The Heart of the Master

III. THE TEMPLE OF TRUTH THE INITIATION. I, Khaled Khan, beheld that Vision and received this Voice upon the Holy Hill of Sidi Bou Said, in the country now called Tunisia, but from of old sacred with many sanctities. Thus far it is permitted me to speak freely of that which came to me in my long search for the True Wisdom; but to me in my long search for the True Wisdom; but to declare the Mode of mine Initiation, whereby I gained ingress to the Place called the Temple of Truth (but by some Dar-el-Jalal) it is forbidden. Nor may I disclose in what land that House is to be found, more openly than to say: It is cut from the living rock of the middle point of the summit of an high mountain apart, the range Jebel-el-Asharah. Now being brought after many days into a Place where Light was, being shed through a carven screen of topaz, graved with a Rose of nine-and-forty petals on a Greek Cross, from the Sun, and that also at midnight, I found myself in the presence of a certain aged man (for it was written that His days should be an hundred and twenty years) who stood before a table of seven sides, whereon were fire, and incense in a thurible, and bread. Of these did he bid me partake; and they being consumed, he took a phial of golden oil from their midst, and anointed mine eyes, and mine ears, and my lips. With that I was aware of the image of a God, severe and noble of aspect, his spirit utterly calm, in his right hand a sickle and in his left an hourglass. And as I looked upon him, he reversed his wrist, for the last grain of sand was fallen through. Then did my Instructor point with a little wand to a great chart not wholly filled, and there came the shadow of a man's hand, and drew the image of a Lion at the end of the writing. Above this parchment, which was partly furled, was a square tablet of white marble, on which, inlaid in gold, I read these characters about the Image of an Eye within a radiant Triangle.