The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX must now incarnate itself ever more completely in that body, and in the bodies and minds of all men. He has made his darkness light; that light must illuminate the darkness of all. Having then received this last Initiation, this destruction of the opposition between One and the Many, he descended from the mountain, and awaited nightfall. The nature of the Initiation itself—its climax and comple- tion—can only be given in the sublime words of the Angel of the A&thyr itself. We therefore quote it in full— The Angel reappears. The blackness gathers about, so thick, so clinging, so penetrating, so oppressive, that all the other darkness that I have ever conceived would be like bright light beside it. His voice comes in a whisper: O thou that art master of the fifty gates of Understanding, is not my mother a black woman? O thou that art master of the Pentagram, is not the egg of spirit a black egg? Here abideth terror, and the blind ache of the Soul, and lo! even I, who am the sole light, a spark shut up, stand in the sign of Apophis and Typhon. I am the snake that devoureth the spirit of man with the lust of light. I am the sightless storm in the night that wrappeth the world about with desolation. Chaos is my name, and thick darkness. Know thou that the darkness of the earth is ruddy, and the darkness of the air is grey, but the darkness of the soul is utter blackness. The egg of the spirit is a basilisk egg, and the gates of the understanding are fifty, that is the sign of the Scorpion. The pillars about the neophyte are crowned with flame, and the vault of the Adepts is lighted by the Rose. And in the 116