arranged, mentally,
that each of the higher spheres is found within or interpenetrating the
lower. Thus, from this point of view, the centre is a more important
position than above or below. External to all is the Physical Universe,
made by the Hylic Angels, that is to say those emanated by Thought,
Epinoia, as representing Primeval Mother Earth, or Matter; not the Earth
we know, but the Adamic Earth of the Philosophers, the Potencies of
Matter, which Eugenius Philalethes assures us, on his honour, no man has
ever seen. This Earth is, in one sense, the Protyle for which the most
advanced of our modern Chemists are searching as the One Mother Element.

The idea of the Spirit of God moving on the Waters is a very beautiful
one, and we find it worked out in much detail in the Hindu scriptures.
For instance, in the _Vishnu Purana_,[124] we find a description of the
emanation of the present Universe by the Supreme Spirit, at the
beginning of the present Kalpa or Aeon, an infinity of Kalpas and
Universes stretching behind. This he creates endowed with the Quality of
Goodness, or the Pneumatic Potency. For the three Qualities (or Gunas)
of Nature (Prakriti) are the Pneumatic, Psychic and Hylic Potencies of
the Waters of Simon.

At the close of the past (or Padma) Kalpa, the divine Brahma,
endowed with the quality of goodness, awoke from his night of
sleep, and beheld the universe void. He, the supreme Narayana, the
incomprehensible, the sovereign of all creatures, invested with the
form of Brahma, the god without beginning, the creator of all
things; of whom, with respect to his name Narayana, the god who has
the form of Brahma, the imperishable origin[125] of the world, this
verse is repeated: "The waters are called Nara, because they were
the offspring of Nara (the supreme spirit); and, as, in them, his
first (Ayana)[126] progress (in the character of Brahma) took
place, he is thence named Narayana (he whose place of moving was
the waters)."

Sir Wm. Jones translates this well-known verse of Manu[127] as follows:

The waters are called Narah, because they were the production of
Nara, or the spirit of God; and, since they were his first Ayana,
or place of motion, he thence is named Narayana or moving on the
waters.

Substantially the same statement is made in the _Linga, Vayu_, and
_Markandeya Puranas_, and the _Bhagavata_ explains it more f