Generation and Restoration

But I have finished with that. I shall now say something about generation and its ways, so that the philosophers’ process upon this matter may be better understood. You must know that Nature has two extremes and, between them, a middle substance, which elsewhere we have called the middle nature. Creation gives us sufficient example. The first extreme was that cloud or darkness of which we spoke earlier. Some call it the remote matter and the invisible chaos, very improperly, for it was not invisible. This is the outward aspect of the Jewish Ensoph, and it is the same as that Orphic Night:

“O black Night, nurse of golden stars.”

[Vaughan’s English:] “O Night, you black nurse of the golden stars.”

Anima Magica.

Out of this darkness everything in this world emerged, as from its fountain or womb; hence the statement of all famous poets and philosophers, “All things came forth from Night.” The middle substance is the water into which that night or darkness condensed; and the creatures formed from the water make up the other extreme. But the magicians, speaking strictly, do not admit this last extreme, because Nature does not stop here. Their philosophy therefore runs as follows: humanity, they say, in its natural state, occupies the middle creation, from which it must move towards one of

two extremes: either towards corruption, as people commonly do, dying and mouldering away in their graves; or towards a spiritual, glorified condition like that of Enoch and Elijah, who were translated. This, they say, is a true extreme, since no alteration follows it. Now, reasoning among themselves why the middle creation should be subject to corruption, the magicians concluded that this disease had its cause and origin in the chaos itself; for even the chaos was corrupted and cursed at humanity’s Fall. Examining matters further, however, they found that Nature, in her acts of generation, only digested the chaos with a gentle heat. She did not separate the parts and purify each by itself; instead, the sperm’s purities and impurities remained together in everything she produced. This domestic enemy eventually prevailed, causing the compound’s death. They therefore wisely concluded that administering plants, animals or minerals as medicine was sheer madness: these, too, had their own impurities and diseases and needed a medicine to cleanse them. Acting on this conclusion, and undoubtedly guided by God, they resolved to work upon the chaos itself. They opened it, purified it, reunited what they had separated, and fed it with a twofold fire, thick and thin,

until they brought it to the immortal extreme and made it a spiritual, heavenly body. This was their medicine; this was their magic. In accomplishing it they saw the image of that face which Zoroaster calls “the countenance of the triad before essence,” and so forth. They knew perfectly the Secundea, which contains all things within herself naturally, as God contains all things within himself spiritually. They saw that the life of everything here below was a thick fire: fire imprisoned and embodied in a certain incombustible, airy moisture. They found, moreover, that this fire was originally derived from heaven; and in this sense the Oracles call heaven:

“Fire, the outflow of fire, and the storehouse of fire.”