In the Traditions of Assyrian stock, die seven gods of the Abyss are distinguished with some difficulty from the celestial deities. G. Hubcrt-Mauss, Melanges dhisroire de h religion (Baris, 1929), 114, which demonstrates that it is a question here as well of a single order with two different kinds of appearance.
13 See note 3 above.
145
G. Gichtel. Thcosophia practica, (1736), 2:SO, 18, introd., 3:6; cf. Boehme, (De signacura, 12, §30) "The Tree is divided into seven branches: it is life. The curse of God has been cast over the seven forms."
lfl We might mention an illustration in the German edition of the Creek triihi of Norton, in which is shown an androgyne sleeping in a locked garden and Mercury standing nearby. The opposite spiritual condition is shown in a figure in the Rosarium philosophomm (Arris auriferae, 2:291), in which the androgyne is shown over the Moon (that is, Mercury) with a tree in his hand and two pairs of seven fruits.
148
Plotinus, Enneads, 3.4.6.
149
On this basis a distinction must be made between the energies that, though always immortal whatever may be the body in which rhey act, are still universal or particular depending on whether they are exercised in "divine bodies" or in "mortals," in which latter case they acquire the aspect of sensations (Corpus Hermcucum, Kopr) koctjuod, 214-15). Della Riviera [Mondo magico, 19) says that "Upon instilling itself in the individuals of each species, the divine virtue, to those it has given life, being, form and permanence, at the same moment loses its universal nature. . . . Wherefore, it will search uselessly and vainly outside the Center contained in the Center, "
150
^ This meaning is hidden in the Jewish riie of die lighting ot die candelabra with seven branches, while the Seven Sleepers of the fable may signify the opposite meaning.