THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING
the starlight, bewilders him and is gone; for he has opened
“The Book of Concealed Mystery” and has read:
“Before there was equilibrium countenance beheld not
countenance.”
The words: ‘ Yehi Aour” trembled on his lips; the very
chaos of his being seemed of a sudden to shake itself into
form—vast and terrible; but the time had not been fulfilled,
and the breath of the creation of a new world caught them up
from his half-opened mouth and carried them back into the
darkness whence they had all but been vibrated.*
From midsummer until the commencement of the autumn
the diaries are silent except for one entry, “ met a certain
Mr. B. an alchemist of note} which though of no parti-
cular importance in itself, was destined to lead to another
meeting which changed the whole course of P.’s progress, and
accelerated his step towards that Temple, the black earth from
the foundations of which he had been, until the present, casting
up in chaotic heaps around him.
Knorr von Rosenroth’s immense storehouse of Qabalistic
learning seems to have kept P. fully employed until the
autumnal equinox, when B——, the alchemist of note, in-
troduced him to a Mr. C (afterwards, as we shall see,
Frater V.:. N.°. of the Order of the Golden Dawn). This
meeting proved all-important, as will be set forth in the follow-
ing chapter. Through C , P. had for the time being laid
aside von Rosenroth, and was now deep in “‘ The Book of the
* At this time P. was leading an hermit’s life on a Swiss glacier with one
whom, though he knew it not at the time, was destined ever and anon to
bring him wisdom from the Great White Brotherhood, This one we shall
meet again under the initials D. A.
+ Afterwards known as Frater C. S.
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