The Light of Egypt, Volume II
by
Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
Part 3 out of 3
The Magic Wand. The words savor of everything that the young tyro
in Occult art can picture to his mind; of the midnight magician
and his mysterious, if not diabolical, arts, muttering his
incantations, working his gruesome spells, and raising the
restless ghosts of the dead. Strange fancies, these, and yet, so
corrupt and ignorant have become the conceptions of the popular
mind regarding the once sacred Science of the Temple and the
psychological powers of Nature, that we very much question, if
the ideas above stated were not very similar to the originals of
each modern student, before he had become acquainted with the
deeper truths--the realities of Occult philosophy.
We will commence our study by a careful investigation of the
original meaning of the words Magic Wand, since those who were
the masters and originators thereof, are far more likely to know
more about them than their degenerate offspring of a later age.
Few, comparatively, would believe that the words MAGIC, MASON,
and IMAGINATION, are the present unrelated descendants of the
same original conception--THE ROOT IDEA; but such is the case.
First, then, we will examine their modern meanings. Magic is the
unholy art of working secret spells, of using invisible powers,
and holding intercourse with the unseen world of ghosts and
demons, by means of enchantments. It also means the expert
deception of the senses by the tricks of a conjurer, SO-CALLED
hocus-pocus and fraud, and a magician is either an evil-minded,
superstitious mortal, fool enough to believe in charms, or an
expert pretender and imposter of the first water, who cheats and
deceives the people. A mason is the honorable designation of a
builder, who works in stone; metaphysically, a member of a semi-
secret society, whose sole advantage is social intercourse and
standing; who proclaim fraternity and universal brotherhood
theoretically and practice the reverse in reality; a man who apes
the Egyptian Mason, knows nothing in reality of Hiram, his
master; who knows nothing of the starry Solomon or his mystic
temple in the heavens, which Hiram built; and who misconceives
the import of the three villains, or assassins; and who, further,
knows nothing of that wonderful sprig of myrtle:--in short, a
Free Mason, speaking generally, is a man who delights in ideals,
social equality, secret fraternity, and plays at mysticism; who
parades on the Masonic stage and enacts a role he does not
understand. The first meaning, that of a builder, is the most
correct. Lastly, the imagination is the exercise of mental
imagery--the picturings of silent thought.
And now we will proceed BACKWARDS. Imagination is from the word
"image," a form, a picture, and has descended to us from the
Latin "imago," which, in its turn, was derived from the old
Semitic root, "mag." Mason comes to us from the Latin "mass,"
which means to mould and form, i.e., to build; and the word
"mass," through various transformations, was also derived from
the root-word "mag." Consequently, originally, there was but
little difference in the ancient idea of building pictures in the
mind and erecting the mental idea externally in stone. It is from
this fact, that, we have to-day Mental Masons, a la the secret
orders, and stone masons, who labor for wages. The Mental Masons
have merely lost the knowledge of their art. They should, by
rights, be as active and correspondingly useful to-day as their
more physical brothers, the masons of stone.
This art would never have fallen into disgrace and disuse, if
their daily bread, or material accumulations, had depended upon
their efforts in building up the mental, moral, and spiritual
attainments, of each other, and bringing their knowledge into
more external use, by making the material edifice, the physical
body, a purer and more fitting temple, for the Divine soul.
Magic comes from the Latin "magi" and the Greek word "magos,"
which means wise, learned in the mysteries, and was the synonym
of wisdom. The initiated philosopher, the priest, and the wise
men, are all of them included in the "magi." Again, tracing this
word to its remote ancestor, we find it terminating in the same
Semitic root, "mag," but of this strange root no one was able to
say much, except that it seemed to belong to the Assyrian branch
of the great Semitic race. But quite recently, thanks to our
scientific explorers and archaeologists, versed in the mysterious
meaning of cuniform inscription; Assyrian scholars now inform us
that they have found the hoary, primitive original of it, of
magic, magi and imago, etc. It is from an old Akkadian word,
"imga," meaning wise, holy, and learned, and was used as the
distinguishing title of their wisest sages, priests, and
philosophers, who, as may be supposed, gradually formed a
peculiar caste, which merged into the ruling priestly order. The
Semites, who succeeded the old Akkadian race in the valley of the
Euphrates, as a mere matter of verbal convenience, transformed
many of the old Akkadian words to suit their own articulation,
and "imga" became "mag," and thus "magi." THE BLEND between the
Semetic and the older Akkadian race, produced, by fusion of
racial blood, the famed Chaldeans. So that we see how old are the
words which many of us daily use, but with different meaning.
Verily, it makes one feel, when be thinks of magic and its
origin, as though he were quite nearly related to the people who
honored King Sargon, the Wise, the earthly original of the mystic
Solomon of Biblical tradition. The term Wand is an old Saxon
word, which primarily signifies to set in motion, to move. From
this we derive our word wander, i.e., to roam, and wandering,
i.e., moving and continually restless.
We have now the original, therefore real, meaning of the words
Magic Wand; thus an object that sets in motion the powers of the
magician, and the magician, an Initiate of the sacred rites--A
MASTER OF WISDOM, possessing all the resources that enable him TO
BUILD mould, and form; to create in fact, by virtue of his
knowledge of the secret powers of mental imagery and the
potential use of his own imagination. He is both Mental Mason and
learned philosopher.
The student may doubtless ask, why all this care and labor
regarding mere definitions? We reply that, it is because, the
real meaning of the words we have purposely selected for the
title of our studies are, in themselves, a far better revelation
than we could possibly have written. Originally, ideas and words
were related as absolute expressions or correspondences, of each
other. This is not so now. As the different races became
interblended, the purity of both language and morals retrograded,
and the people grew more to the external. The intuitions and
spirit were compelled to retreat, giving place to only the
intellectual and mental. The blending of the languages gave birth
to many words wherein different meanings were transmitted; hence,
the trouble arising to-day over the numerous interpretations of a
single word.
Hybrid races have no such thing as a pure language. Their ideas
and language, like their blood, is badly mixed up, confusing, and
unsatisfactory, so far as the real meaning of the words are
concerned. For this very reason we find so many different
meanings for the same word; and also for this reason, we cannot
formulate a legal enactment in the Anglo-Saxon tongue that, a
learned lawyer, versed in this senseless jugglery of words,
cannot demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the courts, means
something the very opposite of the real intentions-- the
spirit--which the framers thereof, intended it to convey.
Anciently, it required no artful cunning of the lawyer to
interpret the laws. The words had only one simple and obvious
meaning. If a language could be so constructed to-day, and the
antiquated precedents of the courts annihilated; the legal
profession would be exterminated inside of twelve months, and an
affliction removed from the people.
The philosophy of the Magic Wand is this. It is a magnetic,
electric conductor for the magician's will. It directs the flow
of his thought and concentrates it upon a given point in space or
an object. It is, magically, what the sights of a rifle are to a
sportsman. It enables him to focus his powers with exact
precision upon the mark against which, or upon which, his will is
directed. Apart from this there is no power, per se, in the Wand
itself, any more than there is in a lightning conductor without
the electric storm. Ergo, the Wand is the conductor, in the
magician's hand, for the lightnings of the soul; and just as the
lightning rod is most useful and most powerful to protect, when
the storm is the strongest; so is the Wand most powerful in the
hands of the most potential magician. We can only transmit
through this Wand the degree of force we may happen to possess in
the soul.
In a properly prepared Wand lies the most powerful weapon, to
protect or destroy, that can be placed within a magician's hands.
With his own spiritual force and knowledge, combined with the
magic power attached to the instrument, nothing can withstand its
power, when directed with a determined and powerful will.
Many substances have been employed in the manufacture of these
Magic Wands. Metals or stones will not serve this purpose, unless
covered with some organic matter. In any case stones are
worthless. The very finest Wands are made from the live ivory of
a female elephant. A short Wand, twenty-one inches long, tipped
with gold at the largest end and silver or copper at the other,
is very powerful. Next to these costly articles are Wands with a
gold or copper core, a wire, in fact, cased with ebony, boxwood,
rosewood, cedar or sandalwood. English yew also serves the
purpose; so does almond wood. Simpler, less expensive, and almost
as effective, are Wands made of witch-hazel. In fact, apart from
the Wands of live ivory, I consider that witch-hazel is as
powerful as the golden Wand. Next in force to this witch-hazel
are the shoots of the almond tree, and, lastly, the peach and
swamp willow.
The proper time to manufacture a Magic Wand is whenever you can
find the person who is able to do the work. But after it is
constructed it must be thoroughly magnetized, with proper
ceremony and aspiration, the first or the second full Moon after
the Sun enters Capricorn, at midnight, when the Moon will be
culminating in her own sign upon the mid-heaven.
The best time TO CUT a shoot of witch-hazel or other material for
a Wand is the first full Moon after the Sun's entry into
Capricorn, at midnight, and then magnetize it upon the next full
Moon at the same hour.
In conclusion, let us repeat that, the Magic Wand is but the
highly sensitive magical medium for transmitting and
concentrating the force of the learned magician; that it is
equally powerful under great excitement of mind, WHETHER USED
CONSCIOUSLY OR NOT. The stream of mental fire will go in the
direction the Wand happens to be pointed, and, therefore, should
never be in the hands of the wicked or foolish, any more than
firearms. It is potential or otherwise, in exact proportion to
the artist's wisdom and dynamic mentality, and is useless in the
hands of the idiotic or weak-minded. A Magic Wand requires brains
and vigorous mental force to make it effective, just as the steam
engine requires an apparatus for generating the steam, that moves
it. With a determined will, and a mental conception of one's
inward power, any man or woman can, by means of this sensitive
Wand, defy all the legionaries of Hell, and quickly disperse
every form of spiritual iniquity.
The firearms which have become so intricate in their mechanism
and so destructive in their operations, are only a degeneration
of the Magic Wand. The first weapons of warfare and slaughter
were very crude and clumsy, then larger and more destructive,
until at last they have become as fine in texture and mechanical
genius, compared with their early brothers, as the Magic Wand is
to-day, above and beyond, the present weapons of warfare. At
last, the original mode of defense will be rediscovered and
become a utility in the hands of the majority of mankind. At the
same time, the mental and moral nature will be evolving into
better conditions, too, so that their use will not be given to
the ignorant and evildoers, but placed in charge of the educated,
those who are morally capable of leading and ruling.
Yes, we are now stepping upon the plane of reason and intuition,
where right, not might, will prevail and rule the world. The
present mode of government and rule will be changed, and one of
humanitarian justice take its place.
God hasten the Millenium.
THE BOOK WHICH IS CALLED THE TABLETS OF AETH
THE SACRED SCROLL WHICH IS CALLED THE TABLETS OF AETH
NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ASTRAL RECORDS AND
DONE INTO A BOOK,
By ZANONI
TO WHICH IS ADDED A SERIES OF INTERPRETATIVE REFLECTIONS FOR THE
SPIRITUAL MEDITATION OF THE FAITHFUL.
FOREWORD
Thy temple is the arch Of yon unmeasured sky;
Thy Sabbath the stupendous march Of grand eternity.
To my Brothers and Sisters of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor:
GREETING--For some years it has been my desire to leave a
spiritual legacy to the many devoted friends and followers who
have braved so much amid present truth and error for my sake.
In choosing the present work for such a purpose, I have had in
view the deeper spiritual needs of the soul--the prophetic
element of the interior spirit, which can best exalt itself
through the contemplation of Nature's arcane symbolism of the
starry heavens--not the material expression of the glittering
splendors of the midnight sky, but the spiritual soul-pictures of
those blazing systems that reveal to the seeing eye the shining
thrones of THE RULERS--the Powers that Be.
Ever since the dawn of intellectual human life upon our Mother
Earth, long before the days of the cave man, or even the first
frost that heralded the coming of the Ice Age, souls have hoped
and hungered and souls have quailed and fallen in their struggles
with the mysteries of God. But ever and anon some bright flower
of the race has gained the spiritual victory. A Messianic soul
has responded to aspirations of a great-hearted, great-souled
woman, pregnant with spiritual yearnings beyond her race, and she
has unconsciously blessed her kind for the generations yet to
come with that incarnated mystery--THE SON OF GOD. Blessed, O
Woman, is thy patient mission on the earth, and transcendent are
the holy mysteries of thy maternity. Every human birth is a
Divine miracle in humanity, performed by the Motherhood of God.
Hence it is that, from the earliest ages of life, triumphant
souls have stormed the gates of the sanctuary and penetrated
Nature's most occult mysteries and there recorded their spiritual
victories. Amid these sacred records lies one great scroll, that
none but the brightest and bravest may read.
This sacred scroll, sealed with the seven mystic seals of the
heavens, contains The Tablets of Aeth, a record of the soul's
experiences upon the planes of both conscious and sub-conscious
life-spirit and matter, that are expressed in a series of
universal symbols, which manifest to the seer the processes of
creative life, of spiritual cause with material effect. And,
finally, the mystery of the seven vials and the seven stars of
Saint John are written therein; for the Tablets are the
hieroglyphic keys which unlock the realities of truth involved
within the unrealities of external life, and open up, to the
aspiring soul, inconceivable vistas of knowledge yet possible of
realization, within the Divine womb of the uncreated Aether.
Myriads of exalted spirits, who have toiled for the treasure
which doth not corrupt, have added, and are adding, their portion
of personal conception to this universal conception of life, so
that the sacred symbols themselves, inscribed upon these
imperishable Tablets, ARE EVOLUTIONARY--are slowly unfolding
through the eons of time, and revealing wider and yet deeper
processes of the light, life, and love, of the Motherhood of God.
Therefore, all Divine revelation of infinite truth is limited and
finite as to its conception, when revealed through a finite
capacity. All Divine truths are universal; all personal
conceptions of such truths are limited; hence springs the
unquenchable fountain of the ONE eternal truth, eternally
repeating itself, in cosmic as in human life, by the progressive
unfoldment of Nature's unlimited potentialities.
"The outward doth from the inward roll,
And the inward dwells in the inmost soul."
The true poet is always a seer, and he might have added that the
INMOST SOUL is the uncreate, and, the yet uncreated itself, lies
buried in the ever eternal beyond; hence the immortality of the
human spirit.
This sacred astral scroll, rightly and reverently studied by the
disciple of the higher law, becomes a boundless source of
knowledge and inspiration. There is no mood of the mind or
yearning of the soul that cannot be satisfied and refreshed from
this inexhaustible fountain of spiritual truth, no passion of the
human heart that cannot be eased of its burden and soothed of its
pain. Its spiritual refreshment falls like the dew from heaven
upon those who are weary and heavy laden with the trials and
sufferings of external life.
Accept it, then, even as it is given unto you. My friends and
brethren, accept it as Zanoni's last work on earth--his legacy to
you, and may the spirit of the All-Father-Mother, the ineffable
spirit of Life, Light, and Love,--the Unknowable, whom men call
God, rest upon you and be with you now and forever.
INTRODUCTION
TO THE BOOK WHICH IS CALLED "THE TABLETS OF AETH," WHEREIN ARE
DESCRIBED THE FORMULAS OF MEDITATION.
THE FORMULAS OF MEDITATION,
TO THE DRAGON, FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.
"When first, a musing boy, I stood beside
Thy starlit shimmer, and asked my restless heart
What secrets Nature to the herd denied,
But might to earnest hierophant impart;
When lo! beside me, around and o'er,
Thought whispered, 'Arise, O seeker, and explore.' "
The Tablets of Aeth are the culminating expression of symbolical
ideas, and the studious meditation thereof is to be approached
and continued in this wise:
First, commit to memory, as near as may be, all the ideas
involved in the astrological laws and principles laid down in
"The Science of the Stars," formulated in the second part of "The
Light of Egypt," Vol. I, especially as regards the symbolism
there given and manifestation thereof on the intellectual plane.
Mentally digest these aspects of truth most thoroughly.
Second, carry forward the same course of mental training with
regard to the preceding chapters in this volume, from No. 1 to
No. 12. There are thirteen chapters, but No. 13, the last one,
being "The Penetralia," should not be included in this course,
but, rightly used, should be reserved as the last and final
revelation for spiritual contemplation.
The twelve chapters just mentioned continue the great astral laws
given in "The Light of Egypt," Vol. I, from this plane to that of
the soul life of the human monad (both prior to and after human
incarnation). At this point we leave the finite and step into the
realms of the infinite. From the sphere of limitations which
surround the microcosm we enter the starlit path of the
macrocosm, and here, with the illimitable ocean of eternal life
sweeping onward before us, we hear the first strains of the Grand
March of the Universe burst forth from the organs of God! The
suns of creative life swell the infinite chorus of sound;
archangels swing their fiery batons to the march of the heavenly
host; and all earthly sound has ceased. We are absorbed in the
music of the spheres.
We are now in the realm of universals, the domain of living
realities. The Tarot of Mother Nature revolves before us,
revealing her mystic meanings to the soul. All ideas are symbols,
and symbols are reservoirs for the conservation of thought. And
this is a very truth: Even so on earth as it is in heaven.
The Tablets of Aeth, then, constitute a spiritual astrology, a
spiritual science of the stars, void of mathematics, yet
possessing all the exactitude of figures, constructed on the
principles of astronomy, yet expressed by the methods of the
Kabbalah.
The transmission of spiritual truth from inward to outward form,
though differing according to the age in which it is expressed,
is ever the same in principle. And in the same way that the
sacred clavicula of Solomon became the Tarot of Bohemian gypsies,
so did the Tablets of Aeth manifest their mysteries in the starry
science of Chaldean lore. But there is this sharp line of
demarcation between them, namely, the Tablets of Aeth deal with
universal human life and nature, with infinite principles from
which all finite laws radiate. The Tablets of Aeth express and
symbolize the cause. All other mundane systems of occult study,
astronomical or metaphysical, are spirito-natural effects, the
individual intellectual fruits, gathered from the one universal
tree of knowledge. Uncreated, Unlimited Potentiality, is the one
impersonal truth shining forever in the Great White Light of God.
All the laws, powers, and principalities, manifested in the
moving Universe, are but the colored rays, blazing with glorious
life through the prisms of matter.
Having stated thus much, the neophyte will perceive in what
meditative sphere of thought the Tablets may be used. The method
of study is, as shown, a purely synthetic deduction of human
ideas from spiritual symbols of universal principles. The Tablets
themselves constitute a grand arcane Tarot of man, God and the
universe, and of all the powers that dwell therein. They may be
studied singly, as, for instance, meditating upon some one great
universal idea or principle; or they may be studied in trines,
as they appear in each separate book, or chapter, or as squares,
like two, five, eight, eleven, or as the seal of two trines, one,
three, five, seven, nine, eleven, with No. twelve in the center,
as the revealer of the mystery. And, finally, they may be
contemplated as the Grand Oracle of Heaven, in the following
manner:
Make a circle of the tablets, as you would with a pack of Tarot
cards, beginning with No. 1, on the eastern horizon, and
proceeding in the exact opposite order from a figure of the
heavens--No. 2, being on the Twelfth House, No. 3, on the
Eleventh, and {} on the M. C. of the figure, as in the
Astro-Masonic chart, given in the second part of "The Light of
Egypt," Vol. I, and so proceed with the rest of the twelve
tablets of the stars. This figure will represent the
potentialities of the macrocosm, the starry signs symbolizing the
possibilities of things past or to be, and the rulers the active
executors thereof. Study the figure in all its aspects as such,
first singly, tablet by tablet, then as a whole--the cosmos.
Next, place the ruler of any given tablet at the side of the
Mansion, and try to penetrate its various meanings, powers and
possibilities. Then proceed the same with a trine and a square,
and, last, with all the rulers, in the order of their celestial
lordship of the signs, each in his appointed place, as a whole
Arcana.
In any grave crisis of mental or physical affairs, wherein
nations, and not individuals, are concerned, the tablets may be
used as a celestial scheme of the heavens, thus: Cast a figure of
the heavens for the Sun's first entry into the sign Aries at the
vernal equinox, calculated for the meridian of the capital city
of the country under consideration. Degrees and minutes are not
wanted. Then place the twelve tablets in place of signs, exactly
as they would occur in an astrological figure. Then place the
rulers of the Sun, Moon and planets therein (each having its own
tablet), as they are found to be situated in an ephemeris for the
time of the figure. This done, study the whole from a spiritual
standpoint as the causes and ultimates of the crisis, according
to astro laws.
The foregoing simple directions will, I think, be sufficiently
plain for all purposes, never forgetting that this holy study is
not a system of divination, as commonly understood, but of Divine
revelation, in its highest and most holy religious sense. Long
study and most reverent meditation will be required to master
this mystery, and many errors of judgment will occur to the
beginner.
The interpretative reflections are added for the purpose of
guiding and guarding the spiritually untrained seer from possible
error in fundamental conceptions only. They must not by any means
be taken as a complete revelation of the tablets, but only as a
series of skeleton keys by means of which all things may be
revealed to the earnest seeker thereof. To have added more than
is given would only be to defeat the object of this work. Each
seeker for the truth must excavate the mines of knowledge, and
dig further into this universal well of truth for himself.
Remember that all interpretation will be personal to each
student. Of no one can it be affirmed, "thou hast said," and so
endeth the matter. Not so. To each, according to his talent,
shall the mysteries of the kingdom be revealed, to every one
according to his humility, spiritual light, and merit. But from
the arrogant, the selfish, and spiritually proud, shall all
things be taken away, and truth shroud herself in the veil of
delusion. In simplicity of mind, then, and purity of soul,
approach the Holy of Holies. "Suffer little children to come unto
Me," saith a messenger of the Most High, "for of such is the
Kingdom of Heaven." Verily, therefore, I say unto you, that not
until you can look upon all the works of Nature--beauty in her
nakedness or vice and crime in their repulsiveness, with pure
thought and holy feeling, can you inherit eternal life.
Here endeth the introduction to the book which is called "The
Tablets of Aeth."
PART I
OF THE TWELVE MANSIONS
Here beginneth Chapter I of the Book which is called "The Tablets
of Aeth," wherein is transcribed the First Quadrant of the Twelve
Mansions.
"I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some lesson of that after life to spell;
And by and by my soul returned to me
And answered, 'I, myself, am Heaven and Hell.' "
"The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line
, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."
TABLET THE FIRST
Aries
SYMBOL
A deep blue Sky, a blaze, as if something were about to rise.
I
REFLECTION
TABLET THE FIRST
The blush of dawn of a new life, all nature quivering with the
sense of coming, conscious life; Isis, vibrant with love of the
coming child, her bosom flushed in expectation of the little son
soon to breathe on her yearning breast.
In this we trace the great lesson of preparation, of sending the
light before the form, of the prophecy before the fulfillment.
Dawn must precede sunrise. What you expect will be your destiny.
It is the longing of centuries that incarnates a god, a real
Sun-God, whose vibrant love-life can thrill other lives into
prayer--aspiration, the struggle for eternal life. The dawn
represents the expectant maternity of Nature--God.
O child of Adam! See that thou expecteth much, and that thy
aspirations are reflected in thy outward life.
TABLET THE SECOND
Taurus
SYMBOL
A red sun on the horizon of an inky sea.
II
REFLECTION
TABLET THE SECOND
Nature has shown forth her glory, as brought forth by young
Horus, but her creative force is still unreflected. The sea is
black and inky. The Son of God is born, but the sea of human life
still remains unconscious, in primeval darkness.
The angles of the Sun and the sea are not yet in right relation
to each other. A few, standing on the watch-towers of life,
seeing the red glow of the risen sun, call "Look!" But the
unfortunate ones in the outer darkness cry, as they beat their
breasts; "No! There is no light! You do but dream!" And yet the
Sun of Life has risen--the Divine light glows.
O child of Adam! Remember that "In Him was life, and life was the
light of man, and the light shineth in the darkness, and the
darkness comprehended it not."
TABLET THE THIRD
Gemini
SYMBOL
Two stars are rising at angles to each other and to the Polar
star, while eight stars shine faintly in the black space of
background.
III
REFLECTION
TABLET THE THIRD
The Divine symbol of soul-matehood is here signified in the two
stars rising in the foreground; not only the soul-affinities of
humanity, but the eternal father-mother forces manifested in the
biune spirit of universal life and nature, the two great creative
powers, Life and Light, whose harmony creates love, attraction
and repulsion, and the straight lines of law and justice, which
blend in the spiral of mercy.
The two stars are rising at an oblique angle to the pole-star,
the center around which, material things revolve. So, too, life
and love are balanced by the star of wisdom. Love in the spirit
is adaption to the environment in matter and providence in
universal life. The eight stars reveal the mystery of the
tablet--universal death, present with life, the final end of all
discord glimmers faintly afar off, and man questions the love of
God, seeing that all things pass away, not realizing that death
is the germinal promise of life, of transformation, of the
realization of unrealized hopes, of the union of loving hearts in
their starry pilgrimage back to the Father's home.
O child of Adam! Listen unto the words of the Teacher: "I and the
Father are one." Suffer little children to come unto me, for of
such ii the Kingdom of Heaven."
PART I
Here beginneth Chapter 2 of the Book which is called "The Tablets
of Aeth," wherein is transcribed the Second Quadrant of the
Twelve Mansions.
"How they struggle in the immense Universe!
How they whirl and seek!
Innumerable souls, that all spring forth
From the vast world-soul.
They drop from planet to planet,
And in the abyss they weep
For their forgotten land.
These are thy tears, O Dionysus,
O Spirit vast, Divine One, Liberator.
Draw back thy daughters to the breast of light."
"Ah, love! Could you and I with him conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits? And then
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire."
TABLET THE FOURTH Cancer
SYMBOL
A woman's face unconscious, in trance, surrounded by clouds.
IV
REFLECTION
TABLET THE FOURTH
The dreaming woman, whose brooding thoughts shape the coming man.
The race is never any farther advanced than the average thought
of the woman. She is yet sleeping, knowing not her powers. So,
not until she awakes and recognizes herself as conceiving by the
Holy Ghost and the mother of the incarnate God, will that God be
brought forth unto universal knowledge.
In this is the great lesson to woman: Ever remember thy creative
power as the mother of the humanity of the future. The sun in thy
mansion exerts its highest power. Awake, therefore, O soul, and
eclipse not its brightness with thy dreams of sublunary power.
O child of Adam! Ever honor the womb that gave thee birth, and
know that all thy earthly greatness received its seed therefrom.
A fountain cannot rise higher than its source.
TABLET THE FIFTH
Leo
SYMBOL
A man's arm, bent, exceedingly muscular, a knife in the hand, a
streak of lightning opposite the arm, which is defying the
lightning.
V
REFLECTION
TABLET THE FIFTH
Here we have the symbol of the incarnate fire of the spirit
defying the mere natural fire of the heavens. The woman sleeps
and broods and dreams, but the man she has brought forth is
awake, and bids defiance to the fiery forces of Nature. He has
armed himself with the keen knife of action, and with it has
conquered the forces of matter. He has harnessed the lightning,
and made the electric fluid his obedient slave. And thus has he
mastered all forces inferior to spirit--that spirit of conscious
life which is his birthright.
The lesson to be gleaned from this is that, the kingdom of Nature
must be taken by storm. Not for rest, but for work, has Mother
Nature sent forth her man child; not for peace, but for battle;
not for inertia, but for effort.
O child of Adam! Arm yourself with the sword--mayhap the sword of
affliction--and, gallantly raising the strong right ann aloft,
hurl defiance at the chaos of Nature, sure that the fire from the
Sun of the spirit is burning in every vein of that arm.
TABLET THE SIXTH
Virgo
SYMBOL
A Lotus, rising from the water, coiled around its stem a snake,
whose efforts fail to reach the flower.
VI
REFLECTION
TABLET THE SIXTH
Here we have the sacred flower, symbol of the virgin soul,
uncontaminated by the snake of passion, which can only enfold the
body-- the stem; the snake of matter--of lust--of evil. But the
flower of the spirit--the soul--lifts its pure white petals
upward as an incense cup to the Sun of the Spirit.
In this symbol read the great lesson of the experience of evil.
If, the flower of the soul, blossoms; the mud of the soil and the
snake of the passions are but the surroundings of its roots and
stem. Both are necessary for the perfection of the flower. The
roots sink deep into Mother Earth, and draw nourishment and life,
lifting matter upward, while the snake of passion becomes, under
another aspect, the serpent of wisdom. Coiled around the stem of
this life, it gives to the incarnated soul that wisdom which
later blossoms in the Seraph of the Sun spheres.
O child of Adam! Take suffering, if it forge the sword of the
spirit. Take evil and passion, and turn them into deep lessons of
life, blossoming the evil into good, changing passion into
wisdom. Only "the pure in heart can see God."
PART I
Here beginneth Chapter 3 of the Book which is called "The Tablets
of Aeth," wherein is transcribed the Third Quadrant of the Twelve
Mansions.
"To know what really exists, one must cultivate silence with ones
self, for it is in silence that the eternal and unexpected
flowers open, which change their form and color according to the
soul in which they grow. Souls are weighed in silence, as gold
and silver are weighed in pure water."
"The worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns to ashes; or it
prospers, and anon, like snow upon the desert's dusty face,
lighting a little hour or two, is gone."
TABLET THE SEVENTH
Libra
SYMBOL
A crowned king, with a scythe raised in the air, looks closely at
two boys wrestling beneath him in a field of grain, a red poppy
below them.
VII
REFLECTION
TABLET THE SEVENTH
The symbol of Nature's eternal war for the impossible equilibrium
between spirit and matter; the symbol, also, of Time, which is
but the illusion in which eternity clothes itself; forever
putting on and forever putting off new garments of matter. The
crowned king is the victorious soul, waiting, with the scythe of
Time, to reap the harvest of the world; while incarnated man, as
represented in the wrestling youths, is struggling for that which
he did not produce, and which only death can reap. The poppy
reveals the secret of the illusions of Nature's master-showman.
All earthly things are unreal to the spirit, which is the only
real thing. Man's effort to hoard and save the things of this
world IS INJUSTICE TO OTHERS. The struggle is eternal, and no
matter how careful or cunning man is to monopolize either power,
truth or wealth, swift-footed time will readjust all things
without error.
O child of Adam! "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through
and steal."
TABLET THE EIGHTH
Scorpio
SYMBOL
A wide, and plain, on it a skeleton; a dull, grey sky, in which
an Eagle soars, full-fed, it seems, from the flesh of the
skeleton.
VIII
REFLECTION
TABLET THE EIGHTH
A significant symbol to the seer, showing forth the two ultimates
of life and death, of earthly things and sex. Scorpio is both the
eagle of the spirit, soaring aloft, well fed with all that is
worth carrying away from the earth; and also the scorpion, whose
natural home is the desert.
In sex, either way, life is given. Shall it be to your spirit
making fat and full your immortal self, or will the other
interpretation be yours? And will you leave yourself dead and
annihilated, a skeleton, to the Ego, the Divine spirit? For sex
is indeed the foundation of all. Raised to the region of Libra,
it is power and magnetism. To the bosom it is love; to the brain
it is enthusiasm. It is the promethian fire of life, the creative
force, giving vigor to whatever region to which it is raised; or,
lowered, to be spent with no returns, it debases and renders life
a desert of dry bones.
O child of Adam! Reflect on the fall of man from spirit to
matter, and combine the wisdom of the serpent with the purity of
the dove, and "lest ye partake of the tree of life ye shall
surely die."
TABLET THE NINTH
Saggitarius
SYMBOL
A child in a shell, holding in its hand a feathered lance, is
drawn by five stars, grouped in an under arc.
IX
REFLECTION
TABLET THE NINTH
The symbol of the conscious soul. The shell is the body, drawn by
the five senses--stars--which form an under arc, to represent the
world of material things and our relation thereto. The child,
armed with the feathered lance, is the soul; riding thus, fully
armed, in the shell of the body, it realizes the duality of
truth; that all things are changeable; and that each thing is
true upon the plane of its manifestation, while an illusion to
that which is interior to its life, while the soul is in its
dream state. Sagittarius represents conservatism and the
permanence of crystallized institutions; but, when the spirit
awakes and bursts the shell of matter, the senses, instead of
being the guardians and jailors of its environment, become its
servants, and the means by which, united as the one Ego,
sense-perception, it races o'er the fields of Aeth--a being of
life and beauty, shining in the empyrean of God.
O child of Adam! Ever remember that temperament and environment
constitute the north and south poles of human possibility, and
that ability, combined with opportunity, is the measure of
responsibility.
PART 1
Here beginneth Chapter 4 of the Book which is called--"The
Tablets of Aeth," wherein is transcribed the Fourth Quadrant of
the Twelve Mansions.
"A hair, perhaps, divides the false and true. Yes, and a single
alif were the clue-- Could you but find it--to the treasure
house, And, peradventure, to THE MASTER, too.
"Beware, O my son, of self-incense. It is the most dangerous on
account of its agreeable intoxication. * * * Learn, O my beloved,
that the light of Allah's truth will often penetrate an empty
head more easily than one too crammed with learning."
TABLET THE TENTH
Capricorn
A deep, black ground, o'er which shimmers a phosphorescent light;
at each side an aurora borealis rises, mountain like; above all,
a tiny star.
X
REFLECTION
TABLET THE TENTH
Here is revealed the symbol of the messenger of the Most High.
The star hovers over the phosphorescent light cast on the
darkness as the spirit hovers over the blackness of matter. The
aurora borealis stands as the emblem for the magnetic attraction
of Earth on spirit, the Christ soon to be born in the manger of
the Goat; the descent of the Holy Ghost into material form, so
that heavenly truth may illumine the drear speculum of earthly
thought with the Divine iridescence of celestial light. It is the
lowest arc of the cycle that reveals the new birth of death unto
life--the divine egg of Brahma, containing the promise of the new
law: "Peace on Earth, good will towards men."
O child of Adam! Be thou the star, and not a dweller of the outer
darkness, and "Let your light so shine before men, that, they may
see your good works."
TABLET THE ELEVENTH
Aquarius
SYMBOL
A stormy sea is seen; above it the eight stars shine, brilliant
and clear.
XI
REFLECTION
TABLET THE ELEVENTH
This tablet symbolizes the complete materialization of man--man,
perfect on the earth and the lord thereof, in so far as material
forces are concerned. The storm is the tempest of life, the whirl
of the elements of matter in their battle with the spirit. The
eight stars, brilliant now (for they are the same stars that were
dimly seen in Gemini), show that the conquest of matter is
complete, the great fall of spirit finished; the end of
involution. And this would bring stagnation and death, if peace
now ensued. The lesson taught is that, not in peace and rest can
the soul grow; but amidst the earthquakes that shake thrones, the
floods that overwhelm countries, the fires that reduce to ashes,
has the strong man-soul grown to its present state and power. So
fear not the storm, but the calm; not the unrest, but the quiet;
fear not the battle, but the ignoble peace of the coward.
O child of Adam! The astral soul must learn to do and dare. Not
over the brave man's grave shall it be written, "Rest in peace,"
but "I will arise, and go to my father."
TABLET THE TWELFTH
Pisces
SYMBOL
A comet, beyond it infinite things, only dreamed of as yet, a
world floating in an ocean and in night, beneath are two hands
clasped palm to palm.
XII
TABLET THE TWELFTH
A REVELATION OF THE TO BE. The comet is the twelfth Avatar, the
herald, coming forth from the starry abyss of the infinite,
staying with us a little while, and then flashing on his shining
way to other worlds than ours, bearing THE DIVINE WORD from sun
to planet, as the fiery messenger of God. And here the soul may
well ask: "Who? Where? Whence and Whither?" For behold, he has
come, and gone, and
"Earth could not answer; nor the seas that mourn In flowing
purple, of their Lord forlorn; Nor rolling Heaven, with all his
signs revealed And hidden by the sleeve of night and morn."
The world floating in the sea of the infinite and resting in
night shows the present state of humanity. But, "the blush of
dawn" is ready to gladden the soul, and the expectant seer, from
his lonely vigil on the hilltop, awaits the sunlight which will
soon flood the world anew.
The two clasped hands point to many problems, chiefly soul-
matehood, the message of the starry messenger, universal
brotherhood, and the Father-Motherhood of God.
O child of Adam! Watch and pray, that a voice of the silence may
speak unto you.
Here endeth the four Quadrants of the Tablets of the Twelve
Mansions, wherein are revealed the signs and symbols thereof, as
faithfully transcribed from the sacred roll in the astral records
and called "The Tablets of Aeth."
April, 1893.
PART II
of The Book which is called
THE TABLETS OF AETH OF THE TEN PLANETARY RULERS
PART II
Here beginneth Chapter I of the Second Part of the Book which is
called "The Tablets of Aeth," wherein is transcribed the First
Trinity of the Planetary Rulers.
"The human heart is the true temple of God; enter ye into your
temples and illumine them with good thoughts. The sacred vessels,
they are your hands and your eyes. Do I say that which is
agreeable to God--doing good to your neighbors? But, first
embellish wherein dwells He, who gave you life." ----
"How small soever your lamp be, never give away the oil which
feeds it, but only the light and flame, which crown it."
TABLET THE FIRST
The Sun
SYMBOL
A flaming splendor, a center of light, radiating in all
directions.
I
REFLECTION
TABLET THE FIRST
The symbol of all created life, spiritual and material; of all
goodness, human or Divine; the center of all thought, from brutal
instinct to Deific wisdom; of all creations, from starry systems
to man, and from man back again to invisible gas; of all action,
from the imperceptible vibrations of nerve energy to the awful
destruction of worlds. All creative potency lies within a Sun
sphere. Light is life. The planets are but the offspring of light
and life. So in this symbol, we read the source of the human Ego,
of our own life. We are, as it were, the planets of the spiritual
Sun. Our souls are the attributes of the Sun, of the spiritual
Ego. Only from the Ego can we receive life eternal and make
immortality a fact. Obeying this spiritual life-force, the human
monad is but an attribute, a reflection, of the Divine Ego, and
if it fails to awake to a consciousness of this union, it withers
and dies like a flower plucked from the parent tree of life.
O child of Adam, in reverence and awe do thou meditate upon this
Tablet, for it is a thing of beauty, a being of light, life and
love, manifesting its creative mission. It is the Vicegerent of
God, flaming forth His splendors in the sky.
TABLET THE SECOND
Mercury
SYMBOL
An elephant, kneeling between two square columns; on one an
eagle, on the other a vulture.
At the side a boy, with bow and arrows, standing in doubt which
to shoot.
Below these a human face, composed of various flowers, whose
roots are snakes, a poppy, forming an eye, which winks.
II
REFLECTION
TABLET THE SECOND
A vision revealing the earthly drama of the microcosm. The
elephant represents the highest expression of intelligence, minus
the spirit; kneeling between the square columns of matter, i.e.,
guarded by them. The external mind is sleeping, or, at most,
dreaming of the things of the spirit. Above sleeping mind sit the
two birds, who represent spirit and matter, each waiting for the
slowly preparing feast. The boy, the soul with its weapons, has a
choice. Shall it be the sensuality of the flesh that he shall
destroy, or the possibilities of the spiritual life on earth. The
problem awaits solution. The eagle sits ready to bear aloft the
spirit of the sleeper. The vulture hopes for sleep to end in
death, that he may live upon the carrion thereof. The flowers of
the external mind have for their roots the snakes; and, in a
larger sense, the flowers of immortality have the serpent of
wisdom for their roots. And the poppy winks. It knows its own
power of illusion, and the double significance of the snake; the
necessity of evil in the evolution of good. It is the Tablet of
Wisdom.
O child of Adam! "Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless
as doves."
TABLET THE THIRD
Venus
SYMBOL
An altar: on it two cups, one full, the other spilled; near them
two bleeding hearts, in one a snake, in the other a dagger.
Above--clouds, from which comes a woman's face, a wreath in the
hand, coming out of the cloud; in the wreath an angel, going
upwards, with wings outspread.
III
REFLECTION
TABLET THE THIRD
There is but one altar, but one blood of the sacrament in two
cups, but one flesh of the Christ--the Ego--in two hearts, two
experiences in love, ecstacy, and pain; two results of
experience, the serpent and the dagger, symbolizing wisdom and
affliction. Above the altar the divine woman holds the wreath
encircling the angel. The angel of immortal life rises from the
altar of sacrifice. Some of the wine is spilled as offering. The
cup that is filled is raised to "Ra." To serve at the altar of
love is the soul-mission of all, even as Christ served his
disciples. Each soul must find its own service, and then the
pilgrims of the Sun return to the mansions of the blessed. The
great mother-god, Venus, Urania, quivers and thrills as she holds
forth her offspring--the angel, the young Eros of life eternal.
O child of Adam, this is the Tablet of Love. Meditate thereon, as
the last of the triune God. In this Tablet lies the secret of
suffering and pleasure. He who vibrates in pain will quiver in
ecstacy. Only those who have agonized in Hell can thrill in
Heaven.
PART II
Here beginneth Chapter 2 of the Second Part of the Book which is
called "The Tablets of Aeth," wherein is transcribed the Second
Trinity of the Planetary Rulers.
"Thou art called forth to this fair sacrifice
For a draught of milk; with the Maruts Come hither, O Agni!
They who know the great sky, the Visve
Devas without guile; with those Maruts
Come hither, O Agni!
They who are brilliant, of awful shape,
Powerful, and devourers of foes; with the
Maruts come hither, O Agni!
They who in heaven are enthroned as gods,
In the light of the firmament; with the Maruts
Come hither, O Agni!"
"Let us meditate on the adorable light of the Divine Rulers. May
it guide our intellects."
TABLET THE FOURTH
The Moon
SYMBOL
NIGHT
A wonderful spider's-web;
The web glitters in the faint moonlight against a dark background
of blue; moon invisible; on the outside of web a star, in the
center a spot of light, underneath a coffin filled with stones.
IV
REFLECTION
TABLET THE FOURTH
The web of life has caught the monad of the soul and thus
incarnated the universe, for each soul incarnates its universe at
birth, each one's world being different, and peculiar unto
himself. At the first breath, the young child polarizes his
relations to stars and earth, and it is the affinity and
repulsion which make his life experience. And the stars weave the
web in their lines of sextile, square and trine, of opposition
and conjunction, thus enveloping the monad in the Circle of
Necessity.
Outside the star of the spirit, the Ego, shines clear, free from
the entanglements of the web and unaffected by the magnetic
glamour of the Moon. And lo! the coffin is filled with stones, a
symbol of death and the Moon, which is but a casket of stones.
Therefore, little monad, caught in the tangle of the web of life
and the glamour of earthly things, take heart, for, beyond all,
is the star of your being. Call down the law of that star into
yourself, and the web is broken and waves its tattered shreds in
the breeze. The moonlight, the reflected light, pales as the
Star-Sun of your being rises, and the moonlight of Earth gives
place to the Sun-spheres of Ra.
O child of Adam! The beginning of sorrow is the dawn of spiritual
life. The wise man rules the stars; the fools of Earth obey.
TABLET THE FIFTH
Mars
SYMBOL
An immense helmet on pedestal, across which a streak of lightning
flashes; beside it a naked child painting pictures on the helmet;
beneath, a broken sword.
V
REFLECTION
TABLET THE FIFTH
Can greater irony be shown than in this astral symbol. Mars is
externally represented as a fierce warrior, awful to behold; the
reality, a little child, painting toy pictures on the helmet, too
big for his curly head. The lesson in this is indeed, that the
pen is mightier than the sword; that the big and blustering
helmet will become a plaything for the child. Soon, that the
sword of bloodshed, rape, and ruin, will be broken and war
relegated to the past, looked at, but, as pictures, painted with
hideous reality by the childhood of the race.
The symbol also reveals the great executive forces of humanity,
the child. The soul can paint, execute its ideas, its hopes and
its fears in any color--the lurid red of blood, the black of
ignorance and crime, or in the living light of beauty. All the
same, it is the childhood of man painting its ideals in the
material world.
O child of Adam, curb the anger of Mars, that thy painting may
set the dove at liberty. Let the magic of thy soul transform the
savage of the desert into the angel of mercy.
TABLET THE SIXTH
Jupiter
SYMBOL
A cave in the mountain side; a face like the sphinx comes out of
the cave, there is a blackness behind it; it looks with upturned
head to a light that is way beyond; it is a face that means
something awful, a godlike defiance to the things that are.
VI
REFLECTION
TABLET THE SIXTH
Again we are impressed with the contrast of internal and external
things. Jupiter, the symbol of authority, conservatism, church,
and state, and the stability of human institutions, and the
things that are, as the things that are the best. But oh, how
widely different the internal, the real Jupiter, that governing
power of the spirit that hurls defiance at unjust authority, the
cruelty and tyranny of the world. The soul sees the light beyond,
and, emerging from the dark chasm of matter, knows the battle
that must be fought against wrong. It is the awful--yea,
terrible--symbol of defiance to gods and men who oppose its
onward, upward march to the shining goal of light. Make way,
then! Make way! For Earth has given birth to her giant son--the
Spirit. For, listen closely, my friend, to the axiom of
Immortality. What is soul? Not the spirit, mind you; not the
deathless Ego, of which you at present, perchance, know
absolutely nothing. Soul is mere memory; a scavenger in earthly
states; and a gleaner, a hired help, in the fields of heaven; and
to become immortal, there must be something more than soul as the
result. It must take such a vital interest in its Lord's work
that, finally it becomes too valuable to lose, and must be taken
into partnership, so to say. The Ego--Lord-- has found a valued
servant, a trusted steward, after much seeking, and at once
adopts it as its very own. And so the soul becomes heir to the
heavenly estate and receives the immortal, vital principle of
spiritual union, and awakes from the son of Earth a God-like
being, free from the shackles of Time--a dweller in eternity. The
soul must awake and realize the Deific atom around which it
revolves before it is too late. Unless this is so, the seed of
immortal life, sown in matter by the Ego, has not germinated, and
it returns unfruitful and dies--it is an abortion. Many, many
seeds never germinate. Many good orthodox, but animal-like lives,
live, move, and die,--yes, die in very truth. Would to God I
could make all mankind realize this awful, inconceivable
privilege of life, that, Jupiter-like, they would turn and face
the light.
O child of Adam! "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye
of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of
God."
PART II
Here beginneth Chapter 3 of the Second Part of the Book which is
called "The Tablets of Aeth," wherein the Third, and last,
Trinity of the Planetary Rulers is faithfully transcribed.
"Thou hast entered the immeasurable regions. I am the Dweller of
the Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? * * * Dost thou fear
me? Am I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou bast
rendered up the delights of thy race? Wouldst thou be wise? Mine
is the wisdom of the countless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover."
"Thus man pursues his weary calling, And wrings the hard life
from the sky, While happiness unseen is falling Down from God's
bosom silently."
TABLET THE SEVENTH
Saturn
SYMBOL
A human figure with a scepter of power, a being of light crowned
with flames.
VII
REFLECTION
TABLET THE SEVENTH
In the external we remember Saturn as an old man, and as a
skeleton with a scythe--as Time, in fact. But see, O immortal
soul, the real Saturn, as the Angel of Life, having from time
gathered the experiences which crown him with light, holding the
rod of power; the Christ born in the manger of Capricorn, the
Goat--life born of death; the conqueror of evil. He throws off
the mask of age, and divine youth beams on us. He doffs the
mantle of rags, and royal splendors clothe him. He lifts the
hood, and behold the crown. He raises the crutch, and lo! the rod
of power. He drops the scythe of death for the jewel of eternal
life.
"Om Mani Padme Um." (Oh the jewel in the lotus.)
O child of Adam! Meditate on the transmutations of life. Behold
the earthly miracle of the caterpillar and the butterfly, of the
toiling mortal and the transcendent God!
TABLET THE EIGHTH
Uranus
SYMBOL
A human eye, from which darts lightning upon an ocean of matter.
VIII
REFLECTION
TABLET THE EIGHTH
The state of soul and spirit--penetration; the wonderful power of
soul-perception, which sheds its light on all visible things,
receiving their images and interpreting them into the spirit, the
all-seer--what does it not convey? The perception that can see
deep into your soul and see, as it were, the yet unborn thought;
that can distinguish the motive of action; that judges the
realities of your soul. Such is the Astral Uranian. For with us
all, are three planes of mind: The drift plane, the intellectual,
and the spiritual, or internal plane; and thought- reading can be
on one or all of these different states. But only the Uranian
seer can read the inmost mind, and so really know the
possibilities of your spirit.
Imagine an image of soft wax, covered with a sensitive skin. All
impressions on the skin shape the plastic wax, but go no deeper--
do not reach the soul. You can separate these impressions from
your real self, when calm and alone, and look upon emotion as a
surface play. But the tragedies of life strike deep. They affect
the soul, and go to the center of being. "Verbum sap."
O child of Adam! Watch the tempest of life closely. The Ego may
sit calm amidst the storm, but, if that be stirred--BEWARE! The
God acts; the soul alone watches.
TABLET THE NINTH
Neptune
A Winged Globe.
IX
REFLECTION
TABLET THE NINTH
An unknown quantity, a hope of progression, ideal love, and all
true mental and spiritual ideals; aspiration to become that which
we feel to be noble and true; the symbol of the monad, the soul
which, receiving its life from the Sun--the Ego--is constantly
revealing new forces and potencies of that God-life. Each soul's
Ego is its maker and God. The Ego is like the Deific potency of
the universe, unlimited in potential power, but limited by its
monad as to what will be evolved from its awful depth of being.
Deity progresses through its expressions of the cosmos. The Ego,
your God, finds progressive expression through you, through your
soul. That soul is not immortal that becomes separated from its
Ego--its God. So, soul, spread your spiritual wings and soar
upward.
O child of Adam! Know these three things: Eternity is the creator
of the universal life; universal life creates the world, and the
world is the creator of time. And of these, the Universe is Life,
and the World is Mind, and Time is the Soul. The sum total of all
is Experience. And this is individual, conscious life--"Jacta est
alea" (the die is cast)--the wings are spread.
TABLET THE TENTH
The Cypher - the unknown
SYMBOL
A Shining Nebulae; within it a dot, aimlessly wandering around an
unknown center.
X
REFLECTION
TABLET THE TENTH
The unknown in very truth. It is everything--it is also nothing.
Inconceivable visions arise within the mental universe, but
nothing assumes definite form. It is all that is past. It is
likewise everything that the future has in store. Amen.
O child of Adam! "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?
or loose the bands of Orion?"
PART III of The Book which is called THE TABLETS OF AETH
OF THE TEN GREAT KABBALISTICAL POWERS or ANGELS OF THE UNIVERSE
PART III
VISION
Each angel standing in front of the symbol is dimly outlined and
transparent. Through the angel's form is seen its symbol.
FIRST
A luminous something, which gives the impression of sleep.
SECOND
Something moving, like an ocean.
THIRD
A storm, and lightning.
FOURTH
A mist.
FIFTH
An animal moving, resembling a turtle.
SIXTH
A blue light; in the center a star with three points.
SEVENTH
An expanse of water, a blue sky, a shining disk rising on the
horizon.
EIGHTH
A lurid sky, like a red dawn; in the water floats an egg.
NINTH
Five stars on a convex arc, like a rainbow; the shell of the egg
is broken and forms continents.
TENTH
A man lying fast asleep under a magnificent palm tree, with his
face turned toward the horizon of the sea.
EXPLANATION
Only the pure in heart can see God, and to those pure souls I
commend the following brief explanation of the Vision of the
Angels of Life, which I have here recorded for the benefit of all
whom it may now and hereafter concern.
In the original Vision of the Tablets of Aeth a great circle was
seen, in the center a head, a faint shimmer above the head, as if
the light were about to dawn; a dull, lurid glow beneath, as if
of chaos or hell; the hair around the head like floating clouds,
the beard like strange cloud-streaks. Each sign of the Zodiac
surrounding the center head had within it a faintly seen face.
Beginning with the first, it became more and more distinct and
perfect with each sign until it evolved into godlike beauty in
Pisces.
The symbolic planets were around the Zodiac, and beyond these,
making a third grand circle, were the ten Evolutionary Angels.
The vision is that of the evolution of all life, spiritual and
material. We gaze at the cosmic sex mystery, and the discerning
mind, the loving spirit, can read the correspondence of the great
sacred conjugal act of both man and God; of its heights, of its
depths, and of all that lies between.
To aid in meditation on the bead at the center, herein is written
a vision, an experience of the soul in the Sleep of Sialam.
The Hermetic brethren encircled my astral body, which was deeply
entranced. "From whence," the great question, quivered through my
inmost being. To answer that awful problem of the soul the
released spirit went on its fearsome journey, back through star
systems; back, back beyond all stars, back to the blackness of
nothing-- that awful nothing, whose outside ring vibrated with
fearful flames; the fiery cherubim, winged, taking all possible
shapes, and unformed living shapes. A human flamed and changed
and vanished. The tornado of whirling, flashing, chaotic life
swirled and drove through the darkness of chaos of nothing from
nothing--and that great, unknown abyss is God! But the life is
EVOLUTIONARY.
Deity is progressive, so never can man cease to be. Never can he
return to that awful center of nothingness, or be absorbed within
the bosom of the unmanifested being. On, and on, and on, with
Deific power, God moves in ever-increasing whirls of evolution.
Thus came the answer of the ages: "From primeval force, from the
mighty breath of unmanifested being, through every phase of
action and reaction, from the energies of storm and lightning,
from star-dust to sunlight, has come the spirit of man!"
And the Astral Brethren understood.
THE TWO SEALS OF THE EARTH
I SYMBOL
A human being, with a flaming, burning heart.
II SYMBOL
A round disk inside a light, as from a sun, conceived, but not
seen.
So here endeth the Book which is called "The Tablets of Aeth,"
transcribed from the astral originals in the Year of Doom
MDCCCXCIII.
"Omnia Vincit Veritas."
"THY KINGDOM COME."
(Zanoni) April, 1893
CHAPTER XII
PENETRALIA
THE SECRET OF THE SOUL
We have now arrived at our final study, which we have approached
step by step amid the labyrinth of the mysteries concealed
beneath the Veil of Isis. We stand at last upon the very
threshold of the sacred Adytum, the "Holy of Holies," from whence
proceeds our final revelation of that inmost conception of Man's
identity with his Creator--the Penetralia of his Being--the last
secret of the incarnated soul.
The written word almost fails us--does fail in fact, when we come
to the difficult task of externalizing ideas, the sublimity of
which is so infinitely beyond the crystallized images of matter
that, they can only be realized in their true glory, when the
purified soul can view them from the ineffable heights of eternal
spirit. We are lost, dazed, at the brilliancy of the spiritual
imagery that opens out before us, in its fathomless stretch of
the eternities that are past, of the ever- imperishable present,
and the unborn eternities yet to be; all of them linked together
in one grand chain of spiritual relationship and deathless
identity; as Man, the Angel, God; and God, the Angel, Man; as the
triune Cycle of Being, within the incomprehensible Cycle of
Necessity; which constitutes Nature's cosmic university for the
complete graduation, education, and purification, of that
self-conscious, Deific atom of life, whose expression becomes the
human soul. Ah! my brothers could you, but for one single
instant, realize WHO you are, WHERE you are journeying, and WHAT
your final destiny, every earthly moment at your disposal would
be rightly used, and every hour considered too short for your
efforts to aid your fellow-man. Selfishness, wealth, and power,
would be so utterly contemptible in your sight that their
possession would be considered a fearful affliction and a curse,
the moment they exceeded the comfortable requirements of mundane
existence.
Leave self and the world behind you for the present, and, for the
moment, leave your life, with its manifold vanities, in the outer
court, and together let us cross the threshold and enter the door
of the Temple. There! At last we have entered the Sacred
Sanctuary, my brother, and we stand face to face with the
imperishable truth of our being--the truth which makes us free,
the truth which must ultimately prevail, by virtue of its own
inherent Divinity; and we realize Man as he really is, not as he
outwardly seems to be. We view him as a molecule, composed of a
congregation of separate atoms, all of them held in their places
by the centripetal force of the central human atom of life. And
yet, small as he is, small as his kingdom is, compared with the
mighty creation of which he is a part, he possesses all the
inherent qualities of the whole. This, then, is our first
conception--Man, is a microcosmic molecule, an atom of divine
life.
The scene changes within the chamber, and upon the shimmering,
luminous veil, yet before us, we view the large and mighty planet
called the Earth. Not as a revolving satellite of the Sun, but as
she really is, a vital organ of the macrocosm, the stellar womb
of the solar system, the matrix which produces the material
organic form of humanity. When the Earth was without form and
void," as we are informed in the mystical language of Genesis,
the human soul had not yet reached the state, or grade, in the
celestial university that desired the Earth and its temporary
illusions. Hence this state was void, an unborn idea, the To Be,
and darkness, symbolical of complete lack of life and
intelligence, "was upon the face of the deep," silent space.
Again the scene changes, and one by one the numberless planets,
planetoids, moons, meteors, comets, and other attendant bodies,
pass before the eye of the soul as we gaze upon the curtain of
this Sacred Penetralia, each orb belonging to some portion of the
Astral Man, each great planet constituting some vital function of
the macrocosmic organism, and conferring those qualities upon
each and every single atom pertaining to that degree of life, so
that the solar system becomes individualized as a grand cosmic
organism, its attendant satellites constituting its vital organs,
and the shining Zodiac its outward form. So, also, each planet is
a living, cosmic individual, intensely alive; living, moving,
breathing, and bringing forth its offspring of like substance,
matter, in obedience to the potential demand of incarnating
spirit. The Sun is alive, glowing with life, and constitutes the
heart and arterial center of all the circulating fluids of the
stellar anatomy.
Scientists may continue to predict, as they have been predicting,
the day when solar radiation will cease, but their predictions
will prove as worthless as the sighing of the summer wind, so far
as reality is concerned. "It is an incomprehensible mystery to
science," says Sir Robert Ball, in his "Story of the Heavens,"
"how the Sun has been able to maintain its heat with such
regularity in the past, for there has been no appreciable change
in the Earth's temperature for thousands of years." What it is
to-day it was ten thousand years ago--yea, Sir Robert Ball, and
will be in ten thousand years to come. You may wonder, and the
Royal College may wonder, but in the meantime the mighty,
pulsating Sun continues beating out its rhythmic vibrations of
spiritual and dynamic life--continues, and will continue, to send
the exhilarating current throughout every atom, to the remotest
part of his solar dominions, and the same current RETURNS TO HIM
AGAIN, UNDIMINISHED, for the purification which his glowing,
transmuting photosphere alone, can give, to be sent forward
again, upon its mission of light, life, and love, around the
vital, organic worlds of the astral organism. There is nothing
lost, no radiation of energy dispersed upon the unformed,
lifeless ether. From the radiating solar focus of Divinity it
comes, and to him, undiminished it returns, and so on forever and
ever; until the last Deific atom has won its laggard way back to
the shining throne of God.
The Sun breathes. The pulsating process of dynamic respiration,
eternally repeated during the grand period of a solar lifetime,
renews its vital energies, and supplies itself, with the full
abundance of the ever-living spirit, transmitted from the
shoreless ether in which it lives. It needs no other food, except
the magnetic nutriment it receives from each vital organ, or
planet, in return for the electrical life current it transmits to
them. Just as the human lungs inflate themselves with the vital
atmosphere, (which is only the ether, dynamically diluted by the
Earth to harmonize with our conditions), to oxygenate the blood
and add fresh fuel to the physical furnace, or supply finer
essences to the nervous centers. Just as the human heart, with
its continual, rhythmic pulsations, propels forth the circulating
fluid to every part of the human frame; so does the central heart
and lungs of the Grander Man of the Skies, (the Sun) send forth
its vitalizing energy to every part of the universe.
Such are the crowding thoughts, born of interior knowledge, that
flood the mind as we view these sacred revelations within the
sacred chamber of the soul. As yet, we are gazing upon the
undulating flow of the astral light. We yearn within our utmost
being to become the center of the Penetralia and gaze upon the
glorious radiance of the Adonai, from whose ineffable presence we
are only screened by the last shining veil of semi-transparent
matter, that waves and trembles with every spiritual aspiration.
The soul sends forth its pleading cry for light: "Who and what is
God?" Faintly, as the distant vesper sounds upon the cooling eve,
comes the answer: "Who and what art thou? What canst thou see?
What delectable blessing does Nature vouchsafe to the pure in
heart?" We tremble with the awful, yet thrilling, revelation. We
know dimly, yet fail to realize in our outward consciousness the
full import thereof. We realize wherein the mistaken selfhood
hath become the only begotten of the Father, but the revelation
is too much, and too little. We know that, faint as the voice
seemed to the yet unprepared soul, an echo only, IT WAS THE VOICE
OF THE ADONAI BEHIND THE VEIL. And now we crave the knowledge of
the Where and Whither.
Again, we see the Earth as the vital function of the
interplanetary being. It is composed of substance termed matter,
which substance is the aggregation of countless atoms, which
science has not, and never can, resolve into their individual
selves. These atoms are rings of the atomless ether, which, thus
differentiated from the formless ether, become centers of force,
the center of such force being a vacuum within the atomic ring--a
center so small that a microscope with lens one thousand times as
powerful as the most perfect modern instrument would fail to
reveal it. These atoms form systems, under the control of another
apparent vacuum; or, rather, this vacuum seems to be the focus,
or center, about which they revolve. THIS SYSTEM CONSTITUTES A
SCIENTIFIC MOLECULE OF MATTER, and, in response to the
innumerable vibrations, they assume different forms or
dimensions, and become, indifferently, molecules of oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen, or carbon, as the case may be, all of which
are but different modes of motion of the same primitive atoms,
there being in Nature but three things--Ether, Intelligence, and
Motion. What Ether is, no one knows. We call it the formless
spirit, the unmanifest, etc. But, there can be no doubt but, that
Motion is the product of Intelligence, since we never see Motion
but as the manifestation of evolution, and this is the expression
of Mind. Therefore, we have a duality--Ether and Intelligence;
one the living spirit, the other the eternal substance for its
manifestation.
Every molecule of matter is the outward form, the center of
which, is the incarnating spirit, in some degree of progress.
Man's physical organism is a system of life and development for
countless billions of them. So the Earth, in its functional
expression as the womb of Nature for the outward expression of
Man, is only so in a material sense. HE IS PRIOR TO THE PLANET.
He (Man) is only the offspring of the planet by virtue of his
material body being a part of the substance of the Earth. This
life is a stage, only, of his material journey; and, just as
Man's body is continually throwing off useless dead matter and
replacing the same with new life, so, too, the countless organic
forms of Earth are hourly returning to the ground from which they
sprang, and new forms, rising from the same dust, are taking
their places.
Here, then, is the sum total: First is revealed to us the grand
Astral Man, the Zodiac being the outward idea or form, the Sun
and his system the vital functions thereof. The Earth, apart from
its functional expression or place, is also an individual. Man,
apart from forming a molecule of the planetary womb, by
comparison, is also an individual. And, lastly, every molecule of
Man's organism is also, in reality, an individual, and small only
by comparison with the human frame. And as there are the high
Solar Archangels of the Sun, and a chief amongst these seated
upon his throne of fire, so there is an Archangelic Chief of the
Earth, surrounded by descending degrees of wisdom and power to
Man, who also, in his turn, stands as the Deific center and chief
of his being, his soul being the sphere of consciousness, which,
when united to the feminine soul, constitutes the Angel of Life,
Eternal. Down still we go, and find that this Divine scale of
life and being is, from the lowly molecule, system upon system
climbing, sphere upon sphere, upward and onward, forever,
evermore, and all eternity cannot bring nearer the end of Man's
glorious immortality.
In the full revelation of this divine scheme of creation, so full
of light, life, love, joy and harmony, a scheme void of death and
annihilation, the mind once more reflects upon the physical
illusions of slowly advancing scientific thought. Camille
Flammarion, the great psychomaterialist of France, has painted,
in his various novels, a lurid, almost horrible, picture of what
the mighty universe must become from the logical deductions of
his own school of thought; a school which would be best named as
transcendental materialism. According to this conception,
"thousands, aye, millions of worlds are rushing through space,
inert, frozen, and dead. Suns have cooled down and ceased to give
forth the life-sustaining element of light, but have still
retained their mighty attraction upon their attendant planets,
according to the laws of gravity, by virtue of their material
mass, and thus hold their planetary offspring in the eternal,
cold, icy grasp of death. Our Sun, too, is cooling fast; the
Earth has already lost a great portion of her own internal heat.
She has passed her prime of life, and death--cold, icy death--has
already begun to encroach upon her extremities. The South pole
(the feet) is now practically lifeless in one perpetual covering
of ice. So, too, her head; her locks are the white of perpetual
snow. No longer has she the blush and beauty of youth, no longer
adorned with the healthy covering of verdue which youthfulness
gives, and as our geologists prove was once the case. So that,
although the time may still be long, according to our reckoning
of years, it is only a brief moment in eternity when this fair
Earth, and also the beauteous splendor of the silent stars, will
be locked forever in darkness, and the final sleep of doom." If
this be so, we ask of the inmost soul, if life be but the fitful
awakenings of the indestructible spirit, ebbing and flowing in
response to the rise and fall of Nature's cosmic barometer and
the transmutations of matter; if life is, in reality, but a brief
and passing moment, eternally repeated, from the flush of youth,
"the gilded salon to the bier and the shroud, then why, O why
should the spirit of mortal be proud?" Why aspire to penetrate
the inward realities of life and enter the Holy of Holies--to
seek and find out God? As the rushing torrent of this thought
swept o'er the mental chambers of the soul and saturated the
spirit with its icy sting, as it lay still chained within the
prison house of matter, the higher self rose, sublime in its
grandeur, and consciousness of divine relationship, and, in the
last earthly appeal for light, for divine truth, as to Man and
his immortality, it turned in reverence and awe before the still,
shimmering veil of the sacred Penetralia. The trial had come, the
crucial test, whether of life or death, the final revelation to
Man. In purity of heart and humility of soul we await in
agonizing suspense. There is a thrilling sensation, as though of
ten thousand electric currents consuming the frame, and a swaying
to and fro, as if drifting upon an ocean of fire; then a dead
silence, so profound that whole eternities seem to pass, without
either beginning or end. And the sight of the inward spirit is
opened slowly. Who? Where? What? For the shadows have fled, the
luminous curtain fades, is gone, and flashing before the inward
sight stands the ineffable Adonai. It is I--YOU! There is no God
but this, and in one moment the interior consciousness becomes
at-one-with-self, God, and from that inconceivable height of
profound vision we again look upon Nature. Behold Sun, Moon and
planets in all the original magnificence of their nebulous
luminosity; from nebulous rings we proceed, stage after stage,
each producing its own degrees of life. On, on we pass the ages,
the geological cycles of inconceivable duration in time, but only
a mere instant in eternity; and on and on, as the changes roll,
until we see Earth as she is now; still on, at the ever-urging
desire of the triumphant Soul, and a remarkable change is
apparent. From forces, at present latent, there comes a change;
and, instead of so-called physical; electrical races have
superceded the present humanity. Crystallization has ceased; and
all things become lighter in density and more ethereal in nature;
AND THE ORBIT OF THE EARTH GROWS LESS. Nearer and nearer shines
the mighty Sun; first Vulcan, then the swift messenger of the
gods are indrawn within the solar vortex, each absorption
producing a cataclysmic change upon our Earth. Then comes the
turn of Venus, while slowly and surely the orbit of the Earth
contracts, and nearer shines the Sun. And, finally, the beautiful
Earth, her mission over, the last atom of life beyond her rule,
inward she sweeps, and is lost in the mighty ocean of fire as a
stone is lost in the lake. Verily is the word of prophecy a
literal truth: "The Earth shall be destroyed with fire." And so
on with the rest, each planet in its proper turn fulfilling the
functions at present performed by the Earth, each becoming the
grand theater of material and ethereal life, and the cometary
bodies, to-day chasing unknown orbits in the realms of ether,
gradually fall into line when their erratic cycle is ended,
taking the places of the present outermost planets.
No such thing as death, no such thing as the dark silence of
eternal night, for any organic creation of the Most High. From
the Sun they come, and unto the Sun each must ultimately return,
even as the body of Man, coming from the dust of Earth, must also
return thereto, to be taken up in new forms and furnish substance
for other degrees of life. And thus will it be, until the Sun, in
its mighty solar heavens of purified spiritual life, will form
the last, the final battle ground of matter, receiving ITS NEW
LIFE FROM A GREATER CENTER THAN ITSELF. A glorious solar world,
well typified in the last Battle of the Gods, and the new
Earth--a World whereon the Angels tread in superlatively
beautiful forms, clothed with the ideals and emanations of their
own divine purity--Souls clothed in Air, treading the ethereal
Realms of Light, as the children of God, and the inheritors of
the Kingdom of Heaven.
Must the searching eye of the Soul seek further? Must the
insatiable thirst of the Spirit launch out upon the trackless
infinities of the yet To Be? Must it still penetrate further in
the profound beyond, where time ceases to be, where the past,
present, and the future, are forever unknown, but exist only as
the Deific consciousness of the eternal Now? No. The Soul at last
rests satisfied. The final revelation is over.
My brother, we have done; and, in closing, have only to add that,
not until the speculating philosophy of earthly schools blends
with the Science of the Spheres in the full and perfect fruition
of the wisdom of the ages, will Man KNOW and REVERENCE his
Creator, and, in the silent Penetralia of his inmost being,
respond, in unison with that Angelic Anthem of Life: "We Praise
Thee, O God!"
Back to Full Books
|