Generation and barrenness

Meaning

II.3.30 makes fire and water Nature’s two champions: fire removes sulphurous adustion, water separates earthly dregs. In the creation account the fire of the Spirit of the Lord is itself the first agent and mover separating formless seeds from the primal waters; the two agents are not both described as assistants to some third first agent. The practitioner later chooses water and fire as assistants in imitation of Nature. Earth’s stomach supplies the related image of metallic cleansing and digestion.

The exact creation-sequence distinguishes light from darkness, forms from confusion, generation from barrenness, and death from life. The last pair should not be silently reversed to life from death. Barrenness here belongs to the unproductive confusion of the first seeds before separation, not a moral judgement upon infertility. The passage prepares the classification of operations by insisting that powers cannot unfold while purity and impurity remain confused; it does not offer a fertility treatment.