. . . The myth of the eternal return displays an order of fixed forms that appear and reappear through all time.  The daily round of the sun, the waning and waxing moon, the cycle of the year, and the rhythm of organic birth, death, and new birth, represent a miracle of continuous arising that is fundamental to the nature of the universe.  [The world] will disintegrate presently into chaos, only to burst forth again . . .

The phases of moon  --appearance, increase, wane, disappearance, followed by reappearance after three nights of darkness-- have played an immense part in the elaboration of cyclical concepts.  We find analogous concepts especially in the archaic apocalypses and anthropogenies; deluge or flood puts an end to an exhausted and sinful humanity, and a new regenerated humanity is born, usually from a mythical "ancestor" who escaped the catastrophe . . .

All the worlds, and even the heavenly realm of Brahmâ, are subject to the laws of rebirth . .  . . [When a new world is born] day dawns, and all those lives that lay hidden asleep come forth and show themselves, mortally manifest.  Night falls, and all are dissolved into the sleeping germ of life . . .

Each world order is better than the last . . . .The conflagration is really a purifying fire . . . . All spirits were created blameless, all must at last return to their original perfection . . .

. . . The system of progressive existence seems, of all others, the most benevolent, and all that we do understand is so wise and so good, and all we do or do not, so perfectly and overwhelmingly wonderful, that the most benevolent system is the most probable.

                                        Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
                                        From creation to decay,
                                        Like the bubbles on a river,
                                        Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

. . . an outbreathing of the "unknown essence" produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear . . .