The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

FOURTH PART THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS OR THE REALIZATION OF SCIENCE INTRODUCTION Tue lofty sciences of the Qabalah and of Magic promise man an exceptional, real, effective, efficient power, and one should regard them as false and vain if they do not give it. Judge the teachers by their works, said the supreme Master. This rule of judgment is infallible. If you wish me to believe in what you know, show me what you do. God, in order to exalt man to moral emancipation, hides Himself from him and abandons to him, after a fashion, the government of the world. He leaves Himself to be guessed by the grandeurs and harmonies of Nature, so that man may progressively make himself perfect by ever exalting the idea that he makes for himself of its author. Man knows God only by the names which he gives to that Being of beings, and does not distinguish Him but by the images of Him which he endeavours to trace. He is then in a manner the creator of Him Who has created him. He believes himself the mirror of God, and by indefinitely enlarging his own mirage, he thinks that he may be able to sketch in infinite space the shadow of Him Who is without body, without shadow, and without space. 267