Adam' Matrix was impregnated from the Spirit of this World, therefore God must frame a fleshly Woman out of it, which afterwards (in her first Fruit) became lustful, and infected from the Devil, as well as the Limbus in Adam. 8 1. And therefore they also generated such a towardly Child as looked only after Covetousness; as Eve also did, who would be like God; and surely Adam had some Mind that Way, or else he should not have entered into the Spirit of this World.

(2) ... For in any one science the reduction of the total of knowledge into its separate propositions does not shatter its unity, chipping it into unrelated fragments; in each distinct item is talent the entire body of the science, an integral thing in its highest Principle and its last detail: and similarly a man must so discipline himself that the first Principles of his Being are also his completions, are totals, that all be pointed towards the loftiest phase of the Nature: when a man has become this unity in the best, he is in that other realm; for it is by this highest within himself, made his own, that he holds to the Supreme.

At no point did the All-Soul come into Being: it never arrived, for it never knew place; what happens is that body, neighbouring with it, participates in it: hence Plato does not place Soul in body but body in Soul. The others, the secondary Souls, have a point of departure- they come from the All-Soul- and they have a Place into which to descend and in which to change to and fro, a place, therefore, from which to ascend: but this All-Soul is for ever Above, resting in that Being in which it holds its existence as Soul and followed, as next, by the Universe or, at least, by all beneath the sun.

The partial Soul is illuminated by moving towards the Soul above it; for on that path it meets Authentic Existence. Movement towards the lower is towards non-Being: and this is the step it takes when it is set on self; for by willing towards itself it produces its lower, an image of itself- a non-Being- and so is wandering, as it were, into the void, stripping itself of its own determined form. And this image, this undetermined thing, is blank darkness, for it is utterly without reason, untouched by the Intellectual-Principle, far removed from Authentic Being.

As long as it remains at the mid-stage it is in its own peculiar region; but when, by a sort of inferior orientation, it looks downward, it shapes that lower image and flings itself joyfully thither.

(22) We may here adduce the pregnant words of Plato: "Inasmuch as Intellect perceives the variety and plurality of the Forms present in the complete Living Being...." The words apply equally to Soul; Soul is subsequent to Intellect, yet by its very nature it involves Intellect in itself and perceives more clearly in that prior. There is Intellect in our intellect also, which again perceives more clearly in its prior, for while of itself it merely perceives, in the prior it also perceives its own perception.

This intellect, then, to which we ascribe perception, though not divorced from the prior in which it originates, evolves plurality out of unity and has bound up with it the principle of Difference: it therefore takes the form of a plurality-in-unity. A plurality-in-unity, it produces the many intellects by the dictate of its very nature.

It is certainly no numerical unity, no individual thing; for whatever you find in that sphere is a species, since it is divorced from Matter. This may be the import of the difficult words of Plato, that Substance is broken up into an infinity of parts. So long as the division proceeds from genus to species, infinity is not reached; a limit is set by the species generated: the lowest species, however- that which is not divided into further species- may be more accurately regarded as infinite. And this is the meaning of the words: "to relegate them once and for all to infinity and there abandon them." As for particulars, they are, considered in themselves, infinite, but come under number by being embraced by the unity.

Now Soul has Intellect for its prior, is therefore circumscribed by number down to its ultimate extremity; at that point infinity is reached. The particular intellect, though all-embracing, is a partial thing, and the collective Intellect and its various manifestations are in actuality parts of that part. Soul too is a part of a part, though in the sense of being an Act derived from it. When the Act of Intellect is directed upon itself, the result is the manifold intellects; when it looks outwards, Soul is produced.

If Soul acts as a genus or a species, the various souls must act as species. Their activities will be twofold: the activity upward is Intellect; that which looks downward constitutes the other powers imposed by the particular Reason-Principle ; the lowest activity of Soul is in its contact with Matter to which it brings Form.

This lower part of Soul does not prevent the rest from being entirely in the higher sphere: indeed what we call the lower part is but an image of Soul: not that it is cut off from Soul; it is like the reflection in the mirror, depending upon the original which stands outside of it.

But we must keep in mind what this "outside" means. Up to the production of the image, the Intellectual realm is wholly and exclusively composed of Intellectual Beings: in the same way the Sensible world, representing that in so far as it is able to retain the likeness of a living being, is itself a living being: the relation is like that of a portrait or reflection to the original which is regarded as prior to the water or the painting reproducing it.

The representation, notice, in the portrait or on the water is not of the dual being, but of the one element as formed by the other . Similarly, this likeness of the Intellectual realm carries images, not of the creative element, but of the entities contained in that creator, including Man with every other living being: creator and created are alike living beings, though of a different life, and both coexist in the Intellectual realm.

(36) You must understand [or conceive] it right: Eve got not Adam's Soul, nor Adam's Body, but one only Rib; but she was extracted from the Essences, and got her Soul in her Essences [that were] given her, in the Tincture, and the Body grew for [or to] her in her own sprung-up Tincture, yet in Virtue [or Power;] but the Fiat had already formed [or made] her a Woman. Indeed she was not deformed, but altogether lovely; for she was of a heavenly Kind, in Paradise, yet the i Marks were already also set upon her by the Fiat of the great World; and it could not otherwise be, she must be a Woman for Adam; indeed they were in Paradise. And if they had not eaten of the Tree, and if they had returned to God, then they should have continued in Paradise; but the Propagation must now needs have been after a womanly Manner, and should not have stood [eternally.] For Satan had brought it too far, although he had not suffered himself to be seen, only he strewed Sugar abroad in the Spirit of this World, till at length the lovely Beast laid itself forth upon the Tree as a Flatterer and Liar. The Gate of our Propagation in the Flesh.

(2) Now when Adam was thus in the Garden of Eden, and the three Principles having produced such a Strife in him, his Tincture was quite wearied, and the Virgin departed. For the Lust- Spirit in Adam had overcome, and therefore he sunk down into Blood, and his strong Virtue [or Power] became Bones; and then the Virgin went into her Ether and Shadow, yet into the heavenly Ether, into the Principle of Virtue [or Power,] and there waits upon all the Children of Adam, [expecting] whether any will receive her for their Bride again, by the i new Birth.

(18) Reason asks: Is Eve merely created out of the Rib [taken] out of Adam? Then she should be far inferior to Adam. No, beloved Reason, it is not so; the Fiat (being a sharp Attracting) took from Adam of all Essences and Properties of every Virtue, but it took from him no more Members in Substance; for the Image should be a Man, after a masculine Kind in the Limbus, yet not at all with this Deformity. Understand it rightly in the Ground, he should be, and (he was also,) a Man, and he had a virgin-like Heart, wholly chaste in the Matrix.

(27) It was from Eternity in God, and therefore it is eternally in God. But when God would create a Similitude of his Essence, and that it should be generated out of the Darkness, then it stood in the Flash of Fire that went forth, in the Place where the fifth Form of the Birth of Love generates itself in the Similitude. For it was generated out of the Fountain of the Will, out of the Heart of God, and therefore its Shadow continues in the Will of God eternally; and for the Sake thereof also the Shadow of all Creatures, and of every [Essence,] Substance, [or Thing,] which was ever generated in the Similitude, remains eternally; for it is the Similitude of God, which is generated out of the eternal Will; yet its Spirit continues not eternally in the third Principle of this World; that ceases, or passes away with the Ceasing of the Springing, or the Ceasing of the Life.