(54) Briefly, whatsoever images itself, stands in the Power and Authority of these three head Qualities, and is formed by them, and also is formed out of its own Power.

(62) For that Power, which in the Turning about shows itself the Strongest in the Generating, according to that Power, Manner, and Colour, the Holy Ghost also images, shapes, or frames the Figures in the Body of Nature. [Holy Ghost also images.]

(11) But now seeing he was so beauteously and gloriously imaged, or formed as a King in Nature, his beauteous Form and Feature excited him, and lo he thought with himself, I am now God, and formed or framed out of God, who can vanquish me? Or who can alter or change me? I myself will be Lord, and with my Sharpness rule in all Things, and my Body shall be the Image, which shall be worshipped; I will prepare and erect for myself a new Kingdom: For the whole Circumference, Extent, or Region is mine, I am God alone, and none else.

(6) For neither can he who perceiveth It, perceive aught else; nor he who gazeth on It, gaze on aught else; nor hear aught else, nor stir his body any way. Staying his body's every sense and every motion he stayeth still. And shining then all round his mond, It shines through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of him to essence. For it is possible, my son, that a man's soul should be made like to God, e'en while it still is in a body, if it doth contemplate the Beauty of the Good.

(11) Whatever the form, it fashions in its own likeness If the form be blessing, the man is thankful; If it be suffering, he is patient; If it be cherishing, he is cheerful; If it be bruising, he is full of lamentation! Since all these forms are slaves of Him without form, Why do they deny their Lord and Master? They exist only through Him that is without form; What, then, means their disavowal of their Sustainer? This very denial of Him proceeds from Him,

(3) After these things, therefore, we shall define the reasons of the self-apparent statues [or images]. Hence, in the forms of the Gods which are seen by the eyes, the most clear spectacles of truth itself are perceived, which are also accurately splendid, and shine forth with an evolved light. The images of archangels present themselves to the view true and perfect; but those of angels preserve, indeed, the same form, but fail in plenitude of indication. The images of dæmons are obscure; and those of heroes are seen to be still inferior to these. With respect, also, to archons, the images of such as are mundane, are clear; but of such as are material, obscure. Both, however, are seen to be of an authoritative nature. And the images of souls appear to be of a shadowy form.

(51) Yea, he dwells in security forever. His form is vanished, he is a mere mirror; If you spit at it, you spit at your own face, And if you hit that mirror, you hit yourself; And if you see an ugly face in it, 'tis your own, And if you see an 'Isa there, you are its mother Mary. He is neither this nor that he is void of form; 'Tis your own form which is reflected back to you. But when the discourse reaches this point, lip is closed; When pen reaches this point, it is split in twain.

(21) This act is naught but a reflection from Himself! The forms of the walls and roofs of houses Know to be shadows of the architect's thought; Although stones and planks and bricks Find no entrance into the sanctuary of thought, Verily the Absolute Agent is without form, Sometimes that Formless One of His mercy Shows His face to His forms from behind the veil of Not-being, That every form may derive aid therefrom, Again, when that Formless One hides His face,

(12) And so now God created the Image, and Similitude, out of the eternal Element, in which the eternal Wonders are originally, and [God] breathed into him the Spirit of the Essences, out of his eternal original Will, out of the broken Gate of the Deep, through where the Wheel of the Stirring and Breaking-through stands in the eternal Mind, which reaches the clear, true, and pure Deity of the Heart of God.

(15) But its Body (which is the true Image of God, which God created) stands before the clear Deity, and is in and out of the holy pure Element; and the Limbus of the Element (out of which the Essences generate) is the Paradise, an Habitation of God the Holy Trinity. Thus was Man an Image and Similitude before God, wherein God dwells, in which (through his eternal Wisdom) he would manifest his Wonders.

(88) It would image, frame, and form all through its own Spirit, which it generated, as the whole Deity did; it would have the Primacy in the whole Deity: This was its Purpose.

(172) If a Figure is imaged in a Spirit, so that it subsists; and if another Spirit wrestles with this, and gets the better, then it comes to be divided, and indeed changed or altered, all according to the Kind of the Qualities; and this is in God as a holy Sport, Play, or Scene.

(20) Although indeed we can say this with Ground of Truth, that the Constellation images and forms no Man, as to [make him to be] the Similitude and Image of God; but [it forms only] a Beast in the Will, Manners, and Senses; and besides that, it has no Might nor Understanding, to be able to figure [or form] a Similitude of God: Though indeed it elevates itself in the highest [it can,] in the Will after the Similitude of God, yet it generates only a pleasant, subtle, and lusty Beast in Man (as also in other Creatures) and no more. Only the eternal Essences, which are propagated from Adam in all Men, they continue with the hidden Element (wherein the Image consists) standing in Man, but yet altogether hidden, unless the new Birth in the Water, and the Holy Ghost [or Spirit] of God [be attained.]

(9) Now the Question is; What is God's Image? Behold, and consider the Deity, and then you will light upon it. For God is not a bestial Man; but Man should be the Image and Similitude of God, wherein God should dwell. Now God is a Spirit, and all the three Principles are in him: And he would make such an Image, as should have all the three Principles in him, and that is rightly a Similitude of God; And he created him, &c. Whereby Moses may be rightly understood, that God created him, and not made him of a Lump of Earth.

(31) for a Similitude or Example, who is made after the Image or Similitude of God, as it is written. [Gen. 1. 17.]

(102) Now as that Quality is which is strongest, so the Body of the Fruit is imaged, and the Colours also; in this Striving, or Wrestling, the Deity forms itself into infinite and unsearchable Variety of Kinds and Manners of Images or Ideas.

(11) Similarly any one, unable to see himself, but possessed by that God, has but to bring that divine- within before his consciousness and at once he sees an image of himself, himself lifted to a better beauty: now let him ignore that image, lovely though it is, and sink into a perfect self-identity, no such separation remaining; at once he forms a multiple unity with the God silently present; in the degree of his power and will, the two become one; should he turn back to the former duality, still he is pure and remains very near to the God; he has but to look again and the same presence is there.

This conversion brings gain: at the first stage, that of separation, a man is aware of self; but, retreating inwards, he becomes possessor of all; he puts sense away behind him in dread of the separated life and becomes one in the Divine; if he plans to see in separation, he sets himself outside.

The novice must hold himself constantly under some image of the Divine Being and seek in the light of a clear conception; knowing thus, in a deep conviction, whither he is going- into what a sublimity he penetrates- he must give himself forthwith to the inner and, radiant with the Divine Intellections , be no longer the seer but, as that place has made him, the seen.

Still, we will be told, one cannot be in beauty and yet fail to see it. The very contrary: to see the divine as something external is to be outside of it; to become it is to be most truly in beauty: since sight deals with the external, there can here be no vision unless in the sense of identification with the object.

And this identification amounts to a self-knowing, a self-consciousness, guarded by the fear of losing the self in the desire of a too wide awareness.

It must be remembered that sensations of the ugly and evil impress us more violently than those of what is agreeable and yet leave less knowledge as the residue of the shock: sickness makes the rougher mark, but health, tranquilly present, explains itself better; it takes the first place, it is the natural thing, it belongs to our being; illness is alien, unnatural and thus makes itself felt by its very incongruity, while the other conditions are native and we take no notice. Such being our nature, we are most completely aware of ourselves when we are most completely identified with the object of our knowledge.

This is why in that other sphere, when we are deepest in that knowledge by intellection, we are aware of none; we are expecting some impression on sense, which has nothing to report since it has seen nothing and never could in that order see anything. The unbelieving element is sense; it is the other, the Intellectual-Principle, that sees; and if this too doubted, it could not even credit its own existence, for it can never stand away and with bodily eyes apprehend itself as a visible object.

(5) Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two remove Alike from thee, the other more remote Between the former two shall meet thine eyes. Turned towards these, cause that behind thy back Be placed a light, illuming the three mirrors And coming back to thee by all reflected. Though in its quantity be not so ample The image most remote, there shalt thou see How it perforce is equally resplendent. Now, as beneath the touches of warm rays Naked the subject of the snow remains Both of its former colour and its cold, Thee thus remaining in thy intellect, Will I inform with such a living light, That it shall tremble in its aspect to thee. Within the heaven of the divine repose Revolves a body, in whose virtue lies The being of whatever it contains. The following heaven, that has so many eyes, Divides this being by essences diverse, Distinguished from it, and by it contained. The other spheres, by various differences, All the distinctions which they have within them Dispose unto their ends and their effects.

(83) But that it is thus sharp in itself, is to the End that a Body may be imaged or framed through its attracting or drawing together, otherwise the Deity would not subsist, much less a Creature. And