THE VISION AND THE VOICE
judgment into justice. BAL is the sword, and TAN the
balances.
A pair of balances appears in the stone, and on the bar of
the balance is written: Motion about a point is iniquity.
And behind the balances is a plume, luminous, azure. And
somehow connected with the plume, but I cannot divine how,
are these words: Breath is iniquity. (That is, any wind must
stir the feather of truth.)
And behind the plume is a shining filament of quartz,
suspended vertically from the abyss to the abyss. And in the
midst is a winged disk of some extremely delicate, translucent
substance, on which is written in the ‘dagger’ alphabet:
Torsion is iniquity. (This means, that the Rashith Ha-Gil-
galim is the first appearance of evil.)
And now an Angel appears, like as he were carven in black
diamonds. And he cries: Woe unto the Second, whom all
nations of men call the First. Woe unto the First, whom all
grades of Adepts call The First. Woe unto me, for I, even as
they, have worshipped him. But she in whose paps are the
galaxies, and he that never shall be known, in them is no
motion. For the infinite Without filleth all and moveth not,
and the infinite Within goeth indeed; but it is no odds, else
were the space-marks confounded.
And now the Angel is but a shining speck of blackness in
the midst of a tremendous sphere of liquid and vibrating light,
at first gold, then becoming green, and lastly pure blue. And
I see that the green of Libra is made up of the yellow of air
and the blue of water, swords and cups, judgment and mercy.
And this word TAN meaneth mercy. And the feather of
Maat is blue because the truth of justice is mercy. Anda
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