The Star in the West

288 THE STAR IN THE WEST sophers , and men of science , who are sooner or later recognized as great men ; in the second the adepts as adepts appear , but seem as fools and knaves ; and in the third , that of Slime , vanish altogether , and are invisible . ' Then the chain starts again . Thus Crowley writes : Decadence marks the period when the adepts , nearing their earthly perfection, become true adepts , not mere men of genius. They disappear , harvested by heaven : and per fect darkness ( apparent death ) ensues until the youthful forerunners of the next crop begin to shoot in the form of artists .? During this period of darkness comes the swarm of materializing and secularizing worshippers , who perceive only the gross symbols and not the truth that lies behind them : “ The Church which begins to exteriorise ,” says Crowley , “ is already lost.” And he continues further on in the same essay : Now when Paganism became popular , organised , state regulated , it ceased to be individual : that is to say, it ceased to exist as a religion , and became a social institu tion little better than the Church which has replaced it . But initiates -men who had themselves seen God face to face , and lived -- preserved the vital essence . They chose men , they tested them ; they instructed them in methods Dionysius thus describes the mystical adept : “ Then is he delivered from all seeing and being seen , and passes into the truly mystical darkness of ignorance , where he excludes all intellectual apprehensions , and abides in the utterly impalpable and invisible ; being wholly His who is above all , with no other dependence , either on himself or any other ; and is made one , as to his nobler part , with the Utterly Unknown , by the ces sation of all knowing ; and at the same time , in that very know ing nothing , he knows what transcends the mind of man .”— De Mysticâ Theologiâ , cap . i, p . 710 . 2 Eleusis , vol . iii, p . 222 , 3 Ibid . vol . iii, p . 221 ,