John St. John

THE EQUINOX October (18—); received the mysteries of LIL. in October (lg—), and obtained the grade of 6°= 5°; obtained the first true mystic results in October (lg—); first landed in Egypt in October (19—); landed again in Egypt in October (lg—); first parted from . . . ἱῃOctober (lg—); wrote the B.-i—M. in October (lg—), and obtained the grade of 7°=4°; received the great Initiation in October 19—; and, continuing, received ........ in October 19—. So then in the last days of September 19— do I begin to collect and direct my thoughts; gently, subtly, persistently turning them one and all to the question of retreat and com- munion with that which I have agreed to call the Holy Guardian Angel, whose Knowledge and Conversation I have willed, and in greater or less measure enjoyed, since Ten Years. Terrible have been the ordeals of the Path; I have lost all that I possessed, and all that I loved, even as at the Begin- ning I offered All for Nothing, unwitting as I was of the meaning of those words, I have suffered many and grievous things at the hands of the elements, and of the planets; hunger, thirst, fatigue, disease, anxiety, bereavement, all these woes and others have laid heavy hand upon me, and behold! as I look back upon these years, I declare that all hath been very well. For so great is the Reward which I (unworthy) have attained that the Ordeals seem but incidents hardly worthy to mention, save in so far as they are the Levers by which I moved the World. Even those dreadful periods of “ dryness " and of despair seem but the necessary lying fallow of the Earth. All those “ false paths ” of Magic and of Medi— tation and of Reason were not false paths, but steps upon the 8