In other words, astral and physical darkness bedim the soul's spiritual sight, and, leaving the realms of innocence and bliss, they sink into the vortex of the great astral world. The celestial state is now forever lost as a realm of angelic innocence. It can only be regained amid trial, sorrow, suffering, and experience, and, when regained, it is as Lord and Master, not as the innocent cherub. But when, having gained or reached the equator of the upward arc of its progress, and, united once more to its missing half, gives expression to that deathless force with which it started from the opposite point, Aries: "I AM THAT I AM;" no longer an embryo, but being within the UNIVERSAL SOUL of being. Before closing this symbolic constellation, we must reveal the mystery of its BI-SEXUAL NATURE. In the higher or first portion of the sign it is {}, positive to some extent, and masculine. The soul is still within the Garden of Eden and pure, clad in the raiment of God, and is represented by the Chaldean statues of "The Bearded Venus," or Venus, the Angel of Libra, as a morning star, bright Lucifer. But in the latter half, after the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (positive and negative, you see) has been partaken of, bright Lucifer falls. The Sun of the Morning, shorn of his glory, becomes the symbol of night, or Vesper, the evening star, and the symbol is thus {}, and the soul loses its heavenly raiment, or spiritual consciousness, and becomes clothed with matter, the symbol of night. The sign Libra in the Zodiac, in its astrological aspect, is a very external correspondence of all the foregoing. VIII. Scorpio "And, longer grown, the heavier scale inclines, And draws bright Scorpio from the winter signs." We now behold the gates of Paradise guarded by the FLAMING SWORD which points to the four quarters of the world. This sword is, according to Genesis, "to guard the way of the tree of life," and such, esoterically, it really is.