Preface

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AVE!

There must have been a time in the life of every student of the Mysteries when he has paused whilst reading the work or the life of some well-known Mystic, a moment of perplexity in which, bewildered, he has turned to himself and asked the question: “Is this one telling me the truth?”

Still more so does this strike us when we turn to any commentative work upon Mysticism, such as Récéjac’s “Bases of the Mystic Knowledge,” or William James’s “Varieties of Religious Experience.” In fact, so much so, that unless we are more than commonly sceptical of the wordy theories which attempt to explain these wordy utterances we are bound to clasp hands with the great school of medical-materialism, which is all but paramount at the present hour, and dismiss all such as have had a glimpse of something we do not see as détraqués, degenerates, neuropaths, psychopaths, hypochondriacs, and epileptics.

Well, even if we do, these terms explain very little, and in most cases, especially when applied to mystic states, nothing at all; nevertheless they form an excellent loophole out of which the ignorant may crawl when faced with a difficulty they have not the energy or wit to surmount. {143}

True, the utter chaos amongst all systems of magic and mysticism that has prevailed in the West during the last two thousand years, partially, if not entirely, accounts for the uncritical manner in which these systems have been handled by otherwise critical minds.

Even to-day, though many thousand years after they were first written down, we find a greater simplicity and truth in the ancient rituals and hymns of Egypt and Assyria than in the extraordinary entanglement of systems that came to life during the first five hundred years of Christian era. And in the East, from the most remote antiquity to the present day, scientific systems of illuminism have been in daily practice from the highest to the lowest in the land; though, as we consider, much corrupted by an ignorant priestcraft, by absurd superstitions and by a science which fell to a divine revelation in place of rising to a sublime art.

In the West, for some fifteen hundred years now, Christianity has swayed the minds of men from the Arctic seas to the Mediterranean. At first but one of many small excrescent faiths, which sprang up like fungi amongst the superb débris of the religions of Egypt, Babylonia, and Greece, it was not long before (on account of its warlike tenets and the deeply magical nature of its rites¹)

it forced its head and then its arms above the shoulders of its weaker brothers; and when once in a position to strike, so thoroughly bullied all competitors that the few who inwardly stood outside the Church, {144} to save the bruised skins of the faiths they still held dear, were, for self-preservation, bound to clothe them in the tinsel of verbosity, in wild values and extravagant symbols and cyphers; the result being that chaos was heaped upon chaos, till at last all sense became cloaked in a truculent obscurantism. Still, by him who has eyes will it be seen that through all this darkness there shone the glamour of a great and beautiful Truth.

Little is it to be wondered then, in these present shallow intellectual days, that almost any one who has studied, or even heard of, the theories of any notorious nobody of the moment at once relegates to the museum or the waste-paper basket these theories and systems, which were once the very blood of the world, and which in truth are so still, though few suspect it.

Truth is Truth; and the Truth of yesterday is the Truth of to-day, and the Truth of to-day is the Truth of to-morrow. Our quest, then, is to find Truth, and to cut the kernel from the husk, the text from the comment.

To start from the beginning would appear the proper course to adopt; but if we commence sifting the shingle from the sand with the year 10,000 B.C. there is little likelihood of our ever arriving within measurable distance of the present day. Fortunately, however, for us, we need not start with any period anterior to our own, or upon any subject outside of our own true selves. But two things we must learn, if we are ever to make ourselves intelligible to others, and these are, firstly an alphabet, and secondly a language whereby to express our thoughts; for without some definite system of expression our only course is to remain silent, lest further confusion be added to the already bewildering chaos. {145}

It will be at once said by any one who has read as far as this: “I lay you whatever odds you name that the writer of this book will prove to be the first offender!” And with all humility will we at once plead guilty to this offence. Unfortunately it is so, and must at first be so; yet if in the end we succeed in creating but the first letter of the new Alphabet we shall not consider that we have failed; far from it, for we shall rejoice that, the entangled threshold having been crossed, the goal, though distant, is at last in sight.

In a hospital a chart is usually kept for each patient, upon which may be seen the exact progress, from its very commencement, of the case in question. By it the doctor can daily judge the growth or decline of the disease he is fighting. On Thursday, let us say, the patient’s temperature in 100°; in the evening he is given a cup of beef-tea (the patient up to the present having been kept strictly on milk diet); on the following morning the doctor finds that his temperature has risen to 102°, and at once concludes that the fever has not yet sufficiently abated for a definite change of diet to be adopted, and, “knocking off” the beef-tea, down drops the temperature.

Thus, if he be a worthy physician, he will study his patient, never overlooking the seemingly most unimportant details which can help him to realise his object, namely, recovery and health.

Not only does this system of minute tabulation apply to cases of disease and sickness, but to every branch of healthy life as well, under the name of “business”; the best business man being he who reduces his special occupation in life from “muddle” to “science.”

In the West religion alone has never issued from chaos; {146} and the hour, late though it be, has struck when without fear or trembling adepts have arisen to do for Faith what Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton did for what is vulgarly known as “Science.” And as Faith, growing old before its day, held back Science with a cruel hand, so let us now, whilst Science is still young, step briskly forward and claim our rights, lest if we halt we too shall find the child of the Morning once again strangled in the maw of a second Night.

Now, even to such as are still mere students in the mysteries, it must have become apparent that there are moments in the lives of others, if not in their own, which bring with them an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination; moments which created epochs in our lives, and which, when they have gone, stand out as luminous peaks in the moonlight of the past. Sad to say, they come but seldom, so seldom that often they are looked back upon as miraculous visitations of some vastly higher power beyond and outside of ourselves. But when they do come the greatest joys of earth wither before them like dried leaves in the fire, and fade from the firmament of our minds as the stars of night before the rising sun.

Now, if it were possible to induce these states of ecstasy or hallucination, or whatever we care to call them, at will, so to speak, we should have accomplished what was once called, and what is still known as, the Great Work, and have discovered the Stone of the Wise, that universal dissolvent. Sorrow would cease and give way to joy, and joy to a bliss quite unimaginable to all who have not as yet experienced it.

St. John of the Cross, writing of the “intuitions” by which God reaches the soul, says: {147}

“They enrich us marvellously. A single one of them may be sufficient to abolish at a stroke certain imperfections of which the soul during its whole life has vainly tried to rid itself, and to leave it adorned with virtues and loaded with supernatural gifts. A single one of the intoxicating consolations may reward it for all the labours undergone in its life — even were they numberless. Invested with an invincible courage, filled with an impassioned desire to suffer for its God, the soul then is seized with a strange torment — that of not being allowed to suffer enough.”²

In the old days, when but a small portion of the globe was known to civilised man, the explorer and the traveller would return to his home with weird, fantastic stories of long-armed hairy men, of impossible monsters, and countries of fairy-like wonder. But he who travels now and who happens to see a gorilla, or a giraffe, or perchance a volcano, forgets to mention it even in his most casual correspondence! And why? Because he has learnt to understand that such things are. He has named them, and, having done so, to him they cease as objects of interest. In one respect he gives birth to a great truth, which he at once cancels by giving birth to a great falsehood; for his reverence, like his disdain, depends but on the value of a name.

Not so, however, the adept; for as a zoologist does not lose {148} his interest in the simian race because he has learnt to call a long-armed hairy man a gorilla; so he, by learning to explain himself with clearness, and to convey the image of his thoughts with accuracy to the brain of another, is winnowing the wheat from the chaff, the Truth from the Symbol of Truth.

Now when St. John of the Cross tells us that a single vision of God may reward us for all the labours of this life, we are at perfect liberty, in these tolerant days, to cry “Yea!” or “Nay!” We may go further: we may extol St. John to the position of a second George Washington, or we may call him “a damned liar!” or, again, if we do not wish to be considered rude, a “neuropath,” or some other equally amiable synonym. But none of these expressions explains to us very much; they are all equally vague — nay (curious to relate!), even mystical — and as such appertain to the Kingdom of Zoroaster, that realm of pure faith: i.e., faith in St. John, or faith in something opposite to St. John.

But now let us borrow from Pyrrho — the Sceptic, the keen-sighted man of science — that word “WHY,” and apply it to our “Yea” and our “Nay,” just as a doctor questions himself and the patient about the disease; and we shall very soon find that we are being drawn to a logical conclusion, or at least to a point from which such a conclusion becomes possible.³

And from this spot the toil of the husbandman must not be condemned until the Season arrives in which the tree he has {149} planted bears fruit; then by its fruit shall it be known, and by its fruit shall it be judged.⁴

“’What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do her work by means of complete minds only? She may find an incomplete mind a more suitable instrument for a particular purpose. It is the work that is done, and the quality in the worker by which it was done, that is alone of moment; and it may be no great matter from a cosmical standpoint if in other qualities of character he as singularly defective — if indeed he were hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric, or lunatic. … Home we come again, then, to the old and last resort of certitude, — namely the common assent of mankind, or of the competent by instruction and training among mankind.’

“In other words, not its origin, but the way in which it works on the whole, is Dr. Maudsley’s final test of a belief. This is our own empiricist criterion; and this criterion the stoutest insisters on supernatural origin have also been forced to use in the end.” — “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” pp. 19, 20.

To put it vulgarly, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” and it is sheer waste of time to upbraid the cook before tasting of his dish.

This application of the word “Why” is the long and short of what has been called Scientific Illuminism,⁵ or the science of learning how not to say “Yes” until you know that it is YES, and how not to say “No” until you know that it is NO. It is the all-important word of our lives, the corner-stone of the Temple, the keystone of the arch, the flail that beats the grain from the chaff, the sieve through which Falsehood passes and in which Truth remains. It is, indeed, the poise of the balance, the gnomon of the sun-dial; which, if we learn to read aright, will tell us at what hour of our lives we have arrived.

Through the want of it kingdoms have fallen into decay and by it empires have been created; and its dreaded foe is of necessity “dogma.” {150}

Directly a man begins to say “Yes” without the question “Why?” he becomes a dogmatist, a potential, if not an actual liar. And it is for this reason that we are so bitterly opposed to and use such scathing words against the present-day rationalist⁶ when we attack him. For we see he is doing for Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer what the early Christian did for Jesus, Peter, and Paul; and that is, that he, having already idealised them, is now in the act of apotheosising them. Soon, if left unattacked, will their word become THE WORD, and in the place of the “Book of Genesis” shall we have the “Origin of Species,” and in the place of the Christian accepting as Truth the word of Jesus shall we have the Rationalist accepting as Truth the word of Darwin.

But what of the true man of science? say you; those doubting men who silently work in their laboratories, accepting no theory, however wonderful it may be, until theory has given birth to fact. We agree — but what of the Magi? answer we; the few fragments of whose wisdom which escaped the Christian flames will stand in the eyes of all men as a wonder. It was the Christians who slew the magic of Christ, and so will it be, if they are allowed to live,

the Rationalists who will slay the magic of Darwin; so that four hundred years hence perchance will some disciple of Lamarck {151} be torn to pieces in the rooms of the Royal Society by the followers of Haeckel, just as Hypatia, that disciple of Plato, was torn to pieces in the Church of Christ by followers of St. John.

We have nothing to say against the men of science, we have nothing to say against the great Mystics — all hail to both! But such of their followers who accepted the doctrines of either the one or the other as a dogma we here openly pronounce to be a bane, a curse, and a pestilence to mankind.

Why assume that only one system of ideas can be true? And when you have answered this question there will be time enough to assume that all other systems are wrong. Start with a clean sheet, and write neatly and beautifully upon it, so that others can read you aright; do not start with some old palimpsest, and then scribble all over it carelessly, for then indeed others will come who will of a certainty ready you awry.

If Osiris, Christ, and Mahomet were mad, then indeed is madness the key to the door of the Temple. Yet if they were only called mad for being wise beyond the sane, then ask you why their doctrines brought with them the crimes of bigotry and the horrors of madness? And our answer is, that though they loved Truth and wedded Truth, they could not explain Truth; and their disciples therefore had to accept the symbols of Truth for Truth, without the possibility of asking “Why?” or else reject Truth altogether. Thus it came about that the greater the Master the less was he able to explain himself, and the more obscure his explanations the darker became the minds of his followers. It was the old story of the light that blinded the darkness. You can teach a bushman to add one to one, and he may after some teaching grasp the idea of “two”; but do not try to tech him the {152} differential calculus! The former may be compared to the study of the physical sciences, the latter to that of the mental; therefore all the more should we persevere to work out correctly the seemingly most absurd, infinitesimal differences, and perchance one day, when we have learnt how to add unit to unit, a million and a millionth part of a unit will be ours.

We will now conclude this part of our preface with two long quotations from Prof. James’s excellent book; the first of which, slightly abridged, is as follows:

“It is the terror and beauty of phenomena, the ‘promise’ of the dawn and of the rainbow, the ‘voice’ of the thunder, the ‘gentleness’ of the summer rain, the ‘sublimity’ of the stars, and not the physical laws which these things follow, by which the religious mind still continues to be most impressed; and just as of yore the devout man tells you that in the solitude of his room or of the fields he still feels the divine presence, and that sacrifices to this unseen reality fill him with security and peace.

“Pure anachronism! says the survival-theory; — anachronism for which deanthropomorphization of the imagination is the remedy required. The less we mix the private with the cosmic, the more we dwell in universal in impersonal terms, the truer heirs of Science we become.

“In spite of the appeal which this impersonality of the scientific attitude makes to a certain magnanimity of temper, I believe it to be shallow, and I can now state my reason in comparatively few words. That reason is that, so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, but as soon as we deal with the private and personal phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the {153} completest sense of the term. I think I can easily make clear what I mean by these words.

“The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner ‘state’ in which the thinking comes to pass. What we think of may be enormous — the cosmic times and spaces, for example — whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess, but only point at outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one. A conscious field plus its object as felt or thought of plus an attitude towards the object plus the sense of a self to whom the attitude belongs — such a concrete bit of personal experience may be a small bit, but it is a solid bit as long as it lasts; not hollow, not a mere abstract element of experience, such as the ‘object’ is when taken all alone. It is a full fact, even though it be an insignificant fact; it is of the kind to which all realities whatsoever must belong; the motor currents of the world run through the like of it; it is on the line connecting real events with real events. That unshareable feeling which each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny as he privately feels it rolling out on fortune’s wheel may be disparaged for its egotism, may be sneered at as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the measure of our concrete actuality, {154} and any would-be existence that should lack such a feeling, or its analogue, would be a piece of reality only half made up.

“If this be true, it is absurd for science to say that the egotistic elements of experience should be suppressed. The axis of reality runs solely through the egotistic places — they are strung upon it like so many beads. To describe the world with all the various feelings of the individual pinch of destiny, all the various spiritual attitudes, left out from the description — they being as describable as anything else — would be something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a solid meal. Religion makes no such blunders. … A bill of fare with one real raisin on it instead of the word ‘raisin’ and one real egg instead of the word ‘egg’ might be an inadequate meal, but it would at least be a commencement of reality. The contention of the survival-theory that we ought to stick to non-personal elements exclusively seems like saying that we ought to be satisfied forever with reading the naked bill of fare. … It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny after all.”⁷

“We must next pass beyond the point of view of merely subjective utility, and make inquiry into the intellectual content itself.

“First, is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds, {155} a common nucleus to which they bear their testimony unanimously?

“And second, ought we to consider the testimony true?

“I will take up the first question first, and answer it immediately in the affirmative. The warring gods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts:

“(1) An uneasiness; and

“(2) Its solution.

“1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.

“2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

“In those more developed minds which alone we are studying, the wrongness takes a moral character, and the salvation takes a mystical tinge. I think we shall keep well within the limits of what is common to all such minds if we formulate the essence of their religious experience in terms like these:

“The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when Stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does {156} so in the following way: He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck”⁸.

These last few lines bring us face to face with the subject of this volume, viz.: —

To enter upon a somewhat irrelevant matter, this is what actually happened to the compiler of this book:

For ten years he had been a sceptic, in that sense of the word which is generally conveyed by the terms infidel, atheist, and freethinker; then suddenly, in a single moment, he withdrew all the scepticism with which he had assailed religion, and hurled it against freethought itself; and as the former had crumbled into dust, so now the latter vanished in smoke.

In this crisis there was no sickness of soul, no division of self; for he simply had turned a corner on the road along which he was travelling and suddenly became aware of the fact that the mighty range of snow-capped mountains upon which he had up to now fondly imagined he was gazing was after all but a great bank of clouds. So he passed on smiling to himself at his own childlike illusion.

Shortly after this he became acquainted with a certain brother of the Order of A∴ A∴; and himself a little later became an initiate in the first grade of that Order.

In this Order, at the time of his joining it, was a certain {157} brother of the name of P., who had but just returned from China, and who had been six years before sent out by the Order to journey through all the countries of the world and collect all knowledge possible in the time which touched upon the mystical experiences of mankind. This P. had to the best of his ability done, and though he had only sojourned in Europe, in Egypt, India, Ceylon, China, Burma, Arabia, Siam, Tibet, Japan, Mexico, and the United States of America, so deep had been his study and so exalted had been his understanding that it was considered by the Order that he had collected sufficient material and testimony whereon to compile a book for the instruction of mankind. And as Frater N.S.F. was a writer of some little skill, the diaries and notes of Frater P. were given to him and another, and they were enjoined to set them together in such a manner that they would be an aid to the seeker in the mysteries, and would be as a tavern on a road beset with many dangers and difficulties, wherein the traveller can find good cheer and wine that strengtheneth and refresheth the soul.

It is therefore earnestly hoped that this book will become as a refuge to all, where a guide may be hired or instructions freely sought; but the seeker is requested — nay, commanded — with all due solemnity by the Order of the A ∴ A ∴ to accept nothing as Truth until he has proved it so to be, to his own satisfaction and to his own honour.

And it is further hoped that he may, upon closing this book, be somewhat enlightened, and, even if as through a glass darkly, see the great shadow of Truth beyond, and one day enter the Temple.

So much for the subject; now for the object of this volume: {158}

Lytton calls him Adonai in ‘Zanoni,’ and I often use this name in the note-books.

Abramelin calls him Holy Guardian Angel. I adopt this:

1. Because Abramelin’s system is so simple and effective.

2. Because since all theories of the universe are absurd it is better to talk in the language of one which is patently absurd, so as to mortify the metaphysical man.

3. Because a child can understand it.

Theosophists call him the Higher Self, Silent Watcher, or Great Master.

The Golden Dawn calls him the Genius.

Gnostics say the Logos.

Zoroaster talks about uniting all these symbols into the form of a Lion — see Chaldean Oracles.¹⁰

Anna Kingsford calls him Adonai (Clothed with the Sun). Buddhists call him Adi-Buddha — (says H. P. B.)

The Bhagavad-Gita calls him Vishnu (chapter xi.).

The Yi King calls him “The Great Person.”

The Qabalah calls him Jechidah.

We also get metaphysical analysis of His nature, deeper and deeper according to the subtlety of the writer; for this {159} vision — it is all one same phenomenon, variously coloured by our varying Ruachs¹¹ — is, I believe, the first and the last of all Spiritual Experience. For though He is attributed to Malkuth,¹² and the Door of the Path of His overshadowing, He is also in Kether (Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth in Kether — “as above, so beneath”), and the End of the “Path of the Wise” is identity with Him.

So that while he is the Holy Guardian Angel, He is also Hua¹³ and the Tao.¹⁴

For since Intra Nobis Regnum deI¹⁵ all things are in Ourself, and all Spiritual Experience is a more or less complete Revelation of Him.

Yet it is only in the Middle Pillar¹⁶ that His manifestation is in any way perfect.

The Augoedes invocation is the whole thing. Only it is so difficult; one goes along through all the fifty gates of Binah¹⁷ at once, more or less illuminated, more or less deluded. But the First and the Last is this Augoeides Invocation.”

This Book is divided into four parts: {160}

Three methods of expression are used to enlighten and instruct the reader:

The first method is found appended to each of the four Books, balancing, so to speak, Illuminism and Science.

The second method is found almost entirely in the first Book and the various pictures are entitled:¹⁸

The third method is found almost entirely in the second Book.

The third and fourth Books of this essay consist of purely symbolic pictures. For the Key of the Portal the neophyte must discover for himself; and until he finds the Key the Temple of Solomon the King must remain closed to him.

Vale!

{162}

Index | Next

Part I: Index | Preface | The Black Watch-Tower | The Miser | The Spendthrift | The Bankrupt | The Prude | The Child | The Wanton | The Slave | The Warrior | The King | The White Watch-Tower

The Temple of Solomon the King | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX

1 Primitive Christianity had a greater adaptability than any other contemporary religion of assimilating to itself all that was more particularly pagan in polytheism; the result being that it won over the great masses of the people, who then were, as they are now, inherently conservative.

2 “Œuvres,” ii. 320. Prof. William James writes: “The great Spanish mystics, who carried the habit of ecstasy as far as it has often been carried, appear for the most part to have shown indomitable spirit and energy, and all the more so for the trances in which they indulged.”

Writing of St. Ignatius, he says: “St. Ignatius was a mystic, but his mysticism made him assuredly one of the most powerful practical human engines that ever lived” (“The Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 413).

3 “In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions.” — “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” pp. 17, 18.

4 “Dr. Maudsley is perhaps the cleverest of the rebutters of supernatural religion on grounds of origin. Yet he finds himself forced to write ('Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings,' 1886, pp. 256, 257)

5 Or Pyrrho-Zoroastrianism.

6 “We have to confess that the part of it [mental life] of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits.” — “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 73.

7 “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” pp. 498-501.

8 “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” pp. 498-501.

9 From a letter of Fra P.

10 “A similar Fire flashingly extending through the rushings of Air, or a Fire formless whence cometh the Image of a Voice, or even a flashing Light abounding, revolving, whirling forth, crying aloud. Also there is the vision of the fire-flashing Courser of Light, or also a Child, borne aloft on the shoulders of the Celestial Steed, fiery, or clothed with gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of Light, and standing on the shoulders of the horse; then if thy meditation prolongeth itself, thou shalt unite all these symbols into the Form of a Lion.”

11 Ruach: the third form, the Mind, the Reasoning Power, that which possesses the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

12 Malkuth: the tenth Sephira.

13 The supreme and secret title of Kether.

14 The great extreme of the Yi King.

15 I.N.R.I.

16 Or “Mildness,” the Pillar on the right being that of “Mercy,” and that on the left “Justice.” These refer to the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

17 Binah: the third Sephira, the Understanding. She is the Supernal Mother, as distinguished from Malkuth, the Inferior Mother. (Nun) is attributed to the Understanding; its value is 50. Vide “The Book of Concealed Mystery,” sect. 40.

18 Nine pictures between Darkness and Light, or eleven in all. The union of the Pentagram and the Hexagram is to be noted; also the eleven-lettered name ABRAHADABRA; 418; Achad Osher, or One and Ten; the Eleven Averse Sephiroth; and Adonai.