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On the rocks of the Ocean, Thou didst place me, O Lord, that I might recall the ancient deeds of my spirit, and suddenly, I felt myself as an Immortal Son of God from the past, a creator of visibility, and one who offers Thee voluntary love on golden garlands of suns and stars. For my spirit, before the creation’s beginning, dwelt in the Word, and the Word was in Thee, and I was in the Word.
However, we, spirits of the word, yearned for forms, and Thou, Lord, madest us visible, permitting us to draw the first forms forth from our own will and love, and to stand before Thee manifested.
Thus, Thou separated the spirits who chose light as their form from those who elected to reveal themselves in darkness; those bound to suns and stars, and these to earths and moons, began the labor of forms, from which Thou, Lord, dost ceaselessly gather the fruit of Love—for whom all things are created, from whom all that is born proceeds. Here, where golden and silver rocks, studded with mica, blaze behind me like immense shields dreamt by Homer’s eyes; where the sun, sailing through the heavens, floods my shoulders in flames; where the ceaseless voice of Chaos, laboring on form, resounds in the sea’s murmur—here, where spirits ascend Jacob’s ladder of life by the path I once trod, over these waves where my spirit ventured into unknown horizons seeking new worlds—allow me, o my God, as a child, to stammer the ancient works of life and read them in the forms that inscribe my past. Now, my spirit, the first Trinity, made of the three persons: Spirit, Love, and Will, soared over the abysses, calling to fraternal spirits of like nature. It awakened its will through love, transforming a point of invisible space into a burst of Magnetic Attractive forces.
These latter were transformed into electric and thunderous powers, unfolding in warmth within the Spirit. However, when my spirit, grown slothful, neglected to bring forth its solar essence and strayed from Creation’s path, Thou, Lord, didst punish it with the strife of inner forces and their discord, compelling it to flash not with light but with destructive fire; then making it debtor to lunar and solar worlds and Thou transformed my spirit into a whirlwind of flame and suspended it over the abysses. Yet behold, in the heavens, a second circle of radiant spirits, of a purer, redeemed essence: a golden angel, strong and impetuous, with disheveled hair, seized a handful of globes, whirled them in an arc of fire and carried them along behind him. Then, three angels—solar, lunar, and global—united, and established the first law of dependence, aid, and weight; and thenceforth I named the illuminated time *day*, and the one lacking light *night*. Centuries passed, Lord, but my spirit, along the days gone by, had never once rested always laboring constantly externalized its new conceptions of form. And in agreement with the planetary Word, she established the law, then submitted to her own law, in order to establish herself on this foundation thus laid and to premeditate for the soul new and even higher paths.Now already enclosed within the rocks, O Lord, lies the spirit, a statue of perfect Beauty, still dormant, yet prepared for the humanity of form, and surrounded by the sparkling arc of Divine thoughts like a sixfold garland. From this abyss, it drew the mathematical science of forms and numbers, which lies deepest in the spirit’s treasury, as if grafted without its awareness or contribution. But Thou knowest, Lord, that the diamond form arose from living forces, that waters flowed from mobile spirits, loosely united, seeking equilibrium, while on the earth all was life and transformation — and death, the passage of the spirit from form to form, was yet unknown. Behold, I present to Thee, O my God, these hard crystals, once the first bodies of our pirit, now forsaken by motion yet alive, crowned with clouds and lightning. These are the Egyptians of the primeval nature, who passionate only for duration and rest, scorning movement, building bodies for millennia. How many thunderbolts struck the basalt rocks of the first world, how many subterranean fires and tremors didst Thou wield, Lord, to shatter these crystals into earthly dust, the remnants of the first colossi raised by the spirit’s attraction? Didst Thou command the spirit to destroy itself? Or, in terror, did it bring down upon itself the vaults it had raised? From the shattered rocks it drew fire, the first spark—perhaps like a great moon—emerging from the rubble, transforming into a flaming column, rising up on the globe as an Angel of Destruction, resting now in the earth’s depths, beneath the seven-day crust of our labors and ashes. Then, O Lord, the first spirits, advancing toward Thee in the martyrdom of fire, offered Thee their first sacrifice. They offered themselves to death. But what they called death was, in Thy eyes, O God, merely the slumber of the Spirit in one form and its awakening in another, more perfect form, without any knowledge of the past or the slightest memory of without the slightest memory of the visions of yesteryear. Thus, the first sacrifice of that humble snail, which pleaded with Thee, O God, to rejoice in a fuller life within a piece of stony matter and then be destroyed by death, was already like the symbol of the sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and it did not remain sterile. For Thou, Lord, didst reward this death, manifested for the first time in nature, with the gift we now call *organism*. From this death, the first sacrifice, sprang the first *resurrection*.
By Thy grace, O Lord, Thou didst endow the Spirit with the wondrous power to recreate forms similar to itself. Through this power, spirits, united in countless numbers, clashing with one another and igniting their forces, did become creators of forms resembling their own. Thus, spirits began to die and rise again, no longer merely combining, flowing, joining, and disintegrate into gases. Though I know, Lord, that my spirit, enclosed in the first spark, lived fully within the stone, to my frail eyes it is only from this death and this first mortal sacrifice that the spirit begins to live visibly and becomes fraternal to me. Thus, a single sacrifice of the Spirit to death, accomplished with all its power of love and will, produced a countless descendants of forms—marvels of creation that I cannot enumerate before Thee, Lord. Yet Thou knowest them all, for no form arose from its predecessor without Thy knowledge. Thou didst take the pleading Spirit into Thy hands, heard its childish pleas, and didst grant it a new form according to its will. Thou who first took into Your hands the soul that implored You; You confessed its childish desires, then You bestowed upon it, according to its will, a new form. How wise and childish are these forms at the same time! For every Spirit, tormented by long suffering and the discomfort of its temporal dwelling, knew, and with tears begged Thee, O God, to grant them an improvement in their miserable walls. Whether of pearl or diamond, it always offered Thee, Lord, something of its past comforts and treasures to gain more for the Spirit’s needs. Ancient Ocean, tell me, how did the first mysteries of the organism unfold in thy womb—the first developments of those nervous flowers in which the Spirit bloomed?
Yet twice didst thou erase from the earth’s face those monstrous, unskilled forms of the first spirit, and today thou wilt not reveal the wonders that God’s eyes beheld in thy depths. Giant sponges and plant-reptiles emerged from the silver waves; zoophytes stood upon the earth with hundreds of feet, mouths turned toward its depths. The snail and oyster, shielded by their father-rock’s stone defenses, clung to the cliffs, astonished by life. For the first time, prudence appeared in the slug's horns; the need for protection and the terror caused by the movement of life fixed the oyster to the rock. In the bosom of the waters were then born prudent monsters, lazy and cold, who, desperately resisting the agitation of the waves, awaited death in the very place where they were born, in ignorance of a more distant nature. Tell me, Lord, what were the first prayers these creatures offered Thee? What strange, monstrous desires were theirs? For I know not which of these shapeless scarecrows, feeling a tremor and tender stirring in its nervous system, sought a triple heart, which Thou didst grant, O Lord. Thou didst place one heart in its center and two others like sentinels on either side, making it thrice sensitive; and in three hearts, the spirit in that form received from Thee the joy of birth and the sting and pain of death. Tell me, who was this martyr that made sacrifice unto Thee with two of his hearts? And then, having kept but one within his breast, he directed all his creative force and passion toward curiosity, to fashion his eyes. These eyes, in the fossil mollusks, do strike us even to-day by their perfection, and did shine, in the first days of Genesis, at the bottom of the waters like unto magic carbuncles. For the first time, at the bottom of the waters, there was a revelation of living stones — moving, turning upon themselves — to discover the world. They remained ever open, to serve as lanterns of reason. Only now, freely closed by those who doubt,, have they for the first time been called by the skeptics traitors to reason, deceivers of experience.
Oh my Lord, but in octopuses and cuttlefish, I already perceive the revelation of the brain and hearing; in underwater nature, I see fully realized, like a first sketch of man, all our limbs already ready and mobile, destined to one day unite in what was then only a body in fragments, penetrated with terror and dread. Finally, the Spirit, weary from battling the ocean’s mighty waves, offered unto Thee, Lord, the sacrifice of its three hearts; it tore sight from its weeping, martyred pupils, sent its mouth — once sighing heavenward —to its feet, multiplied into hundreds to draw the earth’s vital juices, and stood as a zoophytic mushroom upon the earth. This slothful spirit, deviated from the path of progress, even sacrificed its nervous system for peace, in exchange for rest, for a new form, more durable and less painful. And Thou, O God, didst destroy this nature, my God, and from this animal, which did resemble a tree, Thou madest a tree. Behold, O my God, the Spirit’s fall is renewed again in my soul. For its sloth upon the path of progress, its desire to linger in matter, its care for permanence and the comfort of form, were and remain the only sin of my brethren, Thy sons, the spirits. It is under the spell of this single law that suns, stars, and moons do labour. Despite its flaws and imperfections, could it ever have turned its face away from the highest goal? Yet, howsoever far from perfection it may be, every spirit that moveth forward is nevertheless inscribed within the Books of Life. How thoughtful is Thy goodness, my God, to have preserved for me beneath the distant layers respected by the floods, beneath the stratum of forests turned to charcoal by fire—that first attempt of the Spirit in its conquest of the earth, that first adjustment of a nervous ring, its triple endowment of a heart, which in man alone was bloodied, but which for the first time suffered for others in Thy Son, Christ. Blessed are they who, without the aid of Thy Spirit, uncovered this strange nature of primal creations, illuminating it with reason’s lantern. Howbeit, whilst they considered these corpses, they knew not that they evoked their own life. The lamp they left in those dark underworlds illuminated me when I entered; I found bones heaped, almost ordered in life’s pattern, save for Thy Spirit, O Lord, of which Thou alone speak, still feeling the pains of ages past. Thou alone can know the suffering of those bones!
Thus the Spirit offered Thee the organism, O my God, and with the remnant of its immortal strength, it conquered the earth, preserving life’s spark in vegetable forms. Its immensity was revealed in the heaths, its anger and resistance to nature in the harsh, thorny thistles that covered the earth in towering forests. Among Thy stars, this rustling globe ran dark and disheveled; fog and mist, like shreds of funeral crepe, clung to the tops of these first transgressors of nature. I hardly dare look into these forests. There, standing arrogantly against the hurricane, the branches, smite the air with thunder’s roar, and bursting heather seeds resounded as a hundred thunderbolts. There did sprouts surge from the earth with such force that rocks and basalt mountains, torn and hurled skyward, fell shattering into dust and sandy pulp. In clouds, mists, and darkness, I behold the Spirit’s immense labour—the kingdom of Pan, the master of the forests, the sylvan god—where the Spirit toiled more for the body than for its own angelic nature. What fell from it after death—those charred logs turned to coal, those rotted leaves—was its labour’s greatest yield, whilst the Spirit, risen above form, awaited the fire and flood of Thy mercy. O Lord Upon the dead forms of the first creation, upon the petrified bodies of sea monsters, there descended a fiery pillar—a second destroyer, an Enceladus warring with life. Its cloud-crowned forehead poured forth a flood; its fiery feet dried the sea-beds. For centuries did this earth burn, glowing red before the Most High—the globe which, after ages, reborn and radiant with the spirit of love, shall blaze with the fire of twelve precious stones, as Saint John beheld it burning incandescently in the infinity of worlds.
O my Spirit, already in the formlessness of thy first seed, thought and sensitivity dwelt. Through thought didst thou conceive new forms; inflamed by the fires of love and by your sensitivity, thou asked for them from the Creator, your Father. Thou gatheredst these two forces into your brain and heart; and what thou didst gain in creation’s first days the Lord took not away from thee. Yet through suffering and constraint He forced thy nature to craft better forms, drawing from thee an even greater creative power. Then, frightened and vexed by the resistance of thy body, thou beganst to weave silver threads in the ocean’s depths, and thus thou enteredst the third terrible kingdom—the kingdom of the serpents. It seemeth that the logs of those charred trees rose again from the depths of the sea, their wooden core transformed into a nervous system, spreading thought and heart upon the earth. They sent thought across the earth, like a cautious scouts, armed with the lanterns of his eyes, to precede the heart with a wariness that betrayeth the terror in their mind. O Lord! Now, I see the head of a giant reptile, the first to emerge from the calm bosom of the sea, feeling itself the master of all nature, the sovereign of all perfection.
It survey the celestial vault with solemnity, its eyes meeting the solar disk, only to hide, seized with terror, in the depths of darkness. Only after the passing of a serpent’s century-long life doth this head grow bold, venturing forth for a second struggle with the sun. It openeth its gaping jaws, it hisseth, and in that hissing discovereth the gift of voice—a gift conquered through the labor of the spirit. Timidly, it returneth to the bosom of the waters, pondering whether among the treasures it wrought in ages past there is aught worthy, O Lord, to offer Thee for this voice, for this song of feeling and reason, which today, after centuries, poureth forth in hymns unto Thee, serving as the bond and watchword of spirits journeying toward Thee. Since then, O Lord, I hear the world filled with the groaning of nascent nature; I hear the manatees on steep coastal cliffs, crying in the fragrant air for Thy mercy. Gradually conquered by emotion, their spirit suffer, O Lord. Behold, close to the heart appeareth the nourishing breast, a seal of maternal love; behold, the blood of reptiles reddeneth and is transformed into milk—blood predestined to flow, whiter still, as a diamond-like fluid from the wounds of the crucified Christ. Finally, an order ariseth that bringeth eternal fear and lament to shallow sight: the spirit, having earned a more perfect form through its trials, felt the inferiority of the form it abandoned, despised it, and oft lay like a Cainite, biting the brain and wiping its bloodied mouth with the hair of its younger brother. This was the first Cain-like act of nature, harmful to the higher spirit, for it bound it to a lower nature’s spirit. Yet in Thy sight, O Lord, no breach was caused in the chain of creation, for hastening bodily death quickened the spiritual impetus of life. Death, as the law of form, remained the queen of masks, husks, and spiritual garments—a specter without true dominion over creation. Thou knowest, O God, that I have not undertaken to describe the works of Nature; for it is the task of ages to unravel the paths of the creative spirit—the sacrifices it offered Thee, what it acquired, what it lost, and what it recovered again. This chain remaineth a mystery, and the human spirit would tremble if Thou, O Lord, didst reveal its history all at once. Thou wouldst need to hold it by the hand like a child, opening beneath its feet an abyss of knowledge, dazzling its eyes with the lightning of Thy truth.
I, errant and absorbed in thoughts of Thee, have scarcely rejoiced in a few glimpses of truth, beholding the creatures around me— often a blade of grass, a bird chirping on a hedge. Yet with what joy, O Lord, did I see each thing unfold from a single idea: the creative faculty of the spirit!
Thou knowest, Thou who held the spirit on my lips and granted me a few more days to live, devoted to this continual converse with nature’s mysteries. I will not expose to human eyes those subterranean kingdoms or catacombs where lie buried the corpses of the second form, oft but a spade’s length from us, yet separated from today’s living world by countless ages.
Like a great poet drunk on the nectar of gods, the spirit that dwelt there portrayed itself unto Thee, O Lord, in the immense and bizarre forms. Each shape holdeth a memory of the one that preceded it and a revelation of the form to come; in all forms together lieth a revelation of humanity— like a dream of forms upon men, a dream of human incarnation. For man was, for an infinitely long time, the final aim of the creative spirit upon the earth. Yet all is disorder and exertion. The spirit seemeth to create in despair, unconvinced of its own power and creativity. It is in its leaps from one reign to another that this monstrosity is revealed. Thus, O God, Thou didst destroy nearly all these intermediary forms, as if to lend greater mystery and gravity to nature, and, by placing a veil over the past, to direct our spirit even more towards the future. I see in my dreams, O Lord, illuminated by the moon, those melancholy nights of primeval nature and the incoherence of the reptile kingdom. In a crevice, O Lord, I see that first saurian, where the spirit already thinks in its meditations, of the head of a bird and the wings of Icarus. Now, the spirit that advances on this earth must first fly over it like a bird in order to possess a synthetic knowledge of nature, to know how the rivers flow, how vast the forests are, where the mountain ranges lead… But it was through inspiration that the first bard of the Epic of Creation, the first seer of Israel, knew that birds were given primacy over all other animals... that it was on wings that the spirits of the earth first rose up—to examine their future domains, and then to make their flight an offering, with a view to a more stable and secure situation, capable of more complete domination on earth. I smile now, O Lord, when I see, unearthed, one of those skeletons that no longer have a name in our today’s language, for it is forever erased from the cycle of living forms. I smile, seeing the first bird-beaked lizard , endowed with a wing at its foot, embarking on an exploratory journey across the world to survey a station for those heavy monsters that followed, grazing meadows bare of grass and stripping forests of leaves and branches.
But who knows if, lost by the spirit today, the faculty to produce light did not make the quartermaster of these monsters a frightening lamp, burning above the earth, a dragon of fire, which still remains even now in the human mind like a veiled memory filled with terror? Behind this dragon crawled on the ground, built by the spirit and endowed with a skeleton, these frightening vessels—passionate for life, their eyes blazing in anticipation of food, and ready to devour the earth; an immense herd that three times, Lord, You swept away under the waves, and that until now, to our fear and memory, as in three coffins, You have preserved [us], under a triple sheet of ashes.
What spirit, O Lord, was it on the fifth evening, that Noah who allowed neither lizards nor immense elephants to enter his Ark, but gathered together the creatures that are now in harmony in their unity... these forms that prepared the human figure? This mystery is veiled to me, O my God; yet I see in it Thy personal will, and Thy hand upon the world, from which You did not free oppressed nature, leaving it to its own laws, until the day of Your definitive alliance with man, to whom You granted, according to these laws, creative activity and the freedom of the Spirit. It was then, with the sixth day, that its thought about man awakened in the spirit, and the smallest blade of grass bears it logically inscribed in its form. The spirit, that Divine Worker, began to create and progress slowly, but in the course of its work with matter over so many centuries, it often became passionate about form, became irritated and contracted morbid desires, rising up against its own laws that had governed the past. More than once it lazily stopped and dozed off on the creative path; sometimes finally, it regressed, Lord, and sold its birthright for a plate of lentils, in order to feed itself. More courageous, another, though born later, donned a sheep's fleece, earned the Lord's blessing, and then surpassed his brother's descendants with his own… Thus must the injustice of Moses be understood, which, through inspiration, he perceived as the justice of the spiritual world. For, as in a mirror, human history reflecteth that of the spirit. To describe with certainty that chain of forms, one would need to resurrect the corpses of those five days and converse with the spirits of lost shapes, for the wise have already sought to know it through matter. Thou knowest, O God, that some forms, monstrous and transferable between realms, were barred from the Ark of Life. Thus, to find these lost links in creation’s chain, the efforts of external form’s observers shall be vain; only he who, with all his soul, tries to examine nature will surely hold the initiation into these mysteries in the depths of his own soul. Allow me now, O my God, for the second time, to recall my pre-human labor that of the sixth day which my spirit completed, wise with five days’ experience , and such that, having recreated everything anew, nothing is lost of the gifts and properties acquired through its work…Each tree is the grand solution to a mathematical problem—a mystery of numbers—which, dividing into even numbers in imperfect plants and odd numbers in those that are progressing, is resolved in the whole tree through unity.
This intimate feeling of unity in multiplicity is the first task of the vegetable spirit, its intimate enjoyment and satisfaction. This primary color with which we see trees clothed today is logical, for it results from the yellow light that nourishes plants, in combination with the azure of the air and the waves… These two atmospheric colors, condensed and then combined in the chlorophyll of plants, have woven into the spirit of trees these emerald hairs and mantles, represented in the book of Moses by the fig leaf, which man made into his first garment. Far from indifferent to me, O Lord, are the color and shape of every leaf, for they unveil the nature of the spirit and recount my own labor once accomplished in the plant. I know the meaning of each indentation in a leaf, for through every form my spirit justified its own work. If, then, I shed light on the path followed by the spirit, evil but full of vitality, which struggles desperately against the sea’s tempest,, overcomes the resistance of the elements, rises toward the sky and then falls defeated to gather itself and spring again into the air with all its accumulated strength, having surpassed the effort of the elements — if, around a line that goes straight to the goal, I draw twice zigzag curves with sharp angles: I shall obtain the thorny leaf of the thistle, its paleness and the outline of the path followed by this evil but powerful spirit which, under interfering angles, worked in this plant to conquer its form. If I envision this spirit, not evil but strong, opposing nature with greater power, it yieldeth the rounded lobes of the oak leaf, in which the spirit bendeth before the force of the elements and raiseth its powers like an ocean wave, with dignity and might. But if the spirit, which struggles with little effort against the weak resistance of the world, describes to me this path it traces around its midline, I will then perceive, finely serrated, the rose leaf, and I will be inclined to believe that this is the spirit in whom, neither the venom of the serpent, nor the strength of the oak, but the very light essence of beauty, and perhaps already its feeling, for the first time came into the world. And such is today the path of the human spirit as it was centuries ago, the path it carved out for itself when, as a leaf on a tree, it was moving toward its ultimate goals. O how wondrously, O my God, did the vegetable spirits, in their first endeavors, create forms that would echo in the organization of the world—and some of which today are the glory of human invention !
Here is the daisy, it appears to be only a flower, but it is in truth an entire nation of florets, fixed in a calyx, governed by a single pollinator—a nation whose center is occupied by citizen flowers, for they work and give birth, while, like an army of devoted workmans, the white petals stand guard on its edges. When I consider, O Lord, this first marvel of the creative spirit, I see that this same spirit, in its advancing labor, will establish the swarm and kingdom of bees, the discipline of the hive and its royal order; that it will repeat this in flocks of birds; that in a like form it will manifest among men, who know not that the first idea of association and governance sprouted in the labor of plants, then passing through the chain of forms, was to be fully developed in human nature. And thou, republic of Athens, forgive me for seeing thy origin in this clover flower, composed of equal yet distinct citizens, united not in one calyx but on a single stem, among whom Themistocles, though no different from others, sits at the pyramid’s peak, holding the highest place. Thus far, thought alone wrought in the vegetable spirit, reckoning itself in three leaves along the stem, expressing itself in five in the flower; it was thought that, arranging flowers around a single mother, created family and the presentiment of nationality. It seems that mathematical thought alone has unfolded within plants, while feeling, this sap, this heart which extends everywhere, astonished and docile, drew from the virtues brought about by thought a first lesson for the work which remained to be accomplished. Yet the flower and fruit are the result of the dual forces of the spirit : sweetness in the plant’s final yield or the biting poison in the berry of a thorny shrub already fall under moral judgment. The apple could already be shown to man as a symbol expressing the virtue and sin of his own spirit; by eating it, one could unite oneself with the spirit of guilt or merit. For in yielding flower and fruit, the spirit knew good and evil, felt beauty or deformity, and already merited or transgressed against the ultimate goal of the spirit. O first book of creation!
Everything within thee is an endless abyss of knowledge and truth, yet as veils are slowly lifted, thou revealest and explainest all to those of God’s children who grow into divine filiation. Where doth thy labor end, O vegetable spirit? It is in thy meditation on a more perfect organism, in the creation of the plant species, which, transformed into a nervous system, could have immediately appeared revealed among organized beings. It was not, O my God, glimpsed in some book, this insect, identical in every way to a leaf, which enlightened me on the mystery of the spirit; for it could well be a simple whim of nature, a chance of things in formation. But behold, Lord, I saw beneath the village hedge, a pea sprouting from a rotten seed, advancing cautiously like a green caterpillar along its protective stake, Everything that the vegetable spirit could offer Thee, Lord, from its vegetable organization, it seems to have sacrificed for a more perfect existence. The odd numbers present in nature testify to the ultimate perfection of thought: The Spirit can no longer alter or improve upon it in any way. Yet look, Lord, how this frail, fragile, and pale plant, heedless of its own weakness, casts desperate arms into the air; its flower, already seeking to fly from the stem, winged like Psyche, implores Thee, Lord, for the flight of a butterfly. Thou wilt hear this spirit’s prayer, O God, and grant it the form it beseeches, and it will leave its form—fragile yet eternal—for the brother spirits that follow. O Lord, what wisdom, what masterful craftsmanship I see in the fulfilled vows of the vegetable spirit! On the shores of the Ocean, where the salt in the dew corrodes even the foundations of human monuments, the Spirits of the seacoasts imagined the velvets in which they drape themselves, and like Nymphs, they adorn their tousled hair with silver pearls that escape from the tresses of the Oceanids; the sun drinks these airy diamonds, and the sea’s corrosive tears dry up before they even touch the plant’s heart.
Elsewhere, against the scorching rays of the sun, the Dryads of lemon trees crafted mirrors, and, showered with golden arrows, they reflect the light, with the varnish of their lustrous foliage.
Show me nature, where the frenzy of elements reigns, where winds wrestle with waves, where plants clinging to cleft rocks struggle to accomplish the labor of life; and without inquiring from any Dryad, by the inspiration of my spirit alone - I will recount you the prayer through which those spirits besought Thee, O God, for their present form. For my spirit, for centuries, prayed and worked as they did, and now it sorrows, seeing in pale plants amid wild nature this fearsome toil.
Allow me here, O my Lord, to reveal a tiny mystery of my spirit, perhaps risking the premature mockery of judgment. But for me, the sense of fragrance testifieth to my sojourn in vegetable forms... Where the spirit of my present body forged blood vessels alongside the feeling of beauty or deformity, entwined with an obscure sense of poison. Inhaling the fragrance of a rose, I forget for a moment, as if in a daze, the desires and sorrows of my human nature, and I return to those times when my spirit’s aim was to craft beauty ; smelling a perfume was its only enjoyment and its only relief from labor… Thus, O Lord, I return for an instant to my childhood, and from the Genesis abyss cometh a breeze of refreshment and youth. In vain, O Lord, did science seek to explain this phenomenon by the action of scent on the sense of smell; I sought, for my part, the effect of this sense on my soul, which rejoiceth or sorroweth in the feeling of fragrance. Such was the path, O Immortal One, by which the humblest of Thy angels, Thy lowly Son, toiled in the vegetable kingdom until, in its final form, it emerged into a higher world, meeting other streams of globe’s labors, all of which tended towards the final form, that of man.. There, O Lord, the snail, the first sea-dweller - cautiously and securely beneath its stone shield, finally offered Thee the sacrifice of its pearly house, transformed it through the spirit of desire into a tortoiseshell , then yielded yet more of its security. Cunningly crafting wings beneath its scaly shield, it flew forth as a scarab—symbol of Divinity among the Egyptians—into the butterfly’s spiritual realms. Throughout this painful path of labor and transmutation of forms, it did not sacrifice its fertility, O Lord, but preserved as a traditional resemblance of his successive forms— and transported himself from the sea s depths to the celestial realms of flight. And consider the kingdom of serpents, which, in the pterodactyl of creation’s first days, deserved the wonder of flight, offereth Thee its saurian wings in sacrifice, humbleth itself before Thee, reddeneth its blood, and, as the class of annelids, slippeth into the more perfect nature of insects. For it is in insects, Lord, that the spirit beginneth to acquire the first moral virtues: diligence in the ant, social order in the bees. These virtues it later gathereth and paireth, so that bravery and nobility in the horse, fidelity and humility in the dog, are for ever inseparable, dwelling as sister virtues even in human souls. Thou knowest, O Lord, that the whole picture of the materialist philosophers’ school—all faculties, instincts, and virtues wrought by Genesis-labour—was given to man nearly ready, but in the form of coarse matter, to be reworked with knowledge, kindled with the fire of divine love, and led to new creative work. I will not recount these virtues or labours of the spirit, for each spirit will read them in the creatures close to it. I will only narrate certain events that, in the history of the spirit’s evolution, appear as singular revelations. Sometimes the spirit, having sought a new form and organisation, reserved for itself a small distinction among individuals, most often marked only by colour. Certain flowers and animals retained, as it were, through a concession wrested from God, a particularity of fur or hue. God rejected not these demands, but punished the incompleteness of their sacrifice with the weakness of a spirit not unified in a definite form. For such flowers are often barren, and birds and animals submitted to domesticity, seeking the protection of higher spirits.
The cat, having sacrificed to Thee, Lord, this one small detail without hesitancy/reservation, findeth itself, as a tiger, master of the desert… As for us, O Lord, when we offer Thee all that made us unlike Christ, to what dignity, to what power shall we not be raised in the holy hierarchy of Thy Word? Yet behold, O Lord, even upon spirits resigned to servitude, Thou hast placed Thy hand of special grace and care. The Arab, befriending the horse and cultivating in it the spirit of nobility and courage, is to it like his redeeming father of liberation; and the shepherd, seated with his dog in the fields, raiseth and freeth in him the spirit of humility and fidelity. In this mystery lieth the history of Joseph of Egypt, who, weaker than his brethren and condemned to servitude, grew mightier in bondage and became a benefactor to his own family. I also see, O Lord, that these virtues, so rare among men to-day, correspond to preparatory forms that were equally rare in the ancient realms of creation, and this is testimony to me that we are, in spirit, those who once shaped these forms.
It was in the ants and the bees, in a countless number of domestic animals, that the spirit wrought for man, in view of this virtue: application to work; while, on the other hand, the heroic spirit, full of power and nobility, rarely took the form of the lion or that of the eagle, passionate admirer of the storm and thunderbolts. And now, O God, I sense all this nature, laden with spirit, crieth out unto Thee with its most perfect voice for its final form, that of man; for it knoweth that through the elevation of a single spirit, all creation is raised to its furthest limits. Look O Lord, for its supreme invocation to move Thee, the trees adorned themselves with their fairest flowers and fruits, to show their merit and their spiritual labour in its most perfect forms. Note, the proudest creatures gathered in the meadow of Eden, forgetting their desires, furies, and bloodlust, raised by prayer in spirit, soaring above their nature through spiritual aspiration. Contemplate, the eagles flocked with garlands of swans and storks, standing motionless in the heavens, surrounded by rings of shimmering birds, like Thine angelic court, as if portraying the entourage of Thy throne with rainbow-winged angels. And that was the only moment of Eden and peace on Earth. Thou then summonedst, Lord, this soul, already worthy of human form. Thou heardest it, judged it, and allowed it to take on a new form on earth. Then, in its body, as in a book, Thou inscribed all the mysteries of the ancient work, accomplished before the appearance of man. This book is still to-day deposited in the depths of every human soul; and even if the human race and creation were to disappear, Lord, even alone, the last man would find in his soul all the work of the past. Apart from these forms, the globe, in its inheritance, would suffer no loss. Hosanna and glory to Thee, O Lord, for Thou art the Creator, and my spirit, however, beareth the merit of its own creation.
From these heights, where shall I now return?
To the former standpoint of my knowledge, to that abyss where my pre-cradle life was a mystery and the future held no goal? Nay; for emerging from the past, I stand as if upon the rock of creation.
I see what I have wrought and what remaineth to be accomplished. And behold, my spirit, labouring with humanity, hath already fulfilled much of its task; rising above animal instincts and virtues, it hath conquered many works of the human spirit, many powers already more than human, nearly angelic. These labours I will recount unto Thee, O Lord, in other books. Now, as I go toward the future, permit me to turn once more to this abyss of the six days of nature, at rest and numb, and to greet it one last time, O my Lord!
When, still in flints, thou offeredst the sacrifice of form and endurance, believing thou wert sacrificing thine eternity—when, I say, thou devoted thyself to death—the Lord accepted thy offering but deceived thee as a father deceiveth a beloved son. For through this sacrifice, not only didst thou, over the ages, attain man and couldst cry out like Eve: *I have gained a man for the Lord.* Now the Lord granted thee what thou never dreamed of: He bestowed upon thee the eternity of renascent forms, the power to recreate a form like thine own. By this grace, man, without losing his immortality or any part of his spiritual might, reproduceth a form like himself, which becometh the dwelling of a similar spirit. For he begetteth not the spirit, but, for a spirit ready to be born, similar to himself, he engendereth a similar form, granting a fraternal spirit entry into visibility.
In this likeness lieth the mystery of virtues preserved across generations, not poured, as it were, with blood from body to body, but arising from the law that only similar spirits can inhabit similar bodies. This immortality of these forms, gained through death, proveth that through sacrifice the spirit gaineth dominion over death, setting aside the laws of powerless matter, overcoming and abolishing them. Behold, O God, once I was seized with awe at the vast ruins on the ancient fields of the Roman Empire; mine eyes sought in vain a single column to trace upon my pupils the shapes seen by Caesar’s eyes... but works wrought by human hands changed their appearance... monuments raised for eternity crumbled... dew consumed the eyes of marble statues. Uncertain if any form I saw was among those seen ages ago, I spotted a sparrow descend to a sandy path and perch among ruined tombs… And my spirit was at once certain that the same pattern of feathers, the same black throat, had been seen by Varus’s legions. Truly, since then, the seas have receded, and Rome hath sunk beneath twenty feet of dust.
Spirit! Worker before the ages! Thou knowest that within thee lieth the spark of light that eternalizeth the body, the holy adversary of fire, thy transformer in the final days. This redeeming element, which with a marvellous gold illuminateth the faces of form, shewed itself only as an apparition in the depths of the elements – it clothed certain small marine plants with diffused brightness – it made certain butterflies into spiritual stars – then it faded away, eclipsed by miserable souls in search of some more useful property… It is no longer seen among the birds; and the storks that preceded their flocks in garlands no longer turn into lamps and torches when they make their sad, melancholic night journeys; they no longer stretch these flaming ribbons and arcs across the sky for the sailboats lost in the mist.…
This golden light, O Lord, superior to voice and more apt to express divine ecstasies, revealeth itself in the future as the most perfect instrument of sacred song, our celestial nourisher, in that city descending to us from heaven and the clouds. From such age-long labours, O my spirit, from such victories over chaos and storm, cometh thy first crown and thy first merit before God. The Lord did not forget thy works; rather, He even respected them, preserving the forms thou createdst, allowing no further change in them. On the book thou wrotest, He set the seal of His duration; and when thou art worthy and seekest true understanding of nature, He openeth before thee the golden Genesis pages, inscribed by thee in varied scripts, that thou mayest read and fathom them, comparing them with that other mysterious book lodged in the depths of thy spirit. Thou rejoicest, O spirit, whenever thou uncoverest a true mystery of the painful path, thy conscience bearing witness that thou hast read correctly, included in the forms, the true thought of God. Yet the knowledge of the past is useless if it reveal not the future.
Thus, it is in these books that the mystery of death is revealed: the law of successive re‑creation is visibly inscribed there; it is the sacrifice. Deviate not, therefore, from thine origin, O Visible Angel; have faith in the truth of thy conscience against the vicious habit drawn from science. For in Thy holiness rests the Spirit’s liberation and its next reign—the wisdom and form of every future act—its victory, its freedom, and its deliverance from the shackles of falsehood and violence. O Lord, Thou who commandedst the murmur of the sea—the rustling of these airy meadows covered with fragile flowers—to teach me the words of this book, to awaken in me the knowledge dormant in the depths of my soul—make these words, written in a sigh, fly away like the wind and the roar of the sea; and when they touch those powerful but slumbering spiritual forces in my homeland, may they draw them from their unconsciousness to bring them to the clarity of their self‑knowledge. May from this Alpha, from Christ, and from Thy Word, the whole world be inspired and derived; may the luminous wisdom, created in souls by divine love, be the enlightenment of all science. This is what I ask, O my God and Lord: a clear‑sighted faith and the sense of immortality born of faith in souls.
This is what I pray to Thee, O God, my Lord—grant me a visionary faith together with the sense of immortality, aroused by such faith in souls. I ask Thee for the sun of divine wisdom, where I already see the Angel with the sword of the coming sacrifice. For upon these words, that “everything is created by the Spirit and for the Spirit, and that nothing existeth for a material end,” shall be founded the sacred future science of my people. In the unity of knowledge shall be born the unity of sentiment, and the vision of sacrifices that, through the Soul of our sacred Homeland, lead to the ultimate goals. O God, my Father, Thou who, according to the testimony of Christ our Lord, hast not yet been seen by anyone on this earth—Thou whose face was dark toward the material form, through the crowd of bloody and tortured figures of Genesis, but benevolent and just toward Spirits and my Spirit, and all the more luminous and close—make this unique path of enlightenment and illumination, the path of love and indulgence, shine ever brighter through the radiance of knowledge, and lead Thy chosen people, who now advance on a path of sorrows, unto the Kingdom of God.
V 0.1 (Oct 28 2025)
The above translation is a synthesis of computer translations made by Grok, chatGPT, Google Translate and (to a lesser extent) DeepL.
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