The Equinox (Volume I, Number X)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES Magic whose approach had been so much dreaded by the medium. We have seen them, and here is a minute descrip- tion of them. They were traced forcibly, and the pencil had almost cut the paper. They had been dashed on to the paper without order or alignment. The first was the symbol which the Egyptian initiates usually placed in the hand of Typhon. A tau with upright double lines opened in the form of a compass; an ankh (or crux ansata) having at the top a circular ring; below the ring, a double horizontal line; beneath the double horizontal line, two oblique lines, like a V upside down. The second character represented a Grand Hierophant’s cross, with the three hierarchical cross-bars. This symbol, which dates from the remotest antiquity, is still the attribute of our sovereign pontiffs, and forms the upper extremity of their pastoral staff. But the sign traced by the pencil had this particularity, that the upper branch, the head of the cross, was double, and formed again the terrible Typhonian V, the sign of antagonism and separation, the symbol of hate and eternal combat. The third character was that which Freemasons call the Philosophical Cross, a cross with four equal arms, with a point in each of its angles. But, instead of four points, there were only two, placed in the two right-hand corners, once more a sign of struggle, separation and denial. The Professor, whom one will allow us to distinguish from the narrator, and to name in the third person in order not to weary our readers in having the air of speaking of 135