The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE EQUINOX It represents the connecting-link between Assiah and Yetzirah. It is the rending of the Veil of the Tabernacle; and it is the passing of the Gate of Eden. After which he enters upon the symbolisms of the twenty-first Key of the Tarot, the naked female form of which represents the Bride of the Apocalypse, the Qabalistic Queen of the Canticles, the Egyptian Isis of Nature. Her two wands are the directing forces of the DiacraM 21. DiacraM 22. The Cubical Cross of Twenty- The Garden of Eden and two Squares. the Holy City. Positive and Negative currents. She is the synthesis of the Thirty-second Path uniting Malkuth and Yesod, The Hegemon then explains his tablet, which contains the occult symbolism of the Garden of Eden and the Holy City of the Apocalypse; and the Kerux also his—the seven Infernal Mansions and the four Seas.* After which the Hierophant confers on the Zelator the title of the Thirty-second Path; the Zelator then quits the Temple for a short time before passing to the Grade of Theoricus. The Ceremony of Theoricus is opened by the Hierophant, who says to the Zelator: “Frater Pereclinos de Faustis: as in the grade of 1°=10° there were given the symbolical representations of the Tree of Knowledge of the Good and Evil of the gate of Eden and of the Holy Place: so in the 2°=9° of Theoricus the ‘Sanctum Sanc- torum’ with the Ark and the Kerubim is shown: as well as the garden of Eden, with which it coincides, while in the thirty-second path leading thereunto, through which you have just passed, the Kerubic Guardians are represented ; and the Palm-trees, or trees of Progression in the’Garden of Eden. Honoured Hegemon, conduct the Zelator to the West, and place him there before the portal of the thirty-second path through which he has just entered.” The Zelator then seeks entrance by the Caduceus of Hermes, the symbolism of which the Hegemon explains to him. * See 777, cols. cvi., cvii., p. 23. 268