Before created light was gathered into the solar body, earth lay almost idle in solitude, awaiting the male so that, made pregnant by coupling with him, she might give birth to every kind of animal. Until then she had borne feeble and in a certain way imperfect offspring, namely plants. For the weak and powerless heat of dispersed light had been unable to prevail over moist, cold matter or extend its powers any further.

First matter and the elements therefore received their formation from light. Through their shared luminous nature, as though by kinship of blood, they entered into the closest love of one another, not the hatred and conflict taught by common opinion. They embraced one another in a bond of affinity so that they might grow together into the varied bodies of compounds according to their species. Solar light, far more powerful than the earlier light, is the form of forms, or universal form, which in the work of generation pours every natural form into prepared matter and the seeds of things. For each individual thing in nature contains a spark of light within itself, whose rays secretly impart active and moving power to the seed.

LIGHT IS THE UNIVERSAL FORM.

The entire portion of first matter assigned to this lower region, and also the elements that flowed from it, had to be imbued from the beginning with a slight tincture of the first light, to make them fit to receive a greater and more powerful light in the formation of compounds. Thus fire unites and comes together perfectly with fire, water with water, and light with light, because they are of like nature.

From the sun's position and effective power we may infer that it performs the heart's office in the universe, for life flows from it into every part. Light is the vehicle of life, indeed its source and immediate cause; and the souls of living things are rays of celestial light that breathe life into things. The human soul alone is excepted: it is a ray of supercelestial, uncreated light.

God expressed a threefold image of his divinity in the sun. The first is in unity: nature permits no multiplicity of suns, just as divinity permits no plurality of gods, so that all things flow from one. The second is in trinity, or a threefold office: as God's deputy the sun distributes all nature's benefits through light, motion and heat. From these comes life, nature's highest and most perfect act in our world, beyond which there is no advance but only a return. Heat proceeds from light and motion as the third person of the Trinity proceeds from the first and second. Lastly, God, who is eternal, infinite and incomprehensible light, could express himself and show himself to the world through light alone. Let no one therefore wonder why the eternal sun adorned the celestial sun, that most excellent image of himself which he himself fashioned, with such great gifts: for he set his tabernacle in it.

The sun is the shining mirror of divine glory. Since that glory rises beyond the senses and powers of material creatures, it made itself a mirror through whose splendour the rays of its eternal light might be reflected into all its works, and through reflection become known. For mortal nature is forbidden to gaze directly upon divine light. This is divinity's royal eye, which by its presence grants liberty and life to those who supplicate it.

As the maker's final labour, like the work's centre or crowning addition, the human being at last appeared: a compendium of the world's fabric and a little image of divine nature. The creator deferred his birth to the last part of the sixth day and of the whole work, so that all nature's rich furnishings and all the gifts of higher and lower things might flow into human nature as into another Pandora. Thus, when the things of the universe were already ordered, the human being was added to complete the work, the one thing still lacking. Nature, strengthened by manifold light, could then bring purer elements together into a perfect temperament, and purer clay was available to fashion so exquisite an earthen vessel. The lower globe and its inhabitants required such a ruler, so that they would not refuse the yoke of obedience.

THE CREATION OF THE HUMAN BEING.

On the sixth day from creation, the third from the sun's birth, the human being arose from the earth. In this time of production and number of days a supreme mystery was foreshadowed. Just as all heaven's light was gathered into one solar body on the fourth day of creation, and on the third day from the sun's birth, which was the sixth of creation, the earth's clay received the breath of life and rose as a living human being, God's image, so on the fourth day—that is, millennium—from the world's origin, the uncreated sun, namely the infinite divine nature previously confined by no bounds, chose to be enclosed within a human body and in a certain way bounded. On the third day or millennium after that sun's first rising or advent—for a thousand years before God are counted as one day—and around the end of the sixth day, or millennium from creation, the glorious resurrection of human nature will occur at the supreme judge's second advent. This was also indicated to us by his blessed resurrection on the third day. Thus the prophet concealed the world's secret age and destinies beneath its genesis.

Although the Almighty created the world as he pleased, indeed may, if it pleased him, have brought it from darkness into light in a moment and by a mere nod—for he spoke and all things were made—nevertheless the order of the creation of principles and of successive nature, according to before and after, was delineated in the divine mind before nature was created. The sacred philosopher seems to have expounded that order in his Genesis rather than the work of creation itself.

There seem to have been three general modes of giving form to first matter in the beginning. In the portion of matter where luminous form was incommensurable with it and superior beyond all proportion, as in the empyrean heaven, where light first touched matter, form, prevailing with almost infinite power, absorbed its matter and carried it into a nearly spiritual nature free from every accident.