Cosmos

[…] The All-Soul is the mobile cause of movement as well as of Form: more directly than the two superior or ‘earlier’ Hypostases of the Divine-Triad it is the eternal cause of the existence, eternal existence, of the COSMOS, or ‘WORLD’, or material or sense-grasped Universe, which is the Soul’s Act and emanation, image and ‘shadow’. It is the Creator, therefore, and the Vital-Principle of all that is lower, or ‘later’ than the Divine-Triad. […] (Stephen MacKenna)


The administration of the kosmos is to be thought of as that of a living unit: there is the action determined by what is external, and has to do with the parts, and there is that determined by the internal and by the principle: thus a doctor basing his treatment on externals and on the parts directly affected will often be baffled and obliged to all sorts of calculation, while Nature will act on the basis of principle and need no deliberation. And in so far as the kosmos is a conducted thing, its administration and its administrator will follow not the way of the doctor but the way of Nature. Enneads: IV IV. 11