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BEFORE the beginning of things, before the generation of the heavens, the great and invisible God alone subsisted.
2. Even the God whose name is unspeakable, upon Whom no eye hath ever looked, whose nature no mind create can fathom.
3. In the bosom of the eternal were all the Gods comprehended, as the seven spirits of the prism, contained in the Invisible Light.
4. The Elohim filled and comprised the universe, and the universe was at rest.
5. There was no motion, nor darkness, nor space, nor matter.
6. There was no other than God.
7. For there was One only, the Uncreate and Self-subsistent.
8. But forasmuch as motion was conceived in the bosom of the Elohim, the Invisible Light moved on itself;
9. And gathering itself inward toward its axis, left beyond and without it another self.
10. So that where God was not, there was darkness and the abyss.
11. Yet had the darkness of itself no existence, for before the beginning God was all in all.
12. And that which had been God became darkness by the withdrawal of God.
13. So that the darkness is no entity, for it is the negation of being.
14. It is no presence, for where a presence is, there is God.
15. Neither can it produce, neither can it be manifested, neither can it be annihilated.
16. Yet, forasmuch as the darkness doth not comprehend God, it is as another self.
17. Not having power in itself, for all power is God's.
18. Neither having personality, for all personality is of God.
19. But unless there were again to be cessation of motion, there can be no extinction of negation.
20. It may be bounded, but never annihilated.
21. Whatever is, is of God; but God only is absolute and perfect being.
22. All things visible and invisible were potential in God before the beginning, and of God's fulness we have all received.
23. Inasmuch as anything is absolute, strong, perfect, true, insomuch it resembles God and is God.
24. Inasmuch as anything is out of reason, weak, divided, false, insomuch it approaches negation, and is of negation.
25. Now the Absolute, which is God, is Spirit.
141:1 Paris, October 24, 1878. Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, vol. i, pp. 283, 284, 289.