(22) And we find greater Mysteries yet in Evidence of the horrible Fall; for after that the four Elements had thus set themselves every one in a several Region, then they made themselves Lords over the Spirit of the Soul, which was generated out of the Essences, and they have taken it into their Power, and qualify with it. The Fire, viz. the mightiest of them, has taken it into its Region [or Jurisdiction] in the Heart; and there it must mkeep, and the Blossom and Light thereof goes out of the Heart, and moves upon the Heart, as the kindled Light of a Candle, where the Candle resembles the fleshly Heart, with the Essences out of which the Light shines. And the Fire has set itself over the Essences, and continually reaches after the Light, and it supposes that it has the Virgin, viz. the divine Virtue [or Power.]

(104) Now in the body or fountain is the heat, which generateth the fire, and which is a form or kind of thing that a man can search into; and out of the heat goeth the light through all the spirits and qualities; and the light is the living spirit, which a man cannot search into.

(83) Here now we find, that they heard the Voice of God in the Garden; for the Element, which is before God, wherewith Man qualifies [or mixes,] that did tremble because of Sin; and Sin was manifested in the Element of the Mind, first in Adam and Eve, and then Fear and Terror fell into the Essences of the Soul; for the first Principle in the [fierce] Sternness was stirred, so that [Principle] got (as a Man may say) Fuel for its Source of Fire. And it is risen up in the Kindling, in a Contrariety of Will, in the Essences, where one Form has continually opposed the other, viz. the sour Tartness, and the Cold, with their Attracting, have awakened the bitter Stinging and Tormenting in the Essences of the Tincture of the Blood in the Spirit; and the bitter Raging and Rising has awakened the Fire.

(2) The greatest indication, however, of the truth of this is the following. Many, through divine inspiration, are not burned when fire is introduced to them, the inspiring influence preventing the fire from touching them. Many, also, though burned, do not apprehend that they are so, because they do not then live an animal life. And some, indeed, though transfixed with spits, do not perceive it; but others that are struck on the shoulders with axes, and others that have their arms cut with knives, are by no means conscious of what is done to them. Their energies, likewise, are not at all human. For inaccessible places become accessible to those that are divinely inspired; they are thrown into fire, and pass through fire, and over rivers, like the priest in Castabalis, without being injured. But from these things it is demonstrated, that those who energize enthusiastically are not conscious of the state they are in, and that they neither live a human nor an animal life, according to sense or impulse, but that they exchange this for a certain more divine life, by which they are inspired and perfectly possessed.

(99) Then the water becometh an anguishing sweat, which stands between death and life, and so the fire of the heat cannot kindle itself: For the unctuosity or fatness is captivated in the cold fire, and so the whole body remaineth a dark valley, which stands in an anguishing birth or geniture, and cannot comprehend or reach the life. For the life which stands in the light cannot elevate itself in the hard, bitter and astringent body; for it is captivated in the cold fire, but not quite dead.

(16) And the Fire generates now also a Fire, according to the Property of every Quality; in the tart Spirit it is tart; in the Bitter, bitter; in the Love, it is a very hearty Yearning, Kindling of the Love, a total, fervent, or burning Kindling, and causes very vehement Desires; in the Sound it is a very shrill tanging and where the Sound in all Qualities tells or expresses, as it were with the Lips or Tongue, whatsoever is in all the Fountain-Spirits, what Joy, Virtue, or Power, Essence, Substance, or Property [they have,] and in the Water it is a very drying Fire.

(44) Thou dear Soul, thus saith the high Spirit to thee; yield Infusion. up thy Mind here, and I will show it thee. Behold, what does comprehend thy Will, or wherein consists thy Life? If thou sayest, in Water and Flesh: No, it consists in the Fire, in the Warmth. If the Warmth was not, then thy Body would be stiff [with Cold,] and the Water would dry away; therefore the Mind and the Life consists in the Fire.

(30) Also the power of the kindled body, in the outgone power without and beyond the fire, qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth gently, pleasantly, and very sensibly; and herein rightly is understood the divine being.

(1) Dissolving, however, the doubts in a way still more true, we think it requisite, in invoking superior natures, to take away the evocations which appear to be directed to them as to men, and also the mandates in the performance of works, which are given with great earnestness. For if the communion of concordant friendship, and a certain indissoluble connexion of union, are the bonds of sacerdotal operations, in order that these operations may be truly divine, and may transcend every common action known to men, no human work will be adapted to them; nor will the invocations of the priest resemble the manner in which we draw to ourselves things that are distant; nor are his mandates directed as to things separated from him, in the way in which we transfer one thing from others. But the energy of divine fire shines forth voluntarily, and in common, and being self-invoked and self-energetic, energizes through all things with invariable sameness, both through the natures which impart, and those that are able to receive, its light.

(92) "For the fire will consume all, and causes a high rising in the source, and the meekness of the light causes entity or substantiality; viz. in the eternal light it causes the water-spirit of eternal life; and in the third principle of this world it causes water, together with the existency or original of the air.

(22) Therefore it happens often, that the Spirit of a deceased Man is seen walking, also many Times it is seen riding in the perfect Form of Fire; also many Times in [some] other Manner of Disquietude; all according as the Clothing of the Soul has been in the Time of the Body, just so has its Source [or Condition] been; and such a Form, according to its Source, it has (after the Departing of the Body) in its Figure, and so rides (in such Form) in the Source [or Working] of the Stars, till that Source also be consumed; and then it is wholly naked, and is never seen more by any Man. But the deep Abyss without End and Number is its eternal Dwelling-House, and its Works which it has here wrought, stand in the Figure, in its Tincture, and follow after it.

(91) "Yet the fire giveth or holdeth forth to us a mystery of the eternal nature, and of the Deity also, wherein a man is to understand two Principles of a twofold source, viz. I. a hot, fierce, astringent, bitter, anxious, consuming one in the fire-source. And out of the fire cometh II. viz. the light, which dwelleth in the fire, but is not apprehended or laid hold on by the fire; also it has another source than the fire has, which is meekness, wherein there is a desire of love, where then, in the love-desire, another will is understood than that which the fire has.

(23) Now if we will search after the Tincture, what it is in its highest Degree, we shall find the a Spirit: For we cannot say, that the Fire is the Tincture, nor the Air neither. For the Fire is wholly contrary to the Tincture; and the Air stifles it; it is a very pleasant Refreshment; its Root, out of which is generated, is indeed the Fire: But if I may rightly mention the Seat where it sits, I cannot say otherwise, but that it is between the three Principles, viz. [between] the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Hell, and the Kingdom of this World, in the Midst, and [it] has none [of the three] for its own, and yet it is generated from all three: And it has as it were a several Principle, which yet is no Principle, but a bright pleasant Habitation. Neither is itself the Spirit, but the Spirit dwells in it, and it so renews the Spirit, that fit becomes clear and visible. Its true Name is Wonderful, and none can name [that Name,] but he to whom it is given, he names it only in himself, and not without [or outwardly,] it has no Place of its Rest in the Substance, and yet rests continually in itself, and gives Virtue and Beauty to all Things, as the in this World; and it is not the Thing itself, though indeed it works in the Thing, and makes the Thing grow and blossom, and yet it is found really [to be] in all Things, and it is the Life and Heart of all Things, but it is not the Spirit which is generated out of the Essences.

(2) But to return from this digression: if the presence of the fire of the Gods, and a certain ineffable species of light, externally accede to him who is possessed, and if they wholly fill him, have dominion over and circularly comprehend him on all sides, so that he is not able to exert any one proper energy, what sense, or animadversion, or appropriate projection of intellect, can there be in him who receives a divine fire? What human motion, likewise, can then intervene, or what human reception of passion or ecstasy, or of aberration of the phantasy, or of any thing else of the like kind, such as is apprehended by the multitude, can take place? Let such, therefore, be the divine indications of true inspiration from the Gods, which he who attends to will not wander from a right knowledge concerning it.

(7) That this world has neither beginning nor end but exists for ever as long as the Supreme stands is certainly no novel teaching. And before this school rose it had been urged that commerce with the body is no gain to a Soul.

But to treat the human Soul as a fair presentment of the Soul of the Universe is like picking out potters and blacksmiths and making them warrant for discrediting an entire well-ordered city.

We must recognize how different is the governance exercised by the All-Soul; the relation is not the same: it is not in fetters. Among the very great number of differences it should not have been overlooked that the We lies under fetter; and this in a second limitation, for the Body-Kind, already fettered within the All-Soul, imprisons all that it grasps.

But the Soul of the Universe cannot be in bond to what itself has bound: it is sovereign and therefore immune of the lower things, over which we on the contrary are not masters. That in it which is directed to the Divine and Transcendent is ever unmingled, knows no encumbering; that in it which imparts life to the body admits nothing bodily to itself. It is the general fact that an inset , necessarily shares the conditions of its containing principle , and does not communicate its own conditions where that principle has an independent life: thus a graft will die if the stock dies, but the stock will live on by its proper life though the graft wither. The fire within your own self may be quenched, but the thing, fire, will exist still; and if fire itself were annihilated that would make no difference to the Soul, the Soul in the Supreme, but only to the plan of the material world; and if the other elements sufficed to maintain a Kosmos, the Soul in the Supreme would be unconcerned.

The constitution of the All is very different from that of the single, separate forms of life: there, the established rule commanding to permanence is sovereign; here things are like deserters kept to their own place and duty by a double bond; there is no outlet from the All, and therefore no need of restraining or of driving errants back to bounds: all remains where from the beginning the Soul's nature appointed.

The natural movement within the plan will be injurious to anything whose natural tendency it opposes: one group will sweep bravely onward with the great total to which it is adapted; the others, not able to comply with the larger order, are destroyed. A great choral is moving to its concerted plan; midway in the march, a tortoise is intercepted; unable to get away from the choral line it is trampled under foot; but if it could only range itself within the greater movement it too would suffer nothing.

(132) But the qualifying or fountain spirits in the mass could not presently be kindled thereby from the soul; for the soul stood only in the seed in the mass, hidden with the Heart of God in its heaven, till the Creator breathed upon the mass; and then the qualifying or fountain spirits kindled the soul also, and then both body and soul lived equally together.

(43) For the Will in the Center climbs aloft till it generates the Fire, and in the Fire is the Substance and Essentiality generated. For it is the Spirit thereof, and the End of the Will in the dark Mind, and there can be nothing higher generated in the Anguish than the Fire, for it is the End of Nature, and it generates again the Anguish and the Source, as may be perceived. Now therefore the dark anguishing [aching, or anxious] Mind has not only one Substance, viz. one Being [or Essence] in itself, but many, or else no Quality could be generated; and yet it is truly but one [Being, Essence, or] Substance, and not many.

(4) That water extinguishes fire and fire consumes other things should not astonish us. The thing destroyed derived its being from outside itself: this is no case of a self-originating substance being annihilated by an external; it rose on the ruin of something else, and thus in its own ruin it suffers nothing strange; and for every fire quenched, another is kindled.

In the immaterial heaven every member is unchangeably itself for ever; in the heavens of our universe, while the whole has life eternally and so too all the nobler and lordlier components, the Souls pass from body to body entering into varied forms- and, when it may, a Soul will rise outside of the realm of birth and dwell with the one Soul of all. For the embodied lives by virtue of a Form or Idea: individual or partial things exist by virtue of Universals; from these priors they derive their life and maintenance, for life here is a thing of change; only in that prior realm is it unmoving. From that unchangingness, change had to emerge, and from that self-cloistered Life its derivative, this which breathes and stirs, the respiration of the still life of the divine.

The conflict and destruction that reign among living beings are inevitable, since things here are derived, brought into existence because the Divine Reason which contains all of them in the upper Heavens- how could they come here unless they were There?- must outflow over the whole extent of Matter.

Similarly, the very wronging of man by man may be derived from an effort towards the Good; foiled, in their weakness, of their true desire, they turn against each other: still, when they do wrong, they pay the penalty- that of having hurt their Souls by their evil conduct and of degradation to a lower place- for nothing can ever escape what stands decreed in the law of the Universe.

This is not to accept the idea, sometimes urged, that order is an outcome of disorder and law of lawlessness, as if evil were a necessary preliminary to their existence or their manifestation: on the contrary order is the original and enters this sphere as imposed from without: it is because order, law and reason exist that there can be disorder; breach of law and unreason exist because Reason exists- not that these better things are directly the causes of the bad but simply that what ought to absorb the Best is prevented by its own nature, or by some accident, or by foreign interference. An entity which must look outside itself for a law, may be foiled of its purpose by either an internal or an external cause; there will be some flaw in its own nature, or it will be hurt by some alien influence, for often harm follows, unintended, upon the action of others in the pursuit of quite unrelated aims. Such living beings, on the other hand, as have freedom of motion under their own will sometimes take the right turn, sometimes the wrong.

Why the wrong course is followed is scarcely worth enquiring: a slight deviation at the beginning develops with every advance into a continuously wider and graver error- especially since there is the attached body with its inevitable concomitant of desire- and the first step, the hasty movement not previously considered and not immediately corrected, ends by establishing a set habit where there was at first only a fall.

Punishment naturally follows: there is no injustice in a man suffering what belongs to the condition in which he is; nor can we ask to be happy when our actions have not earned us happiness; the good, only, are happy; divine beings are happy only because they are good.

(54) Now when the light shineth through the astringent, contracted body of nature, and mitigateth it, then the mild, beneficent welldoing generateth itself in the body, and then the hard power grows very mild, and melteth, as ice in the heat of the sun, and is extenuated or rarefied, as water is in the air; and yet the stock of nature, as to the heavenly comprehensibility, remaineth the same.

(15) Frictes saith:—O all ye seekers after Wisdom, know that the foundation of this Art, on account of which many have perished, is one only.t There is one thing which is stronger than all natures, and more sublime in the opinion of philosophers, whereas with fools it is more common than anything. But for us it is a thing which we reverence. Woe unto all ye fools! How ignorant are ye of this Art, for which ye would die if ye knewit! Iswear to you that if kings were familiar with it, none of us would ever attain this thing. O how this nature changeth body into spirit! O how admirable is Nature, how she presides over all, and overcomes all!

Pyruacoras saith:—Name this Nature, O Frictes!

And he:—lIt is a very sharp vinegar,* which makes gold into sheer spirit, without which vinegar, neither whiteness, nor blackness, nor redness, nor rust can be made. And know ye that when it is mixed with the body, it is contained therein, and becomes one therewith; it turns the same into a spirit, and tinges with a spiritual and invariable tincture, which is indelible. Know, also, that if ye place the body over the fire without vinegar, it will be burnt and corrupted. And know, further, that the first humour is cold. Be careful, therefore, of the fire, which is inimical to cold. Accordingly, the Wise have said: Rule gently until the sulphur becomes incombustible.* The Wise men have already shewn to those who possess reason the disposition of this Art, and the best point of their Art, which they mentioned, is, that a little of this sulphur burns a strong body. Accordingly they venerate it and name it in the beginning of their book, and the son of Adam thus described it. For this vinegar burns the body, converts it into a cinder, and also whitens the body, which, if ye cook well and deprive of blackness, is changed into a stone, so that it becomes a coin of most intense whiteness. Cook, therefore, the stone until it be disintegrated, and then dissolve and temper with water of the sea.

Know also, that the beginning of the whole work is the whitening, to which succeeds the redness, finally the perfection of the work; but after this, by means of vinegar, and by the will of Ged, there follows a complete perfection. Now, I have shewn to you, O disciples of this Turba, the disposition of the one thing, which is more perfect, more precious, and more honourable, than all natures, and I swear to you by God that I have searched for a long time in books so that I might arrive at the knowledge of this one thing, while I prayed also to God that he would teach me what itis. My prayer was heard, He shewed me clean water, whereby I knew pure vinegar, and the more I did read books, the more was I illuminated.