and the procession of this vision from the groundless is the Holy Ghost.
Thus far God, who is one in three, is only understanding or wisdom, wherein
the images of all the possible are contained; to the intuition of self must
be added divisibility; it is only through the antithesis of the revealed
God and the unrevealed groundless that the former becomes an actual
trinity (in which the persons stand related as essence, power, and
activity), and the latter becomes desire or nature in God.

At the creation of the world seven equally eternal qualities,
source-spirits or nature-forms, are distinguished in the divine nature.
First comes desire as the contractile, tart quality or pain, from which
proceed hardness and heat; next comes mobility as the expansive, sweet
quality, as this shows itself in water. As the nature of the first was to
bind and the second was fluid, so they both are combined in the bitter
quality or the pain of anxiety, the principle of sensibility. (Contraction
and expansion are the conditions of perceptibility.) From these three forms
fright or lightning suddenly springs forth. This fourth quality is the
turning-point at which light flames up from darkness and the love of
God breaks forth from out his anger; as the first three, or four, forms
constitute the kingdom of wrath, so the latter three constitute the kingdom
of joy. The fifth quality is called light or the warm fire of love, and has
for its functions external animation and communication; the sixth, report
and sound, is the principle of inner animation and intelligence; the
seventh, the formative quality, corporeality, comprehends all the preceding
in itself as their dwelling.

The dark fire of anger (the hard, sweet, and bitter qualities) and the
light fire of love (light, report, and corporeality), separated by the
lightning-fire, in which God's wrath is transformed into mercy, stand
related as evil and good. The evil in God is not sin, but simply the
inciting sting, the principle of movement; which, moreover, is restrained,
overcome, transfigured by gentleness. Sin arises only when the creature
refuses to take part in the advance from darkness to light, and obstinately
remains in the fire of anger instead of forcing his way through to the
fire of love. Thus that which was one in God is divided. Lucifer becomes
enamored of the tart quality (the _centrum naturae_ or the matrix) and will
not grow into the heart of God; and it is only after such li