The Equinox (Volume I, Number V)

THE EQUINOX persuades himself 01 his own attainment. If contradicted on the subject, he is cross and spiteful and cattish. IfI criticise Mr X, he screams, and tries to injure me behind my back; if I say that Madame Y is not exactly St Teresa, she writes a book to prove that she is. Such persons “ swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread,” as Milton wrote of a less dangerous set of spiritual guides. For their unhappy followers and imitators, no words of pity suffice. The whole universe is for them but “the glass of their fool’s face”; only, unlike Sir Palamedes, they admire it. Moral and spiritual Narcissi, they perish in the waters of illusion A friend of mine, a solicitor in Naples, has told me strange tales 01 Where such self—adoration ends. And the subtlety of the devil is shown particularly in the method by which such neophytes are caught by the Black Brothers. There is an exaggerated awe, a solemnity of diction, a vanity of archaic phrases, a false veil of holiness upon the unclean shrine. Stilted affectation masquerades as dignity; a rag-bag 01 mediaevalism apes profundity; jargon passes 101 literature; phylacteries increase about the hem of the perfect prig, prude, and Pharisee. Corollary to this attitude is the lack of all human virtue. The greatest magician, when he acts in his human capacity, acts asia man should. In particular, he has learnt kind— heartedness and sympathy. Unselfishness is very often his long suit. just this the mystic lacks. Trying to absorb the lower planes into the higher, he neglects the lower, a mistake no magician could make. I56