THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING
bodies were in prison; but their spirits were in the house of
the fallen chief of the Golden Dawn.
At first Frater P. was seized with horror at the sight, he
knew not whether to direct a hostile current of will against
D.D.C.F. and V.N.R., supposing them to be guilty of cherish-
ing within their bodies the spirits of two disincarnated
vampires, or perhaps Abramelin demons under the assumed
forms of S.V.A.and M.S.R., or to warn D.D.C.F.; supposing
him to be innocent, as he perhaps was, of so black and evil an
offence. But as he hesitated a voice entered the body of the
Sibyl and bade him leave matters alone, which he did. Not
yet was the cup full.
In April he journeyed to London, and the month of May
1903 once again found him amongst the fastnesses of the
north in the house he had bought in which to carry out the
Sacred Operation of Abramelin.
At this point of our history, in a prefatory note to one of
Frater P.’s note-books, we find him recapitulating, in the
following words, the events of the last four years:
In the year 1899 I came to C . . . House, and put everything in order with
the object of carrying out the Operation of Abramelin the Mage.
I had studied Ceremonial Magic, and had obtained very remarkable success.
My Gods were those of Egypt, interpreted on lines closely akin to those of
Greece,
In Philosophy I was a Realist of the Qabalistic School.
In 1900 I left England for Mexico, and later the Far East, Ceylon, India,
Burma, Baltistan, Egypt and France. It is idle here to detail the corresponding
progress of my thought; and passing through a stage of Hinduism, I had dis-
carded all Deities as unimportant, and in Philosophy was an uncompromising
Nominalist, arrived at what I may describe as an orthodox Buddhist; but how-
ever with the following reservations.
(1) I cannot deny that certain phenomena do accompany the use of certain
rituals; I only deny the usefulness of such methods to the White Adept.
Iv M 177