46 PARACELSUS 



The little Limbus has all the qualifications of the great 

 one, in the same sense as a son has an organisation 

 similar to that of his father. " As it is above, so it is 

 below." 



As creation took place and the Yliaster dissolved, 

 Ares, the dividing, differentiating, and individualising 

 power of the Supreme Cause, began to act. All pro- 

 duction took place in consequence of separation. There 

 were produced out of the Ideos the elements of Fire, 

 Water, Air, and Earth, whose birth, however, did not 

 take place in a material mode or by simple separation, 

 but spiritually and dynamically, just as fire may come 

 out of a pebble or a tree come out of a seed, although 

 there is originally no fire in the pebble nor a tree in the 

 seed. " Spirit is living and Life is Spirit, and Life and 

 Spirit produce all things, but they are essentially one 

 and not two. The tongue talks, and yet it does not talk, 

 for it is the Spirit that talks by means of the tongue, and 

 without the Spirit the tongue would be silent, because 

 the flesh alone cannot talk." The elements, too, have 

 each one its own Yliaster, because all the activity of 

 matter in every form is only an efiluvium ot the same 

 fountain. But as from the seed grow the roots with 

 their fibres, afterwards the stalk with its branches and 

 leaves, and lastly the flowers and seeds ; likewise all 

 beings were born from the elements, and consist of 

 elementary substances out of which other forms may 

 come into existence, bearing the characteristics of their 

 parents.'^ The elements, as the mothers of all creatures, 

 are of an invisible spiritual nature, and have souls.^ 

 They all spring from the Mysterium magnum, which is 

 eternal life, and therefore the spiritual elements, and all 



^ This doctrine, preached 300 years ago, is identical with the one that 

 has revolutionised modern thought after having been put into a new shape 

 and elaborated by Darwin ; and is still more elaborated by the Indian 

 Kapila, in the Sankhya philosophy. (Note by H. P. Blavatsky.) 



2 Everything, whether it may manifest itself «is matter or as force, ia 

 essentially a trinity. 



