244
myseia
that he is the very nobody to whom I now
refer.
Meditation is then the means; but only
the supreme means. The agony column of
the 7zmes is the supreme means of meeting
with the gentleman in the brown billycock
and frock coat, wearing a green tie and
chewing a straw, who was at. the soirée of
the Carlton Club last Monday night; no
doubt! but this means is seldom or never
used in the similar contingency of a cow-
elephant desiring her bull in the jungles of
Ceylon.
Meditation is not within the reach of
every one; not all possess the ability; very
few indeed (in the West at least) have the
opportunity.
In any case what the Easterns call ‘‘ one-
pointedness ” is an essential preliminary to
even early stages of true meditation. And
iron will-power is a still earlier qualifica-
tion.
By meditation I do not mean merely.
‘‘thinking about’’ anything, however pro-
foundly, but the absolute restraint of the mind
to the contemplation of a single object,
whether gross, fine, or altogether spiritual.
Now true magical ceremonial is entirely
directed to attain this end, and forms a
magnificent gymnasium for those who are
not already finished mental athletes. By
act, word, and thought, both in quantity and
quality, the one object of the ceremony is
being constantly indicated. Every fumiga-
tion, purification, banishing, invocation,
evocation, is chiefly a reminder of the single
purpose, until the supreme moment arrives,
and every fibre of the body, every force-
channel of the mind, is strained out in one
overwhelming rush of the Will in the direc-
tion desired. Such is the real purport of
all the apparently fantastic directions of
Solomon, Abramelin, and other sages of
repute. When a man has evoked and
mastered such forces as Taphtatharath,
Belial, Amaimon, and the great powers of
the elements, then he may safely be per-
‘mitted to begin to try to stop thinking.
For, needless to say, the universe, including
the thinker, exists only by virtue of the
thinker’s thought.!
In yet one other way is magic a capital
training ground for the Arahat. True
symbols do really awake those macrocosmic
forces of which they are the eidola, and it is
possible in this manner very largely to in-
crease the magical ‘‘ potential,” to borrow
a term from electrical scrence. |
Of course, there are bad and invalid pro-
cesses, which tend rather to disperse or to
excite the mind-stuff than to control it;
these we must discard. But there is a true
magical ceremonial, the central Arcanum
alike of Eastern and Western practical tran-
scendentalism. Needless to observe, if I
knew it, I should not disclose it.
I therefore definitely affirm the validity of
the Qabalistic tradition in its practical part
as well as in those exalted regions of thought
through which we have so recently, and so
hardly, travelled.
Eight are the limbs of Yoga: morality
and virtue, control of body, thought, and
force, leading to concentration, meditation,
and rapture.
Only when the last of these has been
attained, and itself refined upon by removing
the gross and even the fine objects of ‘its
1 See Berkeley and his expounders, for the
Western shape of this Eastern commonplace.
Huxley, however, curiously enough, states the
fact almost in these words.—A. C,
* A possible mystic transfiguration of the
Vedanta system has been suggested to me on
the lines of the Syllogism—
God = Being (Patanjali).
Being = Nothing (Hegel).
God = Nothing (Buddhism).
Or, in the language of religion :
Every one may admit that monotheism, ex-
alted by the introduction of the oo symbol,
is equivalent to pantheism. Pantheism and
atheism are really identical, as the opponents
of both are the first to admit.
If this be really taught, I must tender my
apologies, for the reconcilement is of course
complete.—A. C.