He was at first unable to pierce their veils. In fact, as the Book 
shows, it was only by virtue o£ successive and most exalted initia¬ 
tions undergone in the Aethyrs themselves that He was able to 
penetrate beyond the I5th. The Guardians of such fortresses know 
how to guard. 
The Master Therion has published the most important prac- 
tical magical secrets in the plainest language. No one, by virtue 
°£ being clever or learned, has understood one word; and those 
unworthy who hâve profaned the sacrament hâve but eaten and 
drunken damnation to themselves. 
One may bring down stolen fire in a hollow tube from Heaven, 
as The Master Therion indeed has done in a way that no other 
adept dared to do before him. But the thief, the Titan, must 
foreknow and consent to his doom to be chained upon a lonely rock, 
the vulture devouring his liver, for a season, until Hercules, the 
strong man armed by virtue of that very fire, shall corne and 
release him. 
The Teitan 1 — whose number is the number of a man, six 
hundred and three score and six — unsubdued, consoled by Asia 
and Panthea, must send forth constant showers of blessing not onlv 
upon Man whose incarnation he is, but upon the tyrant and the 
persecutor. His infinité pain must thrill his heart with joy, since 
every pang is but the écho of some new flame that leaps upon the 
earth lit by his crime. 
For the Gods are the enemies of Man; it is Nature that Man 
must overcome ere he enter into his kingdom. 2 The true God 
1. TEITAN — 300+5+ 10+300+1+50 = 666. 
2. In another sense, a higher sense, Nature is absolutely right through- 
out* The position is that the Magician discovers himself imprisoned in 
a distorted Nature of Iniquity; and his task is to disentangle it. This 
is ail to be studied in the Book of Wisdom or Folly (Liber ALEPH, CXI) 
and in The Master Therion’s édition of the Tao T eh King. A rough 
note from His Magical Diary is appended here : 
“Ail éléments must at one time hâve been separate, — that would be 
the case with great heat. Now when atoms get to the sun, when we get to 
the sun, we get that immense, extreme heat, and ail the éléments are 
themselves again. Imagine that each atom of each element possesses the 
memory of ail his adventures in combination. By the way, that atom 
— 152 —