The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX universe. Veiled are their faces, that have beheld the glory Ineffable. These adepts seem like Pyramids—their hoods and robes are like Pyramids. And the Angel sayeth: Verily is the pyramid a Temple of Initiation. Verily also is it a tomb. Thinkest thou that there is life within the Masters of the Temple, that sit hooded, encamped upon the sea? Verily, there is no life in them. Their sandals were the pure light, and they have taken them from their feet and cast them down through the abyss, for this AEthyr is holy ground. Herein no forms appear, and the vision of God face to face, that is transmuted in the Athanor called dissolution, or hammered into one in the forge of meditation, is in this place but a blasphemy and a mockery. And the Beatific Vision is no more, and the glory of the Most High is no more. There is no more knowledge. There is no more bliss. There is no more power. There is no more beauty. For this is the Palace of Understanding: for thou art one with the Primeval things. Drink in the myrrh of my speech, that is bruised with the gall of the roc, and dissolved in the ink of the cuttle-fish, and perfumed with the deadly nightshade. This is thy wine, who wast drunk upon the wine of Tacchus. And for bread shalt thou eat salt, O thou on the corn of Ceres that didst wax fat! For as pure being is pure nothing, so is pure wisdom pure... and so is pure understanding silence, and stillness, and darkness. The eye 1 I suppose that only a Magus could have heard this word. 118