part in this mystery for the evolution and perfecting of the

Divine within ; it is thus that the body is regarded by St. Paul
as a temple of the Holy Ghost, and it is for this, that in their
highest and ultimate use, its different members havo their
being ; they are a laboratory that is of and for the spirit
to work in.

12. The order adopted by the Hermetic writers may seem
to be most disorderly, but it is not so much so as it appears ;
the fact is, they often describe different phenomena occurrent
in the different repetitions of the process ; see for example the
" Golden Treatise." The fermentative process has to be
gone over and over again, and thus the author of that Treatise
seems purposely to confuse and intermix the several steps
taken in the work, when in reality he is describing the stages
taken and the results reached, as the Artist begins, ends, and
repeats the mysterious experiment.

13. The macrocosmic image of the microcosm is the
downward-born nature of which Hermes speaks very finely

564 Appendix.

v

in the Pimander. It is the Eve which Adam brought forth,
and in which he beheld as an image his own soul, the Absolute
Idea of the Beautiful, the Divine image ; the reason why it is
macrocosmic, passive and ephemeral is its want of consub-
stantiality ; it is an image, thrown forth, which image of
perfect beauty attracts the soul, and united to it brings forth
the ideal into an actual offspring.

14. The Hermetic sepulchre is the vehicle of the dead
Divine Life within us, and at the same time it is the death
of itself — ' idem est sepulchrum ac cadaver."

15. The Gold Alchemical is the first conceived Paternal
Light — it is the seed metaphysical of mineral gold, which
JEne&s was told by the Sybil that he must find and gather.

16. The " orient animal " means the animal (that is, the
opposite) will which is clothed in Light ; the third which rises
in opposition to the first.

17. The Golden Fleece is the outward appearance pre-
sented by the light of Life diffused over the body of the seeker
in the third life ; it is of a purplish lustre.

The seeker, however, in this point of relation, is the adept,
the discoverer, the finder.

18. In the lower development of the Hermetic life, the
quintessences successively form themselves, having each of
them a spherical capacity and wholeness, but these world
forms are unstable and, uninformed with the Light Essential,
resolve and die.

19. In the vital changes which are intimately connected
with the spirit changes occurrent in the process, the vital force
in the blood undergoes alchemical changes in its relation to the
body. There are three principles in this force, Attraction,
Circulation, Repulsion— the Alchemical © Salt, $ Mercury,
£ Sulphur. What is really changed is the magnetic attrac-
tion ; the medial spirit is changed ; life is attracted in,
instead of out.

20. We must remember that Alchemy is Divine Chemistry,
and the transmutation of Life ; and therefore that which h
the medium between soul and body is changed, and the soul
freed from the chains of corporeity, and the body is left as a
mere husk. These people put on their bodies as mere coats.

21. The principle of body is preserved in what they call
the ashes or Capvt mortuum, and that one principle being
saved the whole life is restored from it : Khunrath calls it

Appendix. 565

'' our pigmy/' also " the diadem of the body/' and I think
he refers to it under the term " Duanach."

22. It is a curious thing that the Third Principle, i.e., the
siderial and elementary birth, to use Bohme's language, is
the medium of perceiving the First, which is hidden in its
mineral life ; that life is full of defilements and temptations ;
it is therefore necessary, before going into it consciously, that
the will and purpose be perfectly pure and simple in this
return of the reason into its First Cause ; the motive is
segregated from the whole life as a pure Light allied to that
which it seeks.

23. The word fermentation conveys an idea of the perfecting
principle and of the possibility of transmutation beyond any
other word, and also of the fixation or everlasting preservation
of which they speak ; and so of immortality, it is the best
image of the Divine Art which earthly processes give.

Alchemy is a process of fermenting the vital Spirit in and
by its own Light.

The Vital Spirit is in the Universal as well as in the
individual.

In the Art the individual draws the Universal. The best
illustration of the Art as a fermentative process is given by
Basil Valentine in his %i Keys/' It is through this Ar that
man is brought into relationship with God, hence it is called
by the Adepts Holy Alchemy; thus Norton says — "It is
most profound philosophy, this subtle science of Holy
Alchemy."

The moment men begin to reduce the ontological ground
taken by Adepts to physical science they begin to twaddle.

24. Lorenz Oken* is a man who will be appreciated some
day, I suspect. He is a man who deals with nature in that
higher way, never in that lower ; it strikes me that of all
writers Oken best evolves Causal Truth into the outward
forms of life.

25. There are three Lives to be represented. The Terres-
trial, the Celestial, the Infernal. The Terrestrial . is the sen-
suous and represents the Animal Kingdom. In man it is
dominant in the head.

The Celestial is the emotional, receptive, instinctive life,
and represents the Vegetable Kingdom. In man it resides in
the epigastric region and heart ; the plexus Solaris, the Archseus
of Paracelsus, is its workshop.

The Infernal is the voluntary agent in life, and represents
the Mineral Kingdom. In man it resides in the lumbar region.

*Author of Elements of Physiophilosophy (London, Ray Society, 1847).

566 Appendix.

Each of these lives is dominant in the Kingdom of Nature
to which it is especially attached ; in fact, it is its essential
quality, its substance.

We must remember that man, being a microcosm, com-
prehends and represents the whole and each.

26. The aim in the Work is to reverse the whole action
of these lives in their natural order. Man is fallen ; he is in
the third or lowest life, and this third life has to be raised up
and born through the medial or celestial life, and becomes
receptive of the Divine. Man must not dare to aspire to that
highest life which is over this birth and which is typified by
the terrestrial or head life, since if he were there he would
become Creative — he would be taking to himself the Divine
Will.

27. That which in the hands of fools is nothing in that of
a philosopher becomes to be all in all — says one ; all depends
on the willing and intention — " ex fine cujusvis intentionis
resultat principium ejus," and so, too, it is true and less
paradoxical that " finis ab origine pendet." The difficulty is
to find this principium, the intention ; for the rational ferment,
the pure aurific seed of Light, is hidden in this life of ours.

28. Will creates an image, not a being. The will passing
into desire for the image creates it by union with itself into a
being ; it begets itself out of itself, as it were out of its own
image (c./., Behmen's " Three-fold Life/' chap. 10 and 12.)

All the Creation until man was an image ; man was made
permanent by the breathing into him of the breath of Lives,
an<d so became the image of God and from that a son of God;
as the Almighty had done for him so he did for the creatures;
his 'naming" them specificated and vitalized the whole
archetypal world ; he developed into actuality that which
before was potential.

The revelation of the Mystery is nothing without its use,
for it is a vital change.

29. The powers developed, of which the Adepts
speak, are produced from emotional sources in the heart,
which emotional influences qualitate those powers ; contrition,
love, purity, mercy, humility, are such emotions and are
producible not so much materially as essentially. Emotion
brings forth essence, and essence is qualitated, i.e., specificated,
and receives form from Ideas or the universal forms of
Nature ; thus, in lower degree and unlawfully, man may
specificate and qualitate from his own mind ; in this consists
the true idolatry against which the Bible so strongly protests,

Appendix. 567

and that Magic which originated Talismans, Palladia, etc. ;
it is a taking the First Matter which is humanly-producible,
and forming it finitely and for any particular object or
individual end.

30. The fire of the natural life entering into and fer-
menting the natural fire — the same life in another — opens the
last, and develops and excites and sets free the celestial Life
and Light — that is one main principle.

The third principle is developed in like manner. The fourth
contrariwise ; it is a pro -creation of the third through the
second — a retrogression. The mystery is a wonderful one,
the phenomena are constant throughout. It can be talked
about in such a commonplace way and yet it is so far above
the apprehension of the common life.

31. The spirit teaches its own art, and according as it is
obeyed the artist goes on developing the way for him to
advance itself to perfection.

Ut vpntus qui flat, est Me qui dat is one of the old Alchemical
sayings and it is full of meaning. No doubt this is analogous
to our Lord's words, " The wind bloweth where it listeth/'
He who imparts the spirit to another is as the wind that blows,
moved by an influence external to itself. Qui capit, ille sapit,
is another, and refers to the wisdom imparted by the reception
of the Afflatus, since it awakens in him a consciousness
related to the universal.

32. When one life being fermented throws its life to
another equally fermented, a greater perfection is produced
in the patient than was before in the agent who imparts it.
That is the law of progression of the Vital force ; — sic itur
ad astra !

33. There is no such thing as truth absolute in nature,
because she has no true conceptive vehicle ; all her conceptive
life is deformed and falsified, so that, as Raymond Lully says,
" the pure matter of the philosophers is not to be found on
earth/' In the application of universal princij)les you must
have a pure conceptive medium ; that is true which is con-
ceived simple, without any heterogeneous clement; thus
Light in its ether is truly manifested. Given a perfectly true
mirror, the reflection of objects in it would be true. Thus
everything depends on the purity of the receiving power.
You may find out in Plotinus how that pure matter is generated.

34. The Hermetic Art is a perfectioning of the third or
lowest or the mineral life in man ; and typifies throughout
the celestial and Divine ; see Khunrath who teaches this
essentiallv.

568 Appendix.

We live in but one life, the head life, but there are
three possible lives ; i.e., there is a power of entering into
three modes of consciousness : either in the sensible, the
perceptive, or the power life ; this last conjoined to the other
two makes them efficient. We have no right to be efficient
in the present head life, our business is to be efficient in the
medial life — in faith ; then we are efficient for the life imme-
diately over us — the divine. Our present state is one of
inversion.

35. The analogy insisted on by Khunrath and Grassseus
in his Aquarium between the Philosopher's Stone and Christ
the Head Corner Stone is more than pardonable : it is a
verisimilitude, and is founded on the fact that our Lord is
the embodiment and representation and perfection of the
highest moral and spiritual life of man, and the Stone of the
Wise is the perfected lowest life, its true consummation,
which is mineral in its origin.

Our Lord had the threefold perfection, the perfection of
each life, that of the mineral, vegetable, and animal life,
to use Alchemical language. The common Philosopher's
Stone is only the perfection of the mineral life in us.

36. Hermetism is the magnetism of Light according to
its own Law, which Law is its emanating spirit called wisdom,
for it is the Wisdom.

37. Nature taken from the primal source into a will is the
history of the Fall. The Art is a question put to Nature respect-
ing the first cause, and it is an extortion from the Protean
and Sphynxlike forms of the true answer. To whom,
where, in what form, is the question addressed ? To the
stronghold of the Sphynx herself in the spirit in man. This
spirit being reason-gifted can answer if rationally interrogated.

38. Our life goes forth into a line at present, it has
to be taken up into a circle ; in other words life has to be
taken back into its first source ; the serpent with his tail in
his mouth is the chosen illustration of this reduction of the
linear into the circular life.

39. The Walls of Troy are a figure (and were meant by
the poets and traditionists to be so) of the insphering of the
lower life ; it is done in a great resonance. Those walls were
said to be built by the music of Apollo. Apollo is that life,
and it is coruscant, and in the setting free of that centre, of
that coruscation, there is a harmony ; what Behmen calls
the Mercurius, or spirit of the Sound, is evolved ; the ethdr
round the sun is compacted and solidified.

Appendix. 569

The throwing down of the Walls of this by harmony -
ensphered life is the Alchemical solution ; and this also is
accompanied with noise, as Haly says ; in another figure
the roots of the mineral Tree are in the air, its summit in the
earth, and when they are torn from their places a terrible
sound is heard and a great fear is felt. Compare also the
Chaldaic Oracles (Article Hecate, etc.).

However, when this nature is born in us it asserts itself
(or rather, I should say, He asserts Himself, for it is more
than It) through us. (c./., Hermes' Golden Treatise, cap. 4.)

40. The body of Brass is the impure natural-born vital
spirit.

41. The Hermetic Philosophy is a process of experi-
mentation into the Universal Spirit through man ; it is a
development of the art by which a particular spirit (to use
Vaughan's words) is allied to the universal.

42. The Vegetable spirit is the growth-causing spirit,
that which is predominant in the vegetable kingdom.

43. The whole image of the Macrocosm is formed, and has
consequently its typical representation, in the Microcosm,
and is evolved before the mental eye in the re-creative process
of the regeneration, (c./., Nic. Flamel.)

44. In the work, wherever there is power there is a con-
flict : the multitudinous enemies try to rush in, the self-willed
spirit endeavours to gain the mastery and offers all its lures
in order to get the end for itself ; strange mystery it is.

45. I think that the soul comes into this body with the
dream of its whole afterlife presented to it. And that is
its destiny. This would, however, involve us in a fatalism,
if it were not that we may rise above this evestrum, as Para-
celsus calls it (Phil, ad A then, B. 2, textsl823). The will is
always above it, but then it influences the will that does not
see beyond it, by giving that will motive ; we are moved
very often by it, nay, seldom pass beyond it, unless moved
by God's grace (the Divine evestrum, relatively to man), and
so are enabled to overcome it.

The real mystery is so very wonderful, great and close,
that one cannot venture to speak of it in ordinary language.

46. The third life, the mineral or lowest life in man, brings
you into contact with the Macrocosmic mineral life ; for
wheresoever we stand ourselves, there is the relation of the
outward life to us itself formed. The Vegetable and Animal
lives are higher than the Mineral life in us.

570

Appendix.

«£#

47. Those who are Hermetically regenerated in this world
have given up the Head life or the animal, the rational life
(not the Divine inseeing of the Celestial life), they cut them-
selves off from it ; they pronounce a word, their life is sealed
in another Covenant, they enter into our Lord's Life by a
sacrifice in faith that they shall be restored ultimately by
Him when He has received for Himself the Kingdom and
is returned. Job's story is all a type of that.

j7 48. The Alchemical symbols, phrases, metaphors, which

'so disguise the art are more than what they seem ; they point

out a reality, and were we in the spirit of their truth we should

find them to be far more true literally than they are thought

^o be.

49. It strikes me that Behmen is the deepest writer on
ontological subjects ; he is not so scientific as the Platonists,

I but he is more descriptive, awakening, suggestive of truth.

50. When an entrance is effected into the Signature, then
Jthere is a clearing of the understanding to see in the Divine
Wisdom the life, and to hear, by the Divine Utterance, the
specific articulation of things, the knowledge of things in
their roots, "out of their essence/' as Behmen says, " through
the principle in the sound with the voice." Signatura Beram,
ch. L, 1.

51. The speech of Mind uttered into the pure Ether
qualitates and specificates. The Ether is two-fold : the
mundane, which is full of the false forms ; the pure, which is
not of this world but is connected with the supersensual life.

52. There is no true body but Will ; it is the principle of
the body — the Salt.

53. Behmen's three primary forms and his doctrines on
the going forth of the Absolute Will from non-being into
manifestation, are modes of expression by man of a conscious
experience of the creative mystery ; such words of his as
hardness, enclosing, coldness, attraction, compunction (Signa.
Rerum, ch. II., 12) are intended to express qualities which,
acting in the Spirit, become qualitative ; they describe
spiritual emotions both active and re-active, for such words
are not mere theories or suppositions, but expressive, as far
as such an instrument can be, of internal knowledge and
/consciousness. In the Universal, as was the case with Behmen,
/you must have the Universal developed in you before you

can understand the Universal.

Ic

Appendix. 571

54. The whole doctrine of the ontological infolding is
emanation ; emanation from the superstantial Light or
will. The darkness is the emanation and that which

(before was qualitated and flat becomes cubic by multiplication
into itself. It is Mathesis becoming geometric.

55. If you find the Wisdom, and, coming out in the Spirit
of Wisdom, look into the world, then you may see as Solomon
did the nature and virtues of all things. The Philosopher,
says Sendivogius, in a very eloquent passage, " looks not out
on nature with the eyes of common men/'

56. Alchemy is the art of fermenting the human vital

(spirit in order to purify it and finally to dissolve it, so that
the principle be re-constructed through a regeneration.

57. There is a dualism or relation of two in all things plus
the one and the three. The great principle of the number
seven is a Rest from the ferment or action of the Vitalising
or Divine principles.

58. When speaking of the four elements, Alchemists refer
to the four elements of the Universal Ether. This Ether
is a quintessence of those very four principles, which they
call elements. It is the Quintessence of both worlds.

59. The Divine Light, the Essence of Gold, is hidden
in the self-begotten Life. This life of ours, instead of admin-
istering to the Divine Life, appropriates it.

60. The mineral soul or the lowest form of life in us,
when first seen by introspection, is as a dark vapour,
"' monstrum, horretidum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademp-
ium" — it is the Augean Stable the cleansing of which involved
Hercules in so much labour.

61. Saturn or the self-willed life can only be overcome in
the process by satiation ; he must be given from without
plenty " of the honey of the bees/' the aurific seed, the
Rational Light.

He first of all entraps the Light, and then he longs for more
to feed that centre which he has entrapped, and just as a seed
which has drawn light from the sun longs for more and so
grows till it bursts out of the Saturnine husk into a flower,
and soon no longer grows for itself but for another generation
and becomes transmuted, so the selfish Saturnine life in man
when once it has passed into its new life, or rather admitted it,
assimilates that life into itself and becomes itself transmuted.

572 Appendix.

|* 62. As man was the Quintessence of the whole creation,
I so woman was the Quintessence of man — the love-spirit was
in her.

The whole process of the Mj^stery was intended to
purify the impure vital atmosphere which surrounds each
individual life. The action of Mesmerism is a very external
way — an imitation of the Divine Art of the separation of
which Paracelsus speaks. It solves the bond between the
spirit and its corporeal media for the moment, by the
perpendicular or vertical passes. Clairvoyants perceive this
atmosphere, and the deformities with which it is full ; all the
thoughts and desires of life are imaged there. Its density
or lightness is the cause of the darkness or brightness which
may be seen in men.

63. There are two Causes and one Mother in the Work ;
the Mystery of this is shadowed out in the Myth of CEdipus.
It is shut up in those strange allegories of earlier Greek life.
Qui capit, ille sapit.

64. The Law of Divine Manifestation is expressed in those
striking words of Behmen in the Sig. Berum, Ch. II., 68 :
" An Eternal Will arises in the No thing to introduce the
No thing into Something, that the Will might feel and find
and behold itself." C./., the Enigma " Omnia in omnibus " in
Khunrath. This is the order imaged out in the Hermetic
Work, which is in fact an imitation of the Divine.

" 65. The first-fruits, though perfectly real, should not be
accepted as permanent, — the Artist should not stop there \
they must be sacrificed for the sake of the promise they contain,

| would he fulfil the Divine purpose and not his own. There is a
good illustration of this in the latter part of that curious
little book, The Hermetic Wedding.

66. True Knowledge is experimental contact of mind
with mystery ; it is when the mind enters into the Universal
consciously ; it returns, as it were, into its principle and
knows itself in its principle, and there is an efflux of life.

It is not merely an experience such as one might have in
receiving a blow ; there is a consequence in it. The true
Adepts had this knowledge and its fruits. Ordinary men
only touch a surface : they don't realise ; their life is not
multiplied into the absolute fountain of being. Many of the
'Alchemists only saw theoretically ; some of them entering
into the medial sphere ; the Paradisiacal life inferred the
higher and deeper.

67. The Salt is the voluntary substance, and is bound up
in the lowest region, the generative mineral life, and must be

Appendix. 573

transplanted or drawn up into the medial life (Troy in the
old analogy is that citadel where Apollo keeps his cattle,
Mercury steals them and afterwards sacrifices them) ; the Salt
thus transplanted becomes Light and grows ; and, in growing
this sensibly affects the whole connate or surrounding spirit,
ferments it, and moves it to contrition.

By contrition I mean a real contrition, when the soul
through that Light perceives the evil and deviation of the
Whole individual human life from the Law of Light from the
Logos. Speculation on these deep points is rather dangerous,
for Light must not be played with. A reverential spirit
must tone enquiries of this kind; and even then they are
exhaustive of the spirit, because in talking in a theoretic way
one draws from oneself and not from the open Fountain ;
it is the Light without the Love, — it is like mesmerism by wTill
instead of by relation.

68. True Alchemy (not that which the world has run
after without finding) is related to Theosophy on its physical
side ; it concerns that -change in the circulatory system of
the bloo<T to which St. Martiiraiicr JEIckarlshauseix, among

others of the sameliighly experimental school, allude, showing (Jt i(*i
how the change is wrought by reiterated contritions absorbing
the sensuous medium and carrying back the purer conscious
ens of light to its first life in God.

69. The Christian scheme is the bringing of the whole
of our life into the Sonship by regeneration ; it is an eternal
marriage-union between man and God in Christ, as is hinted
by St. Paul and in the Book of Revelation. No doubt the
state of it, when thoroughly achieved, is one of perfect beauti-

iide ; the mind then revels as -it were in the appreciation

f its Maker, its Source. Man is so a child of God, regenerated

r born again as an offspring of his own will, given up in

passivity to the Divine Will. It is the death to sin with a new

!inrth awakened in us, and until that takes place we know
little or nothing of the sinfulness of this life.

70. It is hy emotion that mind is moved into matter.
f Emotion is a mid-point between the two ; conscience strikes
\upon the self -life, and, when it does so, effectually ferments it

and evolves from it a third form of life, a new birth of life.

71 . All qualities (every adjective form) are first in the letter,
the grounded form, the mathematical flat surface ; then in the
intellectual, that which understands that ; then in the emo-
tional that which feels and as it were has it ; then in the
expression of the emotional it becomes sensible and so
materialized — for the efflux or first origin of matter is upon
the sensible experience ; hence, the strange nomenclature

574 Appendix.

of the Hermetists and of Behmen about the Sulphur, the Salt
and the Mercury ; the water, the air, the fire, etc., relates
to principles rather than qualities : in the spirit they become
qualities. Thought qualitates spirit, and spiritual experiences
bring the qualities produced into manifestation, into esse
from posse.

72. All is held in potentiality in Will.

The Alchemists say that, in the process, there is a point
of passivity, where there is no attraction but rather an
indifference to both the life and the death ; then the Artist
must look to his Work, and seek to stir up the Motion ; this
we learn in the language of the older Masters, that when
Vulcan appears in the same altar with Minerva the conjunc-
tion is ominous. This means that all the desire of life is
towards the Wisdom-life, that pure, good, beautiful, passion-
less life : of itself it needs nothing, but if it is stirred it is
taken ; what takes it is the self-will.

The whole of this mystery is a translation of the con-
sciousness ; for there is a life behind the consciousness.
Present consciousness lives in and is drawn out to sense ; it
may be, it should be, thrown backwards, nay upwards, into
its First Source.

73. The Philosophic Matter is an excruciated ens of Light ;
a Light extracted through anguish from Life. The process
[goes over and over again, for we could not bear the birth in
lour own strength ; it is a successive giving up of itself to bo
jbettered on the part of Will.

The principle of it is wonderfully beautiful when one gets a
glimpse of it, but it is almost too sacred, and impinges so
strongly on the Spirit-life that I don't think you can think
into such spheres of life without moving them, or being
moved by them.

74. Everything is in Will. All in the beginning is Will ;
it is the foundation of everything, and is everything ; it is
the only true substance of body. It subsists first in one will,
then in two wills, and exists in the third ; it then becomes a ,
self-assertion.

75. All the false sulphurs (by sulphurs I mean forms) of
the mundane life require to be purified, nay, perhaps extir-
pated, in order that the medium for manifestation of the
Divine Light may be simple and pure. The human spirit
has to die to everything that it now lives to, and lastly
to its own identity, in order to become a simple receptacle of
and magnet for the Divine Seed. When it re-arises it is a true
manifestation, reflex and image of the Divine ; that is the

Appendix. 575

condition of the highest re-generation. All true religion in
this life is a preparation of the Will for this final work.

76. We have no business whatsoever to speak The Name.
If it should speak in us it will work its own change in us
(c.f., St. Martin's Correspondence, letter 30, p. 107) ; that is
how it spake in our Lord's baptism, when the Voice
came, " How I have both glorified my name and I will
glorify it again/' It would seem as if our Lord when He prayed
" Father, glorify thy Name," and received that answer, needed
new strength by the utterance of the Name ; hence He intro-
duced that prayer by the declaration " Now is my soul
troubled."

77. " Take that matter which is gold," says Eirenseus, Cl and
throw it into Mercury, such a Mercury as is bottomless, whose
centre it can never find but by discovering its own " ; in
finding the magical earth in yourself, in your own centre, you
find that which is in the air or the vegetable life, that pure
earth which commences the Regeneration, the medial life,
(nascitur in aere terra magica ; in cethere clarificatnr). The
mineral earth belongs to the lower life and to the centre of the
globe. (See St. Martin's Theos. Correspondence, p. 117.)

78. Wisdom is nowhere so well described as in the Book of
Wisdom ; it is a pure exemplar from the first Light or Life,
showing man what he ought to be, and offering to conform
him to it. The standard is very high and arduous, nothing
but entire self-devotion is of any use even to begin with. Tts
end is that so-called annihilation bringing back into the
Nothing which is before all things. You see it holds such a
strong contrast in hand, the perfection of the Law of Light,
and the defection of humanity ; just that state described by
Job : " I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now
mine eye seeth Thee ; therefore I abhor myself and repent
in dust and ashes." This Divine Wisdom in us has to be
born over and over again ; it is an ultimate in the procedure
in human restoration.

79. The life acts through the sensuous and sensible spirit
in the blood ; it is all to be taken up into, I suppose, the will
to cause another and new life to grow out of its death. If
you magnetize a person, he is elevated into a purer atmosphere
instantly ; the natural tendency at once is to a purification ;
it dissolves the sensuous medium and opens the conscious-
ness to the Divine life ; you may corrupt it by introducing
forcibly upon the patient a bad will, but it is not, naturally,
easy to do so.

576 Appendix.

80. Out of the ashes of this present sensuous spirit arises
the Phoenix.

81. There is a war in the Work between the self-will and
the Universal Will, and all the faculties and desires are engaged
on one side or the other ; the effort of the Universal Will is
to draw them into its service by first destroying them, and
then reproducing them in a transmuted form.

82. The Solar Tincture (Tinctura Solaris) is the Aurific
Light.

83. The physical problem as Kirchberger calls it (Theos.
Correspondence, p. 168) is the making visible the invisible
spirit. V erbum invisible fiat palpabile et germinabit ut radix ;
it is a taking of the infinite Light -nature into bound by
hypostatic multiplication of its shadow or image.

84. Lives as long as they are superficies don't create ;
they are merely principles.

85. The Philosopher's Stone is a real entity produced by
spiritual generation ; it is a real ens of light ; it is both
objective and subjective — an actuality as well as a theory.

86. Living in the Second Principle means living the
Paradisaical life ; they all lived in it — under the Cross ; the
heart life below the arms which, when extended, give a Cross,
represents this, and is this.

87 . The Universal Will being represented as agent dissolves
the false forms in the self-will represented as patient. The
great Salt Sea (Wisdom, the Universal Will) dissipates the
impure sulphurs (desires, phantasms) in the individual will
as the strokes of the sun's rays dissipate the darkness of night.

88. There are three microcosmic centres in man, — the
eye of the Divine, animal rational head life ; the heart of the
celestial medial vegetable life ; the lumbar region of the
inferior mineral life. The universal matter is obtainable at
the focus of either centre.

89. The true manifestation of the law of Light is what is
to be sought ; the place of its manifestation is in the soul.
" There is room for the image also in the circumlucid
place. Every way to the unfashioned soul stretch the reins
of fire." (See " Chaldaic Oracles " and Stanley's Hist. Phil.)

90. In the Philosophical dissolution the body, soul and
spirit are separate ; the body lies without any breath ; the
other two are united to it as by a thread, and this continues
until the refixation takes place.

Appendix. 577

Through every stage of the process of re-generation,
through every stage of progress, the same principles are
maintained in operation until the assimilation is perfected
and the Divine Will is all. There is no defection then • the
selfhood has nothing to deface, nothing to deform.

Many modern metaphysicians have taken the first ground,
their starting point,from the Mystics : ImeanFichte, Schelling,
Hegel, Kant, and others of kindred mind. They worked
hard on the margin of intellectual intuition of truth. Kant
never got beyond or behind it, but stood on and ranged round
the negative margin . Fichte and Schelling broke through <
into the ontological, the Absolute ground, seeing but without
I experiencing. Jacob Behmen here transcended them. He
was in the Experience, but they transcended him in scientific
intuition. Oken's case was different ; he appears to have
had an inspiration into the science of created nature. Behmen <,
saw into the uncreated and felt it ; the arising Life was in )
him consciously.

91. Kirchberger {Theos. Correspondence, p. 236) thought
that "the Divine Will makes use of the human voice as an
organ for conducting the Light, through the fire." It strikes
me that he is right in this ; the fire here is our chaotic will
in potentiality, it is the basis of our microcosmic re-creation.

02. I am always surprised that these Mystics refer
so little to the Psalms ; with the exception of Arndt there
are none who seem to recognize their surpassing depth of
Divine experience.

93. The Key to the Work, or into another life, the Key
of the House of David, is obtained from the desire of the
lower life, the generative, the fallen life, opening up into
the heart life, or the medial life, or the celestial life, or the
vegetable life, by extasis.

94. The strength of the attraction of that which is above
(the feminine principle, — Wisdom, — the heart life), forces,
draws, attracts, as by a magnet, the self-willed source
upwards, so that this latter becomes transmuted into a
passive feminine principle. The draw up is sudden and as at an
instant ; a sudden force of admiration does it ; it is love which
attracts. Nothing else could move that principle from its
self-conscious centre into self-oblivion. The seed of this life,
the paternal principle, is drawn up. As the feminine spirit is
the cause of the Fall, so is it in an advanced stage, you
know, the cause of the restoration when it advances up there.
When the attraction is placed above instead of below a restora-
tion of what was lost takes place and more also ; if Paradise

§

578 Appendix.

regained were merely the old Paradise regained, why, theny
the Fall would be a thing to be wondered at and deplored ;
but seeing that it promises in the restoration a much greater
good (for the second Adam is greater than the first) may we
not regard it as in accordance with the ''eternal purpose, pur-
posed in Christ Jesus, our Lord V

95. St. Martin has a curious remark respecting the
foundation of the two Testaments. He asserts it to consist
" in the true pronunciation of the two great names " (Theo.
Corr., p. 244) ; this involves more than his words convey
to common sense ; as showing what really and originally the
Old and New Testaments are founded on, namely, on the
revealed utterance of the^life of God in man. Out of that
all minor details follow and belong, and all the particulars
that spring out of that Universal, all who have been on that
original ground, agree ; they corroborate one another ; the
New Testament is a development and fulfilment of the promise
of the Old, and with that fulfilment gives another promise.

96. All religions are founded on prior revelations, but
Polytheism is distinguished from Monotheism by its deviation
from the central principle.

97. As the World is diverse, so is the manifestation of the
Spirit diverse ; and so powers subordinate to God are evolved.
Of this we have a remarkable illustration in those words of
comment made by our Lord on the language of David :
"I have said ye are gods,if (says our Lord) ye called them gods
unto whom the Word of God came/' Where that Word comes
there is power in an individual ; the danger is the tendency
in such gifted beings to set up self-centres. This is the key
to the philosophy of the Second Commandment as the
practical result of the violation of the First. A graven image
means a vocal utterance carved into the understanding spirit
which conceives it by the desire of life ; the image lives in
the heart and the whole individual worships it, and endeavours
to conform to it ; that sort of graven image may be carried
out magically into material forms and objectively worshipped,
and this we see becomes more and more weakened the further
it departs from its source till it becomes a mere dead represen-
tation— common idolatry ; the ancient prophets impugned
both, but the danger and sin of the latter is as nothing
compared to those of the former, for in it was vitality and
efficacy.

98. The Initiated moved one another on by words of
power. The Masons ape this, but have lost the Magic Key,
which was so carefully prepared by the anonymous author of

Appendix. 579

the Tractatus Aureus (see Museum Hermeticum, edit. 1649,
p. 45) to open the door into the Hermetic garden ; they want
the words, which are only to be found by seeking them in the
subjective, the fundamental life, from which they are as far
out as the tools they use. The true tools also may be found
on the way in ; they will be given one after another as they
are wanted, i.e., the double Triangle and triple Tau, etc.

99. These and kindred principles are sacred in their
originals ; in their ultimates from the centre they are not so,
they are celestial and outward ; the celestial as well as the
ultimate may be used. There is not that sacredness in the
outward tools : they are representatives of those that are in
The Recess of Light, though they are meant for sacred use,
and are so far consecrated on account of purpose.

100. The outward form of Masonry is too absurd to be
perpetuated were it not for a certain secret response of common
sense to the original mystery ; so it is with the acceptance
of all religious systems : it is based in faith, and faith looks
to the invisible.

101. The perfection of each man is to submit to have his
fundamental faith, which is his individual Logos, perfectly
elaborated — i.e., fermented — so as to transmute the whole
being, so that the whole body, soul and spirit may be saved
in it. Few have ever perfected this, though there were
doubtless degrees of it ; the birth of this life prevents the
complete work : it is not intended to be completed till the
time comes.

The danger of diving into the mystery of life through
Alchemical seekings is that it tempts }^ou to break the seals
upon the book of life artificially in order to hasten the work,
instead of waiting God's will and pleasure about it. He will
hasten up all at last quickly enough.

The Hermetists themselves always war against over-haste.
Norton says, " Haste is the Devil's part." There is a swiftness
in the self-willed magnet working powerfully and to destruction
if suffered to do so before its time. Ripley warns against this
under the similitude of red poppies — the work gets all burnt
up and the artist has to begin over again. Nevertheless
in every mistake there is a lesson for future guidance.

102. The Crown, to use Behmen's and de St. Martin's
phrase, is the Logos. The whole of the Divine purpose
appears to be to bring the self-willed opposition into subjection
through man's consent and operation, in order that the
original fallen body of the will in Lucifer may become a
ground and body to the Divine instead of being apostate.

580 Appendix.

The scheme is wonderful, and appears perfectly marvellous the
moment the mind enters into perception of it ; that is, the
value of man. The body, the really efficient body of the Will,
is at present alienated from and in rebellion, as it were
experimentally, against its first source.

103. Engelbrecht lived like Swedenborg, in the visionary
sphere, and with no education of the intellect, had, it strikes
me, the less gauge for truth. One reads his writings without
any sense of value, except such as they might be to his own
mind, and to such as himself. Behmen's mind was on quite
another ground ; it was altogether withdrawn from surfaces,
which in him were objective instead of subjective ; he looked
to them with a light that penetrated and comprehended them.

There is a certain truth in the analogical sphere,
but it is only relative. The wise called it the Begio
phantastica ; all the true Hermetists knew it, and valued
it only for the derived light of its essence, not for
any light it gave them ; it was as a pabulum for them,
but only when deprived of all phantasmagoric form. All
those little peep-shows are shadows of it, and no doubt
children enjoy these things at fairs because their spirits arc
near this source. A deep intellect will not stay in these
spheres, it will be drawn deeper by gravitation to the primary
sources of life. Some persons, however, such as perhaps
Engelbrecht, misconceive this Evesier, as Paracelsus calls it,
and having a simple understanding see things pretty truly
if they continue faithful of purpose without much self-desire ;
it is self -desire that adulterates. Yaughan, the Welshman,
very elegantly depicts the play of that ether. In Behmen, as
in the higher regenerate men, the body became as the iron
in the forge, no longer visible as before, but penetrated
through and swallowed up with the Light. On that principle,
by the bye, pictures of the Ascension and Transfiguration
should be painted ; they should paint Light, making the
central body of the Light stronger than the outside. Like
the eye and its iris, a body can only become invisible through
excess of light from within it. It is b}^ the shutting up of
ours in its centre that we become sensibly visible to sense ;
it only emanates from the focus of the eye, and it is that light
thrown in to find its own centre and origin which awakens
that centre at last and causes it to coruscate.

104. When the archetypal Light is perceived, it burns up
all anterior manifestations, images and representations, all
that is not of itself ; it perceives itself alone, for it is objective
and subjective both ; it is Truth. There is nothing alien
in it or possible to it, for it burns up all that is alien, trans-
muting all that is not combustible into itself.

Appendix. 581

105. De St. Martin says, " Numerical numbers are merely
the bark of things/' (p. 298, Corres.), and outer nature is
1he bark of them as the tradition of Scripture is the bark of
the inner law.

My notion of numbers considered theosophically is that
they represent, and are the order of the development of, the
Divine Law in actual creative operation, and that they are
known in their arithmetical forms of addition and subtraction
(of which multiplication and division are developments)
through their personal representation in theurgic art, by
which spirit is added to spirit and multiplied as offspring,
producing points, planes, cubes, which being again conjoined,
have their confluence in materiality.

The mystic Tetractys of Pythagoras was thus obtained ;
the source, as he called it, of ever-flowing Nature ; such an
ens was the basis of the philosophic stone, a metaphysico-
chemical birth, emanating according to the creative law,
proving itself doubly, triply, by a realisation of the first repre-
sented will ; and this is known in Regeneration, individually
proven and proving all.

106. All members that work here for the natural work,
work also for the super-essential. All the organs of the
senses are brought to bear against the principle of sense
or the sensuous medium in the blood ; then the hands are
taught to war and the fingers to fight, and all natural secretion
is superseded by super-essential hypherphysical exsudation
and tears ; for when the connate spirit is deprived of its
understanding spirit, as is imaged in the Iliad after the death
of Patroclus, and in the grief of Hercules for the loss of Hylas,
life flows away, until by self-exhaustion it rallies from a new
centre.

107. Grammar has its foundation in operations of the
Spirit, of which will is the substantive or noun, love the
qualitative adjective form ; their union coming into self-
expression is the verb affirmative, I am.

108. The sensual medium must in the work be brought
to its pivot, to its last ens. The residuum from this medium
supplies body to the regenerate soul ; after that the soul
has passed under its Cross. De St. Martin says in allusion
to this that " the earth is the crucible for souls as well as
bodies/' — see Tableau Naiurel, vol. II., p. 230. Also the
Smaragdine Table — " The power is integral if it be turned
into earth ;" this earth becomes the pnnctum saliens of
the Divine Cross which before was its punctual.

582 Appendix.

109. Festina lente, Ne quid nimis, are sayings very applicable
to the work, and very important in conducting it, and that
whether in its higher or lower form. It may seem strange to
say so, but too much haste to be good or perfect involves a
self-willed action which defeats the end ; it is the duty of
man's will to follow God's Will as He, according to His time
and measure, opens the way. Be not righteous overmuch,
says Solomon, showing that we should not exceed the capacity
which is given ; if we do, it gives power to the contrary principle
to re-act upon the over-run. (Note. — The action of the self-
will on the soul which exaggerates its religious life may be
seen in the history of men, Jewish and Christian, in spiritual
pride, in contempt of others, in morbid self-anatomy, in
want of charity or allowance for others, in the odium
theologicum, whether they who show these qualities were
called Pharisees or Katharoi or Devotes or Puritans.)

110. The whole work is an action of agent on patient, and
the re-action of patient, advancing, on agent. The work is
gradual, yet always progressive ; each fermented spirit
advances upon its origin.

Desire constricts the essence of what it desires and so
draws matter about the image of its object.

111. The lucidity and terseness of even Bacon's style if
turned from the a posteriori to the a priori ground would be
equally lucid and perspicuous to those who discovered the
latter, but would be eminently abstruse and involved and
mystical to such as are of a merely perceptive mind cognisant
of sensibles, because the natural understanding and language
are inadequate to express things belonging to absolute
truth ; they were never framed to it. The language of the
spirit itself only can clearly express and reveal its own life.
Nevertheless the more the inner becomes elaborated by
thought through the organisation, the more intelligible can
its light be made by natural language to the natural under-
standing.

112. It is true that all inner principles are evolved out-
wardly, but they are thrown into deviation in the course of
evolution by the halting, obstructive movements of the law
of individual life.

113. Kirchberger says for de St. Martin (Theos. Conesp.,
p. 359) that " there is no true government but a Theocracy/'
This is a great truth, but the social surface to bear a
theocratic government must first be co-ordinate ; the world's
surface can only be governed by the centre from which it is
derived — that is, its king ; and if the Divine Centre moves into

Appendix. 583

& superficial dominion it immediately proceeds to re-create
and prepare for the dethronement of the old centre by
dissolution of the corrupt surface. A perfect law is quite unfit
for an imperfect community in immediate form ; it works by
intermediate degrees of completeness before it attains power
to work through to regenerate without destruction of that
which, taken up progresssively, is valuable (see de St. M's
Reply, p. 364).

114. People in whom the <? Mars or 2 Venus property is
dominant, especially when they both co-exist, are drawn very
closely in consciousness to the vortex of life — the Sol principle;
their knowledge is by experience, not perception or intuition,
which are the property of $ Mercury and U Jupiter, which can
enunciate far more clearly than the mere emotional spheres,
but cannot feel as well, or realise without the voluntary
dominance of *? Saturn and 3 Luna. These supply efficience
to their respective light and life.

115. De St. Martin found an entrance into the centre of
the substantial life which every creature is seeking, and in the
perfect law of which all who have truly entered and known
that centre agree. It is in the identity of this revelation in
every individual vouchsafed it, that this agreement arises.
For this truth is at once a unity and an universal.

116. Kirchberger was drawn to and worked about the
intellectual imagination of the inner life, seeking means of
further entrance perhaps, at least sometimes, rather than
to become integrated or made anew and converted wholly
into the Light he saw. This is the snare of most intellectual
seekers ; they desire to dive deeply by the one ray of intellect
rather than to transfuse its converting light and essence
through the darkness of the selfhood on which it shines.

It is true that high revelations may be obtained in that
way, intuitions even, but without clothing or realisation,
unless the spirit of such a seeker returns before it is too late
to take up the life which was born with the Light, and
which it has left behind in the forgetful enjoyment of its own
researches.

116a. Intellectual seekers get quickly deeper, but have
more to overcome. Seekers, who are in the Divine order of
Love, who are passive, are worked at every surface of the
Spirit, and this takes time ; for doing is more tedious than
seeing, but then it is surer, it takes up everything under God's
Will.

584 Appendix.

117. Every one can find in himself at moments the truo
centre, if only the thought dives deep enough, and so long as he
is there every particular truth will be perceived in its widest
acceptation ; because without hindrance there is nothing to
stop thought there except the law of thought itself. Thus
de St. Martin's mind expatiated broadly and freely, asserted
universal truths in reply to the particular enquiry of his friend ;
so he answers him and does not : he answers questions
and explodes them. And so in the Hermetic process there is
an inquisition into life, in which every question is solved,
thrown into solution, and a new basis furnished for further
enquiry ; and here every solution is a convertive process and
progress in entity and hypostatic relation. When I ask you
a question or you me, the doing so does not change, though
it affects, our life ; but there it does both, because the solution
enters into the spirit of the enquirer : it is intimate,
alchemical ; it is light dissolving darkness until there is no
more darkness or shadow of doubt.

You must understand that the intellect is the enquirer and,
as individual, is sceptical. The Universal Reason condescends
to answer it when not self-seeking and too proud to know.
To the true seeker after truth in humility, not in pride, it
responds.

Kant saw that, Hegel saw it, Fichte knew it, Schelling
saw it, Bohme knew it and proved it by his experienced
in-seeing whereby he became it.

118. It requires Light to throw light upon Light ; darkness
looking in and endeavouring only darkens. It is the blind
leading the blind, or worse than that ; it is a blind man
dragging about his dog instead of his dog dragging him.
Hence by reading St. Paul's Epistles in the atmosphere of
the higher Mystics, more knowledge of his meaning, more
insight into his depths, is given than can be drawn from any
professed commentators. The Theosophic light opens him
at a much wider plane of thought than the Theological.

119. In that dream your mind was carried back into its
ether ; the etherial consciousness brought into relation
with the Universal Ether. That ether is the omnia in
omnibus of the Hermetic Riddle. What we have is a scrap
of that ether shut in at our birth-conception. All qualities
are in it and colour it.

120. The first vegetative life is green, it arises with hope ; it
is hope, the first aspiration to something better, to progress
and improvement ; it is a beautiful principle, the sensation
of it on such as are permitted in consciousness to enter

Appendix. 585

into it is blessed. The purple color is its ripened Life ; it is the
benedicta viriditas of the old masters {Song of Sol., ch. II.)

121. " Man is the servant and interpreter of Nature/' says
Bacon, and truly, so long as he goes outwardly and away from
himself and from God to find knowledge ; but when he returns
within according to the Divine Ordinance and law of Reason,
he finds himself no longer the mere " servant and interpreter "
but that he has a capacity in his own principle of being
and life, when allied to God, to become, next Him, her
revealer and master.

122. The only objection that can be urged rationally to the
a priori investigation of nature is the lapse of the human soul,
the fall away of it into selfhood, which has defaced the image,
so that it no longer reflects the truth nor perceives it until
it has been regenerated ; and so far the objection is valid, but
not beyond. The a priori method is the true one for the
discovery of the first truths ; the difficulty of the method
does not invalidate its superiority ; when found it proceeds to
prove itself a posteriori by efficient procedure, as it were by
what is commonly called miracle ; and this, the inductive
philosophy or method never can arrive at, since it goes
further and further out, and finds its strength in remoteness
from the causal source. The subjective can prove itself,
has proved itself, to the objective ; the objective never can
prove itself by originating any effects.

123. The whole of the self -included vaporous vehicle
of the soul must be evaporated before any truth is evolved.
The vaporous vehicle is the maternal principle in the conception,
it obscures the pure paternal light of life — the generative
light, in order to bring it out into sense.

The birth into this life is a continuous image of the Fall ;
the Fall was not at first sensible, but spiritual ; the principle
of the Fall is a long way back behind its effects.

124. The spirit of Nature is all imagination, ideality,
fancy. She wraps herself about with what you call aromal
essences, aromal emanations, in order to realize her imaginings.
Nature is a personality whenever it is included in particulars
— and also when regarded universally it is the same in the
being of the orb soul. She is sometimes more at one time
than at another in a phantastic state, when there is more
power given her from the Central Source to work with, as in
earthquakes and convulsions. Then she makes beautiful
scenery, and throws about her shaping essence gracefully
to be clothed at those junctures with the material that is in
process of reformation. She enjoys re-constructing in the

586 Appendix.

world, just as she does in us when the constructing organ is
called into play. The embellishing spirit goes with the
constructive, though not always in the same degree; that is
highest and strongest when she has most supply of life. Of
course, there is a sense of beauty in Nature or else the world
would be ugly.

125. Children have the growth spirit in them (the vege-
table spirit which is more phantastic than the animal) and
therefore they imagine more freely and with less resistance
from consciousness of the actual. They are not so entirely
included in the circle of life and circulation. When that is
completed it shuts them more in, and growth upwards stops ;
the intercourse is then not so free with the spirit of Nature ;
it is imprisoned in the self-consciousness, and self becomes
the magnet.

126. Behmen surpassed the Neo-Platonists in his revela-
tions of the Life Centre ; of this they delivered down the
principles scientifically in accordance with the natural reason
and scholar-like knowledge of all contemporary literature, and
of Eastern philosophy and tradition ; besides which they
underwent an Initiation perfected through long ages of
experience ; so that their theosophy bears the same relation
to Behmen's as the astronomy of Ptolemy would to that of
Newton. It was not their practice to declare the inner
experience of the Mystae and Teleioi ; they chiefly confined
themselves to the psychological investigation and experiments.

127. Weight is the analogue of Will.

128. There are two magnets in man, i.e., two wills con-
tending for man : the one universal, the other particular ;
the one related to the Divine Centre, the other to the self
centre. Therefore these two contend for the soul. The
Hermetic picture of the two dogs, the Corascene dog and that of
Armenia, as they sometimes are called, is an illustration of
this, as is also the allegory of the Duellum between the two
knights ; in the common life they are not in contact, they
are remote from each other, the one, that related to the self-will,
being carried out through the senses ; the other, the good life,
being hidden and requiring to be sought out by the will and
desire of man turned towards it.

129. When the medial life draws the hidden central
light, there is a tremendous central action now, i.e., in this
life, we are upside down. The Sulphur, the pure light of life,
is bound down in the inferior mineral region of life, and has
to be drawn forth and transplanted into the medial region

Appendix. 587

before it can grow and become manifest. It is brought up
like a graft, " verbum invisible fiat palpabile et germinabit ut
radix." You see, the central hidden light (there's the
mystery) is hidden in the voluntary contrariation which is a
salt and a poison to it, and therefore Sendivogius says that
Saturn {i.e., Will) has the Key to the prison where Sulphur
lies bound ; for that which Will has bound, Will only can
unbind,

130. Supposing I have a will that wishes to loosen
your will, or rather the will that binds your life individually.
I throw its purpose into your mind, and so ferment the whole
including spirit of your life that it, the former, opens,
corrupts, dissolves, and so lets loose the light of which the
latter was begot, i.e., the light which comes into every soul
born into the world. When this light is let loose, it shines
forth with a sudden coruscation feeding on the surrounding
ether which constitutes the atmosphere of the life, as is
described in the midnight sun seen by Apuleius when he was
initiated by the Goddess Isis. (You are always taken down
there by spiritual guides ; it is never human initiation, that).

This Will being so brought forth (in point of fact, the
Golden Bough— 6th Mneid — has to be found first) returns
after transplantation to complete the work which is begun
for the perfecting of the soul life, which is : —

There is an action and re-action of the opposite poles (the
two magnets before mentioned) to perfect one another, or
rather each by the other, in the overcoming the negative law,
the evil, the selfhood, into which the original sin resulted.
The action of the two on one another resembles that of an
acid and alkali, beginning in a violent effervescence and ending
in coalescence under a third form, so as Ripley (" revived ")
says, through Eirenaeus, " the Corascene dog and the bitch of
Armenia, after all their snarling and biting, brought forth a
sky-colored whelp/' (This colour is the colour of Wisdom.)

131. When light meets light there is true self -perception,
and man begins to know and to hate and to rectify himself
and desire rectification.

132. To utter from spirit-suggestions is a fearful thing ;
spirits get footing in the life through utterance ; every time
strengthening, it makes place for them, as it were, by vacuity
of self-will, and, there being no substitution from the Divine,
they take possession of the soul and plague it subsequently
into submission.

588 Appendix.

133. . By music the human spirit is passed back into its
original sources; the sound makes a concave in the recipient
life ; it is formative in the ether ; matter arranges itself geo-
metrically in accordance Avith the forms educed.

134. The Vulcan of the Alchemists is Motion. Why
Vulcan is represented as lame in the Myths is because
motion or action in this life is halting ; it runs after something
which it never catches ; it runs in a line, keeping on without
returning, circularly into its own principle ; in this life it
is not meant to do so, for nothing here contains its own
principle in itself. Vulcan is not the fire, the ignis Philoso-
p/torum, but the stirrer up of the fire.

135. The first step in this Philosophy is to create motion in
the spirit. The Vulcan or Faber is the instrument of the
motive agent — the mind.

136. The spirit freed works by itself, by its own law, " ignis
et Azoth tibi sufficiunt " ; the wonder must be to see it working
its miracle.

137. We are all compacted in a certain petrifaction, i.e.,
life in each is as a stone in its first being ; therefore they say

' take that stone/' meaning take life as it is and ferment it,
that is by another life, which will dissolve and kill it as well
as itself ; both will be reproduced in a third.

138. There is this difference between fermentation and
ordinary generation, that the one is exalted in its result,
the other keeps level and equal with its offspring : spiritual
generation is according to the fermentative law ; by fer-
mentation of its own light it keeps on rising, until it reaches
the perfection of its law. It is an ascending, not a descending,
process.

139. The Divine Art evolves various states of life and
develops various possibilities, offering many objects and
allurements to the will. And as whatever the will enters into
or draws to, becomes realized, therefore the will should aim
singly at the highest good lest it create for itself idols. The
creating itself into a being is the evil. This is what Lucifer did ;
he did not know before he tried the experiment that the
stirring up of the central fire in his will would inflame the
vehicle of his life, and burn up the ether which was Heaven.

140. " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteous-
ness and all these things shall be added unto you/' said our
Lord. This, in its application to the Hermetic Art, and when
the principle governs the seeker, is really the shortest as well

Appendix. 589

as the truest road to the attainment of all that is promised
or can be looked for. Everything is in the perfected Corner

>tone, when the whole force of life regenerate is brought up
fnto the head-consciousness, what they call in the north. The
life is dislocated now ; what ought to be up is down ; it

wastes itself. The Efficient must be regained. That is, it
fs to be related to mind and not to the generative life.

141. If you seek a finite end first, i.e., before you seek
the Universal — the Kingdom of God — which you are ordered
to do, you will have to give up the former at every stage, if a
right seeker ; and unless you are wicked, and steal the first
fruits of the spirit's offerings, all sorts of gifts are offered ;
you may stop in any of them : if you do, you commit idolatry
It is against God's ordinance ; that is the real truth as ex •
pressed in the 1st and 2nd Commandments especially ; though
it is a breach of all, in the higher spiritualistic sense.

If the human will creates itself into an entity there is
the second death ; a miserable existence is created and made
permanent. We were made mortal in order to save us
from that, " now, therefore, lest he put forth his hand and
take of the Tree of Life and eat and live for ever/' etc. {Gen. III.)
If the immortality is made in the self-will, it is contrary to
the Universal Will : the result is a wrathful biting life,
hopeless. I don't much like looking into that kind of thing.

142. What is it that Nature strives to gain through man,
because creation has lapsed into it ? I suppose it is an escape
from vacuity into entity, from the seeming and shadow into
reality. There is no human misery which can compare to
that.

143. Self-knowledge is the first contact of consciousness
in the ground of life.

144. The First Matter is not to be found on earth, as the
philosophers say; you must go back into the original of life
from which it springs ; go back in consciousness. It is
immediately antecedent to the first consciousness. How
beautifully Plotinus describes that generation of the First
Matter as a recessure of reason behind itself into the indefinite
intermediate between reason and the Absolute This is
merely the metaphysic of it. Tt is never realised so, it is
merely intellgiible so to the highest reason, for this First
Matter thus presents itself as the extreme of bound and
definiteness reverting to n on being.

145 The Hermetic Process is a regular inquisition into
life. There is motion present with interrogation. Generally
speaking, the descriptions of the Matter as it appears to the

590 Appendix.

eye of mind regardant of its own first source, the whole process,
all the descriptions, relate to the one universal entity of life,
the omnia in omnibus before manifestation and individuality ,
the thing of which you may assert everything ; Proteus.

146. There is a spirit-man within the natural man and
his work is to move the Ether.

147. When the natal bond is broken, the Elias spirit
is born and his work is to prepare for something higher.

I This is the analogue of the Work revealed in Holy Scripture,
just as the Stone is the analogue of the Chief Corner Stone.

148. As the Divine Art works in and with the Universal
Spirit, the Proteus mentioned above is mechanical as well as
alchemical and uses instruments as well as vessels ; as the
heart and brain are its vessels, so are the hand and eye
its instruments and vessels also, the eye particularly. Every
member is in short working for the end proposed to fulfil the
law of the head, the direction, I mean, given by the head ;
without taking all the powers and appliances you narrow the
view of this art, which comprehends everything wanted
here on earth analogically.

149. The reason why there are so many seeming contra-
dictions in the descriptions given of the First Matter in its

manifestations, is that the things said of it are transmu table
adjective forms, which may become one another, and what
they are at one moment they change from at another. Virgil
alluded to this in the advice to Aristseus as to the mode in
which he should arrest and bind Proteus (c./. , Vaughan's
Aula Lucis, pp. 15-16).

150. When the consciousness is opened into rapport with
jfche spiritual spheres, it comes into relationship withmulti-
jplicity of being and beings of good or evil character according
/to the state in which the vital spirit is within the blood.
*If a person in the inner life came suddenly into this outer
life, and his senses were awakened into perception of the
vastness and variety of things, he would be astonished at
what he saw ; just so would be the case with one coming into
relation with the manifold world within.

151. As is Nature to God, so is the outward Bible in my
opinion to the inner : the letter to the spirit, the historical
to the ontological. When St. Paul says " the letter killeth "
he means that the living letter of the law is too powerful a
test for man's spirit. The Law of Eternal Justice cannot be
met but b}' the Mediatorial Sacrifice from which the new spirit
arises.

Appendix. 591

I don't like to say much here ; it seems to me presumptuous
rather. I half see it. It is talking too theoretically of the
Christian Love which reconciles, of the Humility which
was deeper than the pride which caused the Fall. We
cannot imagine of the depths of that suffering, that utter
self -aband on men t .

152. The vision and experience of the inner life is the same
to all who enter into it, after they have passed the phantas-
magoric region and so far unriddled the sphynx of this world
as to enter into its solution, i.e., in its dissolved essence which

js the mercury $ of the Philosophers, Proteus. Thus Arist?eus
went to Proteus to learn how he could get on after he had
lost all his bees, all the faculties of his soul, with the genera-
tive life.

153. Nature reduced to the extremity of her last unit or
monad turns upon her axis and rallies up into a new life, and
displays all the powers of her centre as light does in ether.
All colours, all forms, all possibilities of being, are then
brought before the seer.

154. If there were no art in the Divine world there would
be none in this. The mystery is an art revealed to regenerating
men, to advance them on to perfection ; it is revealed, but
by whom, whence, where ?

155. You can't get the medial nature, the anima media,
either of man or nature without its law, and that law is an
impulse towards rectification and regeneration. As the seed
of a natural object to its nature, so is the seed of spirit to
spirit. This is alluded to by St. Paul when he says, " it is
sown in coriuption, it is raised in incorruption/'

156. Every manifestation contains the promise of another
superior to it, the germ or seed, as it were :

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
Atque metus omnes el inexorabile fatuw,
Subjecit pedibus," etc.

These words are a grand declaration of a deep Hermetic
truth, for when the individual light of life is lodged in its
causal centre, the whole of the evil nature adhering is precipi-
tated to the extremities, destroying the downward gravitating
attraction or rather overcoming it, and leaving all the three-
fold life freedom of ascent. This is a deep subject ; I can
hardly grapple it, it requires working out. That which
relates us to the lower principle is cast out with the con
sciousness of the self evolved power, for : —

592 Appendix.

157. In the Regeneration there is a wonderful birth of
freedom to act every and realize every volition ; this, so
far as regards self-will, is given up under the Christ-life
in its higher development and subjected to the Father's will.

158. What does the Reason (vernunft) seek ? Causes,
and, through secondary, the higher Cause, the punctum
saliens of life, and there it finds its root consciously. The
Light which springs up in that alliance is the Divine aurific
seed and true form of gold. That was the " Golden Bough"
which /Eneas carried, and which took him safely through
Tartarus.

159 In the great combat of Life internal on the plain of
truth, the will on either side, that of the universal and the
self centre, sends forth all its troops, that is, the various
powers, as they are called upon successively ; the rational light
keeping back to the last, and never aroused into action until
deprived of its understanding essence which is taken captive
by therationallight on the other side ; not being able to subsist
without this, the rational intellect goes forth to avenge it
and die. This is predestinated from the first ; the process,
however, goes on over and over again ; it is not concluded in
this world.

This war is the war between the two principles of the self-
will and the Divine Will. We are born into the self-will,
and by the Divine mercy shut up in nature in order that we
may not feel the bitterness springing from the course of
the self -life, what Behmen calls the bitter anguish of the
driving wheel of existence. All the whole scheme of
Christianity is to redeem us out of that misery by the
interposition of God's grace between us and it.

160. Alchemy goes beyond nature : it takes her up and
advances her beyond her created stand in this world.

" Art, then, what nature left in hand doth take,
And out of one a two-fold work doth make/'

161 I am perfectly sure that the Hermetic is the only
true key to the old myths, and to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey,
because the solution which it gives is entirely adequate to the
subject. Proclus developes the ontological basis of the Iliad ;
Virgil wrote upon the same initiated ground ; the Georgics
are an allegory all through, an analogical instruction in
celestial and spiritual agriculture. I regard the whole of the
Mmid as illustrative of the same truths in another form —
the 6th Book markedly so.

162 When the Divine presence arises in the human life,
all that is alien and contrary is dispelled 'l as wax before the

Appendix. 593

fire/' as David says in the 68th Psalm, and there is great
rejoicing and a setting free of the life which has been so long
imprisoned, and at the further of the Divine Power all the circum-
ferential etherial sphere is shaken and there is an abundant
influx of the Holy Spirit ; and underneath all this there
is revealed that wonderful White Light which Van Helmont
speaks of, though in a very superficial way, as the Quellem,
and which the Kabalists celebrate as belonging to the Ancient
of Days, i.e., the primeval Light. This action is a merging of
the whole of the variety of Life into its first unity

163. In the process of the Hermetic regeneration there i
is a drawing of power and life up through the feet which may
be called breathing, pumping up of the rich essences of the
spirit ; the essential gold which is of the substance of light ;
that, drawn up in this maimer, becomes through our organiza-
tion into operation and visibility if permitted, or unless
returned for a higher purpose to its fountain. " The ransom
of a man's life are his riches;" man at that moment craving
the riches of the whole world set before him, gives them up.
This is imaged even in our ordinary life in the world, where
Ave find men giving up the chance of acquiring wealth for
science and her rewards, for poetry, for duty and what not
How much more does this hold good for the true seeker
when he is brought to the fountain head of all riches and
wisdom essential.

164. Those old Grecian fables are wonderful, most acute,
refined, Avitty; AA'hen understood they are most relishing.
Take for instance the fable of Midas turning everything into
gold and thereby starving himself He is thus a representa-
tion of one whose will, for Avant of returning the aurific
substance of life into its source and living there, becomes
fossilized and starved in the mere possession of that life,
holding it as he did in the selfhood.

*. 165. The process is a passage of life through A~arious
/ spheres of being, in any of AAdiich the wiU may rest, but every
/ one of Avhich presents a laAv of progress at its development
Avhich should be pursued to the end — the Divine manifestation
— and every stoppage of the will short of this is in its way
punished. There is no standing still in those spheres of
perpetual motion. UpAvards or dowmvards the will must go.

166. It is quite true that Nature, as the Bishop of Oxford
(Wiloerforce) sajs, is as much the A7oice of God as Revelation
is, but Nature, I think, no longer presents a true image or
echo of that voice since the fall off from the Divine Law.
Revelation is given to rectify and draAV back man and all

594 Appendix,

Nature through man to the original Truth. The present form
of Nature is a fall oft" from the true representation, it gives a
distorting shadow of the true. Nevertheless this has no
reference to the possibility of facts oi science contradicting
the Bible. It does not alleviate that difficulty ; where the Bible
makes reference to natural facts the question stands on its
own ground.

167. The Matter is seen with the inner eye, either of the
agent in the patient, or the patient in the agent, for in the
working of the Material they alternate.

1 Synesius refers to that when he says in his Isis and
Osiris, " You also have been initiated into those mysteries
where there are two pairs of eyes ; those which are beneath
are closed, when those which are above are opened/' and
vice versa.

168. The handling of the Matter is this, that when the
Matter flows forth exteriorly from the new-born conscious-
ness, it passes out into the hand and flows through the
fingers, and is able to ferment another life and bring it into
the same consciousness ; this in its turn rises higher, and is
able to re-act, raising again that other which raised it.

169. The entrance of the essential light of the reason
into the chaos of the Vital Spirit (which always is in chaos, i.e.,
always coming to be, never is, and whilst in this life waists
the re-birth), that entrance constricts the chaos at first into
vivid images, but persisting in its direct look or intellectual
perscrutination of the life, dissolves and disperses the images
of which the chaos is fall.

" Strictamque Mneas aciem venientibus ofjert
Et ni docta comes," etc., etc.j
Then the light goes on seeking the Paternal Life, the funda-
mental life ; and finding it through the maternal instinct
(the doves of Venus) is conjoined, and so far as it is conjoined
is strengthened for further Avarfare.

170. Without the Golden Bough /Eneas could not proceed
over or pass by Tartarus to see his Father. Tartarus is the
death of this life. By propitiation, through the offering of
the Golden Bough, he is passed safely through to the
Elysian regions, where the Paternal ens resides in liberty.

171. The Rational Light is the strongest of all lights,
and overcomes every other. All life moves orderly round the
focus of that Light when that Light is found or realised.
This constitutes the re-integration of being, the manifestation
of the Aoyos in man.

t .Eueid VI. 291, &c

Appendix. 595

172. We are all of us drawn to our Ideal as to a star ; to
us the Ideal is a Light, a real objective attraction or magnet.

173. What you find all depends on what you look with ;
ontologically you find what you seek, that is, the
ontological quality of the faculty you seek with determines
what you find ; if you seek with a selfish, covetous, desiring
spirit you find its object in the lower spiritual atmosphere,
the first emanation from this life. We on earth live in the^
first arising from nature. Thoughts, images, passions,
desires, Avords, loves, hates, all rise up through this first
Ether Natural and abide on a sphere of their own above it.
The higher faculties, the moral nature, with their results, are
related to the pure Ether, which overlies the passion sphere.
Above that is the Divine Light region which is the proper
habitation of the high Reason when informed by the
Love, and after it has been purified by passing through the
humiliation.

174. The Protean life is very difficult of discovery : the last
subterfuge of Proteus according to Homer in the Odyssey
is transformation into a tree. This tree appears to be identical
with that bearing the Golden Bough which iEneas was ordered
to find and take as his talisman to pass through the Infernal
Regions to Elysium, where the Paternal Spirit lives. Prior
to the ultimate transformation, however, it takes various
other shapes. As the enquiring spirit enters into the ether life,
the light that it seeks by compresses the ether and drives
it about and causes it to take all sorts of fantastic forms : the
imaginative spirit is the maker of these images. "No one/'
says Vaughan, " enters into the Magian School but he wanders
awhile in the region of Chimseras." These Chimaeras have all

to be destroyed in order to reach the simple Hypostasis oriw^Vt-t,
radix of the reason that seeks ; the :iaurai simplicis ignem." S t~ Jo s/^ ~

%/» IMUJ

175. True Science is the contact identical of the thing
knowing with the thing known, subject with object. Of
course, I mean ontologically ; for Truth is, as it were, Light
in its own ether, the Divine Wisdom self-conspicuous.

176. What a wonderful anatysis of Time Proclus works
out in his Commentary on the Timceus ; he there takes it to be
a created or secondary essential participation of the eternal
Unit, or, better, a participation of the Paradigm by the image ;
not a mere relation as you make it, or a condition of thought
as modern metaphysicians have it.

177. The solution of the sensuous spirit or vehicle is
effected by the Perpendicular Magnetism, the fixation by the
Horizontal ; altitude and latitude. By the former the soul

596 Appendix.

is set free — it translates the consciousness into another
medium. By it, the consciousness is brought into relation
to another world and new experiences. ' Quis deus," says
Virgil in introducing the myth of Aristseus, a myth which
bears altogether on the Vital transmutation in an advanced
stage, " Quis deus hanc musos quis nobis extudet artem ? unde
nova ingressus hominum experientia ccejrit P* / ^\^

178. It is an awful thing that when the Divine Life is being
elicited in a man, the sins of this world press heavily upon him,
through his sympathy with it, and his perception of the evil ;
it is as if the individual soul was responsible for all.

179 How nothing the individual is in comparison with the
universal ! We know nothing of Causality — i.e., we have no
experience of the Efficient Power. When the individual mind
comes in contact with power universal, it then can understand
the meaning of the words, the fear of the Lord is the beginning
of Wisdom, for that experience is the initial of the regenerate
life ; that which ferments the sensorium of this life, and
lives upon its decease ultimately : its decease I say, for it
comes up again ultimately.

180. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's book, wants
writing over again, or rather rewriting twice. It is a
Saturnine mass of power in mere potentiality ; a dark cloud ;
chaos before Light strikes through it. It wants the Jupiter
element to clear it. Charlotte ought to have taken it in hand
for her sister, for Emily was not capable of clearing it.
Charlotte Bronte was Jupiter and Lime ; Emily Bronte was
Saturn ; Anne Bronte was Venus and Lune.

181. The " One Thing ;" it is our psychical essence; our
nervous system. " Solution " refers to the separation of the
sensuous medium itself. You cut off the sensuous life and
get into the intuitional ; and when again you dissolve the
intuitional, you get into the intuitional (sci., divine).

" Help Manual/' The hand outward is an image of the
invisible hand, its clothing ; which, according to its attain-
ment (i.e., the perfection of its own nature), works effects.
The hands of the Ether are its transverse poles, which are
formed by the divine differentiation everywhere, and are in
man a " natural fire "—i.e., the fire of the Ether in us, or of
our life organism.

The " Philosophical Matter " is the entelechy of body
bearing the spirit, the antecedent cause, right up through.
The human soul is more than a mere resultant of body ; it is
its ultimate perfection, lor it is a mesothesis between two
spheres

* Georgics IV. 315, Ac

Appendix. 597

The " Ether " is the universal extended Matter ; the Divine
posit everywhere ; life.

The " Metals " of the philosophers are the etherial metals ;
the Ether's progressive stages ; its processes ; the arising of
the Ether from and through its lower to its higher forms and
qualities.

The adept regards Nature inwardly and as a whole ; he
feels all in himself.

The sours angelic essence is a " metallic humidity.'' The
soul in its perfection is the Christian philosopher's stone.
The soul in its metalline perfection is the philosopher's stone.

Alchemy can be fully understood only by those who have
entered on and are working the philosophic process ; by those
who, as Plato well says, are conversant with the soul in her
philosophy — /.e., the recreative, or rather separative, process.

All you get first of all is a pure matter which is passive,
having no power of perfecting itself ; it is the attractive
power. But you must set free the masculine ferment, the
sulphur or divine ferment (which is doubly hidden and bound
in this life of ours) to effect the perfection of the matter.
/ Our life is threefold. The " salt/' the will, opens its
[ secondfold. Each life must have its key and representative ;
I the first has its status and being in sense. Dissolve the
sensuous medium and you have the second or medial life.
/Dissolve the medial and you reach to the divine, which
[rectifies the whole individual. Visitabis interiora terrain etc.
/ Alchemy is philosophy ; it is the philosophy, the seeking
out of The Sophia in the mind.

For procluction of effect there must be a return of the
sulphur (this third, this obscure, this radical life) on its
matrix. Each principle of the life — active, passive, and
resultant — must be produced or evolved separately, and
represented personally produces a universal work.

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