(31) Now the third birth or geniture is the comprehensibility or palpability of nature, which (before the time of God's wrath) was rarified and transparent, lovely, pleasant and bright, so that the qualifying or fountain spirits could see through and through all.

(4) They are the first and the second and thus both of them are perfect and full, for they are manifestations of the Father who is perfect and full, as well as of those who came forth, who are perfect by the fact that they glorify the perfect one. The fruit of the third, however, consists of honors of the will of each one of the aeons, and each one of the properties. The Father has power. It exists fully, perfect in the thought which is a product of agreement, since it is a product of the individuality of the aeons. It is this which he loves and over which he has power, as it gives glory to the Father by means of it.

(91) And in the seed there are three distinct things, whereof the one cannot fathom the others, and yet the others are in that one only seed, and they all qualify, mix or unite one with another, as one being; and they are also one being, and yet also three distinct things, according to the kind and manner of the Ternary or Trinity in the Deity.

(102) 8. The three that cause love are the heart and the two ears; the three that produce hatred are the liver, the gall, and the tongues; the three life-givers are the two nostrils and the spleen; and the three destroyers are the mouth and the two lower openings of the body. Over all these rules God, the faithful king, from His holy habitation in all eternity. God is One above three, three are above seven, seven are above twelve, yet all are linked together.

(2) 'That Being (i. e. that which had produced fire, water, and earth) thought, let me now enter those three beings (fire, water, earth) with this living Self (gîva âtmâ) , and let me then reveal (develop) names and forms.

(12) But the third Kingdom is not also in the Eternity, but is generated out of the one Element in the Time of the Kindling of the Fiat; that now is corruptible, and has a certain Seculum, Limit and Time, [how long it shall last;] and so this Region in the Soul (when the Light of Life kindles itself) has also a certain Seculum, and Time of its Breaking; and that Kingdom brings Man up, and gives him the Source of his Manners [Conditions and Disposition,] Will and Desires to Evil and Good, and sets him in Beauty, Glory, Riches and Honour, and makes him an earthly God; and it opens to him the great Wonders i in him, and runs along with him inconsiderately to the End of his Seculum, Term, and End, and then it departs from him; and as it helped Man to his Life, so it helps him also to Death, and breaks off from the Soul.

(71) III. The third birth or geniture in the body of God, in or of this world, is under the firmament of heaven, hidden or concealed; and the firmament of heaven qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth therewith, but yet not fully bodily, but creaturely, as the angels and the souls of men do.

(9) But that the sharp and severe Essence with the Attraction might cease, therefore God generated a Similitude according to the Fountain of the Heart of God, viz. the Sun; and herewith sprung up the third Principle of this World, and that [viz. the Sun] put all Things into Meekness and well doing.

(48) Thus thou may understand what manner of being the Deity is, and how the three Persons in the Deity are. Thou must not liken the Deity to any image; for the Deity is the birth or geniture of all things. If, in the first four species or kinds, there were not the sharp birth or generating, then there would be no mobility, neither could the light kindle itself and generate the life.

(44) The Third quality, or the third spirit of God in the Father's power, is the bitter quality; which is a penetrating or forcing of the sweet and the astringent or harsh qualities, and which is trembling, penetrating and rising up. Observe here:

(17) Why are not beauty, goodness and the virtues, together with knowledge and intelligence, included among the primary genera?

If by goodness we mean The First- what we call the Principle of Goodness, the Principle of which we can predicate nothing, giving it this name only because we have no other means of indicating it- then goodness, clearly, can be the genus of nothing: this principle is not affirmed of other things; if it were, each of these would be Goodness itself. The truth is that it is prior to Substance, not contained in it. If, on the contrary, we mean goodness as a quality, no quality can be ranked among the primaries.

Does this imply that the nature of Being is not good? Not good, to begin with, in the sense in which The First is good, but in another sense of the word: moreover, Being does not possess its goodness as a quality but as a constituent.

But the other genera too, we said, are constituents of Being, and are regarded as genera because each is a common property found in many things. If then goodness is similarly observed in every part of Substance or Being, or in most parts, why is goodness not a genus, and a primary genus? Because it is not found identical in all the parts of Being, but appears in degrees, first, second and subsequent, whether it be because one part is derived from another- posterior from prior- or because all are posterior to the transcendent Unity, different parts of Being participating in it in diverse degrees corresponding to their characteristic natures.

If however we must make goodness a genus as well , it will be a posterior genus, for goodness is posterior to Substance and posterior to what constitutes the generic notion of Being, however unfailingly it be found associated with Being; but the Primaries, we decided, belong to Being as such, and go to form Substance.

This indeed is why we posit that which transcends Being, since Being and Substance cannot but be a plurality, necessarily comprising the genera enumerated and therefore forming a one-and-many.

It is true that we do not hesitate to speak of the goodness inherent in Being" when we are thinking of that Act by which Being tends, of its nature, towards the One: thus, we affirm goodness of it in the sense that it is thereby moulded into the likeness of The Good. But if this "goodness inherent in Being" is an Act directed toward The Good, it is the life of Being: but this life is Motion, and Motion is already one of the genera.

(12) On the fourth day, God took the Place of this World rightly at the Heart: For therein he created the wise Master out of his eternal Wisdom in the third Principle, viz. the Sun and Stars; herein Men may first rightly see the Deity, and the eternal Wisdom of God, as in a clear Glass, though indeed the Essence or Substance that is visible to the Eye is not God Himself, but it is the Goddess in the third Principle, which in the End goes into her Ether again, and takes her End.

(80) But if thou sayest it has but one kind of birth or geniture, thou speakest again also like one that is blind; for the herbs and wood which grow out of it are not earth, neither is the fruit, which grows upon a tree, wood; so also the power and virtue of the fruit is not God either; but God is in the centre, in the innermost birth in all the three natural births or genitures, hiddenly, but is not known, except in the spirit of man alone; also the outermost birth in the fruit does not comprehend, conceive or contain him, but he containeth the outermost birth of the fruit, and formeth it. Another Question is: Why then is the earth so mountainous, hilly, rocky, stony and uneven? Answer.

(95) "The third Principle of this world is generated and created out of the first, that is, magically: As is clearly demonstrated in our second [Three Principles], and in our third book [Threefold Life], unto which this book is only an introduction, and is the first book, which was not sufficiently apprehended by the author at the first time, though it appeared clearly enough, yet all of it could not be conceived; also it was as when a torrent or stormy shower of rain passeth over a place, from whence vegetation and springing existeth; for therein is the seed of the whole Deity."]

(37) V. The fifth generating in God is when this light thus very gently, mildly and amiably presseth through the first four births or generatings, and then it bringeth along with it the heart, and most pleasant lovely power and virtue of the sweet water, and so when the sharp births or genitures taste of it, then are they very meek, and richly full of love, and it is as if the life did continually rise up in and from death.

(93) Behold! that is the birth or geniture of nature; and so, if in these three qualities, viz. the astringent, the bitter and the sweet, the wrath-fire were not kindled, then thou wouldst plainly see where God is.

(26) The sect of the Academic philosophers instituted by Plato (427-347 B.C.) was divided into three major parts--the old, the middle, and the new Academy. Among the old Academics were Speusippus, Zenocrates, Poleman, Crates, and Crantor. Arcesilaus instituted the middle Academy and Carneades founded the new. Chief among the masters of Plato was Socrates. Plato traveled widely and was initiated by the Egyptians into the profundities of Hermetic philosophy. He also derived much from the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. Cicero describes the threefold constitution of Platonic philosophy as comprising ethics, physics, and dialectics. Plato defined good as threefold in character: good in the soul, expressed through the virtues; good in the body, expressed through the symmetry and endurance of the parts; and good in the external world, expressed through social position and companionship. In The Book of Speusippus on Platonic Definitions, that great Platonist thus defines God: "A being that lives immortally by means of Himself alone, sufficing for His own blessedness, the eternal Essence, cause of His own goodness. According to Plato, the One is the term most suitable for defining the Absolute, since the whole precedes the parts and diversity is dependent on unity, but unity not on diversity. The One, moreover, is before being, for to be is an attribute or condition of the One.

(10) For Moses writeth thus: [gen. i. 11-13] And God said, Let the earth send forth grass and herbs that yield a seed, and the fruit tree yielding or bearing fruit after its kind, which has its own seed in itself, upon the earth, and it was so done. And the earth sent forth grass, and the herb that yieldeth seed, each after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, which has its seed in itself, every one according to its kind; and God saw that it was good. And so out of evening and morning the third day came to be.

(2) And it divideth the light from the darkness [and] for prosperity, that all things may prosper which shoot and grow on the earth. These three kinds He made on the fourth day.

(27) If the earth transmits the generative soul to growing things- or retains it while allowing a vestige of it to constitute the vegetal principle in them- at once the earth is ensouled, as our flesh is, and any generative power possessed by the plant world is of its bestowing: this phase of the soul is immanent in the body of the growing thing, and transmits to it that better element by which it differs from the broken off part no longer a thing of growth but a mere lump of material.

But does the entire body of the earth similarly receive anything from the soul?

Yes: for we must recognize that earthly material broken off from the main body differs from the same remaining continuously attached; thus stones increase as long as they are embedded, and, from the moment they are separated, stop at the size attained.

We must conclude, then, that every part and member of the earth carries its vestige of this principle of growth, an under-phase of that entire principle which belongs not to this or that member but to the earth as a whole: next in order is the nature , concerned with sensation, this not interfused but in contact from above: then the higher soul and the Intellectual-Principle, constituting together the being known as Hestia and Demeter - a nomenclature indicating the human intuition of these truths, asserted in the attribution of a divine name and nature.