The Sword of Song

tycarb 100 that he is the very nobody to whom I now refer. Meditation is then the m eans; but only the supreme means. The agony column of the Times is the supreme means of m eeting with the gentlem an in the brown billycock and frock coat, wearing a green tie and chewing a s traw, who was at the soirée of the Carlton Club last Monday night; no doubt ! but this means is seldom or never used in the similar contingency of a cow- elephant desiring her bull in the jungles of Ceylon. Meditation is not within the reach of every one ; not all possess the ability ; very few indeed (in the W est at leas t) have the opportunity. In any case what the Eas terns call “ one- pointedness” is an essential prelim inary to even early s tages of true m editation. And iron will-power is a still earlier qualifica- tion. By meditation I do not mean merely “thinking about” any thing, however pro- foundly, but the absolute restraint of the mind to the contemplation of a single object, whether gross, fine, or altogether spiritual. Now true m agical cerem ony is entirely directed to attain this end, and form s a magnificent gymnasium for those who are not already finished mental athletes. By act, word, and thought, both in quantity and quality, the one object of the cerem ony is being constantly indicated. Every fumiga- tion, purification, banishing, invocation, evocation, is chiefly a reminder of the s ingle purpose, until the suprem e moment arrives, and every fibre of the body , every force- channel of the mind, is strained out in one overwhelming rush of the W ill in the direc- tion desired. Such is the real purport of all the apparently fantastic directions of Solomon, Abramelin, and other sages of repute. When a man has evoked and mastered s uch forces as Taphtartharath, Belial, Amaimon, and the great powers of the elements, then he m ay be safely be per- mitted to begin to try to stop thinking. For, needless to say , the universe, including the thinker, exists only by virtue of the thinker’s thought.1 In y et one other way is magic a capital training ground for the Arahat. True symbols do really awake those macrocosmic forces of which they are the eidola, and it is possible in this m anner very largely to increase the magical “potential” to borrow a term from electrical science. Of course, there are bad and invalid pro- cesses, which tend rather to disperse or to excite the mind-stuff than to control it; these we must discard. But there is a true magical ceremonial, the central Arcanum alike of Eastern and W estern practical transcendentalism. Needless to observe, if I knew it, I should not disclose it. I therefore affirm the validity of the Qabalistic tradition in its practical part as well as in those exalted regions of thought through which we have to recently , and so hardly, travelled. Eight are the limbs of Yoga: morality and virtue, control of body , thought, and force, leading to concentration, meditation, and rapture. Only when the las t of thes e has been attained, and itself refined upon by removing the gross and even the fine objects of its 1 See Ber keley and his expounder s, for the Western shape of this Eastern commonplace. Huxley, however, curiously enough, states the fact in almost these words.—A.C. 2 A possible m ystic tr ansfiguration of the Vedanta system has been suggested to m e on the lines of the Syllogism— God = Being (Patanjali). Being = Nothing (Hegel). God = Nothing (Buddhism). Or, in the language of religion: Every one m ay admit that m onotheism, exalted by the introduction of the ∞ symbol, is equivalent to pantheism. Pantheism and atheism ar e r eally identical, as the opponents of both ar e the first to admit. If this be r eally taught, I m ust tender my apologies, for the r econcilement is of cour se complete.—A.C.