The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE EQUINOX est endeavours: for so flowered are the meadows of this Eden, and so sweet the fruit of its orchards, that you will love to linger among them, and to take delight in sloth and dalliance therein. Therefore I write to you with energy that you should not do thus to the hindrance of your true prog- ress, because all these enjoyments are dependent upon dual- ity, so that their true name is Sorrow of Illusion, like that of the normal life of man, which you have set out to transcend. Be it according to your Will, but learn this, that (as it is written) they only are happy who have desired the unattain- able. It is then best, ultimately, if it be your Will to find alway your chiefest pleasure in Love, that is, in Conquest, and in Death, that is, in Surrender, as I have written to you already. Thus then you shall delight in these delights afore- said, but only as toys, holding your manhood firm and keen to pierce to deeper and holier ecstacies without arrest of Will. Furthermore, I would have you to know that in this prac- tice, pursued with ardour unquenchable, is this especial grace, that you will come as it were by fortune into states which transcend the practice itself, being of the nature of those Works of Pure Light of which I will to write to you in the chapter following after this. For there be certain Gates which no being who is still conscious of dividuality, that is, of the Self and not-Self as opposites, may pass through: and in the storming of those Gates by fiery assault of lust celes- tial, your flame will burn vehemently against your gross Self, though it be already divine beyond your present imag- ining, and devour it in a mystical death, so that in the Pass- ing of the Gate all is dissolved in formless Light of Unity. Now then, returning from these states of being, and in the 116