On the conclusion of this instruction, the better to enable the seeress to comprehend the description given in verses 9 and 16, a vision was given her of two human forms, having their molecules, the one in the order of man regenerate, and the other in the disorder of man unregenerate, as on the two sides, A and B, of the figure on p. 189, which represents a combination of the half of each form thus beheld. In the case of specific organs, the rays represent the magnetic direction of each organ as a whole, and not that of its constituent molecules, since the orderly polarisation of these is not to the common centre of the system, but to the centre of their own particular organ, and only mediately through this to the common centre.

Similarly, figs. C and D show the physiologic unit or cell--the type of every kosmical entity--the former in its fully developed and healthy state, wherein the protoplasmic contents are pure, and the nucleus and nucleolus (which correspond to the soul and spirit) fully developed, and the magnetic poles convergent; and the latter in a rudimentary and disorderly condition, with the nucleolus or spirit as yet unpolarised. The four spheres correspond respectively to the physical, the astral, the psychic, and the spiritual; or body, mind, soul, and spirit.

As is well known to students of occult science, the name of Hermes has from prehistoric times been for the Western World the synonym at once for profound problems and for interpretative insight, his claim to have possessed "the three parts of the knowledge of the whole kosmos"--science, philosophy, and religion--having always been recognised. Whether the name originally denoted some actual man from whom, for his eminence in knowledge, it was transferred to the divinity, or whether it originally denoted the divinity, and was assigned to some man supposedly or really inspired by him, there is no historical evidence to determine. It is sufficient to know, as an indubitable historical fact, that some of the profoundest of the sages of old claimed Hermes the divinity as the source of their knowledge, and that the manner of its reception corresponded in all respects with that under which the illuminations in this book were received. It was as the divine principle itself of understanding that he was recognised by the Hermetists in the saying--

As the Spirit of Understanding it is the function of Hermes to recognise and indicate limits and distinctions between things that differ, in whatever department of existence, so that there be no confusion or intrusion. Hence, on the physical plane, he was accounted the guardian of boundaries and landmarks. But though thus discerning and marking limitations, he was not the author of them. That was the function of the angel of the outermost sphere, the "last of the Gods," Saturn or Satan, as explained in Note U.

NOTE H, page 150

Argus, the monster with a hundred eyes, represents the "power of the stars" over the soul,--the power, that is, of Karma, or the destiny acquired by the soul through its defects of conduct during the unregenerate stages of its existence. As it is for want of understanding, of its own nature and that of existence, that the soul comes thus under bondage, it falls to Hermes, as the angel of the understanding, to rescue the soul by imparting to it the instruction requisite for its perfectionment. Thus emancipated by Hermes from the trammels of fate, the soul rises superior to all limitations, and, becoming as a "woman clothed with the sun," wears as jewels in her crown the stars over which she has triumphed, each of which thus denotes a spiritual grace or gift acquired in the conflict with materiality. And so, for her, Hermes is said to have slain Argus. For further information on this subject see The Perfect Way, vii, 27, and ix, 13-17. And for the importance attached by the Bible to the office of Hermes, see the numerous passages cited in the concordance under the various forms of the word understand.

NOTE I, page 151

Serpents when used to denote wisdom are the "seraphs" or rays of the (spiritual) sun, i.e. they are divine emanations. The "serpent of the dust," or of the astral and lower nature, is the obverse of the seraph, and represents cunning rather than wisdom, as shown in its stealthy and sinuous mode of progression.

Atlas implies Discretion. He was one of the Titans, or mundane, spirits, and "brother" of Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoitios, or Precaution, Reflection, and Deliberation bred of, and exercised in, ignorance and distrust of God. In this aspect he is a type of the discretion taught by experience of the crushing weight of the world on those who are devoid of that quality especially as shown by their inability to restrain speech.

NOTE K, page 153

The occasion made use of to give us this "exhortation" was one of peculiar interest. The late Laurence Oliphant was at that time the English representative and agent of Thomas Lake Harris, the founder and chief of a certain mystical brotherhood in the United States. And having heard from a mutual friend of our spiritual work and experiences, and desiring to gain recruits for his chief, he came to Paris to see us, when, after putting to us sundry questions, he declared that we were possessed of the requisite qualifications, and called upon us to renounce everything we were doing and place ourselves at the disposal of Harris, whom he announced as the prophet and king of the new dispensation, and in short, a new avatâr of Christ. Failing to do this, we should, he assured us, infallibly incur dire catastrophe. Knowing nothing of Harris's doctrine, but respecting him for his undoubted poetic faculty, and having a high regard for his emissary, with whom I had some previous acquaintance, we begged for further information. This was accordingly vouchsafed us, but only with the result of our finding ourselves in hopeless disagreement, on account of what we deemed its fanciful character, its failure to satisfy the needs either of the mind or of the soul, and the nature of the experiences on which it was founded. For, though recognising these as real, we also recognised them as appertaining, not to the spiritual and divine region of man's nature, but to the magnetic and astral, and as representing a disorderly condition of this. And in confirmation of this view Mrs Kingsford was on the following night given a dream, in which she beheld a wilderness teeming with sirens, loreleis, and other phantasmal forms, which she was given to understand were of the order of those who pretended to be the "counterpartal angels" and "arch-natural women" of Harris's school--afterwards called by Oliphant "Sympneumata"--but which were the morbid products of that part of man's system which is always mystically called the wilderness, being the astral region which intervenes between the "Egypt" of the purely material, and the "Promised Land" of the purely spiritual;--a region, indeed, which has to be entered and traversed by all seekers after perfection, but which must on no account be mistaken for the goal or unduly loitered in.

A second visit from Oliphant served in no way to reconcile us to

APPENDIX (NOTES A-Y) 193

his views, but rather the contrary. And early on the following morning, Mrs Kingsford received the "exhortation" in question, in response, apparently, to an earnest request of mine, made without her cognisance, for some definite instruction which might be serviceable to our visitor as well as to ourselves. This hope as regarded him proved vain; as after the receipt of a copy of it he made no response, nor ever again approached us. The chief points in respect of which it condemns the doctrine propounded by our visitor are

(1) Its rejection of mental training and intellectual knowledge--in short, of the Understanding--in favour of extraneous influences and phenomenal experiences, as the source and criterion of truth.

(2) Its exaltation of ail earthly personage as spiritual king and master.

(3) Its failure to recognise a diet of flesh as incompatible with the highest aspirations; and,

(4) Its fanciful sex-relations and doctrine of "counterparts," which last, we were subsequently instructed, is a travesty, due to delusive spirits, of the mystical process in the soul called the "marriage of regeneration";--the errors in question being those whereby neophytes are peculiarly liable to be ensnared.

It is due to Oliphant to state that he afterwards seceded from Harris, and modified his teaching. But the change was not radical, and an examination of his later views failed to diminish in the least the interval between us.

This occasion was the first on which Hermes expressly avowed himself, though not the first on which he assumed the guidance over us and our work, while leaving us to identify him for ourselves. Two of Mrs Kingsford's earliest experiences in this respect are related in Dreams and Dream-Stories, Nos. II and IX, in the former of which he directed us to combine our faculties for the prosecution of the interpretative work to which I had already been long devoted; and in the latter of which he prescribed rigid abstinence, especially from flesh and cooked food, as an essential condition for the full perception of things spiritual. On the former occasion he presented himself in the double aspect of a letter-carrier and of John the Baptist; the first in his official capacity as the "Messenger of the Gods," and the last in intimation of the necessity of our application of the principle represented by the Baptist--that of purification in body and mind--for the true discernment of the Christ-idea. But it was only by degrees and after a considerable period that the full significance of the instruction disclosed itself to us, so far in advance was it of what we then knew.

His claim to the power of conferring the divine life was, in itself, a demonstration of his own divinity. No mere human soul, nor spirit of a grade below the divine, could, or would presume to, assert such a claim.

The true "bi-unity" of the mystic man, referred to in verse 25, consists in the equilibration of the mind and soul as shown by the equal use of the mind's two modes, the intellect and the intuition, which are, respectively, its masculine and feminine modes.

Although Dionysos and Aphrodite are mystically the third and fourth of the Gods, they are actually the fourth and third, this being their relative position by the order of their planets, and of their corresponding rays in the spectrum. For Venus, which holds in the solar system the place of the yellow in the prism, and is the brightest both of the planets and of the rays, comes next outside that of Hermes, whose ray is the orange, and whose planet is Mercury; and the planet of Dionysos or Iacchos--the Earth,--whose ray is the green, comes next outside Venus. And such is their position in the Greek and Hebrew theogonies (for the latter of which see Isa. xi, 2, 3, the Douay rendering for preference) and in the "Apostles' Creed." But in the Mosaic theogony and cosmogony this order is inverted, and the creation of the earth, which is represented by Dionysos, is placed on the "third day," while the work of Aphrodite is placed on the "fourth day." And in this order these hymns were received and are here given. The following are the chief reasons for this arrangement:--

1. As the Spirit of Love or Counsel, Aphrodite is the enlightener of the spiritual eyes and revealer of heaven to earth. She is also the centripetal force whereby man is drawn inwards to God. Wherefore the earth must have being, and the centrifugal force must have fulfilled its part in the work of creation, before she can exercise her function in the work of redemption.

2. As the Spirit of Power, and representative of the centrifugal force whereby the Divine substance is projected into the condition of matter, and the earth created, Dionysos must exercise his function before the centripetal force, which is Love, can manifest itself.

3. As representative of the soul, which, though first in being and in dignity, is the last to find recognition, Aphrodite remains unperceived until polarised by means of the bodily elements, So that, although Love really subsists prior to any exercise of force, inasmuch as she is the source of the desire which puts force--whatever its kind, physical or mental-in action, she is veiled and hidden until the mind recognises the need of her and acquires the power to discern her. For which reason also her "day" or manifestation succeeds that of Dionysos.

NOTE M, page 154

The meaning of this and the less obvious of the foregoing symbols is as follows:--

V. 2. "Twice-born" denotes regeneration. The first birth is that of the exterior or bodily man; the second is that of the interior or spiritual man. This latter is produced in and of the former, and is thus "Son of man"; but whereas its true parents are the soul and the Divine Spirit, and the soul when pure is mystically termed water and "Virgin Maria," the interior or spiritual man is said to be born of water and the Spirit, or Virgin Maria and the Holy

Iacchos, in being the mystic Bacchos, denotes the planetary Spirit after its passage through this process in and by means of the human soul; the way of perfection being one for both macrocosm and microcosm.

------- "Beneath the earth, "a phrase equivalent to the "caves of Iacchos" (Part 2, No. XIV (3)), and implying the mysteries of the body.

V. 3. "The horns of the ram," a symbol of force, especially of intellectual force.

------- "Who ridest upon all ass," a symbol at once of humility and patient endurance. This animal is marked on the back with a cross.

V. 4. The "Daughter of the King" is the soul, whether in the individual or in the universal, so-called because proceeding from the higher mind, or Nous, mystically styled the King, The planet-god is herein recognised as proceeding from and constituted of the universal life and substance.

NOTE N, page 156

See note on p. 122.

NOTE O, page 144, 156

The full perfectionment, while yet in the body, of the process denoted by the term Christ, involves the redemption of the body from its material limitations, through the reversion of its constituents from the condition of matter to that of spirit. This is called transmutation, and also resurrection. See Part 2, No. IX; also "Definitions," Resurrection.

NOTE P, page 162

Poseidon is styled "Father of souls," in virtue of his representing the masculine energy of the sea, which is the symbol of the substance, or "Mother," of souls. It is for this reason that he is chosen as emblem of the third gospel, that of Luke, which deals especially with the relations of Christ to the soul, as distinguished from the other three elements of the microcosm. See Note R.

NOTE Q, page 163

By the contemplation of wisdom man acquires wisdom, the highest product of which is the "philosopher's stone" of a spirit perfectly quiescent, and inaccessible to assault whether from within or from without. By wisdom, too, the soul is attracted and absorbed. The mystical meaning of the head of the Gorgon Medusa is thus--as customary in mystical presentations--the opposite of the apparent meaning.

The sapphire throne and four wheels of Ezekiel; the Merkaba, or Car, of the Kabala; the Kaabeh, or Cube, of Islam; the four Rivers, of Eden; the four living Creatures of Ezekiel, the Apocalypse, and the book of Enoch, and which also are the symbols of the four Evangelists; and the celestial chariot of Adonai,--all these alike denote the fourfold existence in which, as in a vehicle, Deity descends into manifestation or creation, and of which both macrocosm and microcosm are constituted. The four are, respectively, the material, the astral, the psychic, and the spiritual. See The Perfect Way, VI, Part i, and VIII, final par. of Part iii.

NOTE S, page 165

For which reason the Christ, as the realisation of man's divine potentialities, is said to be born in a cave and a stable.

NOTE T, page 166

V. 28. The choice of the ring-dove to be the emblem of the Holy Spirit is due to the hues of the circle round its throat, the colours of which are taken to represent the Seven Spirits of God, or rays of the prism constituted by the Trinity.

V. 29. The only message from earth that can look to find acceptance in heaven, is that which announces the consummation of the prophecy of Apoc. xvi, 12:--That "the water of the great river Euphrates is dried up, and the way prepared for the kings of the East."

Among other striking and no less undesigned coincidences, so far as concerns human agency, was that of the names given to her on her reception into the Roman Communion,--long anterior to her spiritual work,--for they were the names of all the women who were by the Cross or at the Sepulchre.

To this step, as also to that of obtaining a medical degree at the University of Paris, she had--as was in due time made clear to us--been prompted in anticipation of her destined spiritual work. Having for its object the downfall of the world's materialistic system, both in religion and in science, it was requisite that the instrument of that work should, in order to be able to speak with full knowledge, undergo initiation in the chief strongholds of the doomed system.

NOTE U, page 169

There are two processions of the seven primary Gods, or Spirits of God, the first by emanation, and the second by evolution, but the evolution is not of the Gods themselves but of their manifestation in time. The direction of one of these processions is the reverse of that of the other. The first is from within outwards, and occurs through the operation of the Deity within and upon itself. By this operation the divine potencies are projected to the furthest verge of the destined kosmos, which--though fourfold as to elements--is always in idea a globe consisting of seven concentric spheres, each divinity having his own sphere, and the outermost being assigned to Saturn or Satan, who is thus the circumference of the entity concerned, having beyond him only the void. Representing the seventh and outermost sphere, and projected after all the others, Saturn is called the seventh and last, and therefore--in this order--the "youngest of the gods." Thus, as matter is the antithetical ultimate, or "adversary," of Spirit yet without ceasing to be Spirit, so is Saturn--or Satan--the antithetical ultimate, or "adversary," of God, yet without ceasing to be God.

In this sphere manifestation begins, for not only is it the sphere of matter, which is Spirit--by the force of the Divine Will projected into conditions and limitations, and made exteriorly cognisable--but Saturn is the principle itself of manifestation, and herein of matter, time, and all other limiting conditions. Hence he is the principle also of Individuation, whereby from being universal and abstract, Spirit becomes particular and concrete. Himself the first to be manifested in the kosmos thus initiated, Saturn heads the procession which is by evolution, and hence, in this order, is the first and "eldest" of the Gods. And upon his sphere or kingdom as basis the kosmos is built up from without inwards, each God presiding over the work in his own domain, until the whole is completed by the attainment of the innermost and highest. This accomplished, the kosmos is made in the divine image, the Sabbath

The substance of all things is spirit, is consciousness. Wherefore all things are modes of consciousness, and all being is consciousness, and consciousness is being, and non -consciousness is non-being. And whereas the outermost sphere of any existing entity is that of the lowest mode of consciousness, wherein it touches negation, that which lies without such sphere is non-consciousness, and, therefore, non-being,--a state the entrance into which constitutes extinction of being. At once the negation of consciousness and of being, this state constitutes the negation of God, which is theologically called the devil (as see page 137).

The transcendent importance of the functions of Satan, and their absolute necessity, not only to the well-being, but to the very being of the individual, become specially apparent when it is considered (1) that as the "bourne of the divine impulsion," he is the circumferential limit whereby life arid substance are arrested in their outward course and made to return to their centre, thus converting into a permanent kosmos that which, but for his intervention, would be dissipated in space. And (2) that but for his guardianship of the outermost sphere, there would be nought to hinder the irruption from the surrounding void into the kosmos, of its deadly foe the principle, if the term can be applied to a nonentity, of the negation of God, and therein, of all being.

The passages in which the Bible seems to identify Satan with the devil constitute, when properly considered, no contradiction to this view, even without the counterbalancing aid of passages which directly favour this view. For, although constituting integral parts of the same kosmos, the inner and spiritual and the outer and material are in a sense antagonistic to each other, and a retrogression from the former to the latter, when once the former has been transcended, is a descent which, unless timely arrested, lands the soul in the region of negation. The sphere of Satan and of the devil are conterminous, and where a downward course is persisted in, Satan becomes the minister of the devil in that in ejecting the irredeemably perverse from the precinct of the kingdom, he consigns

NOTE V, page 169

Saturn, as Kronos or Time, is said to bear all the Gods on his shoulders because their manifestation occurs in and through time; and he is, himself, the first to be manifested, and is the very principle of time and manifestation. Moreover, the faculties in man by means of which they find recognition by man, are the product of experience acquired in time. This was implied in the vision shown to Mrs Kingsford on the eve of her receipt of the first instalment of this instruction concerning Satan,--a vision, at the time wholly unintelligible, in which she beheld Hermes being carried through space on the back of Saturn.

NOTE W, page 172

That is, from the condition of Existence or manifested Being, to the condition of pure, or unmanifested, Being.

The spirit of the regenerated ego in and by whom we realise the divine potentialities of our nature, is, for each of us, "Christ our Lord." And inasmuch as this ego is generated in time, and is the crown of manifestation, and final realisation of the divine idea in creation, for the evolution of whom the whole universe works together, and Satan is the principle of manifestation, the ministry of Satan is said to have been "ordained of God before the worlds, for the splendour (or effulgence) of the manifest, and the generation of Christ our Lord." And this applies to Christ from the point of view alike of the microcosm or individual, and of the macrocosm or universal. For, just as the macrocosm itself comprises and is constituted of the sum total of the microcosms, so the macrocosmic Christ comprises and is constituted of the sum total of the microcosmic Christs, or spirits of the regenerated human egos, all these throughout the universe being combined and blended into one indefeasible personality, representing the individualisation of the Supreme Being, or personification of the Divine Impersonal, through man, by means of evolution. Thus "generated" and constituted, Christ is the "Son" in and by whom the "Father" finds His ultimate full expression, as do the unmanifest light and heat of the system in and by the solar orb.

But the consciousness or potency of the universal Christ must not be regarded as limited to the sum total of the associated consciousnesses of the human egos composing him, any more than the consciousness of the individual man is to be regarded as limited to the sum total of the associated consciousnesses of his system. For just as the human ego represents all the consciousnesses of man's system centralised into a unity and polarised to a higher plane, so does the macrocosmic Christ represent the consciousnesses of all the microcosmic Christs centralised into a unity and polarised to a higher plane. Thus, as--to cite The Perfect Way (v, 17)--"the soul of the planet is more than the associated essences of the souls composing it; and the consciousness of the system is more than that of the associated world-consciousnesses; and the consciousness of the manifest universe is more than that of the corporate systems, so is the universal Christ more than the sum of the individual Christs or Divine Spirits of the regenerated human egos of which he consists. And as in the individual microcosm this Christ is the radiant point, or "One Life," whence the Divine effulgence flows to illume and vivify the man, so in the universal macrocosm the Christ similarly constituted is the radiant point or "One Life," whence the Divine effulgence flows to vivify and illume the universal Church, invisible and visible, of the elect, which is the nucleus, of which He is the nucleolus, or body of which He is the soul. And that wherein He differs from and surpasses all other Gods--even while constituted like them--is that, whereas they represent but partial modes or aspects of Deity, each one being but as a single ray of the Divine spectrum, He represents Deity in its integrity, inasmuch as He

Now, "the consciousness of the unmanifest Deity is greater than that of the manifest, for the manifest does not exhaust the unmanifest." Wherefore, in manifestation, "the Father is greater than the Son"; while in substance, they are "co-equal and coeternal."

NOTE Y, page 172

The difference between the account herein given of the Lord's death and burial (verses 53, 64), and that of Jesus in Part 1, No. XXXIII, presents no difficulty when it is considered that the former deals, as do the gospels, with the mystical or spiritual history of the typical Man Regenerate, and the latter with his physical history, and that it is quite sufficient for the purpose of the narrative that the correspondence between the two histories be general only and not particular. The object of the gospels was not to exalt an individual but to delineate an order, the order of the "Sons of God," for the sake of exhibiting the highest possibilities of humanity. And it is for this reason that while the events which occurred to Jesus were used and adapted to illustrate certain doctrines, they were not followed in all their details. To have so followed them would have been to give the physical history of but one of the "Sons of God," instead of the spiritual history of them all.

DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS OF TERMS AND PHRASES NOT GENERALLY FAMILIAR, OR USED IN AN UN-FAMILIAR SENSE

Adam and Eve.--In their mystical sense, and as applied to the individual, Adam and Eve are respectively the exterior selfhood, or sense and reason, and the interior selfhood, or soul and intuition, which together constitute the human being. And they are as man and woman to each other, in that they represent respectively the centrifugal or force element, which is the masculine, and the centripetal or love element, which is the feminine element of existence. For a full treatment of this subject, see The Perfect Way, Lectures VI and VII.

The Elect is a term the misunderstanding of which has been a stumbling-block and a curse to Christendom. And the evil has arisen through the suppression of the doctrine of a multiplicity of earth-lives, otherwise called the doctrine of re-incarnation or transmigration, and the consequent assumption that all who are not actually of the elect are hopelessly reprobate and lost;--a belief which, by its ascription to God of a capricious, arbitrary, and pitiless character, has served greatly to obscure from view the perfection of the Divine Nature.

The truth is that by the elect are denoted only those in whom the redemptive process has, already proceeded so far as to ensure their

The Egyptian origin of Joachim (as also of Jehovah) is indicated in 2 Kings xxiii, 34, where Pharaoh is said to have changed the name of Eliakim to Jehoiakim (of which Joachim is an equivalent); while the identity of this name with Iacchos is implied in the fact of its being thus imposed by the conquering upon the conquered