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am not exhausted after all this, as I was yesterday. Is this a proof that all is Right Magick, or that 
little force was expended? Where am I, in fact? O Holy Exalted One, do Thou illuminate my mind! 
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59 
I left Shanghai on the twenty-first of April. On the twenty-second I was sick and stayed in bed all 
day. I did no regular invocation, but thought over the recent crisis. I dismissed the Shanghai 
experience as a morbid dream. Reading through the above record at this distance of time, after 
deliberately avoiding doing so for so long, I feel very uncertain about it; I feel that there was a 
great deal of genuine communication with the right people and that the Oracle is confused, 
contradictory and uneven, because of the interference of our personalities. 
There was the question of our love affair. I was absolutely in love with Rose in the ordinary sense of 
the term. My love for Fidelis excluded the material almost entirely. I was very proud of my love for 
Rose and very happy in it. The one thing I feel sure of is this: that we had a superb opportunity to 
take up the Great Work together and that we missed it on account of our determination to see 
things with our own eyes. We were, no doubt, quite ready to put the Great Work first, last and all 
the time; but we were hampered in doing so by our settled conviction as to what the Great Work 
might imply. For my part, at least, I know that I was always arguing that such and such a course 
couldn't be right on general principles, as I had done when Rose herself had told me how to invoke 
Horus; and I had not learned the lesson that my idea of "general Principles" was not reliable. 
The entry of April 24th shows how admirably the gods arrange one's affairs. One may have a 
perfectly right idea, but as long as one holds to it they will take pains to upset the apple cart: 
abandon the idea, and they immediately hand it back with a charming compliment. This is the 
lesson of the Book of Job. 
I quote the entry in full, concealing only the name of the Order. 
At Kobe. A.'. fair only; though I invoked all these powers of mine. Yet after, by a strong effort of 
will, I banished my sore throat and my surroundings, and went up in my Body of Light. Reached a 
room in which a cruciform table was spread, a naked man being nailed thereto. Many venerable 
men sat around, feasting on his living flesh and quaffing his hot blood. These (I was told) were the 
adepts, whom I might one day join. This I understood to mean that I should get the power of taking 
only spiritual nourishment --- but probably it means much more than this. 
Next I came into an apparently empty hall, of white ivory worked in 
{525} 
filigree. A square slim altar was in the midst, I was questioned as to what I would sacrifice on that 
altar. I offered all save my will to know A.'. which I would only change for its own realization. I now 
became conscious of god-forms of Egypt sitting, so vast that I could only see to their knees. "Would 
not knowledge of the gods suffice?" "No!" said I. It was then pointed out to me that I was being 
critical, even rationalistic, and made to see that A.'. was not necessarily fashioned in my image. I 
asked pardon for my blindness, and knelt at the altar, placing my hands upon it, right over left. 
Then, one, human, white, self-shining (my idea after all!) came forth and put his hands over mine, 
saying: "I receive thee into the Order of ---." 
I came back to earth in a cradle of flame. 
I was thus formally received among the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order on the astral plane. It was 
the natural sequel to the passage of the Abyss. I was careful not to presume on a mere vision. 
Superb as the experience was, I would not allow it to turn my head. I am almost morbidly sensitive 
about my responsibility in such matters. No more fatal mistake can be made than to grasp after a