Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the Salaman and Absal of Jami — page 129: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SALAMAN AND ABSAL. Tue Incomparable Creator, when this World He did create, created first of all The First Inte.ticence’—First of a Chain Of Ten Intelligences, of which the Last Sole Agent is in this our Universe, ActTIvE INTELLIGENCE so call’d; The One Distributor of Evil and of Good, 1“ These Ten Intelligences are only another Form of the Gnostic Demones. The Gnostics held that Matter and Spirit could have no Intercourse—they were, as it were, incom- mensurate. How then, granting this premise, was Creation possible ? Their answer was a kind of gradual Elimination. God, the ‘ Actus Purus,’ created an AXon; this Aon created a Second; and so on, until the Tenth on was sufficiently Material (as the Ten were in a continually descending Series) to affect Matter, and so cause the Creation by giving to Matter the Spiritual Form. Similarly we have in Sufiism these Ten Intelligences in a corresponding Series, and for the same End. There are Ten Intelligences, and Nine Heavenly Spheres, of which the Ninth is the Uppermost Heaven, appropriated to the First Intelligence ; the Eighth, that of the Zodiac, to the Second; the Seventh, Saturn, to the Third ; the Sixth, Jupiter, to the Fourth ; the Fifth, Mars, to the Fifth ; the Fourth, The Sun, to the Sixth ; the Third, Venus, to the Seventh; the Second, Mercury, to the Eighth ; the First, The Moon, to the Ninth ; and THe KarrTH is the peculiar Sphere of the Tenth, or lowest Intelligence, called Tue Activg.”—E, B. C.—v. Appendix. (C(O) 1ClaOO 4 (CO)