TO THE NEW EDITION By M. M Simultaneously with the publication of the Qabalah in 1887, he received instructions from his occult teachers to prepare what was eventually to become his esoteric school. In this connection were associated with him the late Dr. Woodman and the late Dr. Wynn-Westcott, both eminent Masons and Qabalists. They, with my husband, held high Office in the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, and other Masonic bodies. Since the year 1887, when the first edition of the Qabalah Unveiled appeared, the whole attitude of the thinking world has changed considerably towards occult philosophy and science. The gigantic strides made by science since the end of the last century, the staggering facts disclosed by its practical demonstrations, simultaneously with the development of the great occult movement, must strike all thoughtful people as the evidence of some imminent change in the evolution of this planet. Material science would appear to be spiritualizing itself and occult science to be materializing itself. If not clasping hands, they are certainly making tentative attempts in that direction. The Ancient Religion has its word, science its promises and demonstrations, philosophy its systematized theories, art its creations and ideals, and yet these in their fundamental separations fall short of that Synthetical ideal which the Spirit of Humanity unceasingly demands. There remains always the perpetual cry of humanity, that plaint of a world in pain demanding apparently in vain some solution to the problem of existence. The answer of the ancient world to this cry of the Spirit of Humanity is to be found in the establishment of the Mysteries, as containing in their penetralia that which even the highest then known forms of religion had not, namely, a philosophico-religious reply resumed in Formulas and Ceremonies, to the problems of Life and Death, of Nature, of the Gods, of Spiritual Beings, etc., and lastly of the linking of these as a whole back to the First Cause of all things. In 1888, after the publication of the Qabalah Unveiled, my husband started the working of his esoteric school. To write the consecutive history of an occult Order is a difficult matter, as difficult as to write the life of an Adept, there being so much of an inner and secret nature necessarily involved in both; so much of the symbolical in the historical, so much of the latter in the symbology. The general constitution of the teaching, the skeleton of the work, was handed to him by his occult teachers together with a vast amount of oral instruction. The object of the establishment of this school was similar to that of the foundation in ancient times of centres for the Celebration of the Mysteries. The literature of this school, with a few exceptions, was written by my husband under the direction of these teachers, based upon the ancient mysteries, chiefly those of Egypt, Chaldea and Greece, and brought up to date to suit the needs of our modern mentalities. It is a system eminently suited to Western occultism, which Regarding the distinction between monotheism, polytheism and pantheism, this distinction hardly exists for the Initiate. Verily there is little difference between a single God and a harmony of Supreme Forces, so absolutely linked that the effect would be that of an indivisible unit, a plurality whose action is unified, an unity whose action is pluralised. Concerning Science and its "missing links," occult Science has asserted that there exists no void in the Universe, and that the "missing links" are to be found in the invisible world. Modern Science and Philosophy are continually demonstrating that our physical senses are limited and cognize but little in proportion to that perceived by the more subtle methods. Sir Oliver Lodge says: "A physicist is never limited to direct sensory impressions. He has to deal with a multitude of conceptions and things for which he has no physical organ: the dynamical theory of heat, for instance, and of gases, the theory of electricity, of Magnetism, of chemical affinity, of cohesion, aye, and his apprehension of the ether itself, lead him into regions where sight and hearing and touch are impotent as direct 1 Here is an almost parallel idea taken from Egyptian Symbolism: 2 "Concerning the harmonious linking together of the divine and the natural; as in the vision of the ladder of Jacob whereon the Angels of God ascended and descended. As also in the very ancient ideals of Egypt, Chaldea, China, India, etc., there was the conception of an unbroken chain proceeding from the highest Godhead, through Gods; angels; spirits, genii; souls, whether in our life or another; spiritual beings; and ultimating through the sacred animals upon the very Ground of Earth Itself, and also even through the trees, plants and minerals. What, then, can be such a chain that links all things unto their divine Origin? Surely it cannot be other than the Descending Divine Influence MEZLA; the Influence of the HOLY and DIVINE SPIRIT." Take this Divine Spirit in its Triune Manifestation, call it Light, Life, and Love, call it Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Father, Mother, Son; take Radium as being so very close in nature to the one element of the Ancients and note its triune manifestation, through the alpha, beta and gamma rays. Regarding seers and mediums, as before remarked, our school lays great stress on the simultaneous development of, crudely speaking, the three planes of being. which development must precede psychic experiment. The methods employed to equilibrate the nature entail considerable study, time and patience. There is no royal road to any science, let alone the science of the occult. Before touching such experiments as obtain in spiritualism, the student would be supposed to be in a measure aware of the nature
xi:1 Raymond, pages 375-6. Sir Oliver Lodge. xi:2 Egyptian Symbolism. S. L. MacGregor-Mathers.
