Nature

When I think what would be in the place of this world, if the four elements and the starry firmament, and also nature itself, should perish and cease to be, so that no nature or creature were to be found any more; I find there would remain this eternal Unity, from which nature and creature have received their original.

The universe and I came into being together; and I, and everything therein, are One.

The laws of phenomena must be constant, or there could be no such thing as science; but it is a great error to mistake the slaves for the master.

The magnet, the essential desire of nature, that is, the will of the desire of nature, compresses itself into a substance, to become a plant, and in this compression of the desire becomes feeling, that is, working; and in that working the power and virtue arises, wherein the magnetical desire of nature, the outflown will of God, works in a natural way.

In this working perceptibility the magnetical desiring will is elevated and made joyful, and goes forth from the working power and virtue; and hence comes the growing and smell of the plant: and thus we see a representation of the Trinity of God in all growing and living things.

If there were not such a desiring perceptibility, and outgoing operation of the Trinity in the eternal Unity, the Unity were but an eternal stillness, a Nothing; and there would be no nature, nor any color, shape, or figure; likewise there would be nothing in this world; without this threefold working there could be no world at all.

The wisdom is the great Mystery of the divine nature; for in her the powers, colors, and virtues are made manifest.

She is the true divine chaos, wherein all things lie, a divine imagination, in which the ideas of angels and souls have been seen from eternity, in a divine type and resemblance; yet not then as creatures, but in resemblance, as when a man beholds his face in a glass.

In all things awaiting death, with a mind that is satisfied, counting it nothing else than a release of the elements from which each living creature is composed. Now if there is no hurt to the elements themselves in their ceaseless changing each into other, why should a man apprehend anxiously the change and dissolution of them all? For this is according to Nature; and no evil is according to Nature.

The Mysterium Magnum is that chaos, out of which light and darkness, that is, the foundation of heaven and hell is flown, from eternity, and made manifest; for that foundation which we now call hell (being a Principle of itself), is the ground and cause of the fire in the eternal nature; which fire, in God, is only a burning love; and where God is not manifested in a thing, according to the Unity, there is an anguishing, painful, burning fire.

Once upon a time, I, Chuang dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called metempsychosis.

By the word center, we understand the first beginning to nature, the most inward ground, wherein the self-raised will brings itself, by a reception, into a something.

This journey of man through the world may be divided into four stages--the sensuous, the experimental, the instinctive, the rational.

Nature, in its first ground, consists in seven properties; and these seven divide themselves into infinite.

And therefore the eternal Unity brings itself by its effluence and separation into nature, that it may have an object, in which it may manifest itself, and that it may love something, and be again be loved by something, that so there may be a perceiving, or sensible working and will.

For when there is a motion in the sharpness, then the property is the aching, and this is also the cause of sensibility and pain; for if there were no sharpness and motion, there would be no sensibility: this motion is also a ground of the air in the visible world, which is manifested by the fire, as shall be mentioned hereafter.

Thus we understand that the desire is the ground of somethingness, so that something may come out of nothing; and thus we may also conceive that the desire has been the beginning of this world, by which God has brought all things into substance and being; for the desire is that by which God said, Let there be. The desire is that Be it, which has made something where nothing was, but only a spirit; it has made the Mysterium Magnum (which is spiritual) visible and substantial, as we may see by the elements, stars, and other creatures.

The Second property, that is, the motion, was in the beginning of this world the separator or divider in the powers and virtues, by which the Creator, viz. the will of God, brought all things out of the Mysterium Magnum into form; for it is the outward movable world, by which the supernatural God made all things, and brought them into form, figure, and shape.

And this feelingness is the cause of the fire, and also of the mind and senses; for the own natural will is made volatile by it, and seeks rest; and thus the separation of the will goes out from itself, and pierces through the properties, from whence the taste arises, so that one property tastes and feels the other.

Thus, by the Third property of nature, which is the anguish, we mean the sharpness and painfulness of the fire, viz. the burning and consuming; for when the will is put into such a sharpness it will always consume the cause of that sharpness; for it always strives to get to the Unity of God again, which is the rest; and the Unity thrusts itself with its effluence to this motion and sharpness; and so there is a continual conjoining for the manifestation of the divine will , as we always find in these three, viz. in salt, brimstone, and oil, a heavenly in the earthly.

For the soul of a thing lies in the sharpness, and the true life of the sensual nature and property lies in the motion, and the powerful spirit which arises from the tincture lies in the oil of the Sulphur: Thus a heavenly always lies hidden in the earthly, for the invisible spiritual world came forth with and in the creation.

The eternal Unity (which I also in some of my writings call the liberty) is the soft and still tranquillity, being amiable, and as a soft comfortable ease, and it cannot be expressed how soft a tranquillity there is without nature in the Unity of God; but the three properties (in order) to nature are sharp, painful, and horrible.

And thus you may here perceive two Principles: the first is the ground of the burning of the fire, viz. the sharp, moving, perceivable, painful darkness in itself; and the second is the light of the fire, wherein the Unity comes into mobility and joy; for the fire is an object of the great love of God's Unity.

And in this fiery will of the eternal nature stands the soul of man, and also the angels; this is their ground and center; therefore, if any soul breaks itself off from the light and love of God, and enters into its own natural desire, then the ground of this darkness and painful property will be manifest in it; and this is the hellish fire, and the anger of God, when it is made manifest, as may be seen in Lucifer; and whatsoever can be thought to have a being anywhere in the creature, the same is likewise without the creature everywhere; for the creature is nothing else but an image and figure of the separable and various power and virtue of the universal Being.

Therefore in fire and light consists the life of all things, viz. in the will thereof, let them be insensible, vegetable, or rational things; everything, as the fire, has its ground, either from the eternal, as the soul, or from the temporary, as astral elementary things; for the eternal is one fire, and the temporary is another, as shall be shown hereafter.

Also the soul comes to be damned thus: when the fiery will breaks itself off from the love and Unity of God, and enters into its own natural propriety, that is, into its evil properties.

The second Principle (the angelical world and the thrones) is meant by the fifth property: for it is the motion of the Unity, wherein all the properties of the fiery nature burn in love.

When the spiritual fire and light shall be kindled, which has indeed burned from eternity in itself, then shall also the Mystery of the divine power and knowledge be always made manifest therein; for all the properties of the eternal nature becomes spiritual in the fire, and yet nature remains as it is, inwardly in itself; and the going forth of the will becomes spiritual.

The first is the going upwards of the fiery will; the second is the going downwards, or sinking of the watery spirit, viz. the meekness; and the third is the going out forwards of the oily spirit, in the midst, in the center of the fiery spirit of the will ; which oily spirit is the ens of the Unity of God, which is become a substance in the desire of nature; yet all is but spirit and power: but so it appears in the figure of the manifestation, not as if there were any severing or division, but it appears so in the manifestation.

The Sixth property of the eternal nature is the sound, noise, voice, or understanding; for when the fire flashes, all the properties together sound: the fire is the mouth of the essence, the light is the spirit, and the sound is the understanding wherein all the properties understand one another.

In the second property the power and virtue is painful; but in the sixth property it is joyful and pleasant; and the difference between the second and sixth property is in light and darkness, which are in one another, as fire and light; there is no other difference between them.

And though they work in different kinds and manners, yet here there is but one only substance, whose power and virtue is called tincture; that is, a holy penetrating, growing or springing bud (essence or being).

The visible world is only an effluence of the seven properties, for it proceeded out of the six working properties; but in the seventh (that is, in paradise) it is in rest: and that is the eternal Sabbath of rest, wherein the divine power and virtue rests.

Moses says, God created heaven and earth, and all creatures, in six days, and rested on the seventh day, and also commanded it to be kept for a rest.

Practise thoroughly all these things; meditate on them well; you ought to love them with all your heart. It is those that will put you in the way of divine virtue. I swear it by he who has transmitted into our souls the Sacred Quaternion, the source of nature, whose cause is eternal.

And the true Sage, taking his stand upon the beauty of the universe, pierces the principles of created things.

In the FIRST [1] motion, the magnetical desire compressed and compacted the fiery and watery Mercury with the other properties; and then the grossness separated itself from the spiritual nature: and the fiery became metals and stones, and partly salnitre, that is, earth: and the watery became water.

The tincture pierced through the earth, and through all elements, and tinctured all; and then paradise was on earth, and in man; for evil was hidden: as the night is hidden in the day, so the wrath of nature was also hidden in the first Principle, till the fall of man; and then the divine working, with the tincture, fled into their own Principle, into the inward ground of the light-world.

We may very well observe and consider the hidden spiritual world by the visible world: for we see that fire, light, and air, are continually begotten in the deep of this world; and that there is no rest or cessation from this begetting; and that it has been so from the beginning of the world; and yet men can find no cause of it in the outward world, or tell what the ground of it should be: but reason says, God has so created it, and therefore it continues so.

And as the inward divine world has in it an understanding life from the effluence of the divine knowledge, whereby the angels and souls are meant; so likewise the outward world has a rational life in it, consisting in the outflown powers and virtues of the inward world.

The spiritus mundus is hidden in the four elements, as the soul is in the body, and is nothing else but an effluence and working power proceeding from the sun and stars.

The earth is the grossest effluence from this subtle spirit; after the earth the water is the second; after the water the air is the third; and after the air the fire is the fourth: all these proceed from one only ground, from the spiritus mundi, which has its root in the inward world.

But reason will say, "To what end has the Creator made this manifestation"? I answer, there is no other cause, but that the spiritual world might thereby bring itself into a visible form or image, that the inward powers and virtues might have a form and image.

The whole visible world is a mere spermatical working ground; every thing has an inclination and longing towards another, the uppermost towards the undermost, and the undermost towards the uppermost, for they are separated one from the other; and in this hunger they embrace one another in the desire.

As we may know by the earth, which is so very hungry after the influence and virtue of the stars, and the spiritus mundi, after the spirit from whence it proceeded in the beginning, that it has no rest, for hunger; and this hunger of the earth consumes bodies, that the spirit may be parted again from the gross elementary condition, and return into its Archaeus again. For the Archaeus of the earth becomes thereby exceeding joyful, because it tastes and feels its first ground in itself again, and in this joy all things spring out of the earth, and therein also the growing of animals consists.

Out of this fiery property, and the property of the light, the angels and souls have their origin; which is a divine manifestation.

The visible world is the third Principle, that is, the third ground and beginning: this is outbreathed out of the inward ground, out of both the first Principles, and brought into the nature and form of a creature.

The inward eternal working is hidden in the visible world; and it is in everything, and through everything, yet not to be comprehended by anything in the thing's own power; the outward powers and virtues are but passive, and the house in which the inward work.

There shall perish of this world only the four elements, together with the starry heaven, and the earthly creatures, the outward gross life of all things.

You shall likewise know that according to Law, the nature of this universe is in all things alike, So that you shall not hope what you ought not to hope; and nothing in this world shall be hidden from you. You will likewise know, that men draw upon themselves their own misfortunes voluntarily, and of their own free choice.

Chuang Tzŭ said: "O my exemplar! Thou who destroyest all things, and dost not account it cruelty; thou who benefitest all time, and dost not account it charity; thou who art older than antiquity and dost not account it age; thou who supportest the universe, shaping the many forms therein, and dost not account it skill; this is the happiness of God!"

Unhappy they are! They neither see nor understand that their good is near them. Few know how to deliver themselves out of their misfortunes. Such is the fate that blinds humankind, and takes away his senses. Like huge cylinders they roll back and forth, and always oppressed with innumerable ills. For fatal strife, natural, pursues them everywhere, tossing them up and down; nor do they perceive it.

For man's intellect, however keen, face to face with the countless evolutions of things, their death and birth, their squareness and roundness,— can never reach the root. There creation is, and there it has ever been.

From this essence the word expresses itself in the second separation, that is, of nature, and in that expression, the separation out of the fiery Science is understood; for thence comes the soul and all angelical spirits.

Instead of provoking and stirring it up, they ought to avoid it by yielding. Oh! Jupiter, our Father! If you would deliver men from all the evils that oppress them, Show them of what daemon they make use. But take courage; the race of humans is divine. Sacred nature reveals to them the most hidden mysteries. If she impart to you her secrets, you will easily perform all the things which I have ordained thee. And by the healing of your soul, you wilt deliver it from all evils, from all afflictions.

Things do not take hold upon the mind, but stand without unmoved, and that disturbances come only from the judgement within; the second, that all that your eyes behold will change in a moment and be no more; and of how many things you have already witnessed the changes, think continually of that. The Universe is change, life is opinion.

The ultimate end is God. He is manifested in the laws of nature. He is the hidden spring. At the beginning, he was. This, however, is inexplicable. It is unknowable. But from the unknowable we reach the known.

Death is like birth, a mystery of Nature; a coming together out of identical elements and a dissolution into the same.

Which of these is lovely because it is praised or corrupted because it is blamed? Does an emerald become worse than it was, if it be not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lute, a sword- blade, a flower-bud, a little plant?

The potter says: "I can do what I will with clay. If I want it round, I use compasses; if rectangular, a square." The carpenter says: "I can do what I will with wood. If I want it curved, I use an arc; if straight, a line." But on what grounds can we think that the natures of clay and wood desire this application of compasses and square, of arc and line?

Make your passage through this span of time in obedience to Nature and gladly lay down your life, as an olive, when ripe, might fall, blessing her who bare it and grateful to the tree which gave it life.

A horse runs, a hound tracks, bees make honey, and a man does good, but doesn't know that he has done it and passes on to a second act, like a vine to bear once more its grapes in due season.

Let the performance and completion of the pleasure of the Universal Nature seem to you to be your pleasure, precisely as the conduct of your health is seen to be, and so welcome all that comes to pass, even though it appears rather cruel, because it leads to that end, to the health of the universe, that is to the welfare and well-being of Zeus.

One must console oneself by awaiting Nature's release, and not chafing at the circumstances of delay, but finding repose only in two things: one, that nothing will befall me which is not in accordance with the nature of the Whole; the other, that it is in my power to do nothing contrary to my God and inward Spirit; for there is no one who shall force me to sin against this.

For travelling by water there is nothing like a boat. For travelling by land there is nothing like a cart. This because a boat moves readily in water; but were you to try to push it on land you would never succeed in making it go.

A son must go whithersoever his parents bid him. Nature is no other than a man's parents. If she bid me die quickly, and I demur, then I am an unfilial son. She can do me no wrong. Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the best arbiter of my death.

Some things are hastening to be, others to have come and gone, and a part of what is coming into being is already extinct. Flux and change renew the world incessantly, as the unbroken passage of time makes boundless eternity ever young. In this river, therefore, on which he cannot stand, which of these things that race past him should a man greatly prize? As though he should begin to set his heart on one of the little sparrows that fly past, when already it has gone away out of his sight. Truly the life of every man is itself as fleeting as the exhalation of spirit from his blood or the breath he draws from the atmosphere. For just as it is to draw in a single breath and to return it, which we do every moment, so is it to render back the whole power of respiration, which you acquired but yesterday or the day before, at birth, to that other world from which you first drew it in.

How does the Sage seat himself by the sun and moon, and hold the universe in his grasp? He blends everything into one harmonious whole, rejecting the confusion of this and that.

All things come from that other world, starting from that common governing principle, or else are secondary consequences of it. Thus, even the lion's jaws, deadly poison, and every injurious thing, like a thistle or a bog, are by-products from those august and lovely principles. Do not, then, imagine them to be contrary to what you reverence, but reflect upon the fountain of all things.

Whatever anyone may do or say, I am bound to be good; exactly as if gold or emerald or purple were continually to say this: 'whatever anyone may do or say, I am bound to be an emerald and to keep the colour that is mine.

Man is capable of existing on several different planes, from the animal to the angelic, and precisely in this lies his danger of falling to the very lowest. In the Koran it is written, "We proposed the burden (responsibility or free-will) to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, and they refused to undertake it. But man took it upon himself: Verily he is ignorant." Neither animals nor, angels can change their appointed rank and place. But man may sink to the animal or soar to the angel, and this is the meaning of his undertaking that "burden" of which the Koran speaks.

Man was intended to mirror forth the light of the knowledge of God, but if he arrives in the next world with his soul thickly coated with the rust of sensual indulgence he will entirely fail of the object for which he was made.

The earth-born parts return to earth again, But what did blossom of ethereal seed Returns again to the celestial pole. Or else this: an undoing of the interlacement of the atoms and a similar shattering of the senseless molecules.

No one wearies of receiving benefits, and to benefit another is to act according to Nature. Do not weary then of the benefits you receive by the doing of them.

The reason of the human spirit seeking to return to that upper world is that its origin was from thence, and that it is of angelic nature.

Wipe out impressions by continually saying to yourself: it is in my power now not to allow any wickedness to be in this soul of mine, any appetite or disturbance at all, but seeing what is the character of them all I employ each according to its worth. Remember this power as Nature requires.

They kill you, cut you in pieces, pursue you with curses. What has this to do with your understanding abiding pure, sane, temperate, and just? As if a man should stand by a sweet and crystal spring of water and curse it, but it never ceases bubbling up in water fresh to drink, and if he throw in mud or dung, it will quickly break it up and wash it away and will in no way be discoloured. How then shall you possess an everflowing fountain, not a mere cistern? If you guard yourself every hour unto freedom, contentedly, too, simply and reverently.

The raison d’être of a fish-trap is the fish. When the fish is caught, the trap may be ignored. The raison d’être of a rabbit-snare is the rabbit. When the rabbit is caught, the snare may be ignored. The raison d’être of language is an idea to be expressed. When the idea is expressed, the language may be ignored.

The sun appears to be poured down and indeed is poured in every direction but not poured out. For this pouring is extension, and so its beams are called rays from their being extended. Now you may see what kind of thing a ray is by observing the sun's light streaming through a chink into a darkened room. For it is stretched in a straight line, and rests so to speak upon any solid body that meets it and cuts off the flow of air beyond. It rests there and does not glide off or fall. The pouring and diffusion of the understanding then should be similar, in no way a pouring out, but an extension, and it should not rest forcibly or violently on obstacles that meet it nor yet fall down, but stand still and illuminate the object that receives it; for that which does not reflect it will rob itself of the light.

To live with your wife, exclaimed Hui Tzŭ, and see your eldest son grow up to be a man, and then not to shed a tear over her corpse,—this would be bad enough. But to drum on a bowl, and sing; surely this is going too far. Not at all, replied Chuang Tzŭ. When she died, I could not help being affected by her death. Soon, however, I remembered that she had already existed in a previous state before birth, without form, or even substance; that while in that unconditioned condition, substance was added to spirit; that this substance then assumed form; and that the next stage was birth. And now, by virtue of a further change, she is dead, passing from one phase to another like the sequence of spring, summer, autumn and winter. And while she is thus lying asleep in Eternity, for me to go about weeping and wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant of these natural laws.

The effect of music and dancing is deeper in proportion as the natures on which they act are simple and prone to emotion; they fan into a flame whatever love is already dormant in the heart, whether it be earthly and sensual, or divine and spiritual.

He who runs after pleasures as goods and away from pains as evils commits sin; for being such a man he must necessarily often blame Universal Nature for distributing to bad and good contrary to their desert, because the bad are often employed in pleasures and acquire what may produce these, while the good are involved in pain and in what may produce this.

When Chuang Tzŭ was about to die, his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzŭ said: "With Heaven and Earth for my coffin and shell; with the sun, moon, and stars, as my burial regalia; and with all creation to escort me to the grave,—are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?" "We fear," argued the disciples, "lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master;" to which Chuang Tzŭ replied: "Above ground I shall be food for kites; below I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other?"

One vital spirit is distributed in irrational creatures: one mind spirit is divided in rational creatures; just as one element earth is in all earthy things and we see by one light and breathe one atmosphere, all that have sight and vital spirit.

These harmonies are echoes of that higher world of beauty which we call the world of spirits; they remind man of his relationship to that world, and produce in him an emotion so deep and strange that he himself is powerless to explain it.

All that partakes of a common mind similarly, or even more swiftly, hastens to what is akin; for in proportion as it is superior to the rest, so is it more ready to mix and be blended with its own kind. At any rate there were found from the first among irrational creatures, hives, and flocks, care for nestlings, and what resembles love.

Calm, in respect of what comes to pass from a cause outside you; justice, in acts done in accord with a cause from yourself: that is to say, impulse and act terminating simply in neighbourly conduct, because for you this is according to Nature.

To Nature, who bestows all things and takes them away, the man who has learnt his lesson and respects himself says: 'Give what is thy good pleasure, take back what is thy good pleasure'; and this he says not boasting himself but only listening to her voice and being of one mind with her.

What creatures they are; they eat, sleep, copulate, relieve nature, and so on; then what are they like as rulers, imperious or angry and fault-finding to excess; yet but yesterday how many masters were they slaving for and to what purpose, and tomorrow they will be in a like condition.

Contemplate, therefore, in thought what comes to pass in such a hidden way, and see the force which makes things gravitate or tend upwards, not with the eyes, but none the less clearly.

What is the soundest thing that can be done or said in a given material condition? For whatever this may be, you are able to do or say it, and you are not to make the excuse that you are prevented. You will never cease groaning until you feel that to act appropriately to man's constitution in any material condition which occurs to you or befalls you is for you what luxury is to the sensualist. For you should regard as an indulgence whatever you can achieve in accord with your own nature, and this you can achieve everywhere.

It would indeed be a wonder, if one should take refuge from the heat of the sun under the shadow of a tree and not be grateful to the tree, without which there would be no shadow at all. Precisely in the same way, were it not for God, man would have no existence nor attributes at all; wherefore, then, should he not love God, unless he be ignorant of Him?

Your element of spirit and all the element of fire that is mingled in you, in spite of their natural upward tendency, nevertheless obey the ordering of the Whole and are held forcibly in the compounded body in this region of the earth. Once more, all the elements of earth and of water in you, in spite of their downward tendency, are nevertheless lifted up and keep to a position which is not natural to them. In this way then even the elements are obedient to the Whole and, when they are stationed at a given point, remain there by compulsion until once more the signal for their dissolution is made from the other world.

The Pythagoreans say: Look up to the sky before morning breaks, to remind ourselves of beings who always in the same relations and in the same way accomplish their work, and of their order, purity, and nakedness; for a star has no veil.

It is in your power to secure at once all the objects which you dream of reaching by a roundabout path, if you will be fair to yourself: that is, if you will leave all the past behind, commit the future to Providence, and direct the present, and that alone, to Holiness and Justice. Holiness, to love your dispensation for Nature brought it to you and you to it; Justice, freely and without circumlocution both to speak the truth and to do the things that are according to law and according to worth. And be not hampered by another's evil, his judgement, or his words, much less by the sensation of the flesh that has formed itself about you- let the part affected look to itself.

The truth of the matter is this, that, just as the seed of man becomes a man, and a buried datestone becomes a palm-tree, so the knowledge of God acquired on earth will in the next world change into the Vision of God, and he who has never learnt the knowledge will never have the Vision.

If then, when you arrive at last at your final exit, resigning all else, you honour your governing self alone and the divine element within you, if what you dread is not that some day you will cease to live, but rather never to begin at all to live with Nature, you will be a man worthy of the Universe that gave you birth, and will cease to be a stranger in your own country, surprised by what is coming to pass every day, as at something you did not look to see, and absorbed in this thing or in that. 2 God beholds the governing selves of all men stripped of their material vessels and coverings and dross; for with His own mind alone He touches only what has flowed and

Consider the causes of reality stripped of their covering; the relations of your actions; the nature of pain, pleasure, death, fame; who is not the author of his own unrest; how none is hindered by his neighbour; that all things are what we judge them to be.

In the case of one who gives the impression that he did wrong, how do I know that this was a wrong? And, if he certainly did wrong, how do I know that he was not condemning himself, and so what he did was like tearing his own face? One who wants an evil man not to do wrong is like a man who wants a fig tree not to produce its acrid juice in the figs, and infants not to cry, and a horse not to neigh, and whatever else is inevitable. With that kind of disposition what else can he do? Very well then, if you are man enough, cure this disposition.

A little while and you will be nobody and nowhere, nor will anything which you now behold exist, nor one of those who are now alive. Nature's law is that all things change and turn, and pass away, so that in due order different things may come to be.

Any single activity you choose, which ceases in due season, suffers no evil because it has ceased, neither has he, whose activity it was, suffered any evil merely because his activity has ceased. Similarly, therefore, the complex of all activities, which is a man's life, suffers no evil merely because it has ceased, provided that it ceases in due season, nor is he badly used who in due season brings his series of activities to a close. But the season and the term Nature assigns-sometimes the individual nature, as in old age, but in any event Universal Nature, for by the changes of her parts the whole world continues ever young and in her prime. Now what tends to the advantage of the Whole is ever altogether lovely and in season; therefore for each individual the cessation of his life is no evil, for it is no dishonour to him, being neither of his choosing nor without relation to the common good: rather is it good, because it is in due season for the Whole, benefiting it and itself benefited by it. For thus is he both carried by God, who is borne along the same course with God, and of purpose borne to the same ends as God.

Whenever you feel something hard to bear, you have forgotten (a) that all comes to pass according to the Nature of the Whole, (b) that the wrong is not your own but another's, further (c) that all that is coming to pass always did, always will, and does now everywhere thus come to pass, (d) the great kinship of man with all mankind, for the bond of kind is not blood nor the seed of life, but mind. You have forgotten, moreover, (e) that every individual's mind is of God and has flowed from that other world, (f) that nothing is a man's own, but even his child, his body, and his vital spirit itself have come from that other world, (g) that all is judgement, (h) that every man lives only the present life and this is what he is losing.

One light of the Sun, even though it be sundered by walls, by mountains, by a myriad other barriers. One common Matter, even though it be sundered in a myriad individual bodies. One vital spirit, even though it be sundered in a myriad natural forms and individual outlines. One intelligent spirit, even though it appears to be divided.

Mortal man, you have been a citizen in this great City; what does it matter to you whether for five or fifty years? For what is according to its laws is equal for every man. Why is it hard, then, if Nature who brought you in, and no despot nor unjust judge, sends you out of the City as though the master of the show, who engaged an actor, were to dismiss him from the stage? 'But I have not spoken my five acts, only three?' 'What you say is true, but in life three acts are the whole play. For He determines the perfect whole, the cause yesterday of your composition, today of your dissolution; you are the cause of neither. Leave the stage, therefore, and be reconciled, for He also who lets his servant depart is reconciled.

The Principle of Polarity: Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

The Ten Sefirot have close connections with these doctrines of letters - secret doctrines about the Divine nature, about creation, about the relations subsisting between God and the universe.

The Principle of Cause and Effect: Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.

The Principle of Gender: Gender is in everything; everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles; Gender manifests on all planes.

The Principle of Rhythm: Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.

The Principle of Vibration: Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.

Nothing stands still - everything is being born, growing, dying - the very instant a thing reaches its height, it begins to decline--the law of rhythm is in constant operation--there is no reality, enduring quality, fixity, or substantiality in anything -- nothing is permanent but Change.

The half-wise, recognizing the comparative unreality of the Universe, imagine that they may defy its Laws--such are vain and presumptuous fools, and they are broken against the rocks and torn asunder by the elements by reason of their folly. The truly wise, knowing the nature of the Universe, use Law against laws; the higher against the lower; and by the Art of Alchemy transmute that which is undesirable into that which is worthy, and thus triumph.

Heat and Cold are identical in nature, the differences being merely a matter of degrees. Light and Darkness are poles of the same thing, with many degrees between them.

This Fourth Dimension may be called "The Dimension of Vibration".

The Hermetic Teachings are that not only is everything in constant movement and vibration, but that the "differences" between the various manifestations of the universal power are due entirely to the varying rate and mode of vibrations.

The Principle of Vibration underlies the wonderful phenomena of the power manifested by the Masters and Adepts, who are able to apparently set aside the Laws of Nature, but who, in reality, are simply using one law against another; one principle against others; and who accomplish their results by changing the vibrations of material objects, or forms of energy, and thus perform what are commonly called "miracles."

The change is not in the nature of a transmutation of one thing into another thing entirely different - but is merely a change of degree in the same things, a vastly important difference.

The tendency of Nature is in the direction of the dominant activity of the Positive pole.

Everything flows out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right, is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.

The Principle manifests in the creation and destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; in the life history of all things; and finally in the mental states of Man.

Thus it is with all living things; they are born, grow, and die -- and then are reborn.

We are able to see now, with eyes made clear by knowledge, that everything is governed by Universal Law in - that the infinite number of laws are but manifestations of the One Great Law-the LAW which is THE ALL.

The great Seventh Hermetic Principle -- the Principle of Gender -- embodies the truth that there is Gender manifested in everything -- that the Masculine and Feminine principles are ever present and active in all phases of phenomena, on each and every plane of life.

The office of Gender is solely that of creating, producing, generating, etc., and its manifestations are visible on every plane of phenomena.

The part of the Masculine principle seems to be that of directing a certain inherent energy toward the Feminine principle, and thus starting into activity the creative processes.

The very Law of Gravitation - that strange attraction by reason of which all particles and bodies of matter in the universe tend toward each other is but another manifestation of the Principle of Gender, which operates in the direction of attracting the Masculine to the Feminine energies, and vice versa?

The possession of Knowledge, unless accompanied by a manifestation and expression in Action, is like the hoarding of precious metals - a vain and foolish thing. Knowledge, like wealth, is intended for Use. The Law of Use is Universal, and he who violates it suffers by reason of his conflict with natural forces.

Whatsoever guilt I have gathered in my foolishness and delusion, alike the wrong of nature and the wrong of commandment, I confess it all as I stand before the Masters with clasped hands, affrighted with grief, and making obeisance again and again.

The bird flying in the environment of this unrestrained light, must inevitably be consumed by the fire of it.

A tree under which may rest all creatures wearied with wandering over life's paths, a bridge open to all wayfarers for passing over hard ways, a moon of thought arising to cool the fever of the world's sin, a great sun driving away the gloom of the world's ignorance, a fresh butter created by the churning of the milk of the Good Law.

The angel and the Logos (Word) or Logoi (Words) have very much the same nature and fulfil very much the same function.

The term 'angel' stands for the powers embodied in all earthly phenomena, the world-forces which are outflowings of God and represent the aspect of the Divine activity in the universe.

This air is the abode of incorporeal souls, since it seemed good to the Creator of the universe to fill all parts of the world with living creatures.

He represents the active phase of Deity as manifested in the universe.

Rabbi Samuel b. Meir, the great Rabbinic commentator of the 12th century says, "God loveth also the nations of the world." Of King Solomon's chariot it is said (Canticles, iii. 10) that "the midst thereof is paved with love." "This love in the midst thereof," say the Rabbis, "is the Shechinah." It is certainly not meant in any sectarian sense. The Divine Chariot in Jewish mysticism is, broadly, the idealised universe. And all degrees of creation from amoeba to man hold and reveal the traces of the Divine love which is ever born anew in our hearts and which guarantees the ultimate goodness of the world.

The multiplicity that one beholds in the cosmos, the whole panorama of thought, action, goodness, badness, the soul, the mind - all things that go to make up the pageant of man's life in the universe, are emanations, radiations from the one Unity, manifestations of the God from whom all things flow and to whom they must all finally return because they are ultimately one with the One, just as the flame is one with the candle from which it issues.

The three which have just been considered, the three 'mothers' or 'parent' letters (Aleph, Mem, Shin) which symbolise the elements, air, fire, and water, which together make up the cosmos.

The remaining six Sefirot are the six dimensions of space - the four cardinal points of the compass, in addition to height and depth.

The seven double letters typify the 'contraries' in the cosmos, the forces which serve two mutually opposed ends.

The twelve 'simple' letters are emblematic of the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve months of the year, the twelve organs in the human body which perform their work independently of the outside world and are subject to the twelve signs of the zodiac.

All offences, all the various sins, spring of necessity from outer forces; none are self-guided.

In the firmament above which covers all things, signs are engraven in which are fixed hidden things and secrets.

As the seed of the cotton-tree is swayed at the coming and going of the wind, so will he be obedient to his resolution; and thus divine power is gained.

He has a shape, and one can say that He has not one. In assuming a shape, He has given existence to all things.

When Adam our first father dwelt in the garden of Eden he was clothed, as men are in heaven, with the Divine light. When he was driven forth from Eden to do the ordinary work of earth, then Holy Writ tells us that "the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skin and clothed them." For, ere this, they wore coats of light, of that light which belongs to Eden.