The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE EQUINOX can hardly realize that one, or any one else, can ever have been in such a silly muddle. It seems so perfectly natural that everything should be just as it is, and so right, that one is quite startled if one contemplates the nature of one’s Star, which led one into these “grave paths.” The only “wrong” is the thinking about anything at all; this is of course the old “Thought is evil” on a higher plane. One gets to un- derstand the Upanishad which tells us how The Original It made the error of contemplating itself, of becoming self- conscious; and one also perceives the stupendous transcen- dentalism concealed in the phrase of the Book of the Law: “Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!” This Universe—the IO PAN PAN and the OIMOI TALAINOI too—is a Play of Our Merry Lady. It is as natural to have all this heavy stuff about the Weary Pilgrim’s Bleeding Feet, and the Candidate for Woe, and all that, as it is for Theseus and Hippolyta to decide that Pyramus and Thisbe may amuse them. The Public will then kindly excuse the Magus if He be of a nature, and in a mood, to decline to take the tragedy too seriously, and to mock the crude buffooneries of Bottom. Perhaps it would be better taste in Him to draw the curtains of His box. But it is at least His pleasure to reward the actors. Love is the law, love under will.” 85. Alas! when once thou hast become like the pure snow in mountain vales, cold and unfeeling to the touch, warm and protective to the seed that sleepeth deep beneath its bosom— *tis now that snow which must receive the biting frost, the northern blasts, thus shielding from their sharp and cruel tooth the earth that holds the promised harvest, the harvest that will feed the hungry. 126