We have already spoken of many of the speculations on this point. To some, the world was created by the LOGOS or WORD, first manifestation of, or emanation from, the Deity. To others, the beginning of creation was by the emanation of a ray of LIGHT, creating the principle of _Light_ and _Life_. The Primitive THOUGHT, creating the inferior Deities, a succession of INTELLIGENCES, the Iynges of Zoroaster, his _Amshaspands_, _Izeds_, and _Ferouers_, the _Ideas_ of Plato, the _Aions_ of the Gnostics, the _Angels_ of the Jews, the _Nous_, the _Demiourgos_, the DIVINE REASON, the _Powers_ or _Forces_ of Philo, and the Alohayim, Forces or Superior Gods of the ancient legend with which Genesis begins,--to these and other intermediaries the creation was owing. No restraints were laid on the Fancy and the Imagination. The veriest Abstractions became Existences and Realities. The attributes of God, personified, became Powers, Spirits, Intelligences. God was the _Light of Light_, _Divine Fire_, the _Abstract Intellectuality_, the _Root_ or _Germ_ of the Universe. _Simon Magus_, founder of the Gnostic faith, and many of the early Judaizing Christians, admitted that the manifestations of the Supreme Being, as FATHER, or JEHOVAH, SON or CHRIST, and HOLY SPIRIT, were only so many different _modes_ of Existence, or _Forces_ [[Greek: δυναμεις]] of the same God. To others they were, as were the multitude of Subordinate Intelligences, real and distinct beings. The Oriental imagination revelled in the creation of these Inferior Intelligences, Powers of Good and Evil, and Angels. We have spoken of those imagined by the Persians and the Kabalists. In the Talmud, every star, every country, every town, and almost every tongue has a Prince of Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL is the guardian of fire, and MICHAEL, of water. Seven spirits assist each; those of fire being _Seraphiel_, _Gabriel_, _Nitriel_, _Tammael_, _Tchimschiel_, _Hadarniel_, and _Sarniel_. These seven are represented by the square columns of this Degree, while the columns JACHIN and BOAZ represent the angels of fire and water. But the columns are not representatives of these alone. To Basilides, God was without name, uncreated, at first containing and concealing in Himself the Plenitude of His Perfections; and when these are by Him displayed and manifested, there result as many particular Existences, all analogous to Him, and still and always Him. To the Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the West both devised this faith; that the Ideas, Conceptions, or Manifestations of the Deity were so many Creations, so many Beings, all God, nothing without Him, but more than what we now understand by the word _ideas_. They emanated from and were again merged in God. They had a kind of middle existence between our modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to the rank of genii, of the Oriental mythology.