777

777 VEL PROLEGOMENA SYMBOLICA AD SYSTEMAM SCEPTICO- MYSTICAE VIAE EXPLICANDAE, FUNDAMENTUM HIERO- GLYPHICUM SANCTISSIMORUM SCIENTIAE SUMMAE THE followingis an attempt to systematise alike the data of mysticism and the results of comparative religion. The sceptic will applaud our labours, for that the very catholicity of the symbols denies them any objective validity, since, in sO many contradictions, something must be false; while the mystic will rejoice equally that the self-same catholicity all-embracing -proves that very validity, since after all something must be true. Fortunately we have learnt to combine these ideas, not in the mutual toleration of sub-contraries, but in the affirmation of contraries, that transcending of the laws of intellect which is madness in the ordinary man, genius in the Overman who hath arrived to strike off more fetters from our understanding. The savage who cannot conceive of the number six, the orthodox mathematician who cannot con- ceive of the fourth dimension, the philosopher who cannot conceive of the Absolute —all these are one; all must be impregnated with the Divine Essence of the Phallic Yod of Macroprosopus, and give birth to their idea. True (we may agree with Balzac), the Absolute recedes; we never grasp it; butin the travelling there is joy. Am I no better than a staphylococcus because my ideas still crowd in chains? But we digress. The last attempts to tabulate knowledge are the Kaddala Denudata of Knorr von Rosenroth (a work incomplete and, in some of its parts, prostituted to the service of dogmatic interpretation), the lost symbolism of the Vault in which Christian Rosenkreutzis said to have been buried, some of the work of Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly, some very imperfect tables in Cornelius Agrippa, the “Art” of Raymond Lully, some of the very artificial effusions of the esoteric Theosophists, and of late years the knowledge of the Order Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Unluckily, the leading spirit in these latter societies found that his prayer, “Give us this day our daily whisky, and just a wee drappie mair for luck !” was sternly answered, ‘‘ When you have given us this day our daily Knowledge-lecture.” Under these circumstances Daath got mixed with Dewar, and Beelzebub with Buchanan. But even the best of these systems is excessively bulky ; modern methods have enabled us to concentrate the substance of twenty thousand pages in two score. The best of the serious attempts to systematise the results of Comparative vii b