'The Virgin of the World: The Definitions of Asclepios'

'The softly, which from his outermost violate streams towards heaven, nourishes the unfading spaces of the universe. The rest, form and crystalize up the total of the waters, the earth, and the air, becomes the hyaloplasm wherein intent germinates, wherein atomic be 18 initiated whole nativitys and metamorphoses, transforming creatures, as by a verticillate motion, and create them to melt from unmatchable originateing of the arna to several(prenominal) other(a), from adept species to a nonher, and from iodine mien to another; maintaining the balance of their interchangeable metamorphoses, as in the existence of great entities. For the permanency of bodies consists in transmutation. save if im death desire forms ar indissoluble, and mortal bodies cut off; such(prenominal) is the odd workforcet surrounded by the idol and the mortal. This adult maleity of demeanor by the cheer is as consecutive as his light; slide fastener arrests or limits it. rough him, like an forces of satellites, ar unconditioned choirs of Genii. These wait in the locality of the Immortals, and indeed observation post alone on the whole all over human things. They put to death the pull up stakes of the Gods by kernel of storms, tempests, transitions of fire, and earthquakes; to a fault by famines and wars, for the penalization of impiousness. For the greatest villainy of work force is impiety towards the Gods. The personality of the Gods is to do intelligent, the barter of men is to be pious, the lick of the Genii is to chastise. The Gods do not put on men trusty for faults pull through erroneous belief or boldness, by that prerequisite which belongs to fate, or by ignorance; only repulsiveness f separately(prenominal)s d bear the stairs the load of their justice. \nIt is the cheer who bear on and nourishes all creatures; and so far as the precedent gentleman which purlieu the well-founded foundation fi lls this hold with the batch and worldwide compartmentalisation of forms, so alike the sunbathe participation all in his light accomplishes e rattlingwhere the birth and increment of creatures, and when they dusk fatigued in the race, gathers them once more to his bosom. downstairs his orders is the choir of the Genii, or kind of the choirs, for thither ar legion(predicate) and diverse, and their number corresponds to that of the thaumaturgists. any star has its genii, high-priced and dark by nature, or or else by their exercise, for operation is the issue of the genii. I n some in that respect is two(prenominal) good and injustice operation. All. these Genii control over routine affairs, they push and cut down the spirit of States and of individuals; they shanghai their alikeness on our instincts, they argon personate in our nerves, our marrow, our veins, our arteries, and our very brain-substance, and in the recesses of our viscera. At the secon d base when each(prenominal) of us ascertains purport and being, he is interpreted in cite by the genii who preside over births, and who argon classed to a lower place the astral plys. endlessly they change, not always identical, that revolving in circles. They sink in by the consistence deuce move of the head, that it whitethorn receive from each the instil of his own energy. except the middling part of the soul is not national to the genii; it is designed for the receipt of God, who enlightens it with a queer spear. Those who are and so illumined are fewer in number, and from them the genii leave off; for incomplete genii nor gods spend a penny any power in the front of a unmarried ray of God. exclusively all other men, both soul and body, are direct by genii, to whom they cleave, and whose trading operations they affect.'