The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE HERMIT Witu the seventh stage in the Mystical Progress of Frater P. we arrive at a sudden and definite turning-point. During the last two years he had grown strong in the Magic of the West. After having studied a host of mystical systems he had entered the Order of the Golden Dawn, and it had beena nursery tohim. In it he had learnt to play with the elements and the elemental forces; but now having arrived at years of adolescence, he put away childish things, and stepped out into the world to teach himself what no school could teach him,—the Arcanum that pupil and master are one! He had become a 6°=5), and it now rested with him, and him alone, to climb yet another ridge of the Great Mountain and become a 7°=4°, an Exempt Adept in the Second Order, Master over the Ruach and King over the Seven Worlds. By destroying those who had usurped control of the Order of the Golden Dawn, he not only broke a link with the darken- ing past, but forged so mighty an one with the gleaming future, that soon he was destined to weld it to the all encirc- ling chain of the Great Brotherhood. The Golden Dawn was now but a deserted derelict, mast- less, rudderless, with a name of opprobrium painted across its battered stern. P. however did not abandon it to cast himself helpless into the boiling waters of discontent, but instead, he leapt on board that storm-devouring Argosy of Adepts which was destined to bear him far beyond the crimsoning rays of 43