The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HASHISH region of pure thought. In the case of the god Osiris, for example, he will no longer express his vision by the name Osiris or by the green face, by the white robes starred with the three active colours, by the crown and by the crook and scourge; nor will he chant wondrous hymns of the descent into Amennti, the death and resurrection of the God; but he will express all this by some pure symbol, such as the cross, the hexagram, or even the number 6. And those upon his plane will understand him. Here, too, we must class the revelations of the pure Qabalah, and the discovery of the relations between symbols. So exalted in truth are the states upon this Safifia grade that the rational man will almost always fail to understand them. Of the Rupa visions he has some experience, if only in analogy; he calls the mystic of Rupa a silly fool; so too of Vedana, whose mystic he calls a besotted ass; but the mystic of Safifia appears to him as a raving lunatic. The hashish correspondences of this stage are the mental analyses which I have gone into so fully above, sections v. and vii. The methods for obtaining success in this matter are far more formidable than those previously sufficient. The whole mind must be intended for long unbroken periods, concen- trated absolutely upon its own working until this becomes normal to it, when the state called Pratyahara is attained. The first result will be its resolution into disconnected impressions. Following this may occur a terrible experience; the consciousness of the disconnectedness of all phenomena, and of the units of consciousness of the observer. Both the Universe and the Self are insane. The mind may become a 73