The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING the starlight, bewilders him and is gone; for he has opened “The Book of Concealed Mystery” and has read: “Before there was equilibrium countenance beheld not countenance.” The words: ‘ Yehi Aour” trembled on his lips; the very chaos of his being seemed of a sudden to shake itself into form—vast and terrible; but the time had not been fulfilled, and the breath of the creation of a new world caught them up from his half-opened mouth and carried them back into the darkness whence they had all but been vibrated.* From midsummer until the commencement of the autumn the diaries are silent except for one entry, “ met a certain Mr. B. an alchemist of note} which though of no parti- cular importance in itself, was destined to lead to another meeting which changed the whole course of P.’s progress, and accelerated his step towards that Temple, the black earth from the foundations of which he had been, until the present, casting up in chaotic heaps around him. Knorr von Rosenroth’s immense storehouse of Qabalistic learning seems to have kept P. fully employed until the autumnal equinox, when B——, the alchemist of note, in- troduced him to a Mr. C (afterwards, as we shall see, Frater V.:. N.°. of the Order of the Golden Dawn). This meeting proved all-important, as will be set forth in the follow- ing chapter. Through C , P. had for the time being laid aside von Rosenroth, and was now deep in “‘ The Book of the * At this time P. was leading an hermit’s life on a Swiss glacier with one whom, though he knew it not at the time, was destined ever and anon to bring him wisdom from the Great White Brotherhood, This one we shall meet again under the initials D. A. + Afterwards known as Frater C. S. 237