THE EXEMPLIFICATION.
This chapter will be devoted to some examples of the recovered Gnosis,
bearing chiefly upon the supreme doctrine of Regeneration. As with all
else received by the Seeress, they are the product of intuitional memory
regained under divine illumination occurring mostly in sleep. And here I
will take occasion to state explicitly and positively, that the states,
whether of sleep or of trance, in which her faculty was exercised, were
all natural and spontaneous, being induced by the Spirit itself; and
that in no case were artificial means employed by either of us, whether
drugs, mesmerism, hypnotism, crystal-gazing, or any other of the devices
ordinarily used to induce abnormal states of consciousness or promote
enhancement of faculty. Our work was to be a real work, done not only by
us but in us, and we had from the first a profound instinctive distrust
of results obtained by such artificial stimulation.
Nor was any change even of a word ever made in the teachings received.
They came one and all in the finished perfection in which they are put
forth, coming down as the holy city from the heaven of the upper and the
within, and incapable of improvement. The following are the examples
proposed:--
(1) Concerning Holy Writ.
All Scriptures which are the true Word of God, have a dual
interpretation, the intellectual and the intuitional, the apparent
and the hidden.
For nothing can come forth from God save that which is fruitful.
As is the nature of God, so is the Word of God's mouth.
The letter alone is barren; the spirit and the letter give life.
But that Scripture is the more excellent, which is exceeding
fruitful and brings forth abundant signification.
For God is able to say many things in one, as the perfect ovary
contains many seeds in its chalice.
Therefore there are in the Scriptures of God's Word certain
writings which, as richly yielding trees, bear more abundantly than
others in the self-same holy garden.
And one of the most excellent is the history of the generation of
the heavens and the earth.
For therein is contained in order a genealogy, which has four
heads, as a stream divided into four branches, a word exceeding
rich.
And the first of these generations is that of the Gods.
The second is that of the kingdom of heaven.
The third is that of the visible world.
And the fourth is that of the Church of Christ.
(2) Concerning the Mystery of Redemption.
All things in heaven and in earth are of God, both the invisible
and the visible.
Such as is the invisible, is the visible also, for there is no
boundary line betwixt spirit and matter.
Matter is spirit made exteriorly cognisable by the force of the
Divine Word.
And when God shall resume all things by love, the material shall be
resolved into the spiritual, and there shall be a new heaven and a
new earth.
Not that matter shall be destroyed, for it came forth from God, and
is of God indestructible and eternal.
But it shall be indrawn and resolved into its true self.
It shall put off corruption, and remain incorruptible.
It shall put off mortality, and remain immortal.
So that nothing be lost of the Divine substance.
It was material entity: it shall be spiritual entity.
For there is nothing which can go out from the presence of God.
This is the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead: that is, the
transfiguration of the body.
For the body, which is matter, is but the manifestation of spirit:
and the Word of God shall transmute it into its inner being.
The will of God is the alchemic crucible: and the dross which is
cast therein is matter.
And the dross shall become pure gold, seven times refined; even
perfect spirit.
It shall leave behind it nothing: but shall be transformed into the
Divine image.
For it is not a new substance: but its alchemic polarity is
changed, and it is converted.
But except it were gold in its true nature, it could not be resumed
into the aspect of gold.
And except matter were spirit, it could not revert to spirit.
To make gold, the alchemist must have gold.
But he knows that to be gold which others take to be dross.
Cast thyself into the will of God, and thou shalt become as God.
For thou art God, if thy will be the Divine Will.
This is the great secret: it is the mystery of Redemption.
(3) Concerning Sin and Death.
As is the outer so is the inner: He that worketh is One.
As the small is, so is the great: there is one law.
Nothing is small and nothing is great in the Divine Economy.
If thou wouldst understand the method of the world's corruption,
and the condition to which sin hath reduced the work of God,
Meditate upon the aspect of a corpse; and consider the method of
the putrefaction of its tissues and humours.
For the secret of death is the same, whether of the outer or of the
inner.
The body dieth when the central will of its system no longer
bindeth in obedience the elements of its substance.
Every cell is a living entity, whether of vegetable or of animal
potency.
In the healthy body every cell is polarised in subjection to the
central will, the Adonai of the physical system.
Health, therefore, is order, obedience, and government.
But wherever disease is, there is disunion, rebellion, and
insubordination.
And the deeper the seat of the confusion, the more dangerous the
malady, and the harder to quell it.
That which is superficial may be more easily healed; or, if need
be, the disorderly elements may be rooted out, and the body shall
be whole and at unity again.
But if the disobedient molecules corrupt each other continually,
and the perversity spread, and the rebellious tracts multiply their
elements; the whole body shall fall into dissolution, which is
death.
For the central will that should dominate all the kingdom of the
body, is no longer obeyed; and every element is become its own
ruler, and hath a divergent will of its own.
So that the poles of the cells incline in divers directions; and
the binding power which is the life of the body, is dissolved and
destroyed.
And when dissolution is complete, then follow corruption and
putrefaction.
Now, that which is true of the physical, is true likewise of its
prototype.
The whole world is full of revolt; and every element hath a will
divergent from God.
Whereas there ought to be but one will, attracting and ruling the
whole man.
But there is no longer Brotherhood among you; nor order, nor mutual
sustenance.
Every cell is its own arbiter; and every member is become a sect.
Ye are not bound one to another: ye have confounded your offices,
and abandoned your functions.
Ye have reversed the direction of your magnetic currents: ye are
fallen into confusion, and have given place to the spirit of
misrule.
Your wills are many and diverse; and every one of you is an
anarchy.
A house that is divided against itself, falleth.
O wretched man; who shall deliver you from this body of Death?
(4) Concerning the Twelve Gates of Regeneration.
Now, the Kingdom of God is within us; that is, it is interior,
invisible, mystic, spiritual.
There is a power by means of which the Outer may be absorbed into
the Inner.
There is a power by means of which Matter may be ingested into its
original Substance.
He who possesses this power is Christ, and He has the devil under
foot.
For He reduces chaos to order, and indraws the external to the
centre.
He has learnt that Matter is illusion, and that Spirit alone is
real.
He has found His own Central Point; and all power is given unto Him
in heaven and on earth.
Now, the Central Point is the number Thirteen: it is the number of
the Marriage of the Son of God.
And all the members of the microcosm are bidden to the banquet of
the marriage.
But if there chance to be even one among them which has not on a
wedding garment,
Such a one is a Traitor, and the microcosm is found divided against
itself.
And that it may be wholly regenerate, it is necessary that Judas be
cast out.
Now the members of the microcosm are Twelve: of the Senses three,
of the Mind three, of the Heart three, and of the Conscience three.
For of the Body there are four elements; and the sign of the four
is Sense, in the which are three Gates,
The gate of the Eye, the gate of the Ear, and the gate of the
Touch[74].
Renounce vanity, and be poor: renounce praise, and be humble:
renounce luxury, and be chaste.
Offer unto God a pure oblation: let the fire of the altar search
thee, and prove thy fortitude.
Cleanse thy sight, thine hands, and thy feet: carry the censer of
thy worship into the courts of the Lord; and let thy vows be unto
the Most High.
And for the magnetic man[75] there are four elements: and the
covering of the four is mind, in the which are three gates;
The gate of desire, the gate of labour, and the gate of
illumination.
Renounce the world, and aspire heavenward: labour not for the meat
which perishes, but ask of God thy daily bread: beware of wandering
doctrines, and let the Word of the Lord be thy light.
Also of the soul there are four elements: and the seat of the four
is the heart, whereof likewise there are three gates;
The gate of obedience, the gate of prayer, and the gate of
discernment.
Renounce thine own will, and let the law of God only be within
thee: renounce doubt: pray always and faint not: be pure of heart
also, and thou shalt see God.
And within the soul is the Spirit: and the Spirit is One, yet has
it likewise three elements.
And these are the gates of the oracle of God, which is the ark of
the covenant;
The rod, the host[76], and the law:
The force which solves, and transmutes, and divines: the bread of
heaven which is the substance of all things and the food of angels;
the table of the law, which is the will of God, written with the
finger of the Lord.
If these three be within thy spirit, then shall the Spirit of God
be within thee.
And the glory shall be upon the propitiatory, in the holy place of
thy prayer.
These are the twelve gates of regeneration: through which if a man
enter he shall have right to the tree of life.
For the number of that Tree is Thirteen.
It may happen to a man to have three, to another five, to another
seven, to another ten.
But until a man have twelve, he is not master over the last enemy.
(5) Concerning the Passage of the Soul[77].
Evoi, Father Iacchos, Lord God of Egypt: initiate thy servants in
the halls of thy Temple;
Upon whose walls are the forms of every creature: of every beast of
the earth, and of every fowl of the air;
The lynx, and the lion, and the bull: the ibis and the serpent: the
scorpion and every flying thing.
And the columns thereof are human shapes; having the heads of
eagles and the hoofs of the ox.
All these are of thy kingdom: they are the chambers of ordeal, and
the houses of the initiation of the soul.
For the soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her
pilgrimage are manifold.
Thou callest her from the deep, and from the secret places of the
earth; from the dust of the ground, and from the herb of the field.
Thou coverest her nakedness with an apron of fig-leaves; thou
clothest her with the skins of beasts.
Thou art from of old, O soul of man; yea, thou art from the
everlasting.
Thou puttest off thy bodies as raiment; and as vesture dost thou
fold them up.
They perish, but thou remainest: the wind rendeth and scattereth
them; and the place of them shall no more be known.
For the wind is the Spirit of God in man, which bloweth where it
listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh, nor whither it shall go.
Even so is the spirit of man, which cometh from afar off and
tarrieth not, but passeth away to a place thou knowest not.
(6) Concerning the Mystic Exodus[77].
Evoi, Iacchos, Lord of the Sphinx; who linkest the lowest to the
highest; the loins of the wild beast to the head and breast of the
woman.
Thou holdest the chalice of divination: all the forms of nature are
reflected therein.
Thou turnest man to destruction: then thou sayest, Come again, ye
children of my hand.
Yea, blessed and holy art thou, O Master of Earth: Lord of the
cross and the tree of salvation.
Vine of God, whose blood redeemeth; bread of heaven, broken on the
altar of death.
There is corn in Egypt; go thou down into her, O my soul, with joy.
For in the kingdom of the Body, thou shalt eat the bread of thine
initiation.
But beware lest thou become subject to the flesh, and a bond-slave
in the land of thy sojourn.
Serve not the idols of Egypt; and let not the senses be thy
taskmasters.
For they will bow thy neck to their yoke; they will bitterly
oppress the Israel of God.
An evil time shall come upon thee; and the Lord shall smite Egypt
with plagues for thy sake.
Thy body shall be broken on the wheel of God; thy flesh shall see
trouble and the worm.
Thy house shall be smitten with grievous plagues; blood, and
pestilence, and great darkness; fire shall devour thy goods; and
thou shalt be a prey to the locust and creeping thing.
Thy glory shall be brought down to the dust; hail and storm shall
smite thine harvest; yea, thy beloved and thy first-born shall the
hand of the Lord destroy;
Until the body let the soul go free; that she may serve the Lord
God.
Arise in the night, O soul, and fly, lest thou be consumed in
Egypt.
The angel of the understanding shall know thee for his elect, if
thou offer unto God a reasonable faith.
Savour thy reason with learning, with labour, and with obedience.
Let the rod of thy desire be in thy right hand: put the sandals of
Hermes on thy feet; and gird thy loins with strength.
Then shalt thou pass through the waters of cleansing, which is the
first death in the body.
The waters shall be a wall unto thee on thy right hand and on thy
left.
And Hermes the Redeemer shall go before thee; for he is thy cloud
of darkness by day, and thy pillar of fire by night.
All the horsemen of Egypt and the chariots thereof; her princes,
her counsellors, and her mighty men:
These shall pursue thee, O soul, that fliest; and shall seek to
bring thee back into bondage.
Fly for thy life; fear not the deep; stretch out thy rod over the
sea; and lift thy desire unto God.
Thou hast learnt wisdom in Egypt; thou has spoiled the Egyptians;
thou hast carried away their fine gold and their precious things.
Thou hast enriched thyself in the body; but the body shall not hold
thee; neither shall the waters of the deep swallow thee up.
Thou shalt wash thy robes in the sea of regeneration; the blood of
atonement shall redeem thee to God.
This is thy chrism and anointing, O soul; this is the first death;
thou art the Israel of the Lord,
Who hath redeemed thee from the dominion of the body; and hath
called thee from the grave, and from the house of bondage,
Unto the way of the cross, and to the path in the midst of the
wilderness;
Where are the adder and the serpent, the mirage and the burning
sand.
For the feet of the saint are set in the way of the desert.
But be thou of good courage, and fail thou not; then shall thy
raiment endure, and thy sandals shall not wax old upon thee.
And thy desire shall heal thy diseases; it shall bring streams for
thee out of the stony rock; it shall lead thee to Paradise.
Evoi, Father Iacchos, Jehovah-Nissi[78]; Lord of the garden and of
the vineyard;
Initiator and lawgiver; God of the cloud and of the mount.
Evoi, Father Iacchos; out of Egypt has thou called thy Son.
To vindicate the suppressed mysteries of the pre-Christian churches by
disclosing them as the true _origines_ of Christianity, and to replace
the false doctrine of the exclusive divinity of one man by the true
doctrine of the potential divinity of all men,--these are among the
foremost objects of the New Gospel of Interpretation. And it is
especially in order to reinforce the last named, that it has restored
the following hymn in celebration of the supreme results of
regeneration, which formed part of the ritual of the greater mysteries
of the Greeks. It is addressed to the first of the Holy Seven, the
Spirit of Wisdom, as represented by his "angel," the angel of the sun,
even "that light which Adonai created on the first day," "whose name is,
in the Hebrew, Uriel, and in the Greek, Phoibos, the Bright One of God."
Breathing both the Spirit and the letter of the Bible, from Genesis to
the Apocalypse, the hymns, of which this is one, indicate unmistakeably
the identity in source and substance of the Hebrew and the Christian
with the other sacred mysteries of antiquity, and the derivation of the
later through the earlier from their common source in the world
celestial when once again they have been restored. And they supply also
the motive which led the Christians to destroy the second Alexandrian
library, showing that motive to have been the desire to conceal, first,
the derivation of the Christian presentment from its predecessors, and
next, the perversion of their doctrine in the interests of an
unscrupulous sacerdocy.
* * * * *
Taken in connection with its fellow-hymns, similarly recovered, to
others of the "Holy Seven," the hymn to Phoibos throws a flood of light
on the creative week of Genesis, showing it to be no mere proem to
Scripture, or concerned with the world physical merely, but an integral
portion of Scripture, being an epitome of eternal verities ever in
process, and appertaining both to Creation and to Redemption. The Hymn
to Her who is mystically the fourth, but really the third of the Gods,
the "Spirit of Counsel" of Isaiah, is especially notable for its
solution of the problem of the inversion of the order of the third and
fourth days of creation. These hymns, moreover, show indubitably that
the order of the solar system was no secret to the hierophants of the
sacred mysteries of antiquity.
(7) Hymn to Phoibos, the First of the Gods.
"Strong art thou and adorable, Phoibos Apollo, who bearest life and
healing on thy wings, who crownest the year with thy bounty, and
givest the spirit of thy divinity to the fruits and precious things
of all the worlds.
Where were the bread of the initiation of the Sons of God, except
thou bring the corn to ear; or the wine of their mystical chalice,
except thou bless the vintage?
Many are the angels who serve in the courts of the spheres of
heaven: but thou, Master of Light and of Life, art followed by the
Christs of God.
And thy sign is the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and of the
Just made perfect;
Whose path is as a shining light, shining more and more unto the
innermost glory of the day of the Lord God.
Thy banner is blood-red, and thy symbol is a milk-white lamb, and
thy crown is of pure gold.
They who reign with thee are the Hierophants of the celestial
mysteries; for their will is the will of God, and they know as they
are known.
These are the sons of the innermost sphere; the Saviours of men,
the Anointed of God.
And their name is Christ Jesus, in the day of their initiation.
And before them every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and of
things on earth.
They are come out of great tribulation, and are set down for ever
at the right hand of God.
And the Lamb, which is in the midst of the seven spheres, shall
give them to drink of the river of living water.
And they shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the centre of
the garden of the kingdom of God.
These are thine, O Mighty Master of Light; and this is the dominion
which the Word of God appointed thee in the beginning:
In the day when God created the light of all the worlds, and
divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Phoibos, and the darkness God called
Python.
Now the darkness was before the light, as the night forerunneth the
dawn.
These are the evening and the morning of the first cycle of the
Mysteries.
And the glory of that cycle is as the glory of seven days; and they
who dwell therein are seven times refined;
Who have purged the garment of the flesh in the living waters;
And have transmuted both body and soul into spirit, and are become
pure virgins.
For they were constrained by love to abandon the outer elements,
and to seek the innermost which is undivided, even the Wisdom of
God.
And wisdom and love are one.
In view of the restoration of the Gods to recognition by the New Gospel
of Interpretation, it must be explained that the doctrines of Monotheism
and Polytheism are not necessarily incompatible. This has already been
shown in Chapter IV., in the utterance commencing--"In the bosom of the
Eternal were all the Gods comprehended, as the seven spirits of the
prism contained in the Invisible Light." For as light is one though its
rays are seven and each ray is light, so is God one though His spirits
are seven and each spirit is God.
And yet further. The deities recognised under various names or by
various peoples are not necessarily different Gods, but may be either
the same God or different modes or aspects of the same God. Notably is
this the case with the Gods of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the
Christians. For while by the term Elohim is denoted the two principles,
masculine and feminine, of Force and Substance, which constitute
Original Being, by Jehovah or Yahveh, Adonai and Shaddai, is denoted the
resultant of the interaction of these two principles as Father and
Mother, who is called therefore their word, expression, and Son. By the
Holy Ghost is denoted the same two principles in activity, having
procession from the "Father-Mother" through the "Son," to be the
constituent principles of creation, being Deity dynamic as distinguished
from Deity static. By the Seven Spirits of God--as by the seven great
Gods of the Greeks,--are denoted the seven potencies into which Deity
differentiates on emerging as Holy Ghost from the prism constituted of
Father, Mother, and Son, which are to each other as the force,
substance, and phenomenon of which every manifest entity consists. For
"Every entity that is manifest, is manifest by the evolution of its
trinity." And by Christ is denoted the ultimate issue of such procession
of Deity into manifestation, namely, divinity individuated by means of
its passage through matter, and elaborated by co-operation of the Seven
Spirits of God, into a perfected _spiritual_ Ego, who is at once God and
man, and subsists under two modes--the microcosmic or individual, and
the macrocosmic or universal, and who is always in process of increase,
because, in manifestation, "the Father is greater than the Son;" and
"the manifest never exhausts the unmanifest."
Now the process of the Christ is by regeneration, and of this, as has
been said, reincarnation is the condition. The New Gospel of
Interpretation contains an utterance of Jesus on this subject which will
fitly conclude this series of examples. It was recovered by "Mary" under
illumination early in 1880, and consequently when we had not fully come
to realise the actuality of the doctrine and the possibility of the
recovery of the memories of past lives. Hence she sought from her
illuminators confirmation of the genuineness of the experience, when she
was distinctly and positively assured that the incident had actually
occurred, and that she had borne part in it, though no record of it
survives. Such is the extrinsic testimony on which it rests. We found
the intrinsic no less satisfactory, whether as regards the substance or
the form.
(8) Concerning the previous lines of Jesus, and Reincarnation.
This morning between sleeping and waking I saw myself, together
with many other persons, walking with Jesus in the fields round
about Jerusalem, and while He was speaking to us, a man approached,
who looked very earnestly upon Him. And Jesus turned to us and
said, "This man whom you see approaching is a seer. He can behold
the past lives of a man by looking into his face." Then, the man
being come up to us, Jesus took him by the hand and said, "What
readest thou?" And the man answered, "I see Thy past, Lord Jesus,
and the ways by which Thou hast come." And Jesus said to him, "Say
on." So the man told Jesus that he could see Him in the past for
many long ages back. But of all that he named, I remember but one
incarnation, or, perhaps, one only struck me, and that was _Isaac_.
And as the man went on speaking, and enumerating the incarnations
he saw, Jesus waved His right hand twice or thrice before his eyes,
and said, "It is enough," as though He wished him not to reveal
further. Then I stepped forward from the rest and said, "Lord, if,
as thou hast taught us, the woman is the highest form of humanity,
and the last to be assumed, how comes it that Thou, the Christ, art
still in the lower form of man? Why comest Thou not to lead the
perfect life, and to save the world as woman? For surely Thou has
attained to womanhood." And Jesus answered, "I have attained to
womanhood, as thou sayest; and
already have I taken the form of woman. But there are three
conditions under which the soul returns to the man's form; and they
are these:--
"1st. When the work which the Spirit proposes to accomplish is of a
nature unsuitable to the female form.
"2nd. When the Spirit has failed to acquire, in the degree
necessary to perfection, certain special attributes of the male
character.
"3rd. When the Spirit has transgressed, and gone back in the path
of perfection, by degrading the womanhood it had attained.
"In the first of these cases the return to the male form is outward
and superficial only. This is my case. I am a woman in all save the
body. But had My body been a woman's, I could not have led the life
necessary to the work I have to perform. I could not have trod the
rough ways of the earth, nor have gone about from city to city
preaching, nor have fasted on the mountains, nor have fulfilled My
mission of poverty and labour. Therefore am I--a woman--clothed in
a man's body that I may be enabled to do the work set before Me.
"The second case is that of a soul who, having been a woman perhaps
many times, has acquired more aptly and readily the higher
qualities of womanhood than the lower qualities of manhood. Such a
soul is lacking in energy, in resoluteness, in that particular
attribute of the Spirit which the prophet ascribes to the Lord when
he says, 'The Lord is a Man of war.' Therefore the soul is put back
into a man's form to acquire the qualities yet lacking.
"The third case is that of the backslider, who, having nearly
attained perfection,--perhaps even touched it,--degrades and soils
his white robe, and is put back into the lower form again. These
are the common cases; for there are few women who are worthy to be
women"[79].
(9) Concerning the "Work of Power."
You have asked me if the Work of Power is a difficult one, and if
it is open to all.
It is open to all potentially and eventually, but not actually and
in the present. In order to regain power and the resurrection, a
man must be a Hierarch; that is to say, he must have attained the
_magical_ age of thirty-three. This age is attained by having
accomplished the Twelve Labours, passed the Twelve Gates, overcome
the Five Senses, and obtained dominion over the Four Spirits of the
elements. He must have been born Immaculate, baptised with Water
and Fire, tempted in the Wilderness, crucified and buried. He must
have borne Five Wounds on the Cross, and he must have answered the
riddle of the Sphinx. When this is accomplished he is free of
matter, and will never again have a phenomenal body.
Who shall attain to this perfection? The Man who is without fear
and without concupiscence; who has courage to be absolutely poor
and absolutely chaste. When it is all one to you whether you have
gold or whether you have none, whether you have a house and lands
or whether you have them not, whether you have worldly reputation
or whether you are an outcast,--then you are voluntarily poor. It
is not necessary to have nothing, but it is necessary to care for
nothing. When it is all one to you whether you have a wife or
husband, or whether you are celibate, then you are free from
concupiscence. It is not necessary to be a virgin; it is necessary
to set no value on the flesh. There is nothing so difficult to
attain as this equilibrium. Who is he who can part with his goods
without regret? Who is he who is never consumed by the desires of
the flesh? But when you have ceased both to wish to retain and to
burn, then you have the remedy in your own hands, and the remedy is
a hard and a sharp one, and a terrible ordeal. Nevertheless, be not
afraid. Deny the five senses, and above all the taste and the
touch. The power is within you if you will to attain it. The Two
Seats
are vacant at the Celestial Table, if you will put on Christ. Eat
no dead thing. Drink no fermented drink. Make living elements of
all the elements of your body. Mortify the members of earth. Take
your food full of life, and let not the touch of death pass upon
it. You understand me, but you shrink. Remember that without
self-immolation, there is no power over death. Deny the touch. Seek
no bodily pleasure in sexual communion; let desire be magnetic and
soulic. If you indulge the body, you perpetuate the body, and the
end of the body is corruption. You understand me again, but you
shrink. Remember that without self-denial and restraint there is no
power over death. Deny the taste first, and it will become easier
to deny the touch. For to be a virgin is the crown of discipline. I
have shown you the excellent way, and it is the _Via Dolorosa_.
Judge whether the resurrection be worth the passion; whether the
kingdom be worth the obedience; whether the power be worth the
suffering. When the time of your calling comes, you will no longer
hesitate.
When a man has attained power over his body, the process of ordeal
is no longer necessary. The Initiate is under a vow; the Hierarch
is free. Jesus, therefore, came eating and drinking; for all things
were lawful to Him. He had undergone, and had freed His will. For
the object of the trial and the vow is polarisation. When the fixed
is volatilised, the Magian is free. But before Christ was Christ He
was subject; and His initiation lasted thirty years. All things are
lawful to the Hierarch; for he knows the nature and value of
all[80].
This chapter may appropriately terminate with a few remarks in reply to
the inevitable question, why our country and language were selected as
the place and tongue of the new revelation in preference to all others.
It is, as we were enabled to see, because the British people are
recognised in the celestial world, as possessing that peculiar quality
of soul which, in spite of their many and grievous limitations, has made
them to be the foremost witness among the nations to God and the
Conscience, in such wise as to constitute them the counterpart of Israel
in the modern world. Others besides ourselves have recognised this
characteristic. Said Milton, speaking of a crisis which, momentous as it
was, pales in presence of that which now is, seeing that Religion itself
as Religion was not menaced then as in our time--
"Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the general
instinct of devout and holy men, as they daily and solemnly express
their thoughts, God is beginning to devise some new and great period in
His Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does He
then, but address Himself to His servants, and--as His manner is--first
to His Englishmen."
To which we may add in reference to the present, "And having by the
hands of His Intellectualists, beaten down the false interpretation of
His holy Word, accomplishing the work of destruction, is about by the
hands of His Intuitionalists, to establish the true interpretation,
accomplishing the work of re-construction."
Nor are there wanting specific historical facts pointing in the same
direction. To Britain it was given by a timely act of revolt against a
domination at once foreign and sacerdotal, to rescue the letter of
Scripture from suppression and virtual extinction at the hands of an
order bent only on exalting itself at whatever cost to truth and
humanity. Meanwhile, for three centuries and a half--period suggestive
of the mystical "time, times, and half a time,"--Britain has faithfully
and lovingly, albeit unintelligently and mistakenly, guarded and
cherished the letter thus rescued, even to the erecting of it into a
fetish. And it may well be that she has now, for her guerdon, been
further commissioned to be the recipient and minister of its
interpretation.
Moreover, as Mistress of the Sea, the especial symbol of the Soul, she
has a prescriptive claim to be the vehicle of the latest and crowning
message to earth, of which the Soul herself is at once the source, the
subject, and the object.
Nor are the universality of her language and the grandeur of her
literature elements to be left out of consideration. All things point to
her language as destined to become, practically, the language of the
world; and hence its peculiar fitness to be the vehicle of that "eternal
gospel" which it is declared should, at the end of the age, be
proclaimed "unto them that dwell on the earth, even unto every nation,
and tribe, and tongue, and people."
FOOTNOTES:
[74] Taste and smell being modes of touch. E.M.
[75] _I.e._, the astral and mental part of man, which is accounted a
person or system in itself. E.M.
[76] The Sacramental bread called by the Hebrews "showbread."
[77] See note on p. 122, ante.
[78] The names Nyssa, Nysa, Nysas, and Nissi are identical with each
other, and also with Sinai, Sion, and those of other sacred mounts. For
they all are names for the Mount of Regeneration, the mount or "holy
hill" of the Lord, within the man, to be on which is to be in the
Spirit. The river Hiddekel has the like import. It is the river of the
soul, herself fluidic and called Maria (waters), which, as the
receptacle of the divine nucleus, winds about and encompasses the
Spirit. Thus Daniel is said to be "on Hiddekel" when under divine
illumination. ("The Life of A.K." Vol. I. p. 459.)
[79] A.K. was distinctly and positively assured that the incident then
shown to her was one that actually occurred, and that she had borne part
of it though no record of it survives. S.H.H.
[80] This instruction is taken from "The Life of A.K." Vol. I, pp.
424-425.