(4) Many other modes, also, of introducing light might be mentioned; but all of them may be referred to one mode, that of irradiation, wherever it may be effected, and through whatever instruments the Gods may illuminate. Since, therefore, this illumination accedes externally, and has every thing which it possesses subservient to the will and intelligence alone of the Gods, and as the greatest thing pertaining to it, possesses a sacred irradiating light, either supernally derived from ether, or from the air, or the moon, or the sun, or from some other celestial sphere,—this being the case, it is evident from all these particulars, that such a mode of divination as this is unrestrained, primordial, and worthy of the Gods.

(2) A divine nature, therefore, whether it is allotted certain parts of the universe, such as heaven or earth, or sacred cities and regions, or certain groves, or sacred statues, externally illuminates all these, in the same manner as the sun externally irradiates all things with his rays. Hence, as light comprehends the things which are illuminated by it, thus also the power of the Gods externally comprehends its participants. As, likewise, the solar light is present with the air in an unmingled manner; but this is manifest from no light being left in the air, when once that which illuminated it has departed, though heat is still present with it, when that which heated it is entirely withdrawn; thus also the light of the Gods illuminates separately, and being firmly established in itself, wholly proceeds through all beings. Moreover, the light which is the object of sensible perception, is one, continuous, and every where the same, whole; so that it is not possible for any part of it to be separate and cut off from the whole, nor to be inclosed in a circle, nor at any time to depart from its illuminating source.

(3) Since, however, a contrary is receptive of a contrary, according to a mutation and departure from itself, and that which is allied to another thing, and familiar with it through similitude, is capable of receiving it, hence the illuminators receive darkness as a cooperator, and employ in illuminating the light of the sun, or of the moon, or, in short, of the air. Sometimes, likewise, they use collocations of such things as are adapted to the Gods that are about to descend, or they employ incantations or compositions, and these appropriately prepared for the reception, presence, and manifestation of the Gods. And again, sometimes they introduce light through water, because this being diaphanous, is aptly disposed to the reception of light. But at other times, they cause light to shine forth on a wall, having previously prepared the wall for the reception of light in the best manner by the sacred descriptions of characters; and, at the same time, they fix the light in a certain solid place, so that it may not be widely diffused.

(2) Invoking then Jesus, the Paternal Light, the Real, the True, "which lighteth every man coming into the world," "through Whom we have access to the Father," Source of Light, let us aspire, as far as is attainable, to the illuminations handed down by our fathers in the most sacred Oracles, and let us gaze, as we may, upon the Hierarchies of the Heavenly Minds manifested by them symbolically for our instruction. And when we have received, with immaterial and unflinching mental eyes, the gift of Light, primal and super-primal, of the supremely Divine Father, which manifests to us the most blessed Hierarchies of the Angels in types and symbols, let us then, from it, be elevated to its simple splendour. For it never loses its own unique inwardness, but multiplied and going forth, as becomes its goodness, for an elevating and unifying blending of the objects of its care, remains firmly and solitarily centred within itself in its unmoved sameness; and raises, according to their capacity, those who lawfully aspire to it, and makes them one, after the example of its own unifying Oneness. For it is not possible that the supremely Divine Ray should otherwise illuminate us, except so far as it is enveloped, for the purpose of instruction, in variegated sacred veils, and arranged naturally and appropriately, for such as we are, by paternal forethought.

(5) If a man performs his sacred works when these flames are shining, and the oblations follow at the right time, then they lead him as sun-rays to where the one Lord of the Devas dwells.

(4) But what slipped from our view in the midst of our discourse, the Good is Cause of the celestial movements in their commencements and terminations, of their not increasing, not diminishing, and completely changeless, course, and of the noiseless movements, if one may so speak, of the vast celestial transit, and of the astral orders, and the beauties and lights, and stabilities, and the progressive swift motion of certain stars, and of the periodical return of the two luminaries, which the Oracles call "great," from the same to the same quarter, after which our days and nights being marked, and months and years being measured, mark and number and arrange and comprehend the circular movements of time and things temporal. But, what would any one say of the very ray of the sun? For the light is from the Good, and an image of the Goodness, wherefore also the Good is celebrated under the name of Light; as in a portrait the original is manifested. For, as the goodness of the Deity, beyond all, permeates from the highest and most honoured substances even to the lowest, and yet is above all, neither the foremost outstripping its superiority, nor the things below eluding its grasp, but it both enlightens all that are capable, and forms and enlivens, and grasps, and perfects, and is measure of things existing, and age, and number, and order, and grasp, and cause, and end; so, too, the brilliant likeness of the Divine Goodness, this our great sun, wholly bright and ever luminous, as a most distant echo of the Good, both enlightens whatever is capable of participating in it, and possesses the light in the highest degree of purity, unfolding to the visible universe, above and beneath, the splendours of its own rays, and if anything does not participate in them, this is not owing to the inertness or deficiency of its distribution of light, but is owing to the inaptitude for light-reception of the things which do not unfold themselves for the participation of light. No doubt the ray passing over many things in such condition, enlightens the things after them, and there is no visible thing which it does not reach, with the surpassing greatness of its own splendour. Further also, it contributes to the generation of sensible bodies, and moves them to life, and nourishes, and increases, and perfects, and purifies and renews; and the light is both measure and number of hours, days, and all our time. For it is the light itself, even though it was then without form, which the divine Moses declared to have fixed that first Triad of our days. And, just as Goodness turns all things to Itself, and is chief collector of things scattered, as One-springing and One-making Deity, and all things aspire to It, as Source and Bond and End, and it is the Good, as the Oracles say, from Which all things subsisted, and are being brought into being by an all-perfect Cause; and in Which all things consisted, as guarded and governed in an all-controlling route; and to Which all things are turned, as to their own proper end; and to Which all aspire --the intellectual and rational indeed, through knowledge, and the sensible through the senses, and those bereft of sensible perception by the innate movement of the aspiration after life, and those without life, and merely being, by their aptitude for mere substantial participation; after the same method of its illustrious original, the light also collects and turns to itself all things existing--things with sight -- things with motion--things enlightened--things heated--things wholly held together by its brilliant splendours--whence also, Helios, because it makes all things altogether (ἀολλῆ), and collects things scattered. And all creatures, endowed with sensible perceptions, aspire to it, as aspiring either to see, or to be moved and enlightened, and heated, and to be wholly held together by the light. By no means do I affirm, after the statement of antiquity, that as being God and Creator of the universe, the sun, by itself, governs the luminous world, but that the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the foundation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Deity.

(6) Here is required most inward sense or perception to understand this; for the place where the light is generated in the heart alone comprehendeth it, the outward man does not comprehend it at all.

(16) For when the shining light, by reason of the hard, dry and rough matter, became extinguished, then it was together dried up and incorporated in the heat, which is the father of the light. Yet you must understand it thus:

(3) Now another man brought forward to me a by no means foolish defence of the present position. For he said that that great one, whoever he was,--the Angel who formed this vision for the purpose of teaching the theologian Divine things,--referred his own cleansing function to God, and after God, to the first working Hierarchy. And was not this statement certainly true? For he who said this, affirmed that the supremely Divine Power in visiting all, advances and penetrates all irresistibly, and yet is invisible to all, not only as being superessentially elevated above all, but as secretly transmitting its providential energies to all; yea, rather, it is manifested to all the intellectual Beings in due degree, and by conducting Its own gift of Light to the most reverend Beings, through them, as first, It distributes in due order to the subordinate, according to the power of each Division to bear the vision of God; or to speak more strictly, and through familiar illustrations (for if they fall short of the Glory of God, Who is exalted above all, yet they are more illustrating for us), the distribution of the sun's ray passes with easy distribution to first matter, as being more transparent than all, and, through it with greater clearness, lights up its own splendours; but when it strikes more dense materials, its distributed brilliancy becomes more obscure, from the inaptitude of the materials illuminated for transmission of the gift of Light, and from this it is naturally contracted, so as to almost entirely exclude the passage of Light. Again, the heat of fire transmits itself chiefly to things that are more receptive, and yielding, and conductive to assimilation to itself; but, as regards repellent opposing substances, either it leaves none, or a very light, trace of its fiery energy; and further, when through substances favourable to its proper action, it comes in contact with things not congenial,--first, it perchance makes things easily changed to heating hot, and through them heats proportionately either water or something else which is not easily heated. After the same rule, then, of Nature's well-ordered method, the regulation of all good order, both visible and invisible, manifests supernaturally the brightness of its own gift of Light, in first manifestation to the most exalted Beings, in abundant streams, and through these, the Beings after them partake of the Divine ray. For these, as knowing God first, and striving preeminently after Divine virtue, and to become first-workers, are deemed worthy of the power and energy for the imitation of God, as attainable, and these benevolently elevate the beings after them to an equality, as far as possible, by imparting ungrudgingly to them the splendour which rests upon themselves, and these again to the subordinate, and throughout each Order, the first rank imparts its gift to that after it, and the Divine Light thus rests upon all, in due proportion, with providential forethought. There is, then, for all those who are illuminated, a Source of illumination, viz., God, by nature, and really, and properly, as Essence of Light, and Cause of Being, and Vision itself; but, by ordinance, and for Divine imitation, the relatively superior (is source) for each after it, by the fact, that the Divine rays are poured through it to that. All the remaining Angelic Beings, then, naturally regard the highest Order of the Heavenly Minds as source, after God, of every God-knowledge and God-imitation, since, through them, the supremely Divine illumination is distributed to all, and to us. Wherefore, they refer every holy energy of Divine imitation to God indeed as Cause, but to the first Godlike Minds, as first agents and teachers of things Divine. The first Order, then, of the holy Angels possesses, more than all, the characteristic of fire, and the streaming distribution of supremely Divine wisdom, and the faculty of knowing the highest science of the Divine illuminations, and the characteristic of Thrones, exhibiting their expansion for the reception of God; and the ranks of the subordinate Beings possess indeed the empyrean, the wise, the knowing, the God-receptive, faculty, but subordinately, and by looking to the first, and through them, as being deemed worthy of the Divine imitation in first operation, are conducted to the attainable likeness of God. The aforesaid holy characteristics, then, which the Beings after them possess, through the first, they attribute to those Beings themselves, after God, as Hierarchs.

(62) Moses writeth, that God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, which should therein give a light to the earth, and divide or distinguish day and night; also make years and times or seasons.

(52) Thy rays, they run over the earth to enlighten the dwellers in Amenta. Those who are in the Tuat worship thee with loud acclaim, and cherish hope when they see thee daily

(32) "Light," writes Edwin D. Babbitt, "reveals the glories of the external world and yet is the most glorious of them all. It gives beauty, reveals beauty and is itself most beautiful. It is the analyzer, the truth-teller and the exposer of shams, for it shows things as they are. Its infinite streams measure off the universe and flow into our telescopes from stars which are quintillions of miles distant. On the other hand it descends to objects inconceivably small, and reveals through the microscope objects fifty millions of times less than can be seen by the naked eye. Like all other fine forces, its movement is wonderfully soft, yet penetrating and powerful. Without its vivifying influence, vegetable, animal, and human life must immediately perish from the earth, and general ruin take place. We shall do well, then, to consider this potential and beautiful principle of light and its component colors, for the more deeply we penetrate into its inner laws, the more will it present itself as a marvelous storehouse of power to vitalize, heal, refine, and delight mankind." (See The Principles of Light and Color.)

(7) 'Then they see (within themselves) the ever-present light of the old seed (of the world, the Sat), the highest, which is lighted in the brilliant (Brahman).' Rig-veda I, 50, 10:-- 'Perceiving above the darkness (of ignorance) the higher light (in the sun), as the higher light within the heart, the bright source (of light and life) among the gods, we have reached the highest light, yea, the highest light .'

(25) Now thus the eternal Light, and the Virtue of the Light, or the heavenly Paradise, moves in the eternal Darkness; and the Darkness cannot comprehend the Light; for they are two several Principles; and the Darkness longs after the Light, because that the Spirit beholds itself therein, and because the divine Virtue is manifested in it. But though it has not comprehended the divine Virtue and Light, yet it has continually with great Lust lifted up itself towards it, till it has kindled the Root of the Fire in itself, from the Beams of the Light of God; and there arose the third Principle: And it has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the dark Matrix, by the Speculating of the Virtue for Power] of God. But when the kindled Virtue in this springing up [of the third Principle] in the Darkness became fiery, then God put the Fiat therein, and by the moving Spirit, which goes forth in the Virtue of the Light, created the fiery Source in a bodily Manner, and severed it from the Matrix, and the Spirit called the fiery created Properties Stars, for their Quality.

(8) Now: given a light of this degree, remaining in the upper sphere at its appointed station, pure light in purest place, what mode of outflow from it can be conceived possible?

Such a Kind is not so constituted as to flow downwards of its own accord; and there exists in those regions no power to force it down. Again, body in contact with soul must always be very different from body left to itself; the bodily substance of the heavens has that contact and will show that difference.

Besides, the corporeal substance nearest to the heavens would be air or fire: air has no destructive quality; fire would be powerless there since it could not enter into effective contact: in its very rush it would change before its attack could be felt; and, apart from that, it is of the lesser order, no match for what it would be opposing in those higher regions.

Again, fire acts by imparting heat: now it cannot be the source of heat to what is already hot by nature; and anything it is to destroy must as a first condition be heated by it, must be brought to a pitch of heat fatal to the nature concerned.

In sum, then, no outside body is necessary to the heavens to ensure their permanence- or to produce their circular movement, for it has never been shown that their natural path would be the straight line; on the contrary the heavens, by their nature, will either be motionless or move by circle; all other movement indicates outside compulsion. We cannot think, therefore, that the heavenly bodies stand in need of replenishment; we must not argue from earthly frames to those of the celestial system whose sustaining soul is not the same, whose space is not the same, whose conditions are not those which make restoration necessary in this realm of composite bodies always in flux: we must recognise that the changes that take place in bodies here represent a slipping-away from the being and take place at the dictate of a Principle not dwelling in the higher regions, one not powerful enough to ensure the permanence of the existences in which it is exhibited, one which in its coming into being and in its generative act is but an imitation of an antecedent Kind, and, as we have shown, cannot at every point possess the unchangeable identity of the Intellectual Realm.

(91) From that power springeth up thy light, so that thou seest, understandest and knowest in the same power what thou art to do; for that light glimmereth in thy whole body; and the whole body moveth in the power and knowledge of the light, which signifieth God the Son; for the body helpeth all the members in the knowledge of the light.

(3) "And all rulers and all authorities and all angels therein were thrown all together into agitation because of the great light which was on me. And they gazed at the radiant vesture of light with which I was clad, and they saw the mystery which contains their names, and they feared most exceedingly. And all their bonds with which they were bound, were unloosed and every one left his order, and they all fell down before me, adored and said: 'How hath the lord of the universe passed through us without our knowing?' And they all sang praises together to the interiors of the interiors; but me they saw not, but they saw only the light. And they were in great fear and were exceedingly agitated and sang praises to the interiors of the interiors.

(6) The Light is not in the body alone, neither is it only outside the body. Mountains and rivers and the great Earth are lit by sun and moon; all that is this Light. Therefore it is not only within the body. Understanding and clarity, knowing and enlightenment, and all motion (of the spirit), are likewise this Light; therefore it is not just something outside the body. The Light- lower of Heaven and Earth ills all thousand spaces. But also the Light-flower of one body passes through Heaven and covers the Earth. Therefore, just as the Light is circulating, so Heaven and Earth, mountains and rivers, are all rotating with it at the same time. To concentrate the seed- flower of the human body above in the eyes, that is the great key of the human body. Children, take heed! If for a day you do not practise meditation, this Light streams out, who knows whither? If you only meditate for a quarter of an hour, you can set ten thousand aeons and a thousand births at rest. All methods take thei/ source in quietness. This marvellous magic cannot be fathomed.

(72) For it is the only and sole natural light of this world, and besides it there is no more any true light in the house of death; and though it seemeth as if the other stars did shine bright and give light also, yet it is not so, but they take all their lustre and shining light from the sun; as hereafter presently followeth. The true Birth or Geniture and Descent of the Sun and Planets is just thus, as followeth.