(2) And from on high come forth and down descend, I saw two Angels with two flaming swords, Truncated and deprived of their points. Green as the little leaflets just now born Their garments were, which, by their verdant pinions Beaten and blown abroad, they trailed behind. One just above us came to take his station, And one descended to the opposite bank, So that the people were contained between them. Clearly in them discerned I the blond head; But in their faces was the eye bewildered, As faculty confounded by excess. "From Mary's bosom both of them have come," Sordello said, "as guardians of the valley Against the serpent, that will come anon." Whereupon I, who knew not by what road, Turned round about, and closely drew myself, Utterly frozen, to the faithful shoulders. And once again Sordello: "Now descend we 'Mid the grand shades, and we will speak to them; Right pleasant will it be for them to see you." Only three steps I think that I descended, And was below, and saw one who was looking Only at me, as if he fain would know me.

(5) The second, tinct of deeper hue than perse, Was of a calcined and uneven stone, Cracked all asunder lengthwise and across. The third, that uppermost rests massively, Porphyry seemed to me, as flaming red As blood that from a vein is spirting forth. Both of his feet was holding upon this The Angel of God, upon the threshold seated, Which seemed to me a stone of diamond. Along the three stairs upward with good will Did my Conductor draw me, saying: "Ask Humbly that he the fastening may undo." Devoutly at the holy feet I cast me, For mercy's sake besought that he would open, But first upon my breast three times I smote. Seven P's upon my forehead he described With the sword's point, and, "Take heed that thou wash These wounds, when thou shalt be within," he said. Ashes, or earth that dry is excavated, Of the same colour were with his attire, And from beneath it he drew forth two keys.

(42) "On the fifth leaf there was a fair rose tree flowered in the midst of a sweet garden, climbing up against a hollow oak; at the foot whereof boiled a fountain of most white water, which ran headlong down into the depths, notwithstanding it first passed among the hands of infinite people, who digged in the earth seeking for it; but because they were blind, none of them knew it, except here and there one who considered the weight. On the last side of the fifth leaf there was a king with a great fauchion, who made to be killed in his presence by some soldiers a great multitude of little infants, whose mothers wept at the feet of the unpitiful soldiers: the blood of which infants was afterwards by other soldiers gathered up, and put in a great vessel, wherein the sun and the moon came to bathe themselves.

(48) Behold, dear Soul, herein lies the heavenly Tincture, which we must set down in a Similitude, and we cannot at all express it with Words. Indeed if we had the Tongue of Angels, we could then rightly express what the Mind apprehends; but the Pearl is cloathed [covered or vailed] with a dark [Cloak or] Garment: The Virgin calls stedfastly to the Heart of God, that he would deliver her Companion from the dark Worm; but the divine Answer still is, The Seed of the Woman shall break the Serpent's Head; that is, the Darkness of the Serpent shall be separated from the Bridegroom; the dark Garment wherewith the Serpent cloaths thy Bridegroom, and darkens thy Pearl and beauteous Crown, shall be broken, [corrupted or destroyed,] and turn to Earth; and thou shalt rejoice with thy Bridegroom in me; this was my eternal Will, it must stand.

(684) 2051 To say: N. ascended at thy ascension, Osiris; 2051 N. has spoken (with) his ka in heaven. 2051 The bones of N. are firm (or, copper), and the limbs of N. 2051 are like the stars, the imperishable stars. 2052 Given that N. be encompassed, then a great one falls into the hands of N. 2052 The mother of N. is Nut; 2053 the father of N. is Shu; the mother of N. is Tefnut. 2053 They take N. to heaven, to heaven-on the smoke of incense. 2054. N. is purified; N. lives; N. makes his seat like Osiris; 2055 N. sits at thy side (lit. shoulder), Osiris; N. spits on thy hair, Osiris; 2055 he will not let him become diseased; N. will not permit him to be bald, 2055 at the mouth of N. daily, at the beginnings (of the feast) of the half months, at the beginnings (of the feast) of the months. 2056 N. sits at thy side (lit. shoulder), Horus; N. spits on thy hair, Horus; 2056 he will not let it become diseased; N. will not permit himself to be bald, 2056 at the mouth of N. daily, at the beginnings (of the feast) of the half months, at the beginnings (or the feast) of the months. 2057. N. is one of these four beings, sons of Atum, sons of Nut, 2058 who do not rot; N. does not rot; 2058 who do not decay; N. does not decay; 2058 who do not fall upon earth from heaven; 2058 N. does not fall upon the earth from heaven. 2059 N. was sought; N. is found with them; 2059 N. is one of them, praised by the bull of heaven. 2060. N. makes his ka arise; N. returns (?); N. strides- 2061 the good companion makes his ka arise, returns (?), strides. 2061 N. rests at home, on the under (side) of the body of the sky, like a nfr.t-star, 2061 at the meanderings of the Winding Watercourse. 2062 When N. ascends to heaven, give him this formula: "R` is good each day." 2062 N. put himself on thy way, Horus of Ssm.t, on which thou leadest the gods 2062 to the beautiful ways of heaven and of the Marsh of Offerings. 56. TEXTS OF MISCELLANEOUS CONTENTS,

(6) Three maidens at the right wheel in a circle Came onward dancing; one so very red That in the fire she hardly had been noted. The second was as if her flesh and bones Had all been fashioned out of emerald; The third appeared as snow but newly fallen. And now they seemed conducted by the white, Now by the red, and from the song of her The others took their step, or slow or swift. Upon the left hand four made holiday Vested in purple, following the measure Of one of them with three eyes in her head. In rear of all the group here treated of Two old men I beheld, unlike in habit, But like in gait, each dignified and grave. One showed himself as one of the disciples Of that supreme Hippocrates, whom nature Made for the animals she holds most dear; Contrary care the other manifested, With sword so shining and so sharp, it caused Terror to me on this side of the river.

(65) Because from these mysterious compositions comes life, That staff becomes a serpent and divides the Nile, Like the staff of Ha, Mim, by the grace of God. Its outward form resembles the outward forms of others, Yet the disk of a cake differs much from the moon's disk. The saint's weeping and laughter and speech Are not his own, but proceed from God. Whereas fools look only to outward appearances, These mysteries are totally hidden from them; Of necessity the real meaning is veiled from them,

(1) Oppressed with stupor, I unto my guide Turned like a little child who always runs For refuge there where he confideth most; And she, even as a mother who straightway Gives comfort to her pale and breathless boy With voice whose wont it is to reassure him, Said to me: "Knowest thou not thou art in heaven, And knowest thou not that heaven is holy all And what is done here cometh from good zeal? After what wise the singing would have changed thee And I by smiling, thou canst now imagine, Since that the cry has startled thee so much, In which if thou hadst understood its prayers Already would be known to thee the vengeance Which thou shalt look upon before thou diest. The sword above here smiteth not in haste Nor tardily, howe'er it seem to him Who fearing or desiring waits for it. But turn thee round towards the others now, For very illustrious spirits shalt thou see, If thou thy sight directest as I say." As it seemed good to her mine eyes I turned, And saw a hundred spherules that together With mutual rays each other more embellished.

(9) And if at any time there is the want of an animal, they are satisfied with bleeding their own finger for a sacrifice. The prophetess Diotima, by the Athenians offering sacrifice previous to the pestilence, effected a delay of the plague for ten years. The sacrifices, too, of Epimenides of Crete, put off the Persian war for an equal period. And it is considered to be all the same whether we call these spirits gods or angels. And those skilled in the matter of consecrating statues, in many of the temples have erected tombs of the dead, calling the souls of these Daemons, and teaching them to be wor-shipped by men; as having, in consequence of the purity of their life, by the divine foreknowledge, received the power of wandering about the space around the earth in order to minister to men. For they knew that some souls were by nature kept in the body. But of these, as the work proceeds, in the treatise on the angels, we shall discourse.

(1) Om! Verily, the dawn is the head of the sacrificial horse; the sun, his eye; the wind, his breath; universal fire (Agni VaisVanara), his open mouth. The year is the body (atman) of the sacrificial horse; the sky, his back; the atmo- sphere, his belly; the earth, the under part of his belly; the quarters, his flanks; the intermediate quarters, his ribs; the seasons, his limbs; the months and half-months, his joints; days and nights, his feet; the stars, his bones; the clouds, his flesh. Sand is the food in his stomach; rivers are his entrails. His liver and lungs are the mountains; plants and trees, his hair. The orient is his fore part; the Occident, his hind part. When he yawns, then it lightens. When he shakes himself, then it thunders. When he urinates, then it rains. Voice, indeed, is his voice.

(11) After this copy has been read, if the fourth hour is going round in the day, beware of what is threatening in the sky; but if thou hast read this book without any human being seeing it, it will widen the steps of the deceased in heaven or earth, and in the Tuat; because this book exalts the deceased more than any ceremony performed to him, henceforth, from this day undeviatingly for times infinite

(142) This now is the very door of the hidden, secret Mystery of the Deity. Concerning which the Reader is to conceive, that it is not in the power or capacity of any man to discern or to know it, if the Dawning or Morning-Redness does not break forth in the centre in the soul.

(10) Man's Image born of a Woman, here in this Life, is in a threefold Form, and stands in three Principles [or Beginnings;] viz. the Soul, that has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the strong and sour Might of the Eternity; and it swims [or moves] between two Principles, begirt with the third [Principle;] it reaches with its original Root into the Depth of the Eternity, in the Source [or Quality] where God the Father from Eternity enters (through the Gates of the Breaking through, and Opening) in himself, into the Light of Joy; and it is in the Band, where God calls himself a jealous, angry and austere God, and is a Sparkle out of the Omnipotence, appearing in the great Wonders of the Wisdom of God, through the dear Virgin of Chastity; and with the Form of the first Principle [it stands] in the Gate of the Sourness of Eternity [mingled, united, or] qualified with the Region of the Sun and Stars, and begirt with the four Elements; and the holy Element (viz. the Root of the four Elements) that is the Body of the Soul, in the second Principle, in the Gate [before or] towards God; and according to the Spirit of this World, the Region of the Stars is the Body of the Soul; and the Production of the four Elements is the Source-house, [or House of Operation,] or the Spirit of this World, which kindles the Region, so that it [springs forth or] operates. 1 1. And thus the Soul lives in such a threefold Source [or working Quality,] being bound with three Cords, and is drawn of all three. The first Cord is the Band of Eternity, generated in the Rising up of the Anxiety, and reaches the Abyss of Hell. The second Cord is the Kingdom of Heaven, generated through the Gates of the Deep in the Father, and regenerated out of the Birth of Sins, through the Humanity of Christ, and there the Soul also (in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God) is tied up, and is drawn by the dear Virgin, in the Word of God. The third Cord is the Kingdom of the Stars, qualifying [or mingling] with the Soul, and it is hard drawn and held by the four Elements, and carried and led by them.

(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.]

(95) And this now is the mother of the soul, which shineth through the seven spirits, and makes them living; and in their stead the seed qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth with the Heart of God. But the seed which so qualifieth is that seed alone in which the light is kindled: in that in which the wrath-fire burneth, there this third mother remaineth captive in the dark chamber.

(2) Rejoicing in their flamelets seemed the heaven. O thou septentrional and widowed site, Because thou art deprived of seeing these! When from regarding them I had withdrawn, Turning a little to the other pole, There where the Wain had disappeared already, I saw beside me an old man alone, Worthy of so much reverence in his look, That more owes not to father any son. A long beard and with white hair intermingled He wore, in semblance like unto the tresses, Of which a double list fell on his breast. The rays of the four consecrated stars Did so adorn his countenance with light, That him I saw as were the sun before him. "Who are you? ye who, counter the blind river, Have fled away from the eternal prison?" Moving those venerable plumes, he said: "Who guided you? or who has been your lamp In issuing forth out of the night profound, That ever black makes the infernal valley? The laws of the abyss, are they thus broken? Or is there changed in heaven some council new, That being damned ye come unto my crags?"

(12) When the Hierarch has finished these things, he places the body in an honourable chamber, with other holy bodies of the same rank. For if, in soul and body, the man fallen asleep passed a life dear to God, there will be honoured, with the devout soul, the body also, which contended with it throughout the devout struggles. Hence the Divine justice gives to it, together with its own body, the retributive inheritances, as companion and participator in the devout, or the contrary, life. Wherefore, the Divine institution of sacred rites bequeaths the supremely Divine participations to them both--to the soul, indeed, in pure contemplation and in science of the things being done, and to the body, by sanctifying the whole man, as in a figure with the most Divine Muron, and the most holy symbols of the supremely Divine Communion, sanctifying the whole man, and announcing, by purifications of the whole man, that his resurrection will be most complete.

(40) But the noble Virgin shows us the Door, [and] how we must enter again into Paradise, through the Sharpness of the Sword; yet the Sword cuts the earthly Body quite away from the holy Element, and then the new Man may enter into Paradise by the Way of Life. And the Sword is nothing else, but the Kingdom or Gate of the Fierceness in the Anger of God, where Man must press in, through the fierce [bitter] Death, through the Center, into the second Principle, into the Paradise of the holy Element before God; where then the fierce [grim] Death cuts off the earthly Body (viz. the four Elements) from the holy [one] Element.

(2) But if the multitude of powers which are excited when the Gods descend and are moved, is not to be comprehended by any one, except theurgists alone, who accurately know this through experience in sacred operations; if this be the case, they alone are capable of knowing what the perfection is of the sacrific art; and they also know that the omission, though of a few things, subverts the whole work of religion; just as in harmony, from the bursting of one chord, the whole becomes dissonant and incommensurate. As, therefore, in the visible descents of the Gods, a manifest injury is sustained by those who leave some one of the more excellent genera unhonoured, thus also in the invisible appearances of the Gods in sacrifices, it is not proper to honour one of them, and not honour another, but it is entirely requisite to honour each of them according to the order which he is allotted. But he who leaves some one of them unhonoured, confounds the whole work of piety, and divulses the one and whole orderly distribution of it; not, in so doing, as some one may think, imperfectly receiving the Gods, but entirely subverting all the ceremonies of religion.

(68) So also it is with the damned [Soul,] when the Body breaks, the Soul needs no flying forth, or departing far away; it remains in that which is Outermost a without the four Elements, in the Darkness, and in the anguishing Source; its Source is [that which comes] after the Light, and its Rising [or Springing-up] is Enmity against itself, and so climbs continually aloft over the Thrones of the Deity, and finds them not, to Eternity; but it rides in its Pride aloft over the Thrones, in their own Game, with the strong Might of the Grimness; of which you shall find at large, about the Description of the last Judgment.