The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX To wish to be at the same time God and Devil is to absorb in one’s self the most absolute antinomy, the two most strained contrary forces; it is the wish to shut up in one’s self an infinite antagonism. It is to drink a poison which would extinguish the suns and consume the worlds. It is to put on the consuming robe of Deianira. It is to devote one’s self to the promptest and most terrible of all deaths. Woe to him who wishes to know too much! For if excessive and rash knowledge does not kill him it will make him mad. 1 An allusion to Shiva, the patron of adepts, who drank the poison generated by the churning of the ‘Milk Ocean.’ (See Bhagavata Purana Skandha VIII, Chaps. 5-12.) Levi therefore means in this passage the exact contrary of what he pretends to mean. Otherwise this “Be good, and you will be happy” chapter would scarcely deserve the title “Arcanum Arcanorum.”-—O. M. 286