The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE EQUINOX thought! “Look not upon the Visible Image of the Soul of Nature; for Her Name is Fatality; it becometh not thy body to behold Her, until it be first cleansed by the Sacred Mysteries.” The methods most practical and easy of obtaining these states are principally as follow : First, the cultivation of the “magical memory.” The practice is to remember the events of the day backwards; 7.e., first dinner, then tea, lunch, and breakfast. Except, of course, that by this time one has abandoned meals for ever! The memory acquires the habit, and eventually goes on work- ing backwards through sleep, back, back, through birth and previous states until (saith Bhikhu Ananda Metteyya) going ever back through the past one comes right round to the future—‘ Which is pretty, but I don’t know what it means!” I think it right to mention that I never obtained any sort of success in this meditation, and only give it on hearsay. The real key to the stage is Sammasati—Right Recollec- tion. One considers all known factors which have gone to make one up such as one is, oneself and not another. Clearly the omission of a single minute item must alter the whole course of events. Consider then, why thus, and not thus. “ Explore the River of the Soul, whence, or in what order you have come: so that although you have becomea servant to the body, you may again rise to the Order from which you descended, joining works to sacred reason.” Why was I born in England, not in Wales? Why were my parents just who they were and not others? Why did I take to climbing, not to cricket? 76