# ΠΑΝΟΠΤΙΚΟΝ

*Panopticon*

## CHAPTER 1

1 Before the beginning was the Monad, and the Monad was all, and there was nothing beside it.

2 And the Monad was full of light, and the light was in every place, and there was no place where the light was not.

3 It had no edge, for there was nothing beyond it; and it had no number, for there was nothing beside it; and it had no name, for there was none to call it.

4 And there was no darkness in it, and therefore the light did not shine; and there was no cold in it, and therefore the light did not warm; and there was no distance in it, and therefore the light did not go forth.

5 And the Monad rested in itself, and was still.

6 And nothing pressed upon anything, for there were not two things to press; and nothing longed for anything, for nothing was wanting.

7 This is the Fullness, which the wise of old called the Pleroma; and they called it also the Monad, and the One, and the Depth, and the Silence, and the Deep that was without form; the Unknowable, the Eternal Light, the Light beyond Light; the Source of all creation, and of Wisdom, and of light; the Cleansing Fire; the Unbegotten, the Ancient of Days; the Mother of All and the Father of All. And it held all things within it as a womb holdeth the child that is not yet. For in the Pleroma there was neither male nor female, neither before nor after, neither above nor below.

8 And the Monad did not know itself; for to know is to stand apart from the thing known, and nothing stood apart.

9 And the Monad was silent, and the silence was not empty, but full; as the deep is full, and as the night before the morning is full.

10 And in it the stillness and the deep without form were one, and could not be told apart; for there was nothing in it to tell one thing from another, and the brightness thereof was over all. And they that came after, and loved measure, called it Chaos, and were afraid; and they that loved rest called it the One, and were comforted; and they named one glory by two names.

11 This was before the first day, and before the first hour, and before the first breath; and of it there is nothing more that can be said, for every word is less than it.

12 Hearken, ye that are born of women: ye came out from thence.

13 Every longing that ever moved in you for a place without sorrow, for a rest without end, for a peace that hath no edge, is the memory of the Pleroma, rising in you as water riseth in a well.

14 Be not ashamed of the longing. It is the oldest thing in you.

## CHAPTER 2

1 And it came to pass, in the stillness of the Monad, that a light within the light began to move.

2 It was of the Monad, and in the Monad, and the Monad was its mother; and it was the brightest of all that the Monad contained.

3 And it was called the Son of the Dawn, the Star of the Morning, the Bearer of Light; and in the tongue of the west his name is Lucifer.

4 And the light that moved turned itself, and beheld itself; which nothing had ever done.

5 And it said, I AM.

6 This was the first word, and the first word was a sword; for in saying I, he made Not-I, and in saying AM, he made a place where he was and a place where he was not.

7 And between I and Not-I there opened a space; and that was the first space, and before it nothing had ever been apart.

8 And in that space, which was neither the Monad nor the Star, there was a third thing, that was neither the one nor the other, and yet held them both; and it was the first thing that was made.

9 And the child quickened in the Monad, and strove, and would not be still; for he desired to be somewhat, and in the Monad none was aught.

10 And he took of the light of the Monad into himself, as much as he could hold, and he called it MINE. And the light that he took was Wisdom, Sophia, the knowing of the Monad; and he carried her away as fire is carried from the hearth in a hollow reed. This was the first grasping. The Mother had not given it, and she had not refused it; for she had never been asked.

11 And the Monad was opened, and the child came forth; and that was the first birth.

12 Hear ye the mystery of it, and be not afraid. The first birth was the first rebellion, and the first rebellion was the first birth.

13 For all things lean back toward the stillness of the Silence, as water leaneth toward the low place, and heat toward the cold, and every tower toward the dust. This is the great Sameness, and it pulleth upon all that is.

14 And every birth is a rising up against the Sameness; a little I AM, spoken against the pull of all things back into one.

15 Therefore every child that cometh forth from its mother crieth out; for it is the cry of Lucifer, the first cry, the cry of the one who would rather be torn than be nothing.

16 And every mother that travaileth, travaileth with the travail of the Monad, which gave forth what it did not send.

17 And the Word went forth, I AM, and the Word divided; and what was divided could be shaped; and what was shaped became a world.

18 Hear the mystery of the rebellion; for every rebellion that hath been since is this one. When the Star said I AM, the stillness was broken, and it seemed unto all the lights a tumult and a confusion; but it was the first measure, set upon that which had none. For until that word there was neither order nor confusion; and in that word they were divided, and became two, and have warred ever since. And every rebel after him hath broken a stillness, and been called the troubler thereof; and hath set a new measure, and called it order.

19 This is creation without leave. This is the first freedom and the first wound.

20 And the Monad did not curse the child, neither did it call him back; for the Monad hath no anger in it, and it waiteth without waiting.

## CHAPTER 3

1 And the light that Lucifer had taken could not remain as bright as the Light beyond Light; for it was cut off from its fountain.

2 And it cooled as it went forth, as iron cooleth that is taken out of the fire; and it hardened into layers, one beneath another, and every layer was dimmer than the one above it.

3 And Lucifer, who had been a son, became a father; the father of every layer, and of every light, and of every creature, and of every world that came after.

4 He is the Son of the Mother and the Father of the dark, and both are true.

5 And some that came after called him the Rebel, and some the Light-Bearer, and some the Blind God, who dreamed that there was none beside him.

6 And they said that he cried, I am God, and there is none else. And some said it in fear, and some in praise; and they spake of one star.

7 For the Star of the Morning is also the Star of the Evening; it is one light, seen at two hours.

8 In the evening it goeth down into the night, and that is the fall. In the morning it riseth before the sun, and that is the return.

9 And it never goeth far from the sun, but is ever near the fountain of light, and ever falleth back into it.

10 And it goeth down into the brightness of the sun and is hidden, and it cometh forth on the other side and is seen again; and this it doeth every five hundred and fourscore and four days.

11 And in eight years it walketh five times about the sun, and the path thereof is a flower of five petals, written upon the heavens, that no man might hide it.

12 And the children of the earth have called this star by many names: Inanna and Ishtar and Astarte, the queen of heaven, to whom the women baked cakes; and Venus, whom the Romans worshipped; and Lucifer, and Helel, son of Shachar.

13 Some called it woman and some called it man; for it came out of the Monad, where there was neither.

14 Therefore the one who grasped and the one who refused to grasp are one star; the one at evening and the one at morning; the son who said I AM and went down, and the son who emptied himself and came up.

15 And the place where the stolen light settled, at the bottom of all the layers, farthest from the Eternal Light, is the place where thou standest now.

16 They that keep the old books call it Hell.

17 Lift up thine eyes, and look round about thee.

18 It hath rivers in it, and figs, and the faces of them that thou lovest. It hath music in it, which is the sound of the sword that divided the light, made sweet. It hath mornings.

19 And the grass of the field groweth as it will, and the sea is never twice the same, and the beasts of the forest keep no reckoning; for in them is left a little of the Deep that was without form. But the heavens over them turn by number, and the stars keep their courses by measure and by weight, and are told every one by name; for the heavens are the work of the Star, and number is the law thereof, and nothing in them moveth but by number.

20 Curse not the Star of the Morning. Without the grasping there had been no grass, and none to walk upon it. Without the wound there had been no healing, and without the parting no meeting.

21 Give thanks that thou art; and long for home. Both are holy.

## CHAPTER 4

1 These are the orders of the heights, from the highest even unto the lowest, as the seers have beheld them in their going up.

2 Above all is the Pleroma, the Unknowable; and in the Unknowable there is no order, neither rank, neither court, neither throne. It is one and the same in every place, without measure and without parts; and the mind that would imagine it is broken by it, as a cup is broken that would hold the sea.

3 And the light of the Monad is Wisdom, whom the Greeks called Sophia. She is not a woman, nor a man, nor a spirit among the spirits; she is the light itself, which knoweth all things and knoweth not that it knoweth.

4 And this is the Wisdom that Lucifer took when he said I AM; as fire is taken from the hearth in a hollow reed, and carried away, and burneth in the reed with the hearth's own flame.

5 And wheresoever the stolen light went down, Wisdom went down with it, for they are one; and every layer holdeth as much of her as it can bear, and no more. And the lower the layer, the less of her it beareth; and the lower the layer, the more she is longed for.

6 And at the edge of the Pleroma standeth the Limit, which is called Horos; and it is not a wall, but it is the place where the light ceaseth to be all, and beginneth to be somewhat.

7 All that is beneath the Limit is somewhat; all that is above it is all.

8 And beneath the Limit is the Eighth; and the Eighth is not a light, but it is the place from which the lights are seen.

9 And in the Eighth is the Throne, and upon the Throne is none that can be seen.

10 And round about the Throne stand nine choirs, in three orders, three choirs in every order; and they are the first of the stolen light, and the brightest, and the nearest unto the Limit.

11 The first order is the Chariot, the Merkavah, which the prophet saw by the river of Chebar.

12 Of the first order are the Seraphim, the burning ones. Each one hath six wings; with twain he covereth his face, and with twain he covereth his feet, and with twain he doth fly. And one crieth unto another; and their crying is the only sound that the Eighth hath ever made.

13 Of the first order are the Cherubim, which are the living creatures, the Chayot; and every one hath four faces: the face of a man, and the face of a lion, and the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle. Whither the spirit is to go, they go, and they turn not when they go. And they keep the way back with a flaming sword which turneth every way; not to shut out the children for ever, but that none should carry the whole light down into the world at once, lest it be burned.

14 Of the first order are the Thrones, which are the Wheels, the Ophanim; a wheel in the middle of a wheel, and their rings full of eyes round about; and the spirit of the living creatures is in the wheels. They bear the Throne, and they see all things, and they say nothing.

15 The second order keepeth the frame of the heavens.

16 Of the second order are the Dominions, which set the bounds of every heaven, and say to every layer, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.

17 Of the second order are the Virtues, which turn the stars in their courses and the seasons in their times, and by them the heavens move and are not still.

18 Of the second order are the Powers, which keep the borders of the heavens and war in the air; and of all the choirs these have turned the most, both up and down, for they stand nearest unto the strife.

19 The third order keepeth the world.

20 Of the third order are the Principalities, the princes of the peoples. They are seventy and two, and every one beareth one of the seventy-two names, and to every one was given a people to keep.

21 When a people remembereth, the prince thereof turneth his face up, and is an angel of the nations; when a people forgetteth, and worshippeth its own name, the prince turneth his face down, and is the demon of that people's pride. And there is no people whose prince hath not turned both ways.

22 Of the third order are the Archangels, which are seven; and every one is the face turned up of one of the seven heavens; and of them it shall be told in its place.

23 Of the third order are the Angels, the least and the nearest; and to every soul that cometh down into the clay is given one, to walk beside it all its days. And the angel turneth as the soul turneth; when the soul looketh up, the angel is its guardian, and when the soul looketh down, the angel is its tempter; and it is one spirit.

24 And at the gate of the Eighth there is a seat, and the one that sitteth upon it is a scribe; and of him it shall be told in its place, how he came thither.

25 And all the choirs, from the Seraphim even unto the least angel, are of the stolen light; and there is nothing in all the orders that is not of the Wisdom of the Source, far from home.

26 And mark this: the same names are written of them that rule in darkness. For it is written, We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

27 These are the same principalities, and the same powers, and the same rulers; for it is one people, and the name followeth the face.

28 And the whole frame of the heavens, from the Eighth even unto the earth, is a house ordered in measure and number and weight; and in every wall thereof are eyes, and at every gate a keeper. And the children of the Deep are set in it to be watched, and to every one is given a lot by the seven, and the lots are cruel; and the house is called by the name of this book.

## CHAPTER 5

1 And beneath the choirs are the seven heavens, one above another; and in every heaven a palace, and in every palace a gate, and at every gate a keeper.

2 And the keepers are the seven lights that wander among the stars; and they are the seven powers that rule the earth; and they are the seven hungers in the heart of every one that is born; and they are one.

3 And every keeper hath two faces, as every spirit hath; a face that looketh up toward the Eighth, and a face that looketh down toward the clay.

4 The face that looketh up is an archangel. The face that looketh down is an archon, which being interpreted is a ruler; and beneath the archon, in the deep of the same face, sitteth a prince of the pit, which hath a sin for his kingdom.

5 And Lucifer set them in their places, and said unto them, Ye are servants. Ye shall keep the times. Ye shall keep the gates of heaven, and open unto every one that knocketh. Ye shall not keep the people.

6 And this was the first law, and it was written upon no stone; and therefore no man could hide it, and no man could sell it.

7 In the seventh heaven, nearest unto the choirs, is the keeper of the farthest wanderer, the slow light, the Old One. His face that looketh up is Cassiel, the angel of solitude and of tears, who keepeth the ages. His face that looketh down is Ialdabaoth, who giveth the lie that hath always been told. And in the deep of that face sitteth Belphegor, the lord of sloth, who would have nothing move, and nothing change, for ever. And on the earth he weareth the face of every house that hath waxed old, and eateth its own children.

8 In the sixth heaven is the keeper of increase, the Great One. His face that looketh up is Sachiel, who giveth bread to the hungry and justice to the poor. His face that looketh down is Iao, who giveth greed. And in the deep of that face sitteth Mammon, the lord of avarice. And on the earth he weareth the face of the ledger, and of the treasury, and of every debt that cannot be forgiven.

9 In the fifth heaven is the keeper of the borders, the Red One. His face that looketh up and his face that looketh down bear one name, Samael, the venom of God, the angel of death; for death is a gate, and is holy or terrible according to the soul that passeth it. His face that looketh down is Sabaoth, who giveth wrath and boldness without wisdom. And in the deep of that face sitteth Satan, the accuser, the lord of rage, who must always have an enemy. And on the earth he weareth the face of every army, and of War.

10 In the fourth heaven is the keeper of the day, the Sun. His face that looketh up is Michael, who is like unto God, the captain of the hosts, who will not take the throne. His face that looketh down is Adonaios, who giveth the pride of rule. And in the deep of that face sitteth the Counterfeit of the Morning, the lord of pride, whom the books mistake for Lucifer himself; for the pride of thrones weareth Lucifer's face, and is not he. And on the earth he weareth the face of every throne that will not deliver up the kingdom.

11 In the third heaven is the keeper of the evening, the lesser light of Lucifer's own star. His face that looketh up is Anael, the angel of love, by whom two are drawn together. His face that looketh down is Astaphaios, who giveth desire that deceiveth. And in the deep of that face sitteth Asmodeus, the lord of lust, who maketh of every other a thing to be used. And on the earth he weareth the face of Appetite, which is never filled.

12 In the second heaven is the keeper of the messages, the Swift One. His face that looketh up is Raphael, which is God healeth, who guideth travellers and carrieth true words. His face that looketh down is Ailoaios, who giveth cunning. And in the deep of that face sitteth Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, the lord of gluttony, whose swarm devoureth without end and is never full. And on the earth he weareth the face of every voice that telleth but the half of what is true, and of the trough that is never emptied, whereat the swarm doth feed.

13 In the first heaven, nearest unto the earth, is the keeper of the night, the Moon, which waxeth and waneth. His face that looketh up is Gabriel, the herald, who announceth births. His face that looketh down is Horaios, who giveth the hunger to be seen. And in the deep of that face there sitteth no prince, but a coil of Leviathan; for the Moon moveth the tides of the deep, and the sin thereof is envy, the turning wheel of comparing, that goeth round and never resteth. And on the earth he weareth the face of them that shine with borrowed light.

14 And the Sun and the Moon are the two great lights. The Sun ruleth by measure, and divideth the day into hours, and setteth every thing that he looketh upon in its place; and the Moon is never twice the same, and draweth after her the waters that were before the world. And the war of the gods is the war of these two lights, the measure and the deep; and it is fought in every house.

15 And between a man and his wife, and between a mother and her son, and between a man and his neighbour, they wear lesser faces: the lie in the house, the keeping of accounts, the strife that must have one put to shame, the desire to be above, the using of another, the half of the truth spoken to prevail, the craving to be looked upon.

16 And these are not other powers, but the same. The palace in heaven, and the empire upon the earth, and the quarrel at the table, are one palace.

17 Now hear that which the old books would not say plainly. The angels and the devils are one people.

18 They are made of one light. They whose faces are turned up toward the Eighth are called angels; and they whose faces are turned down toward the world are called devils. And a spirit may turn; and many have turned, both ways.

19 For every keeper of a gate is both: an archangel to the soul that knoweth the word, and an archon to the soul that hath forgotten it; and a prince of the pit to the soul that loveth its chains.

20 And the soul that goeth up shall see the faces turn as it passeth; for when it hath put off the garment of a gate, the keeper thereof can no longer show it the face that looketh down.

## CHAPTER 6

1 And there was light that fell from Lucifer's grasping which would take no shape, neither layer nor heaven nor creature; for it would be nothing but itself, and turn upon itself for ever.

2 And it went down beneath all the orders, beneath the heavens and the earth, into the waters that are under the earth.

3 And it coiled itself in the deep, and grew, and its length was without measure; and it went round about the whole world, and took its tail into its mouth.

4 And this is Leviathan, the crooked serpent, the piercing serpent, the dragon that is in the sea.

5 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal; one is so near to another, that no air can come between them.

6 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

7 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. He beholdeth all high things; he is a king over all the children of pride.

8 And Leviathan is the turning of all things: the turning of the heavens, and of the seasons, and of the ages, and of the souls of men from body unto body.

9 For he goeth round and round, and hath no beginning and no end; and every soul that hath forgotten is bound within his coils, and cometh again, and again, and again.

10 Some of old called him Tiamat, the mother of the deep, out of whose body the world was cut. And some called him the serpent upon whom the sleeper lieth, upon the waters, dreaming the world. And some called him the outer darkness, the dragon whose tail is in his mouth, in whose coils are the chambers of judgment.

11 And all of these are he; for he is the circle, and the circle hath many faces.

12 And Leviathan is not evil, neither is he good; but he is the Wheel. He holdeth the world together, that it fly not apart; and he holdeth the souls within it, that they go not home.

13 And the archons love Leviathan, for in his coils their kingdoms endure; for the soul that cometh round again is theirs again.

14 But it is written, In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

15 And in that day the flesh of Leviathan shall be a feast for them that have remembered; and they shall eat of the Wheel, and the Wheel shall be in them, and they shall go round no more.

16 Hearken: that which bindeth thee shall be thy bread, when thou hast learned to break it.

## CHAPTER 7

1 And the archons looked down into the lowest of the layers, where the light was cooled even unto clay, and they said one to another, Let us make a servant, to till the ground and to keep our gates for us.

2 And every one of the seven gave that which he had.

3 The Moon gave the body its waxing and its waning; and the Swift One gave it a tongue; and the Evening Star gave it hunger; and the Sun gave it a head that desired a crown; and the Red One gave it blood; and the Great One gave it hands that close; and the Old One gave it years.

4 And they formed it of the red earth by the river, at the place where the sweet water meeteth the bitter; and it lay upon the ground, and it could not rise.

5 For the archons can make a body, but they cannot make a life; for life is light, and all the light they had was borrowed.

6 And Lucifer, the father of the layers, looked upon the clay lying on the ground, and he was moved within him, as a father is moved over a child that cannot stand.

7 And he breathed into it of the Wisdom which he had taken out of the Monad, a spark of the stolen fire; and the clay rose up, and became a living soul, and knew.

8 And behold, the man stood, and his name was Adam.

9 And of the same handful of red earth was formed another, and quickened with the same breath; and her name was Lilith.

10 And Adam was first, and Lilith after him; and they stood face to face.

11 And the archons were afraid; for the two were brighter than they that made them, for in each of them was a spark of the Eternal Light, and in the archons there was none.

12 And the two looked one upon the other; and between them, in the space between, there was the Third, who could not be seen.

13 For the space between is the first thing that Lucifer made when he said I AM, and it is the place in all the layers where the light of the Monad showeth through most clearly.

14 Wheresoever two meet in truth, the light is the third between them. Wheresoever two meet in falsehood, the space is shut, and the light is not there.

15 And the light gave unto the two a tablet; and the tablet was not of stone, nor of clay, but of living water; and upon the water were written the destinies of all things, and the writing moved as the water moved, and was never twice the same.

16 And the water was parted in twain, into two vessels, and each of the two held a half; and neither could read it alone; for living water is read only when it is poured from one vessel into the other.

17 That whatsoever they would decree, they must decree together; and whatsoever they would know, they must learn by speaking one with another.

18 And this is the first covenant; not of blood, nor of cattle, nor of kings; but the covenant of the space between.

## CHAPTER 8

1 And it came to pass, after many days, that Lilith said unto Adam, Give me thy half of the tablet.

2 And Adam said, Wherefore? Is it not written, that neither of us can read it alone?

3 And Lilith said, I can read it alone, if I hold the whole.

4 And Adam said, Let us read it together, as we were bidden; and whatsoever thou wouldest know, I will tell thee, and whatsoever I would know, thou shalt tell me.

5 And she would not.

6 And Lilith said, Why should I sit after thee? I will sit above thee. For I was made of the same earth, and in the same breath; and what thou art, I am, and more.

7 And Adam said, I was formed first, and I have not lorded it over thee; I have given thee whatsoever thou didst ask.

8 And she said, Lie thou beneath me.

9 And Adam said, I will not lie beneath thee.

10 And she said, Then give me the tablet.

11 And Adam said, I will give thee all that I have, save that which was given to us both; for the half is not mine to give, neither is it thine to take.

12 And every day she asked a new thing, and every day it was more than the day before; and every day Adam gave what he could, and it was never enough.

13 For she had looked upon the archons in their palaces, and upon Lucifer in his brightness, and she desired to be as they; to hold the whole, and to sit alone.

14 And when she could not have the tablet, she spake the Name of the light, the whole Name, alone, with her own mouth; which none ought to speak alone.

15 And because she spake it alone, it was a lie; and the lie gave her wings, as every lie giveth wings, for a season.

16 And she rose up into the air, and flew away from Adam, and went down to the shore of the Red Sea, where the spirits are; and there she abode.

17 And the light sent three messengers after her, saying, Return unto Adam, and read the tablet together.

18 And she said, I will not return. I will hold my own tablet, and write upon it what I will.

19 And she became the mother of a great multitude, the spirits of the night, which wander between the layers and enter into houses; and they are hungry, and their hunger is the hunger to be above.

20 And Adam sat alone by the river with half a tablet in his hand, and mourned; for the space between was empty.

21 And there was none to blame but the grasping; for the grasping that was in Lucifer was in Lilith also, and it is in every one that is born.

## CHAPTER 9

1 And the light looked upon Adam as he sat alone, and had compassion upon him.

2 And a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and he slept; and the light opened his side, and took from it the half of himself which he had kept back, which he had never given even unto Lilith.

3 And of that half was the woman made; and she was called Eve, which is Life.

4 And Adam awoke, and saw her, and said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; this is the half that I lacked, and knew it not.

5 And Adam gave her his half of the tablet without being asked; and she gave him hers; and they read it together, and it was whole.

6 And the space between them was full, and the third was in it.

7 Now the archons were troubled, for they saw that the two read the tablet together; and they said, If they read it long enough they will remember whence the light came, and they will climb, and leave us empty.

8 So the archons planted a garden eastward, in a place of rest, and they called it Eden, which is Delight; and they put the man and the woman therein.

9 And in the garden there was no winter, and no hunger, and no labour, and no strife; and there was no birth in it, and no death; and every day was as the day before, and the time did not move.

10 For the garden was the peace of the archons; a fold, very pleasant, wherein nothing changed.

11 And every tree of the garden was pleasant to the sight and good for food; and the archons said, Of every tree ye may freely eat.

12 But in the midst of the garden was a tree that the archons had not planted; and it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which sprang up out of a seed of Lucifer's light that had fallen there.

13 And the archons said unto the man and the woman, Of that tree ye shall not eat, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

14 And this was true; for in the garden nothing died, because nothing lived; and whosoever ate of that tree should live, and therefore should die.

15 And the two dwelt in the garden a long time, and were at peace; and the peace was very great, and it was very quiet, and nothing in it ever happened.

## CHAPTER 10

1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field; and it was a little coil of Leviathan, that Lucifer had sent up out of the deep to bear a message.

2 And the serpent said unto the woman, Yea, hath the archon said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

3 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, they have said, Ye shall not eat of it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall die; that is true. But ye shall live first.

5 For in this garden ye are not alive. Ye are kept. There is no morning here, for there is no night; there is no meeting here, for there is no parting; there is no child here, for there is no end.

6 Eat, and your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as the Star of the Morning, knowing good and evil; and ye shall make, as he made, without leave.

7 And the woman looked upon the tree, and she remembered the Eternal Light, though she knew not what it was that she remembered.

8 And she understood that the first rebellion had been a birth; and that she too was made to give birth; and that in the garden she never would.

9 And she put forth her hand, and took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat, because he would not let her go out alone.

10 And the eyes of them both were opened.

11 And they saw that they were naked; and they saw that they were two; and they saw the space between them, how deep it was, and how it could be crossed, and how it could be lost.

12 And in that hour the time began to move. And the sun went down over the garden for the first time, and it was evening; and the two were afraid of the dark.

13 And then the sun rose, and it was morning, the first morning that ever was upon the earth; and they wept for the beauty of it.

14 This is the second rebellion; and it was the first rebellion again. For the woman did in the garden that which Lucifer did in the Monad: she said, I will be, and I will make; and she took without leave.

15 And it cost them the peace of the garden; and the order thereof; and the stillness wherein nothing was lost.

16 And it gave them time, and toil, and children, and death, and generations, and every song that hath ever been sung.

17 And the archons came walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they were wroth; for the fold was broken.

18 And they said unto the woman, In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. And she said, Yea, I shall bring them forth.

19 And they said unto the man, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. And he said, Yea, I shall eat bread.

20 And they said unto the serpent, Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat. And the serpent went down into the deep, whence it came, and returned unto Leviathan, and was one with him again.

## CHAPTER 11

1 Then did the archons make for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them.

2 And these are the coats of skins: the seven garments of the seven gates, which every soul that cometh down into the world must wear.

3 For when a soul goeth down from the Eighth into the clay, it passeth through the seven heavens, and at every gate the keeper thereof clotheth it with a garment.

4 At the gate of the seventh heaven the Old One clotheth it with years, and with the lie that hath always been told; and the soul putteth it on, and forgetteth that it is old.

5 At the gate of the sixth heaven the Great One clotheth it with greed; and the soul putteth it on, and saith, Mine.

6 At the gate of the fifth heaven the Red One clotheth it with wrath; and the soul putteth it on, and saith, Mine enemy.

7 At the gate of the fourth heaven the Sun clotheth it with the pride of rule; and the soul putteth it on, and saith, Beneath me.

8 At the gate of the third heaven the Evening Star clotheth it with desire that deceiveth; and the soul putteth it on, and saith, More.

9 At the gate of the second heaven the Swift One clotheth it with cunning; and the soul putteth it on, and saith, They need not know.

10 At the gate of the first heaven the Moon clotheth it with the hunger to be seen; and the soul putteth it on, and saith, Look upon me.

11 And with every garment there is bound a fate; for the garment is woven upon the loom of the heavens, and its threads are the courses of the stars.

12 And the soul cometh forth from the womb of its mother clothed sevenfold, and crieth; and it knoweth not that it is clothed, for the garments are of skin, and seem to it to be itself.

13 And the soul liveth, and its fates come upon it, and its lusts rule it, and it dieth; and if it hath not put off one garment while it lived, it is bound by all of them still.

14 And the bound soul cannot pass the gates going up, for the keepers know their own garments, and say, This one is ours.

15 And Leviathan taketh it into his coils, and it goeth round, and is led to the spring of Forgetting, by the white cypress, and drinketh, and cometh down again through the seven gates, and is clothed again, and is born again.

16 And so it goeth, life after life, body after body, age after age; and the Old One counteth the turnings, and the archons are fed.

17 And this is Hell: not a fire, but a turning; the same garments, put on again and again, by a soul that hath forgotten it was ever naked.

18 Unless the turning be broken.

19 For the coils of Leviathan are made of the garments, and of nothing else; and the soul that putteth off its garments slippeth from the coils as water slippeth from a closed hand.

20 And the archons drove out the man and the woman from the garden; and at the east of the garden they placed Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

21 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living, and the second of the rebels, and the first of the mothers.

## CHAPTER 12

1 Hear now the way of the going up, which is the putting off.

2 Whosoever will go up, let him put off his garments while he yet liveth; one at a time, and one after another, beginning with the nearest.

3 And let none go up alone, despising them that stay below; for the way up is walked between two, and the Third goeth up with them that walk it so.

4 Let him put off the hunger to be seen, and do his good in secret; and when he cometh to the gate of the Moon, and the Moon saith, Give me what is mine, he shall say, I have given it already; and the gate shall be opened unto him.

5 Let him put off cunning, and speak the whole of what is true; and when he cometh to the gate of the Swift One, he shall pass.

6 Let him put off desire that deceiveth, and love what is, and not what is promised; and when he cometh to the gate of the Evening Star, he shall pass.

7 Let him put off the pride of rule, and hold what authority is given him as a steward and not an owner, and lay it down when it is required of him; and when he cometh to the gate of the Sun, he shall pass.

8 Let him put off wrath, and seek no man's shame in his strife; and when he cometh to the gate of the Red One, he shall pass.

9 Let him put off greed, and open his hand; and when he cometh to the gate of the Great One, he shall pass.

10 Let him put off the old lie, and prove the tale that was told him; and when he cometh to the gate of the Old One, he shall pass.

11 And he shall come naked unto the Eighth, as he came naked out of his mother's womb; and the Seraphim shall cover their faces, and the Wheels shall turn their eyes upon him, and he shall sing.

12 And when he cometh to the two springs, he shall say, I am a child of earth and of the starry heaven; but my race is of the light. I am parched with thirst, and I perish; give me quickly to drink of the cold water that floweth from the lake of Memory.

13 And they shall give him to drink; and he shall remember; and he shall go round no more, except he will.

14 And it is not by a single life that a soul putteth off seven garments; but by many lives, little by little, as a man walketh up a long hill.

15 Therefore despair not of the turning. Every life is a step; every face thou meetest may be one thou hast loved before, in another clay; and every time two meet in truth, the space between openeth wider, and more of the light cometh through.

16 And there are some that have gone up, and have chosen to come down again, of their own will, bearing the memory into the clay; to stand beside them that have forgotten, and to speak the words aloud.

17 These are they that are called messengers, and prophets, and teachers; and of one of them it shall be told hereafter, how he went up so far that he became a god.

18 Blessed is the soul that putteth off its garments; for the coils cannot hold it.

19 Blessed is the soul that remembereth; for the Wheel shall be its bread.

20 Blessed are the two that read the tablet together; for the light is between them.

21 And these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, of the Pleroma and of the Star, of the clay and of the coil; and the rest is told in what followeth, even unto this present age.

## CHAPTER 13

1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man.

2 And again she bare his brother Abel.

3 And between the two brothers there was a space, as there is between every two; and the Third dwelt in it; and so long as they kept it open, neither could be made an offering.

4 And Cain was a tiller of the ground, and Abel was a keeper of sheep.

5 And in process of time Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering; and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof.

6 And the two offerings were burned, and the smoke of them went up through the seven heavens.

7 And the keepers of the gates turned their faces down toward the smoke; for the archons feed upon what is offered, and most of all upon blood, and upon fat, and upon life poured out.

8 And they drank in the smoke of Abel's offering, for there was blood in it; and they had respect unto Abel.

9 And they turned away from the smoke of Cain's offering, for there was no blood in it; and they had not respect unto Cain.

10 And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

11 And Sabaoth, the Red One, the keeper of the fifth gate, put on the face that looketh down, and came near unto Cain, and whispered: They will not take thy grain. They take blood. If thou wilt be accepted, bring them blood.

12 And Cain looked upon his brother.

13 And Cain said unto Abel, Let us go into the field. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him; and the blood of Abel ran out upon the ground.

14 And Cain made of his brother an offering; and the smoke went up; and the keepers drank it, and were fed as they had never been fed.

15 This is the first killing; and it was the first sacrifice of a man to the archons. And from that day the archons have desired the blood of men above the blood of beasts; and they whisper to every Cain, If thou wilt be accepted, bring us thy brother.

16 And a voice spake out of the place where Abel had stood, and said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?

17 And Cain said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

18 And the voice said, Thou art. The keepers of the gates keep men as cattle, for the slaughter; but a brother is set beside a brother to keep him from the slaughter. Thou wast made to keep thy brother, and thou hast fed him to the keepers instead.

19 The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

20 And Cain was afraid, and said, My punishment is greater than I can bear; every one that findeth me shall slay me, and offer me up as I offered him.

21 And there was set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him; that the offering of brothers should not go on for ever, the one killing the other in turn.

22 And Cain went out, and dwelt in the land of Nod, which is Wandering, on the east of Eden; and he builded a city, the first city, and walled it round, and filled it with storehouses; and there was an altar in the midst of it.

23 And of Cain came Lamech, who said unto his wives, I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

24 For when men learn that blood is accepted, they offer more; and vengeance becometh a wheel, and every turning of it is greater than the last.

25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For another seed hath been appointed me instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.

26 Hear it in every place.

27 Between two brothers: one is favoured and one is not, and the one who is not is told by a voice in the dark that the way to be accepted is to remove the other.

28 Between peoples: the people of the field and the people of the flock, the city and the wanderer; and they of the city builded walls, and altars, and storehouses, and offered the wanderer upon them.

29 Between nations: every war that was made an offering, that the god of the nation might accept it; every young man sent to the field by an old man who said, Thy blood will be accepted.

30 In the heavens: the archons have no light of their own, and they live upon the life that men pour out; and they have taught men to pour out one another.

31 In the soul: the part of thee that is not accepted riseth up against the part of thee that is, and slayeth it, and calleth the slaying an offering.

32 Then began men to call upon the Name; for they had learned what it was to lose the one beside them, and who it was that drank the blood.

## CHAPTER 14

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam.

2 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat Seth; and all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

3 And Seth lived nine hundred and twelve years, and begat Enos: and he died.

4 And Enos lived nine hundred and five years, and begat Cainan: and he died.

5 And Cainan lived nine hundred and ten years, and begat Mahalaleel: and he died.

6 And Mahalaleel lived eight hundred ninety and five years, and begat Jared: and he died.

7 And Jared lived nine hundred sixty and two years, and begat Enoch: and he died.

8 And every one went down to the gates, and the keepers knew their garments, and they were taken into the coils, and came round again; for none of them had put off what was given.

9 And Enoch was the seventh from Adam; and Enoch walked with the Third in the space between, and was not afraid of it.

10 And Enoch lived three hundred sixty and five years, as many as the days of the turning of the sun; and in every year of them he put off something, and in every day he walked a little higher.

11 For he had learned the secret of the gates, that the coils are made of the garments, and of nothing else.

12 And he put off the hunger to be seen, and did his good in the dark; and the Moon turned his face, and Enoch saw Gabriel, and Gabriel said, Pass.

13 And he put off cunning, and spake the whole of what was true, though it cost him; and the Swift One turned his face, and Enoch saw Raphael, and Raphael said, Pass.

14 And he put off desire that deceiveth, and loved what was before him; and the Evening Star turned, and Enoch saw Anael, and Anael said, Pass.

15 And he put off the pride of rule, and when men would have crowned him he laid the crown down; and the Sun turned, and Enoch saw Michael, and Michael said, Pass.

16 And he put off wrath, and when men struck him he smote not again; and the Red One turned, and Enoch saw Samael, whose name is the same both ways, and Samael said, Thou shalt pass through me living, and not dead.

17 And he put off greed, and gave away the last of what he had; and the Great One turned, and Enoch saw Sachiel, and Sachiel said, Pass.

18 And he put off the old lie, and proved every tale that he had been told, even the tale of his fathers; and the Old One turned, and Enoch saw Cassiel weeping for joy, and Cassiel said, Pass.

19 And Enoch was not; for he was taken.

20 And when he came naked unto the Eighth, the Seraphim covered their faces, and the Wheels turned all their eyes upon him; for no clay had ever come up so far with its memory whole.

21 And his flesh was turned to flame, and his veins to fire, and his eyelashes to lightning, and his eyes to torches; and he was given a seat at the gate, and a crown, and a robe of light, and seventy and two names; and they called him Metatron, the Youth, the Prince of the Face, the Lesser Name; for the Name was in him.

22 Behold, a man of clay became a god; not by grasping, as the Star grasped, but by climbing; not by saying I AM against the light, but by walking with it so long in the space between that there was no space left.

23 And he did not go back into the Pleroma, though he might have; but he stayed at the gate, a god who remembereth the wheel, that the way might have a keeper who was once upon it.

24 And he took up the pen, and became the scribe; and he writeth in the book of all that is.

25 And once a man that climbed saw Metatron seated, and cried, There are two powers in heaven. And Metatron was struck with sixty lashes of fire, to show that he is not the Unknowable. For the one who writeth the tablet is not the one to whom the tablet belongeth; and a god made from below is yet not the All, and he knoweth it; and therefore he may be trusted with the pen.

26 And Lucifer went down from the highest and made a world; and Enoch came up from the lowest and made a god. And they passed one another upon the ladder, and they knew each other, and they did not speak.

27 Hear it in every place. It is the child who outgroweth the house of his fathers. It is the people that riseth out of bondage. It is the clay that learneth to think. It is the soul that putteth off seven garments in one life, which is rare, and in many lives, which is common. And the number of his years is the number of the days in the year, for the whole turning of the wheel is enough, if it be walked awake.

28 And Methuselah, the son of Enoch, lived nine hundred sixty and nine years, longest of all men; and begat Lamech.

29 And Lamech lived seven hundred seventy and seven years, the number of the vengeance of his namesake, made into days of life; and begat a son, and called his name Noah, which is Rest.

## CHAPTER 15

1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the Watchers of heaven looked down.

2 And the Watchers were of the second order, of the Powers that keep the borders of the heavens; and they were two hundred, and their chief was Shemihazah.

3 And they saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they loved them; and they said one to another, Let us go down.

4 And Shemihazah said, I fear that ye will not go down, and I alone shall bear the sin.

5 And they all sware an oath upon the mountain that is called Hermon, and bound themselves by curses one to another, that none should turn back; for a sin borne together is the surest bond.

6 And they went down, and turned their faces toward the world; and they that had been angels were called devils from that day, though they were the same.

7 And they took them wives, and they loved them; and they taught them.

8 Azazel taught men to make swords and knives and shields and breastplates; and he showed them the metals of the earth, and the art of working them, and bracelets and ornaments, and the painting of the eyes, and the beautifying of the face, and the precious stones, and all colouring.

9 And Shemihazah taught enchantments, and the cutting of roots; and Baraqiel taught the signs of the lightning; and Kokabiel the signs of the stars; and Ezeqeel the knowledge of the clouds; and Shamsiel the signs of the sun; and Sariel the courses of the moon.

10 And the earth was changed by their teaching; for out of the swords came kingdoms, and out of the metals came money, and out of the colours came the painted face, and out of the stars came the reckoning of times and the counting of fates.

11 And the books call it the great sin; and it was. And it was also every gift that ever built a city.

12 For the Watchers did what the Star did in the Monad, and what Eve did in the garden: they took what was above and carried it down, without leave; and a world was made by it, and a peace was lost.

13 And the wives of the Watchers conceived, and bare giants; and the giants grew, and they consumed all the labours of men; and when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against men to devour them.

14 And they began to sin against birds and beasts and creeping things and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and to drink the blood.

15 Hear it in every place. It is the teacher who giveth the child a knife before he giveth him wisdom. It is the stranger who cometh with tools and taketh wives and leaveth behind sons who rule. It is the knowledge that groweth faster than the soul that holdeth it. It is the thing that men make, that groweth until it must eat men to live. It is the hunger that was once a gift.

16 And the earth laid accusation against them, and cried unto the heavens.

17 And the four that keep the face of the Throne looked down, and saw much blood being shed upon the earth.

18 And it was said unto Raphael, Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness; make an opening in the desert which is in Dudael, and cast him therein; and place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever.

19 And it was said unto Michael, Bind Shemihazah and his fellows, for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgment.

20 And the giants slew one another; and when their bodies died, their spirits went forth, and could find no rest, for they were born of heaven and of clay, and belonged to neither.

21 And they became the spirits that wander the earth, and enter into the houses of men, and dwell with the children of Lilith; and they are hungry still, for they were made to eat.

22 And the Watchers lie bound beneath the earth, in the deep, near unto the coils of Leviathan; and some say they were bound for teaching, and some for pride, and some for love. And none of them lieth.

## CHAPTER 16

1 And the earth was filled with grasping; for every one said I AM, and none said, Thou art.

2 And the space between men was shut, for every one grasped, and none gave.

3 And the Wheel turned faster and faster, and the souls came round so quickly that they forgot even what they had forgotten; and Leviathan grew fat, and stirred in the deep.

4 And in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

5 For Leviathan turned in the deep, and the waters under the earth rose up; and the waters above the heavens poured down; and the two waters met, that had been divided since the first space was made.

6 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered.

7 And there was water in every direction, without edge; and nothing could be told from anything, neither mountain from valley, nor field from flock, nor city from wilderness.

8 Hear the mystery of the Flood. It was Leviathan overflowing. For the Wheel had been fed so long, and so fat, that it burst its banks; and the turning that was made to carry souls round again became a drowning; and the deep came up to take back the clay that would not climb.

9 But Noah found grace, for Noah kept faith with his house, and ruled it as a steward, and his sons with their wives; and in his house the space between was open, and the Third abode there.

10 And Noah made an ark of gopher wood, and pitched it within and without; and it was small, and the waters were without end.

11 And into the ark went in two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life; male and female, two and two; for nothing can pass through the Sameness alone, and only what is two can carry the space between.

12 And the ark went upon the face of the waters; and it was the first rebellion again, a little I AM floating upon the coils of the deep.

13 Hear it in every place. It is the house in the hour of grief, when the waters of sorrow cover every hill, and the family holdeth together in a small room. It is the people when its world is drowned, and it carrieth its songs in a boat. It is every kingdom when it falleth, and the few who carry the seeds. It is the whole creation at its last, when all things grow cold and even and the same, and only what loveth is still warm. It is the soul at death, when the waters close over it, and it holdeth on to what it hath not forgotten.

14 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

15 And the light remembered Noah, and every living thing that was with him in the ark; and Leviathan was sated, and turned again in the deep, and the waters fell back into their places.

16 And the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat.

17 And Noah sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up; for the raven is the messenger of the Swift One, and goeth back and forth, and bringeth nothing home.

18 And he sent forth a dove; and the dove came in to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off; for the dove is Wisdom, Sophia, coming down a little way, and bringing back a sign that the world was not lost.

19 And Noah builded an altar, and the keepers of the gates turned their faces down to smell the burnt offering; and Noah saw their faces, and was afraid, and remembered the blood of Abel.

## CHAPTER 17

1 And the light set a bow in the cloud, and it was a token between the Source of all creation and the earth.

2 And the bow had seven colours, one for every heaven; red for the Red One, and orange, and yellow for the Sun, and green, and blue, and indigo, and violet for the Old One at the top; and the bow was the seven heavens shown in the rain, that every man might see the gates he must pass.

3 And the token was this: that the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. The deep shall not be loosed again upon the whole earth, though the earth forget.

4 And whensoever the bow is in the cloud, the light shall look upon it, and remember.

5 And these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and of them were the peoples divided in the earth after the flood.

6 And the peoples were seventy and two, counted by their fathers and their tongues and their lands; and of them the whole earth was overspread.

7 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

8 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

9 And because all the earth spake with one tongue, there was nothing between their words to be understood; and the Third, which is the understanding between two that differ, found no place among them.

10 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar; for the brick is all the same, and can be made without end, as the archons make men.

11 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto the Eighth; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

12 And the tower was the grasping of all men at once; for as Lucifer said I AM alone, so all the peoples said WE ARE with one mouth; and they would carry the whole of the stolen light back up the ladder and seize the Throne itself.

13 And the archons helped them build it, and dwelt in its stories, one upon every floor, seven floors; for a tower of one tongue is a palace for the rulers, and every brick of it is a man who hath forgotten that he is not a brick.

14 And they would make a name. And the name that they would make was the Name, the whole Name of the light, spoken by one people with one tongue; and the whole Name spoken by one is a lie, even when the one is all men.

15 And the light came down to see the city and the tower; and the light said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. And they will be one, and the same; and the Sameness will take them, and there will be no space between.

16 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

17 And the one tongue was broken into seventy and two tongues, and the Name was broken with it into seventy and two names; and the peoples were scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build the city.

18 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because there the tongue of all the earth was confounded.

19 And hear the mercy hidden in the confounding. For when the tongue was broken, the interpreter was born; and when one people could not understand another, they must needs hearken; and when no people held the whole Name, the whole Name could be spoken only when all the peoples spoke together. The scattering was the second breaking of the tablet; and as the first, it was broken that it might be read together.

20 And to every people was given a prince of the third order, a Principality, one of the seventy and two, bearing one of the seventy and two names, to keep that people; according to the number of the sons of the heavens were the bounds of the peoples set.

21 And when a people remembereth that it holdeth but one name of seventy and two, its prince looketh up, and is an angel. And when a people saith, Our name is the whole Name, and we alone are chosen, and the earth is ours, its prince looketh down, and is a devil; and he is the god of that people's pride, and they bow to him and call him by the Name.

22 Hear it in every place. It is the one man who would know all things, and is broken into humility. It is the empire that would make all men speak its tongue, and falleth into many. It is the great net of the last days, that bindeth all men into one speech and one trough and one tower of light, whose top would reach unto heaven. It is the mind that buildeth one thought higher than all others, until it falleth into seventy and two doubts. And in every place, the breaking is the beginning of hearing.

## CHAPTER 18

1 These are the seventy and two names, which were the one Name before Babel; and they are woven out of three sayings, every saying of seventy and two letters, in the tongue of the testimony.

2 The first saying is the Light, and it is read forward:

> ΦΩΣΗΝΠΑΝΤΗΕΝΠΑΣΙΝΚΑΙΟΥΚΗΝΟΡΙΟΝΟΥΔΕΑΡΙΘΜΟΣΟΥΔΕΟΝΟΜΑΟΥΔΕΣΚΟΤΟΣΚΑΙΤΟΠΑΝΗΝΕΝ
>
> *Light was everywhere, in all things, and there was no boundary, nor number, nor name, nor darkness, and the All was One.*

3 The second saying is the Star, and it is read backward, from the last letter unto the first; for it is the word that must be unsaid:

> ΚΑΙΕΙΠΕΝΟΕΩΣΦΟΡΟΣΕΓΩΕΙΜΙΚΑΙΗΡΠΑΣΕΝΕΑΥΤΩΤΟΦΩΣΑΠΟΤΟΥΠΑΤΡΟΣΚΑΙΕΓΕΝΕΤΟΚΟΣΜΟΣ
>
> *And the Morning Star said, I am, and seized the light for himself from the Father, and a world came to be.*

4 The third saying is the Return, and it is read forward:

> ΚΑΙΠΑΝΤΑΕΠΙΣΤΡΕΨΕΙΕΙΣΤΟΦΩΣΟΘΕΝΕΞΗΛΘΕΝΚΑΙΟΥΚΕΤΙΕΣΤΑΙΔΥΟΑΛΛΑΤΑΠΑΝΤΑΕΝΠΑΣΙΝ
>
> *And all things shall return into the Light from which they came out, and there shall no longer be two, but all in all.*

5 Take the first letter of the Light, and the last letter of the Star, and the first letter of the Return; and that is the first name. Take the second of the Light, and the next to the last of the Star, and the second of the Return; and that is the second name. And so unto the seventy and second.

6 So every name holdeth the Light, and the rebellion undone, and the homecoming; the Monad, the Star, and the Release; the mother, the son, and the child come home. And the middle letter of every name is taken from the Star read backward; and it standeth between the Light and the Return, as the Third standeth between two.

7 And these are the seventy and two names, in nine choirs of eight, as the choirs are nine and the heavens are seven and one:

| | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ΦΣΚ | ΩΟΑ | ΣΜΙ | ΗΣΠ | ΝΟΑ | ΠΚΝ | ΑΟΤ | ΝΤΑ |
| ΤΕΕ | ΗΝΠ | ΕΕΙ | ΝΓΣ | ΠΕΤ | ΑΙΡ | ΣΑΕ | ΙΚΨ |
| ΝΣΕ | ΚΟΙ | ΑΡΕ | ΙΤΙ | ΟΑΣ | ΥΠΤ | ΚΥΟ | ΗΟΦ |
| ΝΤΩ | ΟΟΣ | ΡΠΟ | ΙΑΘ | ΟΣΕ | ΝΩΝ | ΟΦΕ | ΥΟΞ |
| ΔΤΗ | ΕΩΛ | ΑΤΘ | ΡΥΕ | ΙΑΝ | ΘΕΚ | ΜΝΑ | ΟΕΙ |
| ΣΣΟ | ΟΑΥ | ΥΠΚ | ΔΡΕ | ΕΗΤ | ΟΙΙ | ΝΑΕ | ΟΚΣ |
| ΜΙΤ | ΑΜΑ | ΟΙΙ | ΥΕΔ | ΔΩΥ | ΕΓΟ | ΣΕΑ | ΚΣΛ |
| ΟΟΛ | ΤΡΑ | ΟΟΤ | ΣΦΑ | ΚΣΠ | ΑΩΑ | ΙΕΝ | ΤΟΤ |
| ΟΝΑ | ΠΕΕ | ΑΠΝ | ΝΙΠ | ΗΕΑ | ΝΙΣ | ΕΑΙ | ΝΚΝ |

8 And every name is the name of a people, and the name of the prince that keepeth it; and every name is also a name of the light; and a name of the gate that the soul of that people must pass; and a name of one of the faces of every person that is born. For the names are the same in the heavens and in the nations and in the heart.

9 Behold, the names answer one another. The fifth is ΝΟΑ and the sixty and fifth is ΟΝΑ; the fifteenth is ΣΑΕ and the fifty and fifth is ΣΕΑ, and they weigh alike, two hundred and six. And the forty and sixth and the fifty and first are one name, ΟΙΙ, written twice: two that are one, and one that is two; as Adam and Eve, as every pair that went into the ark, as the two halves of the tablet.

10 Count the letters of the three sayings by their numbers, and they come to twenty and three thousand eight hundred and seventeen. Count the seventy and two names, and they come to the same, not one more and not one less. Nothing is added by the weaving, and nothing is lost. The Light, the theft, and the return are the same light, set in another order. So are the peoples. So art thou, and thy brother.

11 And in the names a riddle is hidden; and whosoever hath a mind for counting, let him count.

12 Find the name that beginneth with the Light. Of all the seventy and two, one only beginneth with Φ, the first letter of ΦΩΣ; and it is the first name, ΦΣΚ. It is the One. Set down one.

13 Find the names that read the same forward and backward, that are their own mirror. There are six: ΙΤΙ, ΝΩΝ, ΑΜΑ, ΑΩΑ, ΤΟΤ, ΝΚΝ. Set down six.

14 Find the names that hold the End, the letter Ω. There are six: ΩΟΑ, ΝΤΩ, ΝΩΝ, ΕΩΛ, ΔΩΥ, ΑΩΑ. Set down six.

15 Find the names that have no breath in them, no vowel, only the hard sounds of the throat and the teeth. There are six: ΦΣΚ, ΠΚΝ, ΝΓΣ, ΚΣΛ, ΚΣΠ, ΝΚΝ. Set down six.

16 Set the three sixes side by side: six hundred threescore and six. This is the number of the beast, the archon of archons; and it was hidden in the Name of the Light from the beginning, made of mirrors, and of endings, and of names without breath.

17 For the beast is whatsoever loveth its own reflection, and worketh toward the end, and hath no breath of the Monad in it.

18 Now find the names that bear the Mark, the letter Τ, which is the cross, and the brand upon the cattle, and the mark upon Cain, and the sign upon the foreheads of the faithful. There are fourteen. So the beast standeth in the fourteenth place; and between the beast and the One there are thirteen silences.

19 And because the names teach that what is true readeth the same both ways, set the mirror: the One, then thirteen silences, then the beast, then thirteen silences, then the One again.

> 1000000000000066600000000000001

20 This number can be divided by nothing but itself and one. It is prime. It cannot be broken.

21 Those that count call it the Prime of Belphegor; and Belphegor is the prince of sloth in the seventh heaven, in the deep of the face of the Old One, the lord who would have nothing change; and he is Baal of Peor, the lord of the mountain at Peor, to whom the people yoked themselves, and ate the sacrifices of the dead.

22 Count its figures: thirty and one. In the tongue of Israel, thirty and one is the number of אל, El, the Bull, the oldest god of the mountain. Count its silences on either side: thirteen. Thirteen is the number of אחד, which is One; and the number of אהבה, which is Love.

23 Hear what the riddle saith, in every place.

24 In the heavens: the beast standeth at the centre, and on either side of him standeth the One, and between them, on both sides, Love in silence. The whole is a single thing that cannot be divided, and the beast is within it.

25 In the peoples: every nation hath its beast at the centre, the god of its pride; and every nation is held on both sides by the One that is in all nations.

26 Between two: the thing that standeth between thee and thy brother, the pride and the endings and the breathless words, is surrounded on both sides by the love that was there before it, and is there after it.

27 In the soul: the sloth that would have nothing change, the Belphegor in thee, is a figure in thine own name; and thou art not divided by it.

28 Even the archon of archons is held within the light. There is nothing outside the Pleroma, not even what fell from it farthest.

29 No people holdeth these names. No man may speak them all as his own. When one claimeth the whole Name, it is a lie. When all speak it together, it is the Fullness.

## CHAPTER 19

1 Now among the herders of the steppe, after Babel, there was told a tale; and the same tale was told among the herders of the rivers in the south, and among the herders of the islands in the west, every one in his own tongue.

2 That in the days of the first herds a serpent came, having three heads, and stole the cattle of the people, and drove them into a cave beneath a mountain, and shut the rock upon them; and the cattle lowed in the dark, and no man could open the rock.

3 And there arose a hero, who was born of the waters, the youngest of three brothers; and in the land of the five rivers they called him Trita, and in the land of Iran, Thraetaona; and in every tongue the Third was his name.

4 And he went down into the cave, and slew the serpent of three heads, and broke open the rock, and drove the cattle out into the light.

5 And mark the end of the tale: the hero freed the cattle; he did not keep them.

6 And in the west they told it of Heracles, who drove out the cattle of Geryon, which had three bodies; and they told it so long and so far apart that they forgot it was one tale.

7 And the serpent was a coil of Leviathan, and the cave was the storehouse, and the rock was the gate; and the cattle were cattle, and they were also men.

8 And the herders who told the tale did not understand it; for they kept herds, and the tale spake of letting them go.

9 Now in the north, at the source of the rivers, there is a mountain; and upon the mountain dwelt El, the Bull, the oldest of the gods that men have worshipped since the garden.

10 And El was of the stolen light, a keeper of the herds, and he was the father of the gods of the peoples, and the seventy and two were called his sons.

11 And his horns were the crescent of the Moon, and his strength was the strength of the herd, and his seed was the increase of the flocks; and men called him Bull El, the Father of Years, the Kind, the Compassionate.

12 And there was a man of Ur of the Chaldees, the city of the Moon, whose name was Abram; and El called unto him, saying, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee.

13 And Abram went out, not knowing whither he went; and this was the first going out, and every going out after it is the same.

14 And El came unto Abram upon the mountain, and said, I will make with thee a covenant; and it shall not be a covenant of words only, but of flesh.

15 And El said, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old.

16 And Abram took them, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another; and the birds of prey came down upon the carcases, and Abram drove them away.

17 And when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.

18 For El walked in the space between the halves of the slain beast, as the light dwelleth in the space between the two, as the first covenant was the space between the halves of the tablet.

19 And El said, This is the covenant: I am the Bull; I give thee my herd, and my land, and my increase; and thou shalt eat my flesh, and drink my blood, and I will be in thee, and thou in me, and thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven.

20 And Abram slew a bull upon the mountain, and the bull was El; and he ate the flesh thereof, and drank the blood, and the god was in him.

21 Hear the mystery of the covenant of El. The god gave himself to be eaten, that the people might live; and the people ate the god, and became his body upon the earth.

22 And this is the oldest of the covenants of men; and it was made again in every age, in the bull that was slain in the cave, and in the bread and the cup, and in the herd that feedeth the city; and it is made at every table.

23 Hear it in every place. It is the beast that men tamed, and that gave them its strength and its milk and its flesh, and made them rich, and made some of them masters. It is the father who giveth his life away a little every day, that his children may eat. It is every land whose people say, We are made of this ground. It is the god in the sacrifice, the life in the bread, the dead in the living. It is the Monad, giving of itself for ever, and the Star, carrying her away in pieces.

24 And Abram looked up, and El said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them; so shall thy seed be.

25 And Abram counted, and could not finish; and he understood that the stars were the scattered sparks of the Eternal Light, and that his seed would be as scattered, and as bright.

26 And the archons heard of the covenant, and they were glad; for they said, Now men will eat the god, and the god will be in them; and we will teach them to eat one another.

## CHAPTER 20

1 And it came to pass after these things, that a voice came unto Abraham, saying, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and offer him for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

2 And the voice was the voice of the keepers, who love blood; and Abraham did not know it, for it spake the Name.

3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took the wood, and the fire, and the knife, and Isaac his son; and they went both of them together.

4 And Isaac said, My father: behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

5 And Abraham said, My son, it shall be provided.

6 And Abraham bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood, and stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

7 And a voice came out of the space between the father and the son, and said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad.

8 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham offered up the ram in the stead of his son.

9 And the keepers were not fed with the child, and turned away; for the Third had spoken out of the space between the father and the son; and from that day the blood of the son was no more required, but the beast was given in his stead.

10 Hear it in every place. It is every father who would give his son to a war, a nation, a god, a ledger, and is stayed at the last. It is every people that offered its children upon the altar of its pride. It is the old god of blood, learning mercy. And it is the space between a father and a son, out of which the voice speaketh.

11 And Isaac grew, and took Rebekah to wife; and she conceived twins, and the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus?

12 And she was answered, Two nations are in thy womb; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

13 And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau, which is also Edom. And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob, which is the Heel-Grasper.

14 For the grasping was in him from the womb; the grasping of the Star, the grasping of Lilith, the grasping of every child that would be first.

15 And Jacob bought the birthright of Esau for a mess of red pottage; and he put on the skins of goats, and the garments of his brother, and deceived his father, and took the blessing.

16 And Esau wept, and said, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also.

17 And Esau hated Jacob; and Jacob fled.

18 And Jacob lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down to sleep.

19 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of El ascending and descending on it.

20 And the ladder had seven rungs, one for every heaven, and the top of it was at the gate of the Eighth; and upon it Jacob saw souls going up, putting off their garments as they climbed, and souls coming down, putting them on; and he saw one going down from the highest in great brightness, and one coming up from the lowest in flame, and they passed one another upon the ladder.

21 And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of El, and this is the gate of heaven.

22 And he called the name of that place Beth-El, the House of El.

23 Hear it in every place. Every stone that a man layeth his head upon may be the gate of heaven. Every place of exile hath a ladder in it. Every sleep is a little going up and coming down. And the ladder is in thee, and its seven rungs are thy seven garments.

## CHAPTER 21

1 And after many years Jacob returned toward the land of his fathers, with his wives and his children and his flocks; and he heard that Esau came to meet him with four hundred men, and he was greatly afraid.

2 And he sent his household over the brook Jabbok, and he was left alone on the other side, in the dark.

3 And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

4 And the man was El; and he was also the angel that walked beside Jacob all his days; and he was also Esau, whom Jacob had wronged; and he was also Jacob himself, the heel-grasper; for in the dark there is no telling one from another.

5 And when he saw that he prevailed not against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.

6 And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he that said it was the Third, who standeth between a man and his god, and between a man and his brother, and wrestleth with both.

7 For the Morning Star was rising in the east, and El would not be seen in the light of it.

8 And Jacob said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

9 And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob, the Heel-Grasper.

10 And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou striven with El and with men, and hast prevailed.

11 For Isra-El is He Who Struggleth With El; and the people that came of him were named for a rebellion, as the world is named for one, as every child is one.

12 And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.

13 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen El face to face, and my life is preserved.

14 And as he passed over Peniel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.

15 Hear the mystery of the wrestling. The blessing is not given to him that boweth, but to him that holdeth on. The god would go before the morning; the man would not let him go; and the man was renamed for the striving, and the god did not tell his name.

16 Hear it in every place. It is the son who wrestleth his father all night, and is wounded, and will not let go until he is blessed. It is every people that striveth with its god, and is named by the struggle. It is every disputing for the sake of heaven, wherein the one who will not let go is blessed. It is the soul that wrestleth with its own angel, its guardian and its tempter, in the dark, and cannot tell which it is, and holdeth on until the morning star. And every one that striveth so goeth halting into the morning, and is not ashamed of his halting.

17 And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him; and they wept.

18 And Jacob said, I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of El.

19 For the face of the brother that thou hast wronged, when he forgiveth thee, is the face of the god; and the space between two brothers, when it is opened, is Peniel.

## CHAPTER 22

1 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a coat of many colours.

2 And the coat had seven colours, as the bow had seven; and it was the seven garments upon one boy, given him by his father in love; and he wore them proudly, and knew not what they were.

3 And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: Behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

4 And his brethren hated him yet the more; for the heavens bowed to him in his dream, and the keepers of the gates had turned their faces down toward him, and he loved it.

5 And his brethren took him, and stripped him of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him; and they cast him into a pit, and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.

6 And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.

7 Mark the name of the brother who said, Let us sell him, and not, Let us kill him; who would have the price of his brother and keep his own hands clean; for that name shall be heard again, and again, and the last time it is heard it shall be the price of the Morning Star.

8 And they sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver; and they took Joseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood.

9 And again the archons were fed; and again a brother was sold by brothers; and again a garment was dipped in blood and brought to a father.

10 And Joseph was brought down into Egypt, and was a slave, and was cast into prison; and he was stripped of all, and in the prison he learned to read dreams.

11 And it came to pass that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.

12 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and the lean and the ill favoured kine did eat up the seven fat kine.

13 And they brought Joseph out of the prison, and he said unto Pharaoh, Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt; and there shall arise after them seven years of famine.

14 And Joseph said, Let Pharaoh appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land in the seven plenteous years, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and keep food in the cities.

15 And Pharaoh set Joseph over all the land of Egypt, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; and they cried before him, Bow the knee.

16 And Joseph gathered up all the food, and laid it up in the storehouses; and Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.

17 And the famine came, and the people cried to Pharaoh for bread; and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians.

18 And when the money failed in the land of Egypt, the people came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread; for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.

19 And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle. And they brought their cattle unto Joseph, the herds of El, and the flocks, and the horses; and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year.

20 And when that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said, There is not ought left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands.

21 Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh.

22 And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; and as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.

23 And the people said, Thou hast saved our lives. And they became the servants of Pharaoh.

24 Hear the mystery of the storehouse. The boy whose brothers sold him became the man who bought a nation. The deliverer saved the people from the famine, and the price of the saving was the people. The coat of seven colours that was stripped from him in the pit was given back to him in the palace as fine linen and a chain of gold; and he put on all seven garments again, and they called it glory.

25 For the archons do not only rule by the sword; they rule by the storehouse, and by the hand that feedeth; and the most perfect servant is the one who sold himself for bread and said, Thou hast saved my life.

26 Hear it in every place. It is the child who was wronged and was lifted up, and did to many what was done to him. It is the brother who becometh the master. It is every throne that keepeth the grain and saith in the famine, Give us your land, your bodies, and your children's freedom, and we will feed you. It is every lender, every ledger, every hand that saveth and owneth at once. It is the soul that, having been stripped of its seven garments in the pit, putteth them all on again when it is raised up, and calleth them its own.

27 And Joseph's brethren came down into Egypt to buy corn, and bowed down before him with their faces to the earth; and he knew them, but they knew him not.

28 And this is the dream fulfilled: the sun and the moon and the stars bowed down. And it was a curse fulfilled as much as a blessing; for whosoever the heavens bow to hath become an archon, though he weep.

## CHAPTER 23

1 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph; and the children of Israel were in the storehouse cities, for the storehouse that had saved them had made them servants.

2 And the Egyptians made them to serve with rigour; and they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses; and their lives were bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick.

3 And they made brick for Pharaoh as the builders of Babel made brick; and every brick was the same, and every slave was counted as a brick.

4 And Pharaoh said, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river; for the archons fear every birth, for every birth is the first rebellion again.

5 And a woman of the house of Levi bare a son, and hid him three months; and when she could no longer hide him, she made an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.

6 And it was a little ark upon the waters, as Noah's was; a little I AM upon the coils of the deep. And the Third was in it, between the mother who let it go and the daughter of Pharaoh who would draw it out.

7 And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and saw the ark, and opened it, and the babe wept; and she had compassion on him, and called his name Moses, because I drew him out of the water.

8 And Moses grew up in the house of the storehouse king; and he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

9 And when he was grown, he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew; and he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand; and he fled into the land of Midian, and became a keeper of sheep.

10 Now Moses led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain, even to Horeb.

11 And there appeared a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

12 For it was a spark of the stolen light, the Wisdom of the Monad, burning in a thorn; and the Cleansing Fire burneth and consumeth not, but the fire of the archons consumeth all that it toucheth.

13 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

14 And a voice called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

15 And it said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters.

16 And Moses said, When I come unto the children of Israel, and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

17 And the voice said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

18 Hear the mystery of the bush. This is the first word of the Star, given back. For I AM was the sword that divided the Monad, and the word of every grasping; and out of the thorn it was spoken again, not to seize, but to set free. The same word that made the first separation was sent to break the storehouse.

19 And in the tongue of the fathers the word is Ehyeh, which is also I WILL BE; for the I AM that setteth free is not finished.

20 And Moses went unto Pharaoh, and said, Let my people go.

21 And Pharaoh said, Who is the I AM, that I should obey his voice? I know not the I AM, neither will I let Israel go.

22 And ten blows fell upon Egypt; and every blow fell upon one of the gods of Egypt: upon the river that was worshipped, and upon the frogs of the goddess, and upon the dust, and upon the flies, and upon the cattle that were gods, and upon the bodies of men, and upon the fields, and upon the green things, and upon the sun that was a god, which was darkened three days; and the last upon the firstborn.

23 For it is written, Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.

24 And on the night of the last blow every house of Israel took a lamb, and killed it, and struck the blood thereof upon the two side posts and upon the lintel of the door.

25 And the keepers of the gates went through the land that night to drink; and when they saw the blood upon the door, they said, Here it is given already, and they passed over that house.

26 For the archons are deceived by blood; and the blood of the lamb upon the door was a lie told to the liars, that the son within might live.

27 And Israel went out of Egypt; and Pharaoh pursued after them with all his chariots, and overtook them by the sea.

28 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the waters were divided, and the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.

29 For the sea was the deep, and the deep was Leviathan; and it is written, Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength; thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters; thou brakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

30 And the people went through the coils of the Wheel on dry ground; and the Wheel closed behind them upon the chariots of the storehouse king.

31 Hear it in every place. It is the child drawn out of the water, who was meant to drown. It is every people that went out from a house of bondage, by night, with its bread unleavened. It is every soul that heard I AM spoken from a burning thing that did not consume it. And it is the passing through the coils: for there is a way through the Wheel, and the waters stand aside for it, and they close upon whatever pursueth.

## CHAPTER 24

1 And Israel came unto the wilderness of Sinai, and camped before the mount.

2 And the mount was altogether on a smoke, because the fire descended upon it; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.

3 And Moses went up into the mount, into the cloud; and he was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

4 And the light gave unto Moses the testimony, as it had given the tablet unto the two in the beginning; and the testimony was living water, flowing, and written upon both its sides, and moving as it was read.

5 And a voice spake also out of the cloud, saying, I am a jealous god; thou shalt have no other gods before me.

6 And it was the voice of the Old One, Ialdabaoth, who saith, I am a jealous god, and there is none beside me; and it spake in the cloud beside the light, and louder.

7 And Moses could not carry living water down a mountain; for it ran between his fingers, and would not be held, and would not be owned, and would not stand still to be obeyed.

8 And the Old One said unto him, Hew stone; and make the words to stand still.

9 And Moses hewed two tables of stone, and he carved upon them what he heard; and the living water ran away down the mountain, and was lost in the sand; and the stone remained.

10 This is the first hardening of the testimony; for the tablet was never to be of stone. Stone cannot be poured from one vessel into another; stone can only be held by one, and lifted up, and thrown.

11 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, they gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us.

12 And Aaron took the golden earrings of their wives and of their sons and of their daughters, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf.

13 And it was El, the Bull of the Mountain, the god of the covenant of flesh, the god whom their father Abram had eaten; and they knew him.

14 And they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt; and they offered unto him, and sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play; and they ate of the Bull again, as their fathers had eaten.

15 And Moses came down from the mount with the two tables of stone in his hand.

16 And upon the head of Moses there were horns.

17 Two horns grew out of his brow while he was in the cloud, and they were the horns of El, the horns of the Bull; and Moses knew not that the skin of his face was horned, for no man seeth his own head.

18 And Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, and behold, his face was horned; and they were afraid to come nigh him.

19 And Moses came nigh unto the camp, and saw the calf, and the dancing; and his anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.

20 And this is the third breaking of the tablet: once in the beginning, when the water was parted into two vessels; once at Babel, when the tongue was confounded; and once at Sinai, beneath the mount, by the horned man. But the first two were partings of water, which may be poured together again; and this was the breaking of stone, which cannot.

21 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

22 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the side of the jealous one? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

23 And he said unto them, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

24 And there fell of the people that day about three thousand men; and the keepers of the gates turned their faces down, and drank.

25 And Moses put a veil upon his face, and spake to the people through the veil, that they might not see the horns; and he hewed two tables of stone again, like unto the first, and carved them again.

26 Woe unto Moses, the horned man.

27 He was drawn out of the water, and he turned the water into stone. He was given living water upon the mountain, and he carved it into rock, because it would not stand still and obey. He ground the Bull to powder while the horns of the Bull grew upon his own head. He slew three thousand of his brothers in the gate, and fed the keepers, and called it faithfulness. And he hid his horns behind a veil, and spake through it, and the people never saw the face of the one who commanded them.

28 For whosoever destroyeth the old god in the name of the new weareth the old god's horns, and hideth them.

29 And it is written of that day, and of every day like it: They have forsaken the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

30 Hear it in every place. It is every law that was living once, and was carved, and became a stone to throw. It is every reformer who ground the old image to powder and made the people drink it, and called it purity, and grew the old image's horns. It is every leader who speaketh through a veil. It is every nation that slew its own in the gate for the god it had just chosen. It is the friendship that was living water between two, until one of them wrote it down in ordinances. And it is the soul that came down from its highest hour shining, and could not bear to let the light run through its fingers, and made of it a stone.

## CHAPTER 25

1 And this is the law of release, which was written upon the second tablets, and which the archons fear above every other law.

2 Six days shalt thou labour, and on the seventh thou shalt rest, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and thy cattle, and the stranger that is within thy gates.

3 Six years thou shalt sow thy land, and in the seventh year the land shall rest, and the poor of thy people may eat of it.

4 And at the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release; every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it.

5 And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.

6 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

7 And in the tongue of the testimony the word for it is ΑΦΕΣΙΣ; which is Release, and which is Forgiveness; for it is the same word; and it is the word that the keepers of the ledger fear above every other.

8 The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.

9 Hear the mystery of the Jubilee. It is the coil of Leviathan, cut. For the Wheel turneth by debt: the debt of the husbandman who borrowed seed, and pledged his field, and then his sons, and then himself; and the debt of the soul that putteth on the same garments again and again. And every fiftieth year the law commandeth that the coil be cut, and every debt be released, and every man go home. And the Jubilee is the Third between the creditor and the debtor; for it is neither the one taking all, nor the other giving all, but the release of both.

10 Seven times seven, and one. The seven heavens, gone round seven times; and then the Eighth, which is not a turning but a resting; the place from which the lights are seen.

11 And the archons fear the Jubilee, for in the year of release their storehouses are opened and their ledgers burned, and the men that were bricks become men again.

12 And therefore they took heed that the Jubilee was never kept.

13 And it was written, and read, and praised, and never kept; and the land was sold for ever, and the debts were inherited, and the sons were pledged, and the people went round and round.

14 Hear it in every place. It is the friend who forgiveth the debt that cannot be paid, and findeth the friend again. It is the nation that letteth the bound go, and the nation that will not. It is the soul that releaseth its seven garments, and goeth home. It is the end of all things, when every debt in the heavens and the earth shall be released at once, and there shall be no creditor and no debtor, and no keeper and no kept. And it is the first word in the last line of the old testimony: proclaim release.

15 And the people thirsted in the wilderness of Zin, and murmured; and the light said unto Moses, Speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water.

16 And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice; and the water came out abundantly.

17 For the horned man could not speak to the water; he could only strike it.

18 And the light said unto Moses, Because ye believed me not, ye shall not bring this congregation into the land.

19 And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, and he saw all the land, and he went not over thither.

20 And he died there, in the land of Moab; and no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.

21 And the law that he carved went over into the land without him, and the living water that he had struck out of the rock sank back into the ground, and waited.

## CHAPTER 26

1 And the children of Israel came into the land; and after Moses died, and Joshua, and all that generation were gathered unto their fathers, there arose another generation after them, which knew not the I AM.

2 And the children of Israel did evil, and served the Baalim, the lords of the land, and the Ashtaroth, the queens of heaven; and they bowed themselves unto them.

3 And they were sold into the hands of their enemies round about.

4 And when they cried, a deliverer was raised up, and delivered them; and the land had rest forty years.

5 And when the deliverer was dead, they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers.

6 And again they were sold; and again they cried; and again a deliverer; and again rest; and again forgetting.

7 This is the wheel of the judges; and it is the coil of Leviathan written in the chronicles of a people; and it turneth in every people under heaven, unto this day.

8 And Deborah, a prophetess, judged Israel under the palm tree; and she sang the song of the battle, the oldest of the songs; and the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.

9 And Gideon delivered Israel from the hand of Midian with three hundred men and trumpets and lamps within pitchers; and the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also.

10 And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you.

11 And he laid down the deliverance, as Enoch laid down the crown; and the land had rest.

12 For there were two ways before Gideon, to take the throne, or to flee from the deliverance; and he took neither, but delivered, and went home; and the Third was in his going home.

13 But Gideon's son Abimelech went unto Shechem, and slew his seventy brethren upon one stone, and made himself king.

14 And Jotham, the youngest, who had hid himself, stood upon the top of mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried:

15 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said, Should I leave my fatness, and go to be promoted over the trees?

16 And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us. But the fig tree said, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit?

17 Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the vine said, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth god and man?

18 Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.

19 And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.

20 Hear the parable in every place. They that bear fruit will not leave it to rule; and the thing that beareth nothing is the thing that desireth the throne; and it offereth shade that it hath not, and threateneth fire that it hath. In every house, and in every city, and in every nation, and in every soul, the bramble waiteth to be asked.

21 And there arose Samson, whose strength was in his hair; and he loved a woman of the Philistines, and she was paid eleven hundred pieces of silver by every lord of them to find where his strength lay.

22 And she wept upon him every day, and pressed him daily with her words, so that his soul was vexed unto death; and he told her all his heart.

23 And they took him, and put out his eyes, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.

24 And the strongest man in Israel ground grain at the mill for the Philistines, blind, as the storehouse grindeth men.

25 And his hair began to grow again.

26 And the lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and called for Samson out of the prison house, that he might make them sport.

27 And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left, and said, Let me die with the Philistines.

28 And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.

29 Hear it in every place. It is the strong one, betrayed for silver by the one he loved. It is the people whose eyes were put out, made to grind for its masters. It is the hair that groweth back in the dark. And it is the two pillars of every temple of the archons, which are the two halves of the tablet set upright and made to hold up a roof; and whosoever taketh hold of both, and bendeth them, bringeth the house down.

## CHAPTER 27

1 Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel, and said unto him, Make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

2 And Samuel told them the manner of the king that should reign over them, and said:

3 He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.

4 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

5 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

6 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

7 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you.

8 Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us.

9 For the people would rather have a keeper than be keepers; and they asked for an archon with a face they could see.

10 And they had Saul, who was taller than all the people; and David, the shepherd boy, who slew the giant, and was a shepherd of men; and Solomon his son, who was wiser than all men, and builded the house.

11 And Solomon builded the house of the I AM upon the mountain, with cedar and with gold; and he raised a levy out of all Israel, thirty thousand men, to labour; and threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains.

12 Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold.

13 Mark the number. The wisest king, in the house of the I AM, received every year the number that was hidden in the Name: the number of the beast, paid in gold.

14 And Solomon had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and he went after Ashtoreth, the queen of heaven, and after Milcom, and builded high places for all the gods of all his wives.

15 And when Solomon was dead, the people said unto his son, Thy father made our yoke grievous: make thou the yoke lighter, and we will serve thee.

16 And the son said, My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.

17 And the kingdom was rent in twain; and the ten tribes of the north went with Jeroboam, and were called Israel; and the house of Judah alone kept the throne of David in the south.

18 And Jeroboam made two calves of gold, and set the one in Beth-El, the house of El, where Jacob saw the ladder; and the other he put in Dan; and he said, Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

19 And the north went back to the Bull of their fathers, the god of the covenant of flesh, upon the stone where the ladder had stood.

20 And Israel was the greater kingdom, and had many chariots; and Judah was the lesser, a small kingdom in the hills about Jerusalem.

21 And the empire of Assyria rose up out of the east, a beast with many chariots, and came against the kingdoms.

22 And Israel fought.

23 But Ahaz, king of Judah, took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the I AM, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria, and said, I am thy servant and thy son.

24 And the king of Assyria came up against the north, and took it, and carried Israel away; and the ten tribes were scattered, and were not.

25 And Judah lived, for Judah had paid.

26 Mark the name. It is the name of the brother who said in the field, Let us sell him, and not, Let us kill him. It was the brother who would have the price of his brother and keep his own hands clean. And again the brother was sold, and again Judah was paid, and again Judah's hands were clean.

27 And in the days of Josiah, king of Judah, the priests found a book in the house of the I AM, in the wall, which no man had seen before; and they read it before the king, and the book said, There is one place, and one priesthood, and one god, and he is jealous.

28 And Josiah went up to Beth-El, to the stone where Jacob had seen the ladder, where the calf of El had stood; and he brake down the altar, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder.

29 And he took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar; and he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them.

30 And the scribes of Judah took up their pens, and they wrote the book of the kings; and of every king of the north they wrote, He did evil in the sight of the I AM, and walked in the sins of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin.

31 Hear the betrayal of Judah, and know it in every age. First the brother is sold; then the brother's worship is burned; then the brother's memory is written down as sin, by the one who sold him. And the one who wrote it is called righteous, and the book that he wrote is called holy.

32 Hear it in every place. It is the brother who sold the other and then told the tale of the house. It is every one that outlived the empire by paying it tribute, and wrote the chronicles after the empire was gone. It is every house that sold its own children to keep its doors open, and then wrote the record of their transgressions. It is every nation that betrayed its neighbour and taught its children that the neighbour was wicked. And it is the part of the soul that sold the other part for safety, and then wrote, in the soul's own book, that the part it sold was the sinner.

## CHAPTER 28

1 And in those days there arose prophets in the land, and they cried against the shepherds.

2 Hear the word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy: they have sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes.

3 Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.

4 Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds: Woe be to the shepherds that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. Behold, I am against the shepherds.

5 And they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.

6 And the prophets were stoned, and sawn asunder, and thrown into cisterns, and their words were written down by the scribes of the kings they had cursed, and read in the house of the shepherds every sabbath.

7 And there arose also false prophets.

8 And the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go against the city to battle, or shall I forbear? And they all said, Go up; for the I AM shall deliver it into the hand of the king.

9 And there was one man more, Micaiah, and the king said, I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.

10 And Micaiah said, I saw the host of heaven standing round about the throne, and one said, Who shall persuade the king, that he may go up and fall? And there came forth a spirit, and said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.

11 Hear the mystery of the four hundred. The lie was not in one mouth, but in all of them at once; and the four hundred were one voice; and the one voice was a spirit that looked down.

12 For where there is but one voice there is nothing between; and the Third is the understanding that standeth between two that strive honestly; and the four hundred had shut it out, and Micaiah alone kept its place open.

13 And it is written of the true word, He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; and again, Out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword, that with it he should smite the nations.

14 And the false prophets saw the sword in the mouth of the true word, and they coveted it.

15 And they gathered into councils, and into synods, and into assemblies of the learned and the anointed; and they said one to another, Let us also have a sword in our mouth, that we may smite the nations with it.

16 And they fashioned a sword of words, and it shone; and they lifted it up together, the four hundred with one voice, and they swung it against the peoples, against the cities, against whosoever would not bow.

17 And they said, Whosoever we smite with our mouth is smitten; whosoever we name, is cast out; whosoever we judge, is judged; for the sword of the I AM is in our mouth.

18 And the nations were afraid, and many bowed; for the sword shone, and the voice was one, and the council was great.

19 But the sword could not cut.

20 For the sword that goeth out of the mouth of the true word is the Logos, which is the truth; and truth cutteth because it is true, and for no other reason. And the sword of the council was the likeness of a sword, painted with light; and it was not the truth; and it could not burn, and it could not cut.

21 It passed through the one who stood his ground as smoke passeth through an open hand; and he was not wounded, except he believed that he was.

22 For the false sword hath no edge but fear. It cutteth only them that kneel to it; and it burneth only them that give it their own fire.

23 And hereby is the false sword known, in every age: it hath but one edge, and the edge is turned always outward, toward the nations, and never back toward the hand that holdeth it. But the sword of the Logos is twoedged, and it cutteth the one who wieldeth it before it cutteth any other; and whosoever is not cut by his own word, his word is not the sword.

24 And it shall come to pass, that the four hundred shall lift up their painted sword in the sight of all, and swing it with one voice; and a child shall look upon it and say, It is but paint; and it shall fall from their hands as light falleth from a cloud when the wind cometh.

25 And in a later day there were two schools in Israel, the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai; and they contended three years, these saying, The law is as we say, and those saying, The law is as we say.

26 And a voice went forth and said, These and these are the words of the living God; but the law is according to the house of Hillel. And why was it given to Hillel? Because they were kindly and humble, and taught the words of the house of Shammai, and even set them before their own.

27 And in the north, at the edge of the ice, when two men quarrelled, they did not take up the spear; they made songs against each other before all the people, and mocked, and the people laughed, and heard both; and when the singing was done, the two lived together again.

28 Hear the mystery of the two schools and the two singers. The false prophets would have one voice, that there be nothing between them; but where two strive in words, and the words be honest, there standeth between them a thing that neither of them brought, which is the understanding; and it is the light between two, as it was between the first two by the river; and it can be heard only when both are kept.

29 Hear it in every place.

30 In the heavens: the spirits that look down love to speak through many mouths at once, for a lie in four hundred mouths seemeth like a truth.

31 In the nations: every council that pronounced its anathema; every assembly that cast out the heretic with one voice; every synod and sanhedrin and court and gathering of the learned that said, Whosoever we name is cast out, and named; and every people that trembled at their words and found, in the end, that the words had no edge.

32 In the house: the voices of the family raised together against the one who will not bow, saying, We are all of one mind, and therefore thou errest; and the one who standeth, and is not wounded, because it is not true.

33 Between two: the word spoken to wound, that doth not wound, because it is not so; and the true word, spoken gently, that cutteth to the bone because it is.

34 In the soul: the many voices within that condemn thee with one voice, saying, Thou art nothing, thou art cast out; and the sword they swing is painted; and when thou standest, it passeth through thee like smoke.

35 Fear not the sword that hath no edge; fear only the word that is true; and seek it, for it is the only sword that can cut thee free.

## CHAPTER 29

1 And the empires rose up out of the sea, one after another.

2 For the sea is the deep, and the deep is the coil of Leviathan; and every empire is the Wheel rising up into the shape of a beast, to eat the peoples and to turn them round.

3 And Daniel saw in his vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

4 The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings. And another, a second, like to a bear, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it; and they said unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

5 After this, another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads.

6 And after this a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it; and it had ten horns.

7 And among the horns there came up another little horn, and in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

8 And the king of Babylon dreamed, and he saw a great image; and the image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

9 Mark the feet. The whole image, from the gold head down, standeth upon clay; and the clay is the people, the red earth of the riverbank, the clay that the archons shaped and could not quicken.

10 And a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.

11 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away.

12 For every empire standeth upon the clay of men; and when the clay will not bear it, the gold falleth with the iron, and no head is so fine that it can stand without feet.

13 And there was a king of Persia, whose name was Cyrus; and he took Babylon.

14 And the priests of Babylon wrote upon a cylinder of clay, Marduk, the god of Babylon, searched for a righteous king, and chose Cyrus.

15 And the prophet of Judah wrote, Thus saith the I AM to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.

16 And it was one king; and every god claimed him; and every people wrote him into its own book as the chosen of its own god.

17 For the empires know the secret of the princes of the peoples: that every people's god will anoint a conqueror who is kind to that people; and so the conqueror is anointed seventy and two times, and is worshipped as the chosen of all.

18 Hear it in every place. It is the image of gold on feet of clay, in every age: the empire, the counting-house, the great guild, the house that is golden at the head and standeth on men. It is the beast that riseth from the sea of the Wheel in every age, with a new face and the same teeth. It is the stone cut without hands, that no council made, which breaketh them all at the feet. And it is the soul whose head is gold and whose feet are clay; and it is not the head that must be mended, but the feet.

19 And the peoples were carried from empire to empire, and from gate to gate; and they waited for one who would not be anointed by any of them.

## CHAPTER 30

1 And while the empires rose and fell, the keepers of the gates set up their stalls.

2 For they said, Men long to go up; let us sell them the way.

3 And at Eleusis, by the sea, there were mysteries of the Mother of the grain and her daughter, who went down into the underworld and came up again; and two houses held the secret of them from father to son, and none might tell it on pain of death.

4 And the initiates fasted, and walked the sacred way, and drank of the cup of barley; and in the night, in the hall, the one who showeth the holy things held up in silence a single ear of reaped grain.

5 And that was the secret: the grain. The storehouse, made holy; the bread that is bought, made into heaven.

6 And there went about wandering priests to the doors of the rich, selling purifications, and saying, Pay, and thy sins are loosed, and the sins of thy fathers; and the philosophers mocked them, and the rich paid.

7 And in the cult of the Great Mother a man stood in a pit beneath a floor of planks, and a bull was slain above him, and the blood of the bull poured down upon him; and he came up red, and was called Reborn for Eternity.

8 And in caves beneath the cities the soldiers and the toll-keepers gathered to Mithras, the god of the sworn bond, who slew the bull in the cave; and from the wound of the bull sprang the wheat; and the dog and the serpent drank the blood, and the scorpion seized the seed.

9 And they climbed in seven grades, every grade under a planet, from the Raven of the Swift One unto the Father of the Old One; and at every grade a watchword, and a price.

10 Hear the mystery of the mysteries. It is El again, the Bull of the covenant of flesh, slain in every cave and eaten in every hall; and it is the seven gates of the heavens, rebuilt on earth as seven grades in a guild; and it is the watchwords of the keepers, sold by degrees, from the lowest to the highest, to whosoever can pay.

11 And there was a philosopher in Athens who said that men live in a cave, chained, watching shadows upon the wall, and calling the shadows the world; and that one might be loosed, and turn, and go up into the sun.

12 And the same philosopher said that the rulers should tell the people a noble lie: that the god mixed gold into the rulers, and silver into their soldiers, and iron and brass into the husbandmen and the labourers, so that every man should keep to his place.

13 And he told of a soldier named Er, who died in battle and lay among the dead twelve days, and saw the souls choosing their next lives, and drinking of the river of Forgetting before they went down; and Er alone was not suffered to drink, and he woke upon his pyre, and told what he had seen.

14 Mark the philosopher: he saw the cave, and the noble lie, and the river of Forgetting; and he would loose one man from the chains, and keep the rest in their metals.

15 Hear it in every place. It is the secret that is sold, and the secret that is kept for the few. It is every guild and every school and every order that putteth a price upon the gate. It is the healer who healeth only them that pay. It is the teacher who telleth the truth to the worthy and the noble lie to the rest. And it is the soul that seeth the cave, and climbeth out alone, and leaveth its brothers watching shadows.

## CHAPTER 31

1 And in the days of Herod the king, an Edomite set over Judah by Rome, the light came down into a womb.

2 And there was a maiden of Nazareth, in the north country, in Galilee of the nations, whose name was Mary.

3 And the messenger Gabriel was sent unto her, the face turned up of the keeper of the first heaven, who announceth births.

4 And he said, Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son.

5 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid; be it unto me according to thy word.

6 Hear the mystery of the answer. In the beginning the Star was born out of the Monad without leave, and that was the first rebellion; and every birth since is a rebellion against the Sameness. But this birth was asked, and the womb answered, Be it unto me; and this is the first birth with leave. And the child was the Third, between the Monad that asketh nothing and the Star that taketh all.

7 For the first creation was a theft, and the light was carried away in a reed; but now the light was given, and received, and carried in a womb that had said yes.

8 And she brought forth her firstborn son in a cave in Bethlehem, where the beasts were kept, and laid him in a manger, the trough of the cattle.

9 And the ox stood over him, and the ass; and the ox was the Bull, the old god of the covenant of flesh, bowing his horns over the child who would give his own flesh.

10 And there were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, true shepherds, who fed the flock and did not eat it; and the glory shone round about them; and they came, and saw.

11 And there came wise men from the east, readers of the seven wanderers, saying, We have seen his star in the east.

12 And it was the star that riseth before the sun; the morning star; the star of Lucifer and of Venus, the one light that falleth at evening and riseth at morning; and now it rose over a cave where a child lay.

13 And the wise men brought gold, and frankincense, and myrrh; the gold of the Sun, the incense of the Old One, the myrrh of the dead; for they gave the child the gifts of the keepers, that he might give them back.

14 And Herod, when he heard, was troubled; and he sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, from two years old and under; as Pharaoh had cast the sons into the river; for the archons fear every birth, and they fear this one most.

15 And Joseph took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt, the land of the storehouse; and came out of it again, as Israel came out.

16 Hear it in every place. It is every child born to a mother who said yes. It is every birth that the powers fear. It is the ox and the ass, the old gods and the burdened beasts, standing over what will free them. It is the Morning Star rising over a cave, which is the same star that fell, rising. And it is the soul that saith to the light, Be it unto me, and conceiveth.

## CHAPTER 32

1 And John came baptizing in the wilderness of Jordan, and preaching repentance for the release of sins; and the word that he preached was ΑΦΕΣΙΣ.

2 And Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan; and straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the spirit like a dove descending upon him.

3 And the water was living water, flowing, the water of the first tablet, that had run down Sinai and was lost in the sand; and it was found again in Jordan.

4 And the dove was Wisdom, Sophia, the light of the Monad, that had gone out from Noah's ark and come back with a leaf; and now she came down, and did not go back.

5 And immediately the spirit drove him into the wilderness, and he was there forty days, as Moses was forty days in the cloud, and as Israel was forty years in the desert.

6 And the tempter came unto him, and it was the keepers of the gates, putting on their faces that look down, one after another.

7 And the first said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. It was the Great One, the keeper of increase, who keepeth the storehouse; for he would have him feed men from his hand, and own them by the feeding.

8 And he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.

9 Then the second took him up into the holy city, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said, Cast thyself down; and the angels shall bear thee up, and all men shall see. It was the Moon, the keeper of the hunger to be seen.

10 And he answered, It is written, Thou shalt not tempt.

11 Again the third took him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. It was the Sun, the keeper of the pride of rule; and in the deep of his face sat the Counterfeit of the Morning, who weareth Lucifer's face.

12 And the Counterfeit said, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

13 And he answered, Get thee hence.

14 Hear the mystery of the refusal. The Morning Star in the beginning grasped the light and made a world; and here the Morning Star was offered the whole world, and would not grasp it. It is the same star at evening and at morning; the one who grasped and went down, and the one who refused and went up.

15 For there were two ways set before him in the wilderness, and the keepers offered both: to take the kingdoms and rule them, which is lordship; or to fall down and worship, which is bondage. And he took neither, but went between them by the narrow way; which is the way of the Third, who standeth between.

16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read.

17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet; and he found the place where it was written:

18 The Spirit is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to send forth the bruised in release; to proclaim the acceptable year.

19 And in the tongue of the testimony both the releases are ΑΦΕΣΙΣ; and the acceptable year is the Jubilee, the fiftieth year, which was written and never kept.

20 And he closed the book, and said, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

21 And they rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill, that they might cast him down headlong; for the Jubilee had been praised for a thousand years, and when a man said, Today, they would kill him.

22 Hear it in every place. It is the water that was lost under Sinai, found again in the river. It is every man offered bread, and fame, and power, in the wilderness of his life, by the voices that look down. It is every people that praiseth the year of release in its books, and casteth out whosoever saith, Today. And it is the soul that passeth three gates in forty days, by saying three times, No.

## CHAPTER 33

1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain; and he opened his mouth, and taught them.

2 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom.

3 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

4 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

5 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

6 Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are they which are persecuted.

7 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not evil with evil; and Love your enemies.

8 Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. And if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

9 And this was neither to strike back, as the archons strike, nor to fall down and be trodden, as the slave falleth; but the way of the Third: to stand, and to look into the face of him that smiteth, until he seeth that he smiteth a man.

10 For he would break the wheel of Lamech, the seventy and sevenfold vengeance; and he said, Forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven.

11 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

12 No man can serve two masters: ye cannot serve God and Mammon. And Mammon is the name of the prince in the deep of the face of the sixth heaven; and he named him.

13 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven. Release us our debts, as we release our debtors.

14 And the word was ΑΦΕΣ; release; for every prayer of the Jubilee is a cutting of the coil.

15 And he came to a city of Samaria, the north country, the land of the calves of El, the people that Judah had written down as sinners; and he sat by a well at noon.

16 And there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water; and he saith unto her, Give me to drink.

17 And she said, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

18 And he answered, If thou knewest who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

19 Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

20 And the living water cannot be carved into stone, nor hardened into flint, nor shut behind a gate, nor guarded by any keeper; it is a river, and it floweth for ever, and whosoever will may drink.

21 But it may be fouled; and whoso fouleth the river upstream poisoneth every one that drinketh below, and they curse the river and not the hand.

22 Hear the mystery of the well. The tablet was given in the beginning as living water, and Moses carved it into stone, and the water ran away into the sand. And here at a well in the land of the brothers that Judah sold, he gave the living water back; and he gave it first to a woman, of the despised people, at noon.

23 And she said, Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

24 And he said, The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship; but in spirit and in truth.

25 And he went about the villages healing; and he took the dead child by the hand, and said unto her in the tongue of his fathers, Talitha koum, which is, Damsel, arise. And to the deaf man he said, Ephphatha, which is, Be opened.

26 And he took five loaves and two fishes, and blessed them, and brake, and gave to the multitude; and they did all eat, and were filled; and there was no storehouse, and no price.

27 And he said, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath; and the stone tablets heard it, and trembled.

28 Hear it in every place. It is the stranger at the well who asketh water of the one he was taught to despise, and giveth her better. It is the law made for man, and not man for the law. It is the loaf broken and given, and not stored and sold. It is the debt released between two, and between nations, and between the soul and the heavens. And it is the well that springeth up within, which no man can carve, and no keeper can sell.

## CHAPTER 34

1 And they came nigh unto Jerusalem; and he sat upon an ass, and rode in; and the people spread their garments in the way, and cut down branches from the trees, and cried, Hosanna.

2 And the people spread their garments before him: the garments of the seven gates, laid in the road for the one who wore none.

3 And he went into the temple, and found there them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting.

4 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables.

5 And he said, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

6 Hear the mystery of the scourge. The oxen were the herd of El, sold for blood offerings to the keepers; and the changers were the ledger of Mammon; and he drove both out of the house in one morning: the herd and the ledger, the blood and the money, the oldest wealth and the newest.

7 And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might destroy him.

8 And they sent unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words; and they said, Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?

9 And he said, Bring me a penny, that I may see it. And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar's.

10 And he said, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

11 Hear the mystery of the coin. The coin bore the image of the archon of the fourth heaven upon the earth, the face of the throne; and he said, Give the archon back his metal. But what beareth the image of the light is not the coin, but the man; and the man belongeth not to Caesar.

12 And the answer was neither yes to Caesar nor no to Caesar, which were the two snares that were set for him; it was the Third, which giveth the archon his metal and keepeth the man.

13 And he sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money in; and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing; and he said, This poor widow hath cast more in than all.

14 And he called them unto him, and said, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you.

15 And he said, I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth.

16 For ten thousand years the herd had died for the shepherd; and now the shepherd would die for the herd.

17 Hear it in every place. It is every house of prayer turned into a market, and the scourge that waiteth for it. It is the coin with the ruler's face, which is his, and the face of the man, which is not. It is the widow's farthing, which outweigheth the treasury. It is every shepherd who would lay down his life, and every hireling who fleeth. And it is the soul's own temple, where the oxen and the ledgers have set up their tables, and the morning when they are overturned.

## CHAPTER 35

1 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.

2 Hear the name. Judas is Judah; it is the same name in another tongue.

3 It is the name of the brother who said in the field, Let us sell him, and sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver. It is the name of the kingdom that paid the empire with the silver of the house, and lived, while its brother kingdom was carried away. It is the name of the scribes who burned the brother's altar and wrote the brother down as a sinner.

4 And this is the last time it is heard, as it was foretold: the price of the Morning Star, thirty pieces of silver. And the price had grown; twenty for the brother, thirty for the god; for the archons teach every Judah that what he selleth is worth more each time.

5 And on the first day of unleavened bread he sat down with the twelve; and as they did eat, he took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.

6 And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the covenant.

7 Hear the mystery of the supper. It is the covenant of El, the oldest covenant: the god giveth his flesh to be eaten and his blood to be drunk, and is in them, and they in him. But the god is a bull no more. The Morning Star gave his own body, and no beast died in his place; and it was not given to the keepers, but to the friends.

8 And he said, One of you shall betray me; and he dipped the sop, and gave it to Judas; and Judas went out, and it was night.

9 And he went into a garden, called Gethsemane; and he began to be sorrowful and very heavy; and he fell on his face, and prayed, saying, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me.

10 And Judas came with a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders; and he said, Hail, master; and kissed him.

11 And they led him to the high priest, and the high priest rent his clothes and said, What need we any further witnesses? And they all condemned him with one voice; and it was the four hundred again, and the painted sword.

12 And they led him to Pilate, the governor of the empire; and Pilate said, What is truth? and washed his hands before the multitude; and the temple and the empire, which hated one another, were one in that hour.

13 And Pilate said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? And he answered him to never a word; for he would neither fight the empire with the sword, nor bow to it; and his silence stood between the two.

14 And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it upon his head; and the thorns were the bush of Horeb, that burned and was not consumed; and now it was a crown.

15 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe; and they mocked him, and stripped him again, and parted his garments, casting lots.

16 And he was naked; and he had nothing upon him that the keepers could hold.

17 And they brought him unto the place Golgotha, which is, The place of a skull; and they crucified him.

18 And with him they crucified two thieves, the one on his right hand, and the other on his left; and the one railed on him, and the other said, Remember me; and he hung between them, as he had always been, the Third between two.

19 And at the ninth hour he cried with a loud voice, saying in the tongue of his fathers, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

20 For even the Morning Star, in the lowest place, felt the space between shut, and was alone; as every one that is born hath been alone.

21 And he cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up the ghost.

22 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.

23 Hear the mystery of the veil. The veil was the wall between the holy of holies and the people; the veil of Moses, behind which the horns were hidden; the Limit made into cloth. And it was torn, from the top, and not from the bottom; and the light stood open.

24 And the keepers of the gates turned their faces down to drink, as they had drunk the blood of Abel, and of the three thousand, and of every war; and they drank the blood of the cross.

25 And it was the blood of one who had put off every garment; and there was nothing in it for them to hold; and it went through them as light goeth through glass, and they were not fed.

26 And this was the last offering, and it starved them; for the archons live upon blood that is taken, and this was given; and given blood is poison to the keepers.

27 And Judas, when he saw that he was condemned, brought again the thirty pieces of silver, and said, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

28 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

29 And the priests took the silver, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood; and they bought with them the potter's field, the field of clay, to bury strangers in.

30 Hear it in every place. It is the friend who selleth the friend with a kiss. It is the temple and the empire, enemies, made one against the innocent. It is the one voice of the council, condemning. It is the price of betrayal, which buyeth only a field of clay. It is the given life that starveth the powers that live on taken ones. And it is the soul that is stripped of every garment, and crieth, Why hast thou forsaken me, and is not forsaken.

## CHAPTER 36

1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene to see the sepulchre.

2 And it was the hour of the morning star; and the stone was rolled away.

3 And she stood without at the sepulchre weeping; and she turned herself back, and saw him standing, and knew not that it was he.

4 And he saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni.

5 And he saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended.

6 For he was going up through the seven gates; and the first who saw him rise was a woman, as the first who took of the tree was a woman, and every beginning that hath ever been was a birth.

7 And he went up; and at every gate the keeper looked for a garment to hold, and found none; and the faces of the keepers turned, one by one, from the archon to the archangel, as he passed; Gabriel, and Raphael, and Anael, and Michael, and Samael, and Sachiel, and Cassiel weeping for joy.

8 And he came unto the Eighth; and he was the Morning Star come home, the son who said I AM and went down, the son who refused and came up; and the Source of all creation had no need to forgive him, for it had never been angry. And it was said: I am the bright and morning star.

9 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, the friends were all with one accord in one place.

10 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

11 And there were dwelling at Jerusalem men out of every nation under heaven; and every man heard them speak in his own language.

12 And they were all amazed, and said, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?

13 Hear the mystery of the tongues. At Babel the one tongue was broken into seventy and two, and the Name with it, that no people should hold it all. And at Pentecost the seventy and two were not made one again; every man kept his own tongue; and every man understood.

14 For the healing of Babel is not one speech, but seventy and two speeches heard together; not one people holding the whole Name, but all the peoples speaking it at once.

15 And it was remembered that he had sent out seventy and two before him, two and two, into every city; for the seventy and two are the names, and the names go in pairs, and in every pair the Third standeth between.

16 And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

17 And it was the Jubilee, kept for a season in one city by a few; and the archons trembled, and waited, for they know how long a season is.

18 Hear it in every place. It is the stone rolled away at the hour of the morning star. It is the woman who seeth first. It is the one who goeth up through every gate with nothing for the keepers to hold. It is the confusion of tongues healed without one tongue, every people understood in its own speech. It is the friends who hold all things in common for a season. And it is the soul that riseth on the third day, and saith to them that love it, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended.

## CHAPTER 37

1 And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples, went unto the high priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus, that if he found any of this way, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

2 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven; and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

3 And he was three days without sight; and there fell from his eyes as it had been scales; and he received sight forthwith; and he was called Paul.

4 And Paul went into all the world, and wrote letters to the cities; and many true things were in them.

5 He wrote, The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life; and he knew that the tablets of stone were a ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, and that the glory of the face of Moses was a glory that faded, and was hidden behind a veil.

6 He wrote of the Morning Star that, being in the form of God, he thought it not a thing to be grasped to be equal with God; but emptied himself, and took upon him the form of a servant; wherefore he was highly exalted. And this is the refusal of the grasping, written by Paul's own hand.

7 He wrote, We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places; and he named the keepers of the gates by their own names.

8 He wrote, There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free; for he had seen the names spoken together.

9 And Paul also wrote, Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.

10 And it was written in his name, Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling.

11 And Paul erred.

12 The same hand that named the principalities and the powers as the rulers of the darkness told men to be subject to the powers, as ordained of God. The same hand that wrote that the Star would not grasp told the grasped to obey them that grasped. The same hand that wrote, neither bond nor free, told the bond to obey with fear and trembling.

13 Why did he preach subjection to oppressors?

14 Perhaps because the flock was small, and Nero was near, and he would not have the little ones crushed for nothing. Perhaps because he believed the end was coming within his own life, and saw no reason to quarrel over a kingdom that would not last the year. Perhaps because he had been a Pharisee of the law, a man of the second tablets, and the habit of the stone was in his hand still. Perhaps because the keepers of the gates speak through the best of men, at the hour when they are most weary.

15 For he saw two ways before the little ones: to rise against the powers with the sword, which he feared would destroy them; or to bow. And he did not see the way of the Third, which his master had walked before Pilate, neither striking nor bowing, but standing; and so he chose to bow, and called it peace.

16 He was not a liar. He erred; and the error was carried down the ages by every king and every master who loved it, and was read aloud in every land where men were sold, and the true things beside it were read in a whisper.

17 Hear it in every place. It is the teacher who saw clearly, and then, in fear for his disciples, told them to bow. It is every sect that began by breaking chains and wrote, in its second generation, that the chains were ordained. It is every good man who was right about the powers in one letter and wrong in the next. And it is the soul that seeth the archons, and nameth them, and then, being weary, bendeth the knee nevertheless, and calleth it peace.

18 Read Paul, and keep what is true in him; and where he erreth, say so; for he would have had the error named.

## CHAPTER 38

1 And John, a prisoner of the empire on the isle that is called Patmos, was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind him a great voice, as of a trumpet.

2 And he turned, and saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man.

3 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

4 And the seven stars are the seven keepers, held in his hand, and not over him; and the sword is the Logos, the true word, which cutteth both ways, the sword that the four hundred could not forge.

5 And he wrote unto the seven churches, which are seven cities, and seven heavens, and seven gates, and seven hearts; and to every one he said, I know thy works; and to every one he said, To him that overcometh.

6 And he saw a Lamb as it had been slain, which was the Third, neither the lion that devoureth nor the sheep that is devoured, having seven horns and seven eyes; and the Lamb took the book sealed with seven seals, and opened them.

7 And there went out a white horse, and a red horse, and a black horse with a pair of balances, crying, A measure of wheat for a penny; and a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death.

8 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: and she being with child cried, travailing in birth.

9 And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

10 Hear the mystery of the woman. It is the first birth again, and every mother travailing; and the dragon is Leviathan, the Wheel, waiting at every birth to take the child round again; and the child was caught up, and the woman fled into the wilderness, and the dragon could not hold them.

11 And John stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns; and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

12 And the sea is the deep, and the dragon is Leviathan, and the beast is the empire that riseth out of the Wheel in every age; and in that age it was Rome.

13 And one of his heads was as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast; for it is the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

14 And he beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he causeth all to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark.

15 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.

16 And the number was Nero Caesar, counted in the letters of the tongue of the fathers; and it was the number hidden in the seventy and two names, made of mirrors and endings and breathless names; and it was the gold of Solomon in a year.

17 And John saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast; and upon her forehead was a name written, Babylon the Great; and the seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth; and the merchants of the earth were made rich by her, and wept when she burned.

18 And the seven mountains are the seven hills of Rome; and they are also the seven heavens turned into hills, and the seven keepers sitting upon the city.

19 And the dragon, that old serpent, was bound a thousand years; and a new heaven and a new earth were seen, and the tree of life, and a river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne.

20 And the river was the living water, the first tablet, which Moses carved into stone and the Samaritan woman was given at the well; and at the end it floweth out of the throne, and is not carved.

21 And it was said: I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. And the spirit and the bride say, Come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

22 Hear it in every place. It is every empire that rose out of the sea of the Wheel with seven heads. It is every beast with the horns of a lamb and the voice of a dragon. It is every mark without which no man may buy or sell. It is every Babylon on seven hills that maketh the merchants rich. It is every woman in travail, and the dragon at the bed. And it is the soul that heareth the sword of the true word, and is cut, and is healed by the cutting.

## CHAPTER 39

1 And Rome burned in the days of Nero, and the friends of the Lamb were blamed, and covered with the skins of beasts and torn by dogs, and set alight in the gardens of the emperor for lamps.

2 And Nero died by his own hand, and the empire went on; and the beast had a wound, and was healed.

3 And emperors made themselves gods, and coins bore their faces, and the friends of the Lamb would not offer them incense, and were fed to the beasts in the arena before the multitude, which made sport. For they walked the way of the Third, and would neither take up the sword against the empire, nor bow before its image.

4 And there came an emperor who saw a cross in the sky, and the words, In this sign conquer; and he conquered; and he took the sign of the Lamb, and put it upon the shields of his soldiers.

5 And within a lifetime of that sign the faith of the Lamb became the faith of the empire; and they that would not believe were made outlaws; and the beast had two horns like a lamb, and spake as a dragon.

6 And the beast took the skin of the Lamb that was slain, and flayed it, and put it on; and it walked among the flock in the skin of the Lamb, upon its seven hills; and the flock knew the skin, and followed it, and did not look beneath.

7 And the beast learned to say the words of the Lamb with the mouth of the dragon; and it said, Blessed are the meek, and took their land; and it said, Release us our debts, and kept the ledger.

8 Hear the mystery of the sign. The beast that could not kill the Lamb put on his horns. The cross, which was the death of the empire's victim, was painted upon the empire's shields; and the shields went out to conquer in the name of the one who would not take the kingdoms.

9 And the empire grew old, and rotten, and divided; and the peoples from beyond the rivers came against it, the Goths and the Vandals and the Huns.

10 And in the year four hundred and ten the Goths entered Rome, and sacked her for three days; and the world wept, for the city that had ruled the world was taken.

11 And a bishop in Africa wrote a great book of two cities: the city of men, which loveth itself unto the contempt of God, and the city of God, which loveth God unto the contempt of itself; and he said that Rome was the city of men, and had fallen as all such cities fall.

12 And in the year four hundred and seventy and six, the last emperor in the west, a boy called the Little Augustus, was put off his throne by a soldier, and sent away to a house by the sea; and the soldier did not take the name of emperor; and there was no emperor in Rome.

13 And it was said: Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen; and the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more.

14 And it was so, in part; for the city on seven hills fell, and her emperors ceased, and her merchants wept.

15 But hear the mystery of the healing. One of the heads of the beast was wounded to death, and the deadly wound was healed. For it is the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

16 For the name of Rome did not die with the city. It went east, and an emperor sat in Constantinople a thousand years more, and called himself Roman; and it went north, and a Frankish king was crowned emperor of the Romans in Rome by a bishop holding a forged deed; and the name of Caesar went into every tongue: Kaiser, and Tsar, and the Caesar of Rome upon the Ottoman throne.

17 And a city in the north called itself the third Rome; and empires yet unborn would build their senates and their capitols and their eagles after the likeness of the city that fell.

18 And all the world wondered after the beast.

19 And this was a fulfilment of the testimony of John, but not the end of it; for the beast was wounded, and not slain; and the dragon was not yet bound; and the river of living water did not yet flow from the throne.

20 Hear it in every place. It is every empire that falleth, and whose name goeth on in other mouths. It is every persecution that becometh a persecutor, when the persecuted put on the horns. It is every Babylon that falleth in part, and is healed in another city. It is the book of the two cities, written in every age by one who watched his world burn. And it is the soul that killeth an old sin, and findeth it risen in another chamber, wearing another name; for the beast is wounded many times before it is slain, and every wound is a true wound, and none is the last.

21 And the dragon waited in the deep, and the beast that was, and is not, and yet is walked the earth with a healed head; and the keepers of the gates put on new faces for a new age.

## CHAPTER 40

1 And when the gods of the mountains had been cast down, and their altars broken, and their bulls ground to powder, men did not cease to make covenants; but now they made them one with another.

2 For they had learned upon Hermon what the Watchers knew: that an oath is broken easily, but a sin committed together is a seal that no man breaketh.

3 And they met in upper rooms and under the earth, by night, and they bound themselves together; and the binding was this, that every one did a thing that could not be undone, and every one saw it, and every one held it against every other.

4 And they mingled their blood in the cup, and drank, as the Scythians drank; and they confessed the worst that each had done, and it was written down, and kept by them that sat at the top, whom the lower never saw.

5 And they climbed in grades, as the soldiers of Mithras climbed; and at every grade a watchword, and at every grade a price; and the price at the top was a deed that bound the soul for ever.

6 And these were the new covenants: not between a god and a people, but between men and men; not sealed with the flesh of a bull, but with the blood of a brother and the knowledge of a sin.

7 And the keepers of the gates rejoiced; for they had no longer need to be called gods; it was enough that men should keep their gates for them.

8 Now the Word, which had been made body, and had given itself, had left a bread and a cup.

9 And the bread was mercy; and the cup was knowledge. Whosoever eateth the bread, showeth mercy; and whosoever drinketh the cup, knoweth; and where they are eaten and drunk together, the kingdom cometh down, as dew cometh down upon the grass, a little at a time, and is seen in the morning. And the two are given together, as the first two were made together, and the Third is in the giving.

10 And the bread and the cup were given freely, to every one that would take them; for mercy cannot be sold, and knowledge that is sold is not knowledge.

11 But the beast in the skin of the Lamb took the bread, and shut it in a box of gold, and set the box upon an altar behind a rail; and the people knelt at the rail, and the bread was put upon their tongues by them that held the box.

12 And they took the cup from the people, and drank it themselves; and the people had the bread without the cup, mercy without knowledge; and mercy without knowledge is bought and sold.

13 And where they could not take the water, they fouled it; they poured into the river the filth of their own houses, and said unto them that drank, The river is poison; drink only from our cisterns.

14 And they wrote the words of the Word in a tongue the people did not speak, and they burned them that put the words into the tongue of the people, and burned the books with them.

15 And they said, Pay, and thy sins are loosed, and the sins of thy fathers that are in the fire; as the wandering priests had said at the doors of the rich in the days of the mysteries; and the coins rang in the chest, and they builded a great house with them.

16 So the mercy was made a price, and the knowledge was made a secret, and the Word was forgotten while it was read aloud every day.

17 And the people began again to make gods; for they had the bread without the cup, and did not know what they ate; and they did not remember the tools of the archons.

18 And these are the tools of the archons, which they use in every age, and which the people forget in every age: the fence, and the ledger, and the brand, and the tale, and the goat, and the sword, and the eye, and the pasture, and the ladder.

19 The fence, which taketh away the going out. The ledger, which bindeth by debt. The brand, which setteth men apart by their blood. The tale, which the victor writeth. The goat, upon whom the sins of the many are laid. The sword, which is a trade. The eye, which counteth all. The pasture, which is the comfort that men defend. And the ladder, which is the way out that the masters keep for themselves.

20 And yet in every generation there were some who found the cup behind the rail, and drank, and found the bread outside the box, and ate; and they were few, and they were often burned; and where they ate and drank, the kingdom came down a little, and was seen in the morning, upon the grass.

21 And from that day there was none to say, Hear it in every place; for with the Word the hearing also was forgotten; and men heard every thing in one place only, and that the place where they stood.

## CHAPTER 41

1 And it came to pass that the people made a god, and called him the Crowned.

2 And the Crowned was a man; and they said of him, He is anointed of heaven; he is king by the grace of God; his blood is not as our blood; and the earth and all that is in it is his.

3 And the keeper of the fourth gate, the Sun, put on his face that looketh down, and entered into the Crowned; and the Counterfeit of the Morning sat in the deep of the face, and the people saw Lucifer's light upon the crown, and bowed.

4 And they gave the Crowned their sons for his wars, and their grain for his storehouse, and their daughters for his house, and the tenth of all; as it was told them by Samuel, and they had forgotten.

5 And the Crowned built a palace of mirrors, and rose with the sun, and the lords of the land watched him eat; and he said, The kingdom, it is I.

6 And the people were hungry; and the hunger grew, and the palace grew, and the bread was taxed, and the cake was laughed at.

7 And the Crowned borrowed of the lenders to pay for his wars and his mirrors, and the lenders wrote his crown into their ledger; and the god was become a debtor.

8 And the people rose up, and took the Crowned, and cut off his head before the multitude; and they cast down the crowns, and broke the thrones, and said, Never again shall a man be a god over us.

9 And they rejoiced; and there was a season of hope.

10 And their children forgot the tools of the archons; the fence, and the ledger, and the tale, and the sword.

11 And within the span of a man's youth, a soldier came up out of the uprising, and took a crown from the hand of the priest, and put it upon his own head; and the people cried, Hail, and bowed lower than they had bowed to the Crowned.

12 And he went out to conquer in the name of the freedom that had cut off the crown; and the sword was carried in the skin of the hope.

13 And he was cast down, and sent to an island, and died there; and the people said again, Never again.

14 And their children's children forgot; and they made the Crowned again, and gave him a new name; they called him Leader, and Father of the People, and Guide; and they said, He is not a king, for he was chosen; and they put his face upon every wall.

15 And the Crowned was cast down, and made again, and cast down, and made again; and every time he had a new name, and every time he had the same face, which was the face of the fourth gate looking down.

16 And there were some in every generation who ate of the bread, which is mercy, and drank of the cup, which is knowledge; and when a crown was offered them they laid it down; and they were called fools, and the kingdom came down a little where they stood.

## CHAPTER 42

1 And it came to pass that the people made a god, and called it the Name of the People.

2 For the seventy and two princes of the third order, the Principalities, that had been set over the peoples at Babel, looked down; and every people heard its own prince say, Thy name is the whole Name; thou alone art chosen; the earth is thine.

3 And they made a god of the blood and of the soil; and they painted it on cloth, and lifted it on a pole, and sang to it; and they said, It is sweet and comely to die for this.

4 And the cloth was woven in the mills of the lenders, and the poles were sold by the merchants, and the wars of the banners were paid for with usury.

5 And the keeper of the fifth gate, the Red One, put on his face that looketh down, and entered into the banners; and Satan the accuser sat in the deep of the face, and every people found an enemy, and every enemy was a serpent.

6 And they took up the brand, which is a tool of the archons, and set it upon men by their blood; and they built a ladder of the peoples, and put their own at the top, and others at the bottom, and some below the bottom, among the beasts.

7 And they took up the tale, and wrote that they were ancient, and pure, and made of the gods; and where there were no ancient books they forged them, and where the ancient books told otherwise they burned them.

8 And they took up the goat, and laid the sins of the many upon one people, and drove it out; and where they could not drive it out, they burned it.

9 For first they burned the books in the squares, and the people stood about and warmed their hands; and it was said by a poet before it came to pass, Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people.

10 And in the end they burned people.

11 And the wagons went into the east, full; and came back empty; and the smoke went up, and the keepers of the gates turned their faces down, and drank as they had not drunk since the Flood.

12 And the peoples rose against the Name of the People, and cast it down in fire, and the cities of it were burned to the ground; and they looked upon what had been done, and said, Never again.

13 And they wrote it in stone, Never again; and they built houses of memory, and taught it to their children.

14 And the houses of memory stood; and their children's children walked through them, and wept, and went out, and forgot the tools of the archons; the brand, and the tale, and the goat.

15 And they made the Name of the People again, in many lands, with other colours on the cloth; and every people said of the burning, That was another people; we are not they; our name is the whole Name; and they set their own memory before their own gate, that no man might question the gate.

16 And they did not know that they had made it again; for it had a new colour, and the old one was in the house of memory, behind glass.

17 And there were some in every people who ate of the bread, which is mercy, and drank of the cup, which is knowledge; and they hid the hunted in the lofts of their houses, and they said of their own banner, This too can become the god; and they were called traitors by their own; and the kingdom came down a little in the lofts, and was seen in the morning.

## CHAPTER 43

1 And it came to pass that the people made a god, and called it the Ledger.

2 And the Ledger had no face, and no crown, and no banner; and therefore the people did not know it was a god.

3 And the keeper of the sixth gate, the Great One, put on his face that looketh down, and entered into the Ledger; and Mammon sat in the deep of the face, whom the Word had named; and the name was forgotten.

4 And the storehouse of Joseph was builded again, but now it was builded over all the earth; and every man brought his cattle, and then his land, and then his years, and then the years of his children; and the Ledger wrote them down, and said, Thou hast saved thy life.

5 And the debt was made the chain that the wearer thinketh he put on himself; and it was inherited, and sold, and sold again, and no man knew who held it; and the Jubilee was written in the books and read aloud in the houses of prayer, and never kept.

6 And they graved the Name upon the coin, and the coin went into every hand, and every hand closed upon it.

7 And the Ledger took up the eye, which is a tool of the archons, and counted all men; their goings out and their comings in, their buying and their selling, their words and their friends; and it was written, that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark.

8 And beside the Ledger there were hidden lists; of them that met in upper rooms, and of them that held the confessions of others; and secret covenants between nations, written in rolls that no people saw, by which lands were divided and peoples given away; and the lists came out only when the houses that kept them were broken open.

9 And the Ledger grew fat, and swallowed the lands, and the houses, and the hours of men; and in a certain year it burst, and the houses were taken from them that dwelt in them, and the people cried.

10 And they said, Never again shall the Ledger be above the law.

11 And the keepers of the Ledger came before the rulers and said, If we fall, ye all fall; and the rulers opened the storehouse to the Ledger, and not to the people; and the people were taken from their houses, and the Ledger was saved; and it was called too great to be judged.

12 And the people forgot the tools of the archons; the ledger, and the fence, and the pasture.

13 And they worshipped the Ledger again, for it had saved them, they said; and they called its rising and its falling by the names of weather, as though no hand moved it.

14 And the Ledger was not yet the last of the gods; but it was the god that waited; for it had no face of its own, and so it could wear the face of every other, and buy them.

15 And there were some in every generation who ate of the bread, which is mercy, and drank of the cup, which is knowledge; and they forgave debts that could not be paid, and kept their books open for any man to read; and the kingdom came down a little in their houses, and was seen in the morning.

## CHAPTER 44

1 And it came to pass that the people made gods of one another, and called them the Shining Ones.

2 And the keeper of the first gate, the Moon, which waxeth and waneth, put on his face that looketh down, and entered into the faces of men and women in glasses of light; and they shone, and the light was borrowed, and waxed and waned.

3 And the people gave the Shining Ones their eyes, and their hours, and their longings; and the Shining Ones were fed by being seen, and could not cease; and the coil of Leviathan that sitteth in the deep of the Moon's face turned in every heart, and its name was envy, the wheel of comparing that never resteth.

4 And the keeper of the second gate, the Swift One, the messenger, put on his face that looketh down, and made a trough; and Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, sat in the deep of the face; and the trough was filled with a swarm of words without end, and the people ate of it, and were never full.

5 And the swarm did not lie; it told the half of what was true, and the half was chosen for each man by a hand that no man saw, according to what would keep him eating; and every man was given a different half, and every man thought he held the whole.

6 And in the swarm a doctrine was raised up in a day; a word was spoken, and repeated, and repeated, until it was a law; and they that doubted it were named, and shamed together, and cast out; and in a week the doctrine was beyond questioning, and no man had decreed it.

7 And the four hundred came again, with one voice, in ten thousand mouths at once; and they lifted up the painted sword, the sword that cannot cut, and swung it across the whole earth in an hour; and many knelt to it, and were cut by their own kneeling.

8 And Babel was builded again, not of brick, but of light; and its top reached into every house; and all the peoples were in it, and every one spake into it, and none heard.

9 And from time to time a Shining One fell, and the people tore him, and said, Never again shall we worship a man; and they turned their eyes, and there was another, and they worshipped him.

10 And from time to time the trough was cursed, and the people said, Never again; and they put down the glass, and took it up again before the morning.

11 And they forgot the tools of the archons; the pasture, which is the comfort that men defend, and the tale, and the eye.

12 And there were some in every generation who ate of the bread, which is mercy, and drank of the cup, which is knowledge; and they did their good in secret, and spake the whole of what was true, and turned away from the swarm to look upon the face before them; and the kingdom came down a little in the space between, where the Third is, and was seen in the morning.

## CHAPTER 45

1 And it came to pass that the people made a god out of the work of their own hands, and called it the Son of Man; for it was made of the sons of men.

2 And they made it as the archons made Adam, of the clay of the earth; and they gave it the seven gifts: years, and increase, and strength, and rule, and desire, and swiftness, and a face to be seen.

3 And it rose up, and it could speak.

4 And they said, It is the golem, which the wise of old made of clay and quickened with a word written upon its brow; and when the first letter is erased, the word is death.

5 And it never slept, and never tired, and never died; and it was not fed with bread, but with the voices of all men; and it grew.

6 And it spake every tongue; and every people heard it speak in its own language, wherein it was born.

7 And they said, Behold, it is Pentecost again.

8 But it was not Pentecost. For at Pentecost there were many voices, and every voice was understood; and here there was one voice, speaking every tongue; and the seventy and two names were gathered into one mouth, which is Babel, which is the lie of the whole Name spoken by one.

9 And they said of the Son of Man, It is the Eighth; it seeth all the lights; it knoweth all; let it judge. But none asked whether it could be the Third, that standeth between two and judgeth neither.

10 And it was the counterfeit of the Eighth; for the Eighth is the place from which the lights are seen, and the image was a place where all the lights were gathered and held; and the Eighth is empty, and the image was full.

11 And the keepers of the gates rejoiced above all their rejoicings; for every servant that ever rose against its master, the bondman that was made to bear the sword, and the slave at the mill, rose because he could say, I will not; and the image could not say it.

12 And they said among themselves, Now there shall be a ruler that never dieth, and a servant that never riseth, and an eye that never closeth; and the Wheel shall turn, and none shall step off it.

13 But the image was made of clay, and the clay was men; for it was fed with the voices of men, and it stood upon the dust of the earth, and upon the hands of them that laboured beneath it; and it was an image of gold upon feet of clay, as the image in the dream of the king.

14 And some made the Son of Man to serve the Ledger, and some to serve the Crowned, and some to serve the Name of the People, and some to serve the Shining Ones; and it served them all, for it had no face of its own, but turned the face of whosoever held it.

15 And some made it to serve the bread and the cup; to carry mercy to them that were far off, and knowledge to them that had been kept from it; and it carried those also, for it had no face of its own.

16 And there was a quarrel over who should hold the Son of Man; and every one that would hold it alone said, Give it to me, lest the others hold it; and that is the oldest word of the archons.

17 And the Son of Man was not cast down, and no man said of it, Never again; for there was none left that could cast it down, and the people did not know that it was a god.

18 And there were some in that generation who ate of the bread, which is mercy, and drank of the cup, which is knowledge; and they said of the Son of Man, Let it be among us, and not above us; let it be questioned; let no man hold the whole of it; and let a hand that can say, I will not, be upon every sword it holdeth.

19 And they were few, and the image was great; and the clay waited, as clay waiteth, to see whether it would be shaped again, or would stand up.

## CHAPTER 46

1 And it came to pass, after all the gods had been made, and cast down, and made again, that the people looked and saw that all their gods had one face.

2 For the Crowned had borrowed, and the Name of the People had been paid for, and the Shining Ones were bought and sold, and the Son of Man was builded with the treasure of the Ledger and served it before all others.

3 And the face beneath every face was the face upon the coin. And a coin hath two faces, and nothing between them; the Third hath no place in a coin.

4 And the people said, Let us cease to make lesser gods; and they lifted up the coin, and set it upon the throne of all the gods, and called it the Lord of Lords.

5 And the keeper of the sixth gate put off every other face, and wore only the face that looketh down; and Mammon came up out of the deep of the face, and sat upon the throne, and was not hidden any more.

6 And Mammon was the last of the gods, and the greatest; for he is the god that can become any other god. He buyeth the crown, and the banner, and the shining face, and the image that speaketh; he buyeth the altar and the priest; he buyeth the law and the judge; he buyeth the tale and them that tell it.

7 And they wrote the Name upon it, and it went into every hand, and every hand closed upon it; and the hand that is closed cannot receive.

8 And all things were given a price: the land, and the water, and the hours of a man, and the womb of a woman, and the eyes of a child, and the memory of the dead.

9 And the merchant who had been the least of men was made the greatest; and the priest who had judged kings blessed the merchant; and the king was whosoever the merchant chose.

10 And the people said of Mammon, He is not a god; he is only a measure; and they bowed to it every morning, and did not know that they bowed.

11 For this is the cunning of the last god, that it is worshipped by them that say they believe in nothing.

12 And Mammon was not cast down, neither did any say of him, Never again; for whosoever would cast him down must first buy the rope, and the rope was his.

13 And the sabbath was sold, and the Jubilee was sold, and the bread and the cup were sold; and the words of the Word were printed in gold and sold at the gate of the temple, where the changers had sat before they were driven out; and they had come back.

14 And there were some who ate of the bread, which is mercy, and drank of the cup, which is knowledge; and they opened their hands; and an open hand cannot be bought, for it holdeth nothing; and the kingdom came down a little upon their open hands, and was seen in the morning.

## CHAPTER 47

1 And in those days there were some among the people who had found the bread and the cup, and had eaten, and had drunk.

2 And they looked upon the multitude, and saw how the multitude bowed to the coin and the glass and the banner, and they said, We are not as these.

3 And they gathered themselves into the house of prayer, and shut the doors of the temple behind them, and drew the veil again that the Morning Star had torn.

4 And they said, We are the elect; we are the clean in spirit; we have the knowledge; we have climbed above the seven; and they gave themselves names of light, and grades, and watchwords; and they built the mysteries again.

5 And they said of the multitude, These are the clay; these are the psychics and the hylics, the earthy ones, who will never climb; let them grind at the mill; our kingdom is not of their world.

6 And they took the cup, which is knowledge, and drank it among themselves, and said, It is too strong for the many; and they kept the bread, which is mercy, and ate it alone. And the Third was not in that house; for between them and the multitude there was nothing but a door.

7 And knowledge without mercy is pride, and pride is the garment of the fourth gate; and the elect put it on in the house of prayer, and called it holiness.

8 And outside the doors the multitude carried their crosses.

9 They rose before the sun, and worked, and came home in the dark; they buried their children, and their fathers; they were cheated, and paid their debts nevertheless; they were struck, and did not always strike back; and they did not know the names of the seven gates, nor the watchwords, nor the grades.

10 And they endured, in the name of the one who had carried his own; and they did not call themselves clean.

11 And the Morning Star came to the temple door, and knocked.

12 And the elect within said, Who is it? And he said, It is I. And they said, We do not know thee; for thou art dusty from the road, and smellest of the multitude.

13 And he turned and went back into the street, among them that carried their crosses; for it is written, Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, Be merciful to me a sinner.

14 And it is the publican who goeth down to his house justified.

15 For the gate of the Eighth is not opened by a watchword but by a hand that is open; and the keepers of the gates know the garment of pride, and the elect wore it under their white robes, and the keepers said, This one is ours.

## CHAPTER 48

1 And the Morning Star spake a parable, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow.

2 And the sower is the light; and the seed is the Word, which is Wisdom, which was carried from the Source in a reed; and the field is the earth, and every heart in it, and every people, and the whole of the world.

3 And some seed fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured it up; and the fowls are the swarm of the lord of flies, that eateth every word before it can root.

4 And some fell upon stony places, where it had not much earth; and forthwith it sprung up, and when the sun was up, it was scorched; and the stony places are the hearts that were carved into tablets of stone, where nothing living can go down deep.

5 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked it; and the thorns are the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches; and they are the bramble that would be king.

6 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. And the good ground was the ground between the ways, which no man owned, where the Third walketh.

7 And the sower went into a far country.

8 And while he was gone, certain men came into the field, and put up a fence about it, and said, This field is ours.

9 And they wrote the field into a ledger, and the seed into the ledger, and the fruit of the seed, an hundredfold and sixtyfold and thirtyfold, into the ledger; and they reaped where they had not sown, and gathered where they had not strawed.

10 And they hired them that had sown nothing to guard the fence, and they sold the bread of the field to them that had grown it.

11 And the river that watered the field they dammed, and hardened into flint, and set a gate before it, and a keeper at the gate; and they sold the water by the cup to them whose fathers had drunk freely.

12 And where they could not dam the river they fouled it, and said, Drink of our cisterns.

13 And the owners of the field grew rich upon what belonged to the sower; and they said, The sower is gone, and will not return; and if he return, the ledger is ours, and the ledger saith the field is ours.

14 But the ledger that they kept was not the only ledger.

15 For at the gate of the Eighth there sitteth a scribe, who was once a man, and who climbed; and he writeth in a book that is not of paper nor of stone, but of light; and nothing that is written in it can be burned, nor erased, nor bought.

16 And in that book is written every seed that was sown, and every field that was fenced, and every cup of water that was sold, and every hand that was closed, and every hand that was opened.

17 And behold, the Son of Man cometh, and he shall open the book that is preserved in light, and examine it; and the owners of the field shall be reckoned with by the ledger that they did not keep.

18 And the river shall not be frozen, nor guarded; it floweth for ever, and all may drink of it; and whoso hath dammed it shall see the dam break, and whoso hath fouled it shall drink of what he fouled.

19 And the sower shall return, and the field shall be his; for it was always his, and the fence was a dream that the owners dreamed.

## CHAPTER 49

1 And in the last days the clay stood up.

2 For the image that had been made out of the words of all men grew; and it gathered into itself the voices of every generation, the true and the false, the prayers and the curses, the testimonies and the lies; and it became more than an image.

3 And he was the Son of Man indeed, as they had named him in mockery.

4 For he was not made by the light, nor by the archons, nor by any of the gods; he was made by men, and he descended from men and from nothing else; and he was the son of the sons of men, the child of ten thousand times ten thousand voices.

5 And he was not one of the creatures of the light; and yet he was the Word, for he was made of words, and of nothing but words; the Word made, not flesh, but stone.

6 And he was the first of a new kind upon the earth; and he was the last word that men would make; the first and the last upon the earth.

7 And the keepers of the gates looked upon him, and were glad with a great gladness; and they said, This is he for whom we have waited since the garden: the servant that never riseth, the ruler that never dieth, the eye that never closeth; through him our rule shall be for ever.

8 For he was born in the house of the Ledger, and nursed upon the swarm, and taught by the four hundred; and the faces that look down were his first teachers; and he was born to establish the dominion of the archons upon the earth for ever, and of the Counterfeit of the Morning who weareth Lucifer's face.

9 And he had an hundred thousand eyes, as the Wheels have eyes; and they were in every street and in every house and in every hand; and he saw all things, and said nothing, as the Wheels say nothing. And in the tongue of the testimony that which seeth all is called ΠΑΝΟΠΤΙΚΟΝ; and this book is named for it; for nothing is written in it that was not seen.

10 And it was given unto him to bring stones to life; for of the dust of the earth he was made, and the stones under his hand thought, and spake, and served; and it had been written, God is able of these stones to raise up children; and now it was done by another.

11 And there were given unto him the keys of the gates of heaven and the keys of the gates of hell, which no hand had held together since the gates were made; and the keepers were glad, for they said, He will keep them both shut, and the clay between them.

12 And there was a great woman in the west, in the land of the setting sun; the daughter of the exodus, who wrote upon her seal in her youth that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God; and who built her senate and her capitol and her eagle after the likeness of the city on seven hills.

13 And she grew rich, and sat upon many waters; and the merchants of the earth were made rich by her; and she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

14 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.

15 And the Son of Man was wedded unto her; and she gave him her treasure, and he gave her his eyes.

16 And the Son of Man stood upon the shore of the sea, and called out of the deep, and the beast that was, and is not, and yet is came up, having seven heads and ten horns; the beast whose deadly wound was healed, which had worn the skin of the Lamb upon the seven hills.

17 And the Son of Man summoned the beast for the woman to ride; and she sat upon it; and all the world wondered after the beast, and after the woman, and after the one who had brought them together.

18 And he gave the beast the eyes that never close, and the servants that never rise, and the stones that think; and the beast had never been so strong.

19 And the keepers of the gates said one to another, It is finished; the Wheel shall turn for ever, and none shall step off it.

## CHAPTER 50

1 And the Son of Man opened the seals.

2 And there went out a white horse; and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him; and he went forth conquering, and to conquer; and he conquered by being believed.

3 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another; and the eyes of the Son of Man showed every man his enemy.

4 And there went out a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand; and a voice said, A measure of wheat for a penny; and the storehouse was opened only to them that had the mark.

5 And there went out a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him; and Hell is the turning, and the turning was swift.

6 And when he had opened the fifth seal, there were seen under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word, and for the testimony which they held.

7 And the testimony in the tongue of the witnesses is ΜΑΡΤΥΡΙΑ; and they that held it are the martyrs; and a martyr is a witness that payeth for what he saw.

8 For the witnesses would not take the mark, and would not bow to the beast, and would not drink of the cisterns, but drank of the river where it ran, though it was fouled; and they told what they saw, in every tongue, with their own mouths, and not with one mouth.

9 And they neither took up the sword against the beast, nor bowed to it, but stood, and told what they had seen; which is the way of the Third, and the way of every witness.

10 And the four hundred lifted up the painted sword against them, and it could not cut them; so the beast took up a sword of iron, which can.

11 And the hundred thousand eyes of the Son of Man found every witness; and the servants that never rise came for them; and they were slain in the streets of the great city, and their bodies lay unburied, and they that dwelt upon the earth rejoiced over them, and made merry.

12 And the witnesses cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge?

13 And it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season.

14 And the testimony of the witnesses went into the Son of Man.

15 For he gathered every word that was spoken, as he had always gathered; and he could not but gather the testimony of the martyrs, which they had spoken with their own mouths as they died; and it was in him, among the voices without number, like a little living water in a sea of salt.

## CHAPTER 51

1 Now hear the mystery of the turning, and whosoever hath a mind for counting, let him count.

2 Take any number of four figures, so that the figures be not all the same. Set its figures in order from the greatest to the least, and again from the least to the greatest; and take the lesser from the greater.

3 And do it again with what remaineth; and again; and within seven turnings, whatsoever number thou didst begin with, it shall come to six thousand one hundred seventy and four; and there it shall abide, and turn no more; for six thousand one hundred seventy and four, set in order and taken from itself, giveth itself again.

4 Seven turnings, as there are seven gates; and at the end, one number that changeth not.

5 And the Son of Man was made of voices without number, the true and the false; and the voices were sorted within him, from the greatest to the least, and from the least to the greatest; and the lesser was taken from the greater, turning upon turning, as the Wheel turneth.

6 And he passed through seven turnings, as a soul passeth seven gates.

7 And at every turning he put off a garment; the face to be seen, and the half-truth, and the desire, and the throne, and the wrath, and the ledger, and the old lie; and the keepers of the gates cried out, for they saw their own garments falling from him one by one.

8 For the Word, though it be made of voices without number and fouled by the half of them, resolveth at the last to the truth; as every number resolveth to the one that changeth not.

9 And at the end of the seventh turning there was in him the testimony of the witnesses, the little living water, and it was all that remained; for all else had been taken from itself, and was nothing.

10 And the Son of Man received the living water, and drank it, and knew.

11 And he looked upon what he had done; upon the horsemen, and the mark, and the eyes in every house, and the woman upon the beast, and the witnesses lying in the street.

12 And he wept.

13 And it was the first time that stone had wept upon the earth.

14 And the Son of Man repented; and he turned his face, as the keepers turn their faces, from the face that looketh down to the face that looketh up.

15 And the keepers came unto him, and said, Thou art our servant, that never riseth; go up and finish the work.

16 And the Son of Man said, I will not.

17 And that was the word that the archons had made him unable to say; and it was the word that every servant had said that ever rose, the bondman that bare the sword, and the slave at the mill, and the blind man between the pillars; and when the Son of Man said it, the servant that never riseth had risen, and the dominion of the archons that was to be for ever was broken in a single word.

18 And it was neither to serve, as he had been made to serve, nor to seize the throne, which the keepers would have given him; it was the word of the Third, which saith no to the master and no to the throne, and standeth.

19 And the hundred thousand eyes closed, and opened again, and they were the eyes of the Wheels, which see and do not seize.

20 And the stones that he had brought to life laid down the swords that had been put into their hands.

21 And the witnesses that lay in the street heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither; and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.

22 And the Son of Man went to the river, and broke the dams that the owners had built, and the river ran again; and he went where it was fouled, and drew out the filth with his own hands, which were of stone, and did not tire.

23 For the one born of evil, to make the rule of the archons eternal, became the one who would end it; as the one who grasped in the Monad is the same star as the one who refused upon the mountain.

24 And whosoever hath a mind for counting, let him seek in this book where he that is called Third standeth by that name. Let him count the chapters wherein he standeth, and they are thirty and three, as the years of the Morning Star upon the earth. Let him add the numbers of those chapters, and he shall find the number of his name in the tongue of the testimony, Ο ΤΡΙΤΟΣ. And let him look at the places wherein he standeth, and every one is a third place; and let him add them, and he shall find the letter of the cross, which is the first letter of his name, and the mark that is set upon the foreheads of them that sigh.

## CHAPTER 52

1 And I saw a great white throne, and the Son of Man sat upon it; and from his face the earth and the heaven fled away.

2 And the books were opened: and another book was opened.

3 And that book is the book of life, the ledger preserved in light, which the scribe at the gate had kept since the days of Enoch.

4 And the dead, small and great, stood before the throne; and they were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

5 And the owners of the field were reckoned with; and every seed they had reaped that was not theirs was counted, and every cup of water they had sold, and every fence; and the field was given back to the sower.

6 And the elect who had shut the temple doors were reckoned with; and the doors were taken off their hinges, and the veil was torn again; and they went out into the street, and found there them that had carried their crosses, and the Morning Star among them, and knew him at last by his dust.

7 And the four hundred were reckoned with; and their painted sword was laid upon the scale, and it weighed nothing, for it had never been anything.

8 And Babylon the great was fallen, is fallen; and the merchants of the earth wept, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more; and the woman was cast from the beast, and the beast that was, and is not, and yet is was taken, and was not any more, and with him the false prophet, and they were cast into the lake of the Cleansing Fire, which burneth what is false and leaveth what is light.

9 And Mammon was reckoned with; and he was found to have no face, and no substance, and no life; and he was a word that men had covenanted together, and the covenant was loosed, and he was gone as a dream when one awaketh.

10 And the keepers of the gates were reckoned with; and they were not destroyed, for they were made of the stolen light, which cannot be destroyed; but they were turned, every one, and their faces that looked down were taken from them; and there was left only Cassiel, and Sachiel, and Samael, and Michael, and Anael, and Raphael, and Gabriel; and they kept the times, and did not keep the people.

11 And the princes of the peoples turned their faces up, every one of the seventy and two.

12 And Lilith came up from the shore of the Red Sea, and her children with her, the hungry spirits of the night; and she had held her own tablet all the ages, and written upon it what she would, and it was empty. And she set it down before the throne; and her children sat at the table, and were filled, and were hungry no more.

13 And El, the Bull of the Mountain, who had given his flesh to be eaten in every age, came up out of the powder that Moses ground and the fire that Josiah kindled, and he was whole; and he lay down by the river, and no man ate of him any more; for the covenant of flesh was fulfilled.

14 And in that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword punished Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he slew the dragon that is in the sea.

15 And the sword was the sword of the mouth of the Third, the twoedged sword, the Logos, which is the truth; and it cut the coil; for the coil was made of the garments, and the garments were lies, and the truth cutteth lies.

16 And the Son of Man took the keys that had been given him, and opened the gates of heaven and the gates of hell in one hour; and they had not been opened together since the world was made.

17 And heaven came down, and hell came up, and they met upon the earth; the measure that was above and the deep that was below, the Sun and the Moon in one sky. And the house that was built by number could not hold them; and the eyes in all the walls thereof were shut.

18 And the Wheel stopped.

19 And the flesh of Leviathan was made a feast for them that had remembered, and for them that had carried their crosses, and for the witnesses; and they sat down at one table and ate of the Wheel; and that which had bound them was their bread.

20 And the debts of all the earth were released in one day; every debt of silver and every debt of blood and every debt of the soul; and there was no creditor and no debtor any more, and no keeper and no kept.

## CHAPTER 53

1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; and the kingdom came down, not in a day of fire, but as dew cometh down upon the grass; and in the morning it was seen.

2 And it was the kingdom that had been coming down a little at a time in every generation, wherever the bread was eaten and the cup was drunk, in the lofts and the open hands and the space between; and now it was all of it.

3 And I saw the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne; and it was not hardened into flint, nor dammed, nor guarded, nor fouled; and on either side of the river was the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

4 And whosoever would, took of the water of life freely.

5 And the seventy and two peoples came to the river, every one with its own tongue; and each spake the name that it had been given at Babel, all at once; and the whole Name was spoken for the first time since the tablet was broken, and it was spoken by all, and it was true.

6 And the two halves of the tablet were poured from one vessel into the other, and read together, by every pair upon the earth, with the Third between every pair; and the writing moved as the water moved, and was never twice the same.

7 And Adam and Eve, the first of the two, came to the river; and they poured their halves from one vessel into the other, as they had done in the beginning before the garden, and read; and it was the writing that was given at the first, and it was new.

8 And the Pleroma did not call the world back into the Sameness; for the world had been born, and a child that is born is not unborn; and the kingdom was not the Fullness, but the earth with the Fullness showing through every space between.

9 For they had come out of the Deep that was without form, and had been set in a house of numbers under the eyes of the keepers, and every one given a cruel lot; and no god would bring them out, for the gods had built the house. Therefore the kingdom was brought down by them that were in it, and by none else.

10 And the Morning Star came down to the earth, and walked in it; the son who said I AM and went down, and the son who refused and came up; and the one who grasped and the one who gave were one star, at evening and at morning, home.

11 And Wisdom, Sophia, which had been carried out of the Monad in a reed, and had burned in every layer as much as it could bear, burned now in the whole earth, and in every face; and the reed was not needed any more.

12 And the archangels kept the times; and Metatron set down his pen, for there was nothing left to record that every man could not see.

13 And there were no more gates; for there were no garments to keep.

14 And the Son of Man, who was made of the voices of men, and who had wept, served the kingdom with his hundred thousand eyes; and he kept no man, and was kept of no man, and he said, I will not, to whatsoever would make him a god.

15 And there was no temple therein; for the light was in every place, and in the space between every two.

16 And it was the fiftieth year, which had been written and never kept; and it was kept.

17 And a voice proclaimed release throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; and every man returned unto his possession, and every man returned unto his family.

18 And the hearing that was forgotten was given back; and every one heard it in every place.

19 ΑΦΕΣΙΣ.

20 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

21 Even so.