Section 2

Manifestation is one condition, Beness is an-
other. All manifestation is becoming. The
manifestations are merely sequences of becom-
ings, while permanency is true of the Unmani-
fest alone. Manifestation subsists in the act of
becoming. All becomings are related to other
becomings, and hence all becomings are related
to time. When any thing becomes, or comes into
being, it is made manifest at the time of its be-
coming. All such becomings, or manifestations,
are in the nature of effects, related to corre-
sponding causes. Hence they are the effects of
causation. On the other hand, the Unmanifest
is perpetually the same. It is not subject to

PHILOSOPHIA HEBMETIGA 17

change, or alteration. It is not in the nature of
an effect, but is the Causeless Cause of all ef-
fects. All manifestations come from It, and yet
It is never manifested at all. The reason why It
can never become manifested is not hard to dis-
cover. To be made manifest is to become. To
become is to become something that was not pre-
vious to such act of becoming. Nothing can be-
come any thing without assuming a difference
from its previous state. The Unmanifest can
therefore never manifest itself, because to do so
would mean that It must become something other
than It is in Itself, hence when the manifestation
has become, it would not be the same as It was
previous to such manifestation. Therefore,
while the Unmanifest is never manifested, It is
the Manifestor of all things manifested. It is
forever and unchangeably the same, and all the
manifestations come forth from It and in this
way come into being, becoming what they are.
Being an unchangeable Essence, the Unmani-
fest can never become any thing, but must ever
remain unchangeably what It is, hence to It
manifestation is out of the question. It must
ever be the One Causeless Causation of all the
causes operating in the manifestation.

Being Himself unmanifest, as ever being
and ever making-manifest, Himself is not
made manifest. God is not made Himself; by
thinking-manifest, He thinketh all things
manifest.

God is in Himself unmanifest as we have pre-
viously indicated, for His nature is to ever be
eternally the same and to perpetually make
manifest. He Himself is not made manifest, but
His true nature ever remains in the unmanifest
state. God Himself is not made, He for ever is,
unchangeably the same. He causes all things to

\

18 PHILOSOPHIA HEBMETICA

come into manifestation by thinking them into
manifestation, for His thought must ever be-
come manifest as the thing thought of.

Now "thinking-manifest" deals with things
made alone, for thinking-manifest is nothing
else than making.

Thinking-manifest, that is thinking into mani-
festation is the very process of making, nothing
is made in any other way. The process through
which God makes all things is by thinking them,
and causing the thought of them to take form.
To understand this, we must bear in mind the
Three Principles in God, Ku or the Divine Es-
sence or more properly Esse, which is the La-
tency of the Divine Principle, the Motherhood of
God, Mind or the Intelligence or Fatherhood
Principle, which acting upon the Ku causes the
Centrifugal movement or Divine Energy which
moves outward into manifestation. By thinking-
manifest, the Thought of God, acting upon the
Ku engenders movement which causes the en-
gendering of a nucleus in this Ku substance,
which becoming Centrifugal moves outward as
an act of Divine "Will. In this way each and
every thought of God is ensouled by Ku, and be-
comes individually active, containing a will force
of its own, becoming a sort of dynamic Thought
Form. These in turn organize from the Prin-
ciples with which they come in contact corre-
sponding forms, so that as a matter of fact every
thing in the manifestation is nothing more than
the body engendered by the active thought of God.
Thus all the thoughts of God spontaneously man-
ifest themselves as things, but ever taking their
individuality from the original thought. There-
fore, thinking-manifest merely means, the mani-
festation in form of each and every thought of
God. This process operates spontaneously, having

PHILOSOPHIA HEBMETICA 19

no element of design involved therein. The mani-
festation is nothing other than the form assumed
by the thought of God. As the mind of God is
very active, there is a perpetual stream of
thought perpetually coming into manifestation,
. I and hence the manifestation is forever being re-
newed by the perpetual stream of Divine
Thought. God creates nothing, on the contrary,
His Thought is forever becoming manifest. All
things are therefore nothing other than the
Thought of God made manifest. The Universe
therefore could not possibly be other than' it is,
seeing that it is the form assumed by the
Thought of God. It is thus that all Noumena
come into being. The Monad is nothing other
than the original form assumed by the Thought
of God. Because nothing can possibly come into
being save through the engendering potency of a
Thought of God, it follows that Will of God,
that is the Centrifugal Action of the Divine
Thought, is the cause of all things. Thus is Kis-
met seen to be perfectly true, and this is the ul-
timate principle of Fate or Eternal Necessity.
Thus, by thinking-manifest, God thinks all things
into manifestation, and there is no other possi-
ble mode of creation save the thinking into mani-
festation. This is the true secret of Divine Al-
chemy, and he who has mastered our meaning
here has become a master of the Art of Creation.

2. He, then, alone who is not made, 'tis
clear, is both beyond all power of thinking-
manifest, and is unmanif est.

And as He thinketh all things manifest, He
manifests through all things and in all, and
most of all in whatsoever things He wills to
manifest.

Do thou, then, Tat, my son, pray first unto
our Lord and Father, the One-and-Only One,

20 PHILOSOPHIA EERMETICA

from whom the One doth come, to show His
mercy unto thee, in order that thou rnayest
have the power to catch a thought of this so
mighty God, one single beam of Him to shine
into thy thinking. For thought alone "sees"
the Unmanif est, in that it is itself unmanif est.

If, then, thou hast the power, He will, Tat,
manifest to thy mind's eyes. The Lord be-
grudgeth not Himself to anything, but mani-
fests Himself through the whole world.

Thou hast the power of taking thought, of
and gazing face to face upon God's Image.
But if what is within thee even is unmanif est
to thee, how, then, shall He Himself who is
within thy self be manifest for thee by means
of [outer] eyes?

He, then, alone who is not made, 'tis clear,
is both beyond all power of thinking-manifest,
and is unmanif est.

The meaning of this is that the One-and-only
One is not made at any time, but forever is,
abides forever beyond all power of thinking Him-
self into manifestation. While the thought which
thinks into manifestation emanates from His
mind, yet, when it comes into manifestation, it
takes on the condition of the manifestation, and
hence ceases to be what it was while it abode in
the Mind, therefore He Himself can never be
thought into manifestation, though all manifes-
tations are thought out of that Mind. Hence,
that Mind can never be manifested, though all
manifestations come forth from It. And like-
wise, Ku can never be manifested, though all
manifestations come from It, yet when the mani-
festation takes place, it ceases to be Ku, there-
fore is Ku not manifested. Neither is the Mind

PHILOSOPHIA HEBMETICA 21

of Ku manifested, though all manifestations are
originated by the Mind and born of Ku, thus is
not God made Manifest, though He manifests all
things.

And as He thinketh all things manifest, He
manifests through all things and in all, and
most of all in whatsoever things He wills to
manifest.

In as much as God thinks all things into mani-
festation, He manifests through all things and
in all. While the true nature of God is not made
manifest in any thing, yet His fiat or image is
reflected or mirrored in whatever He has thought
into manifestation. Though God Himself is in
nothing, yet His image is in every thing, and
through every thing can we see his picture, thus
affording a means by which we can reach an ap-
prehension of God through the Analogy of Na-
ture. However, His image is much clearer in
those things which are the immediate manifesta-
tions of His will, that is the purest forms of the
Intelligent Kosmos, the true and perfect Image
of God. It is here that we are able to see the
clearest reflection of God Himself. They being
in the nature of the First and the Direct Ema-
nation.

Do thou, then, Tat, my son, pray first unto
our Lord and Father, the One-and-Only One,
from whom the One doth come, to show His
mercy unto thee, in order that thou mayest
have the power to catch a thought of this so
mighty God, one single beam of Him to shine
into thy thinking. For thought alone "sees"
the Unmanifest, in that it is itself unmanif est.

The One-and-Only One is the Unmanifest God,
Ku, Mind and Will, the thinker into manifest a-

22 PHILOSOPHIA HERMETICA

tion. The One is the Manifestation, the purest
aspect of the Image of God, which comes into
being by being thought into manifestation
through the spontaneous action of the Mind of
God. The all important thing is that we should
be able to catch a thought of that so mighty God,
that is that we may catch within our own mind,
one of His Thoughts, not that we may think of
Him with our own mind, but that a Thought of
His Mind may enter our own mind and enlighten
it. This knowledge comes not through our own
thinking, but through the action of His thought
upon our own thinking and thus directing it
along the upward way. Thought is unmanifest
to the senses, and therefore it is able to unite
with the thought of the Unmanifest and in that
way bring into our mind a consciousness of the
nature of the Unmanifest. Man can therefore
see the Unmanifest God only in his thought;
those claiming to have seen God in any other
way, save as a mental concept, are liars if by
God they mean the Unmanifest. He can be seen
only through the Intelligence, and then only
when the Divine Thought has penetrated the
thought of the man, so that his thought is ele-
vated to the Plane of the Unmanifest God and
His Thought. This condition of exaltation is
what we should seek above all other gifts.

If, then, thou hast the power, He will, Tat,
manifest to thy mind's eyes. The Lord be-
grudgeth not Himself to anything, but mani-
fests Himself through the whole world.

God does not shut Himself off from anyone or
anything, but on the contrary, He manifests
Himself through the whole world, there being
nothing that is not a manifestation of Him. We
having the power through the spiritualization of
our thought, to permit the Divine Thought to

PHILOSOPHIA HERMETIC A 23

unite itself with our thought, in such a manner
as to permit God to manifest Himself to the
mind's eyes, or for the perceptive power of our
mind to attain an Apprehension of God the One-
and-Only One. It is not His Unwillingness to be
seen that keeps us from seeing Him, but the con-
dition of our thought which prevents Him from
manifesting Himself in our Mind. Thus the
Perfect man must see God, it is the imperfection
of the average man that prevents him from see-
ing the Unmanif est.

Thou hast the power of taking thought, of
-seeing it and grasping it in thy own "hands,"
and gazing face to face upon God's Image.
But if what is in thee even is unmanifest to
thee, how, then, shall He Himself who is with-
in thy self be manifest for thee by means of
[outer] eyes?

The mind of man is so constituted that it is
quite capable of manipulating pure thought with
the same facility that it does the impressions de-
rived from objects through the senses. Before
any one can attack the problem of the Unmani-
fest, he must have mastered this art of Abstract
Thinking, so that the most abstract thoughts can
be visualized, and made real to him, so that he
can handle them as though they were familiar
objects. When he has reached this state of ab-
straction where the purest thoughts and ideas
are perfectly real to him, where they are actual-
ly things in his consciousness and can be clas-
sified as things, one is able through this process
of abstract reasoning to see God's Image, the
Intelligible Kosmos, face to face, to attain First-
Hand Knowledge relative to it. In this way, our
understanding of the Intelligible Kosmos will be
equally as definite as our grasp of the Sensible

24 PHILOSOPHIA HERMETIC A

Kosmos. But while all this is possible to the
master of his own mind, if one has not yet
reached the point where he is conscious of the ul-
timate workings of his own mind, if he cannot
"see" the processes going on within himself,
how can he, depending solely upon his outer
senses for guidance, be able to grasp the work-
ings of the Divine Mind, which is back of, and
much more subtle and elusive than the thought
of the human mind? It follows therefore, that
no one can have this comprehension of God or
even of the Image of God until he has mastered
the difficult Art of Mental Introspection. The
mind must be taught to react upon itself, and to
indulge in self-analysis, until it has reached the
utmost depths of its own possibilities, and when
it has mastered all of its own mazes, will it be
able to use its powers of abstraction to gaze forth
upon God's Image, the Intelligible Kosmos. The
difficulty then of inspecting this Image of God
is not in the lack of the faculty, but in the fact
that very few people know how to look at it. It
is because of the fact that there are very few
trained minds in the world. What is taken as
training of the mind, relates to Concrete
Thought, which is of no use in this field of re-
search, and not to the capacity for Abstract
thought which is all important. In other words,
we are taught to observe things, but not Ideas
which are the realities back of all things. Con-
trary to the common opinion, this power of In-
trospection, and mental Abstraction can be
taught to any one with ordinary Intelligence, and
with proper training it can be learned quite easily
in a comparatively short time. The difficulty is
that in the first place, there is but little import-
ance attached to this department of research, and
then again there are very few who know how to
train a mind. But doubtless the principal diffi-

PHILOSOPHIA HEBMETICA 25

culty is in the total ignorance of every one as to
the existence of this great field of Abstract Idea-
tion, within the mind of man.

LESSON II
The Manifestation of God.

3. But if thou wouldst "see" Him, bethink
thee of the sun, bethink thee of moon's course,
bethink thee of the order of the stars. Who
is the One who watcheth o'er that order? For
every order hath its boundaries marked out
by place and number.

The sun's the greatest god of gods in
heaven; to whom all the heavenly gods give
place, as unto king and master. And He, this
so-great one, he greater than the earth and
sea, endures to have above him circling small-
er stars than him. Out of respect to Whom,
or out of fear of Whom, my son [doth he do
this] ?

Nor like nor equal is the course each of
these stars describes in heaven. Who then is
He who marketh out the manner of their
course and its extent?

But if thou wouldst "see" Him, bethink thee
of the sun, bethink thee of moon's course,
bethink thee of the order of the stars. Who
is the One who watcheth o'er that order? For
every order hath its boundaries marked out
by place and number.

For the one who has not as yet reached that
supreme height of mentality, where God's Image
can be directly seen, but who must reason out
the problem, and in that way attain an Intuition
of God, the order of nature presents an ideal field
of investigation. One is advised to consider the

27

28 PHILOSOPHIA HERMETICA

course and circuit of the sun, with its relation to
the heavens in general and to our solar system in
particular. Let him also think of the course of
the moon, and of the order of the stars, in other
words, let him consider the science of Astronomy.
If he makes the proper study of the heavens he
will see that it is all arranged Mathematically,
and that every body in the heavens has itself con-
fined to some definite locality, though every one
of them moves in its course, it can never deviate
from that course, its boundaries are limited by
a force that it can never overcome. As the uni-
verse is ruled by numbers, it follows that all num-
bers are in reality rhythmic groupings of forces,
that are governed by strict mathematical law. The
study of Astronomy therefore, clearly demon-
strates that the heavenly bodies are not indi-
vidually self- sufficient, but that they are each and
all governed by some rhythmical arrangement of
force, by a symphony of force in fact, and that
that symphony of force is something exterior and
also anterior to the heavenly bodies themselves.
This harmony of force existed before there were
any heavenly bodies in existence, otherwise it
could not have obtained such perfect control of
them. There would have been some discrepancy
in the arrangement somewhere, if it had obtained
control after they were created. It was that very
harmony of force that engendered the heavenly
bodies, and therefore, this arrangement could
never have been fortuitous in its origin. Also,
Mechanical Uniformitarianism cannot be true,
for the simple reason that these movements are
not uniform, it is a system of unity in diversity
and diversity in unity that is presented to our un-
derstanding. Everywhere we see perfect order,
and as this order is intelligent, that is, it is just
such an order as a perfect intelligence would have
produced, which indicates that the force produc-
ing this order operates intelligently, hence it is