The Vision and the Voice

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 57