Six Theosophic Points, and Other Writings

6. The dark world is called death and hell, the abyss, a sting of death, despair, self-enmity and sorrowfulness; a life of malice and falsehood, in which the truth and the hght is not seen and is not known. Therein dwell the devils and the damned souls; also the hellish worms, which the Fiat of death has figured in the motion of the omnipresent Lord.

7. For hell hath in the darkness the greatest constellation of the fervent, austere power. With them all is audible as a loud noise. What rings in the Light, knocks and thumps in the Dark, as is to be seen in the thing men use to strike upon, that it gives a ringing sound. For the sound is not the thing; as a bell that is rung is itself not a sound, but only a hardness and a cause of the sound. The bell receives the stroke as a knocking, and from the hard knocking proceeds the ringing sound. The reason is this, that in the matter of the bell there is an element, which, at creation, in the motion of the omnipresent God, was shut up in the hardness; as is to be seen in the metalline tincture, if men would not be so mad and blind.

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8. We recognize, then, that in hell, in the abyss, there are many and divers spirits, not only devils, but many hellish worms according to the property of their constellation, and void of understanding. As in this world there are irrational animals — worms, toads and serpents — so has also the abyss such in the fierce wrathful world. For all willed to be creaturely, and is gone into a being, so that the wrath-mirror also exhibited its wonders and manifested itself.

9. There is indeed no feeling of pain in the hellish worms, for they are of the same essence and property. It is their life, and is a nature that is hidden to the outer world; but the Spirit of God who in all three principles is himself the source in accordance with each property, he knows it and reveals it to whom he will.

10. If now we would say how the three principles are united together, we must place fire in the middle as the highest force, which brings to each principle a satisfying life and a spirit that it requires. There is, therefore, in the principles no strife; for fire is the life of all the principles, — understand, the cause of Hfe, not the life itself. To the abyss it gives its pang, viz. the sting, so that death finds itself in a life; else the abyss were a stillness. It gives it its fierceness, which is the lift, mobility and original condition of the abyss; else there were a still eternity and a nothing.

11. And to the light-world fire gives also its essence, else there were no feeling nor light therein, and all were only one. And yet beyond fire a

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Nothing, as an eye of wonders that knew not itself, in which were no understanding; but an eternal hiddenness, where no seeking or doing were possible.

12. And to the tliird principle, viz. to the kingdom of this world, fire gives also its essence and quality, whereby all life and growth rises. All sense, and whatever is to come to anything, must have fire. There springs nothing out of the earth without the essence of fire. It is a cause of all the three principles, and of all that can be named.

13. Thus fire makes a union of all the three principles, and is for each the cause of being. One principle fights not against another, but the essence of each desires only its own, and is always in combat; and if that were not, then all were a still nothingness. Each principle gives to the other its power and form, and there is a perpetual peace between them.