“And now comes a mystery, a Sod; a secret which Rabbi Simeon imparted but to very few initiates. It was enacted once every seven years during the Mysteries of Samothrace, and the records of it are found self-printed on the leaves of the Thibetan sacred tree, the mysterious KOUNBOUM, in the Lamasery of the holy adepts.
In the shoreless ocean of space radiates the central, spiritual, and Invisible sun. The universe is his body, spirit, and soul; and after this ideal model are framed ALL THINGS.
These three emanations are the three lives, the three degrees of the gnostic Pleroma, the three “Kabalistic Faces”, for the ANCIENT of the ancient, the holy of the aged, the great En-Soph, “has a form and then he has no form.”
The invisible “assumed form when he called the universe into existence”, says the Zohar, the Book of Splendor. The first light is His soul, the Infinite, Boundless, and Immortal breath; under the efflux of which the universe heaves its mighty bosom, infusing Intelligent life throughout creation.
The second emanation condenses cometary matter and produces forms within the cosmic circle; sets the countless worlds floating in the electric space, and infuses the unintelligent, blind life-principle into every form.
The third, produces the whole universe of physical matter; and as it keeps gradually receding from the Central Divine Light its brightness wanes and it becomes DARKNESS and the BAD – pure matter, the “gross purgations of the celestial fire” of the Hermetists.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 