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ILLI N O I


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H14h
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,,[
























    -t'LI I A RY
        OF TH E
    UN IVERSITY
    Of .ILLINOIS
    MERTENil J, MANDEVILLE
COLLECTION IN PARAPSYCHOL
    AND OCCULT SCIENCES
        186 .4
        HI14--h
        1925















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     Origin of Hermetic Philosophy
     Hermetic Anatomy
     Hermetic Philosophy in Fairy Story
     Nature the Divine Instructor
     The Love Stories of the Gods
     Romance of the Spirit and Soul
     The Immaculate Conception


4
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           1  

           The Hermetic Marriage

                      PART ONE

     THE ORIGIN OF HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY

     1. Thoth Hermes, the ibis-headed, was the
     Egyptian god of wisdom, learning, literature, and
     science. He is accredited with being the first to
-   reveal the art of writing to the present human race.
  T hoth, according to the records which we have con-
    cerning him, lived in Egypt as a contemporary of
 ". Moses. Some authorities even claim that Moses
.   and Hermes were one and the same person. The
    Greeks gave the name Hermes to the Egyptian bird-
headed Thoth. The name Hermes is taken from an
    ancient root, herm, which means the active, posi-
 - tive, radiant principle of Nature, sometimes trans-
 lated "vitality" and known to ancient Masonry as
    the cosmic fire, Chiram, and later as Hiram Abiff.
      2. Hermes Trismegistus (thrice greatest), often
    called Mercurius Ter Maximus (the first intelli-
    gencer), dominated the philosophical and literary
  thought of the ancient world. His very name be-
    came a synonym of wisdom. He was considered
    and revered as the personification of philosophy
    " and erudition. He was regarded as the first Qabal-
  J' ist, the first physician, the first alchemist, and the






first historian. The actual life of this demigod and
king of the ancient double empire of Egypt is ob-
scured by that twilight which hides the origin of
all peoples. By reason of his great wisdom and
mysterious powers, Thoth was listed among the
gods, until today many are of the opinion that he
never existed at all outside of mythology. But if,
as science says, action and reaction are equal, there
surely must be something more substantial than a
legend as a foundation for the towering super-
structure of the Hermetic arts.
   3. During the early periods of human growth,
when the intelligence of man was little better than
that of the animal, all education was controlled by
the priestcraft. The ancient priests were called the
shepherds of men, for they guarded the flocks of
primitive human beings as the shepherd his sheep.
Both science and philosophy were outgrowths of re-
ligion, and even the most material of our present
crafts were originally of sacred origin. All of our
present day wisdom once emerged into the world
from between the pillars of sanctuaries. Hermes
was to ancient philosophy what Jesus is to Chris-
tianity-its light, its inspiration, and its impetus.
The Egyptian initiates of the Temple of Isis
claimed, therefore, that Hermes was actually the
writer of all books on philosophical and religious
subjects; and that the supposed human authors
were merely amanuenses, who wrote upon parch-
ment or vellum the thoughts which this great god
placed in their minds or impressed upon their con-
sciousness. In scriptural terms, they were the pens
and he the everready writer.






  4. During his own physical life Hermes Trisme-
gistus was supposed actually to have written forty-
two books. Some of these, however, are probably
the work of the ancient Egyptian priests, for during
their glory these serpent-crowned hierophants rep-
resented the wisest group of philosophers who have
ever lived upon this planet. Clemens Alexandrinua
states that these Hermetic books were divided into
six parts, each dealing with a separate subject under
such headings as astronomy and its inseparable
companion astrology, medicine, geography, the
hymns to the gods, and other titles. During the
ages that have passed, Hermes has come to be
acknowledged as the godfather of science, especial-
ly its chemical and medical branches. Even after
the Christian Era, numerous works dealing with re-
ligion and philosophical subjects were dedicated to
him, and the general term "Hermetic art" has been
applied to practically all the abstruse sciences of
the ancient, medieval and modern worlds.
  5. The Divine Poimandres (more commonly
known as "the shepherd of men") and the Smarag-
dine Tablet found in the Valley of Ebron are the
most famous of the Hermetic fragments*    These
two works are probably authentic and contain
many keys to the universal science of life of which
Hermes was supposed to have been a master. Near-
ly all Hermetic thought was an elaboration of the
principle of analogy contained in the great Her-
metic axiom, "that which is above is likened unto
that which is below and that which is below is lik-
ened unto that which is above."
*See "Lost Keys of Masonry."






At the present time nearly all the so-called Her-
metic writings ARE SAID TO BE LOST-only a few
isolated remnants remain of what once must have
been a magnificent collection of philosophical,
medical, and religious wisdom.
  6. During the Middle Ages one particular
branch of Hermetic thought gradually came into
prominence and for several hundred years dominat-
ed all other branches. This was alchemy. Alchemy
may be defined as the chemistry of life. Alchemy
was the androgynous parent of chemistry, which
was separated from its sire by the speculations of
Roger Bacon and Boyle. While chemistry as a
science dealt only with minerals, medicines, and
essences, alchemy struggled with the far greater
elements of macrocosmic and micoscosmic relation-
ships. Alchemy undoubtedly originated in Egypt,
for there the secret of transmuting base metals into
gold and of prolonging the life of the physical
body indefinitely was thoroughly understood by the
priestcraft. Ancient records tell us that the Chal-
dean sages knew how to rebuild their bodies, so
that many of them lived to be over a thousand
years old. Many of the processes by which this
was accomplished were concealed under the sacred
Egyptian rituals, such as the Book of Coming Forth
by Day, which E. Wallace Budges has called the
"book of the dead."
   7. In the Middle Ages, when religion divorced
philosophy and was wed to blind faith, there was
a great reawakening of alchemical and Hermetic
arts. They were revived by that type of mind






which demand reason, logic, and philosophy as
well as hymns and prayers. Alchemy won numer-
ous converts in Germany, France, and England.
The long ignored works of the Arabian magicians
became immensely popular, and from them was ex-
tracted the greater part of modern astrology. The
ancient philosophies also of the Jewish patriarchs
were revived and Qabbalism became universally
considered pro and con.
  8. Paracelsus, the great Swiss physician (some-
times called the second Hermes), undoubtedly re-
discovered the ancient Egyptian formulae of the
philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, and
around him gathered a school of medieval phil-
osophers who stand out strongly against the dun-
colored background of medieval culture. Back of
this revival of interest in ancient Egyptian phil-
osophy, we find the master minds and guiding
hands of three great philosophical movements. (1)
The Order of the Illuminati-represented by Mu-
hammed, prophet of Islam; Roger Bacon, father of
Chemistry; and Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast
de Hoenheym, father of modern Medicine. It is an
interesting fact that the present buildings and
school Rudolph Steiner, the German mystic, are
located in the grounds of the old estate of Hoen-
heym where Paracelsus lived. (2) The Order of
Free Masons-represented by the great Robert
Fludd, master of symbolism and alchemy, and
Elias Ashmole, the philosopher unique. (3) The
Rosicrucians-a sacred organization founded by
the mysterious frater C. RC. after his return from






Arabia. In the mythological city of Damcar he had
been educated in alchemy and astrology by Arab-
ian adepts. After him came Sir Francis Bacon,
the remodeler of British law; Count Cagliostro, the
sublime adventurer; and then, last of all (and
greatest by far), the great Count de Saint Ger-
maine, probably the world's greatest political re-
former-an alchemist by fire. These minds leav-
ened the loaf of materiality and kept alight the
flame of Hermes during the medieval centuries of
religious intolerance and bigotry.
  9. Concealed beneath chemistry-the science of
relating chemicals and elements-these minds dis-
covered the ancient Egyptian arcana, long hidden
by the crafty priests of Ra and Ammon. Alchemy
thereupon became the chemistry of the soul, for
under the material symbol of chemistry was con-
cealed the mystery of "The Coming Forth by Day."
These ancient wise men taught that the world was
a great laboratory; that living essences were the
chemicals; and that the span of life was a period
of time given to the mind in which to experiment
with the great energies of Nature. To the thought-
ful came wisdom from their labors, but to the
thoughtless life held only foolishness and sorrow.
In this great laboratory man learned the lesson of
how to relate one thing to another. He learned how
to combine the living chemicals of thought, action,
and desire, and in so doing became master of Na-
ture by learning the ways of Nature. He became
a God by actually becoming a man. In the words
of the great Paracelsus, "the beginning of wisdom
is the beginning of supernatural power."
                        8






  10. Of all the Hermetic mysteries there are
none more perplexing than the so-called Hermetic
marriage. A post-Christian interpretation of an
ancient Egyptian ritual was published to the modern
world in the first part of the seventeenth century
(but supposedly written two hundred years earlier),
under the name of The Chymical Nuptials of Chris-
tian Rosencreutz. ..Little, if anything, has been
discovered concerning the origin either of this book
or the Fama Fraternitatis which appeared at about
the same time. The exalted Order of Rosicrucian
philosophers has been very reticent concerning its
members and their works, and even today it is diffi-
cult to prove from a strictly material viewpoint
that the Order ever existed. But beneath the rather
peculiar wording of the alchemical marriage can
be plainly traced the fact that it concealed a series
of mysterious formulate concerning the transmuta-
tion of base metals into gold. The alchemist taught
that man contained within himself all the elements
of Nature, both human and divine, and that by a
process of special culture the base elements of his
nature could be transmuted into the spiritual gold
they called the soul. In discussing this, Paracelsus
makes plain that these philosophers did not wish
to leave the impression that they could make some-
thing from nothing, but rather they emphasized
the fact that all things contain all other things and
that their process of making gol1 was merefy the
process of culturing the germ of gold which lies
concealed in every base substance. Modern science
substantiates the alchemical viewpoint by stating
that it expects to extract gold from mercury by tak-






ing out or separating the electron of gold, which is
one of the elements in every mercurial atom. Tak-
ing the chemistry of human relationships as a basis,
we have prepared the following thesis concerning
the true preparation of a Philosopher's Stone and
the Elixir of Life according to the fundamentals
laid down by Hermes and the ancient Egyptian
priestcraft.


10









The Hermetic Marriage


                 PART TWO

            HERMETIC ANATOMY

  1. A natural theory of creation has been gen-
erally accepted by the peoples of the world, with
the possible exception of those of the Christian
faith. To the ancients, everything in Nature was
alive; therefore they accepted the human body as
symbolic of the universe. The Hebrews called this
prototype Adam Kadmon, or the Grand Man, in
whose mold all things were made. Every system
of cosmogony except the Christian makes the uni-
verse a living thing; instead of a God separate from
His creation, the Brahmans, Jews, Persians, and
Chinese have conceived their God as being hopeless-
ly involved in His creation. They have accepted
more literally than the Christians the idea that man
dwells in God, and that in God he lives, moves, and
has his behng. They called this God Macroproso.
pos, or tlie spirit of the Grand Man." From his
body was made the Macrocosm, consisting of suns,
moons, planets, meteors, ethers, gases, and the
sundry parts of creation. In the Scandinavian
Edda., the universe was formed from the body of
Ymir, the frost king. In India the universe was
constructed from the person of Brahma, whose






members became the various bodies of the visible
cosmos. The Hermetists, therefore, said "Man,
know thyself! for thou, like God, art all wisdom
and all power, and the shadow bearing witness
unto the Eternal."
  2. An anonymous alchemist, writing in the
Middle Ages, stated: "God has given man three
ways whereby he may learn the Infinite Will: (1)
Nature, for in the stars that twinkle in the sky, the
planets in their thundering march, and the earth
with its multitude of laws, are concealed the laws
of God; (2) Holy Writ, the inspired word of saints
and sages unnumbered; and (3) anatomy, the
structure of our own bodies, wherein is concealed
the 'structure of the universe, for all things are
made by one mold." The electron, revolving around
its nebular center, obeys the same law that moves
planets around the sun. In this we see the truth
of the great Hermetic axiom, "as above, so below."
As with the lesser, so with the greater.
  3. Thee Hermetists spent a great deal of time
studying the intricate constitution of man and, like
the Brahmans of India, they divided him into three
major parts. These constituents when fitted to-
gether formed the composite man. In India this
trinity of basic parts is called Adi, Buddhi, and
Manas, meaning literally spirit, soul, and body.
Their trimurti corresponds to the trinity of Chris-
tian theology. Each of these three major parts of
a god, a man, or a universe was personified as an
individual. Adi, or spirit, was called the divine
cause, or the Father. Manas, or matter, was called
the divine effect, being known in India as Shiva
                        12






and in Christendom as the Holy Spirit. Between
these two stood Buddhi-the mediator, the god-man,
the Mercury of the Latins, the messenger of the
gods. By some this is considered synonymous with
soul; by others it is called mind, for mind is the
uniting link between Life in the sense of energy and
death in the sense of inertia. To the pagans and
Hermetists, everything in Nature is alive-the ether,
the air, minerals, the earth itself-endowed by the
ancients with intelligence, consciousness, and feel-
ing. The Adi-Buddhi-Manas constitution of men is
represented by the alchemists under the symbolism
of the Philosopher's Stone and its three important
constituents: salt, sulphur., and mre1rry. Accord-
ing to alchemy, salt is the substance of all things;
it is the body, the form, the dense crystallized par-
ticles from which all physical things are manu-
factured. Sulphur is symbolic of fire, the divine
agent. Fire is defined by the Herinetists as the life
of all things, and is the Adi of the Brahman tri-
murti. Mercury, the universal solvent, becomes
anonymous with Buddhi, the mind-the thing
which absorbs all experience into itself-the link
between God and Nature. All of the great World
Saviors have come, it seems, as personifications of
Buddhi, or the universal mediator. Like the Indian
Vishnu, they have sought to bring God and man
closer together. Whether as Christ, Prometheus,
Zoroaster, Krishna, or Buddha, they have come to
bear witness to the Father; and being made in the
semblance of men, but imbued with the spirit of
God, they have become personifications of the Uni-
versal Solvent.
                        13






  4. To the Hermetists, man has always been con-
sidered androgynous, and they created the god Her-
maphroditus to represent the duality of all living
things. This word is coined from Hermes, fire or
vitality, and Aphrodite, the goddess of water. The
great Hermetic and alchemical axiom was, "Make
the fire to burn in the water, and the water to feed
the fire. In this lies great wisdom." The ancient
Rosicrucians taught that the eternal feminine was
not extracted from the nature of man, as Moses
would have us think, but was rather made subservi-
ent to the opposite side of its own nature. They
believed that every creature was essentially male
and female, but for reasons sufficiently good, which
we will discuss later, only one phase of that nature
manifested at a time. These philosophers by fire
taught that there was but one life force in the
human body and that it was used by man in the
furtherance of all his labors; that he digested his
food with essentially the same energy with which
he thought, and he reproduced his species with the
same forces which he used in physical exercise.
This force was said to be the builder of the uni-
versal temple. It became the Hiram      Abiff of
Masonry, the builder of the eternal temple. In
Egypt this force is symbolized by a serpent, and it
is interesting to note that ip the ancient Hebrew the,
words serpent and savior are synonymougs. In the
stanzasof Dzyan, an ancient Tietan fragment, it
is stated that at a certain time a great cloud of ser-
pents rained upon the earth. This is understood in
esoteric philosophy to represent the coming of the
great world teachers who have long been called
                        14





"serpents." The Savior of the Aztecs and Incas
was called Quetzalcoatl. This name means "feath-
ered serpent." In all parts of the world, from the
serpent kings of Egypt to the feathered serpents of
Tibet, the serpent is symbolic of the vital energies
of the human body. Moses raised the brazen ser-
pent in the wilderness, and all who gazed upon it
lived. Christ, the serpent reborn, says: "I, if I be
lifted up, shall draw all men unto me." It would
seem that the simile is obvious, yet few ever under-
stand it. To the ancients, the magic wand was the
spinal canal." Through this canal runs a sacred
liild, called "f ioi," in Greek chri~stos, the
savior or redeemer of things. This same fhought
has been preserved for Masonry under the heading,
"The Marrow of the Bone."    The Hermetic philo-
sophers recognized this essence in man as a distil-
lation of universal life derived from the atmos-
phere, the sunlight, the rays of the stars, and the
food which he eats. This universal vitality, upon
which all living things draw, is probably the origin
of the myths of the gods who died for mankind. It
is undoubtedly the origin of the legend of the Last
Supper, for man eternally maintains himself upon
the body and the blood of the spirit of universal
energy.
   5. If this energy (which passes through the con-
 duit of the spine) is drained off by various parts of
 the body, it stands to reason that waste will result
 in want. We know that it is very undesirable to do
 heavy thinking directly after eating, for at such
 times the vital energies are digesting food and can-
                        15






not safely be diverted to other channels. By an-
alogy, one-pointedness is the basis of success, for
when the body energies are divided against each
other they cannot perform their proper functions.
The ancients taught that the normal individual had
two distinct avenues of expression-the first, mental
and spiritual; the second, emotional and physical.
The mental faculties were radiant, powerful, domi-
nating, and strong, but often cruel and cynical.
The mind was called the positive pole of the soul,
while the heart was called the negative pole. We
have been taught that the spirit expresses itself
through the mind; the soul and the body through
the heart. The ancient alchemists called the mind
"the sun" and the heart "the moon," for to them
strength, reason, and logic were masculine, patern-
al, solar powers; while love, beauty, intuition,
and kindliness were feminine, maternal, lunar
qualities. This will probably make clear why gold
and silver had to be blended in the great alchem-
ical enterprpises, for the gold and silver of the al-
chemists were not dead metals but living qualities
in human life.
   6. The marriage of the sun and moon was,
therefore, the marriage of the heart and mind or
the two halves of every nature. It was the union
of strength and beauty, inspiration, and courage;
and in its greatest expression the union of science
and theology, or God and Nature. The great need
of this alliance is plainly evident in the world to-
day, where cold intellectualism and commercialism
need the finer sentiments of friendliness and altru-
ism to offset their heartless cruelty. On the other
                        16






hand, fanaticism, blind faith, and ungoverned emo-
tionalism require the strong hand of logic and rea-
son to steer them away from the rocks of insanity
and death. Perfect equilibrium in the nature of
people is seldom met with; in fact, it is Nature's
greatest rarity. A person who has that perfectly
balanced viewpoint is the living Philosopher's
Stone, for he has strength matched with kindliness
and justice tempered with mercy.
  7. Hermetic anatomy teaches that there are two
little bodies in the brain which are identical with
the living Yin Yang of China. In the same way
every person has a masculine nature and a feminine
nature, and never do we find these two entirely dis-
sociated. It may be that East Indian philosophy
gives us our best light on this rather perplexing
subject, for both the Hindus and the alchemists
agree that the spirit is androgynous-as god, it is
both father and mother. It states in Genesis, "God
created man in His own image, male and female
created He them." He would infer from this that
God is both male and female, and as the spirit of
man is of God it must partake of the androgynous
nature of its parent. Let us therefore say in har-
mony with the Eastern sages that sex does not exist
in spirit any more than it does in the embryo be-
fore the third month of prenatal life. Sex is a
polarization of the body, a manifestation of spirit;
but the germ of life itself is capable of projecting
both the positive and negative rays.
   8. We now become involved in a still more
 perplexing problem, namely, what governs the sex
                        17






which the human being is to manifest during life?
Again we must turn to the Eastern sages. Evolu-
tion is the continuity of form appearing in cycles
and gradually unfolding from a simple cell to a
complex organism. If a form evolves, it is not ab-
surd to suppose that the cause of that form is also
evolving. The Easterner solves one ofi the Western
world's greatest problems by the law of reincarna-
tion. This little-known doctrine (which was re-
moved from the Christian faith A. D. 550, at the
Council of Constantinople) taught that the spirit
or flife is immortal; that it descends into gross mat-
ter for the purpose of gathering experience; and
that it descends not only once but a number of
times in order that it may ultimately gain that per-
fection which no living creature has ever yet gained
in one appearance in the world. This doctrine also
taught that the consciousness descending into form
does not always appear in one sex, but alternates,
appearing first in a masculine body and then in a
feminine-in this way developing both sides of the
nature symmetrically. If this doctrine be accepted,
it will go far toward solving a number of problems
concerning heredity and the so-called injustice and
inequality in the world. Even without it, Her-
meticism can still stand; with its aid, however, the
alchemical philosophies become far more clearly
defined.
   9. The ancient wisdom teaches that the circle of
 the creative forces in the human body is broken at
 the present time. One end of this broken ring is in
 the brain, where it furnishes the power or vitality
 which is the basis of brain function. The other
                         18






end of this circle is located in the generative sys-
temn, where it furnishes the means of reproducing
the species. At a time remote in history, however,
man was a complete creative unit in himself, being
capable of procreating his species like certain of
the lower orders of animals of today. At that time,
however, he had no mind. The raising of the brazen
serpent, according to mythology, therefore gave him
a mind but broke the creative circuit. In the mas-
culine sex the positive pole of the life force is in
the brain; the negative pole is used for generative
purposes. In the feminine sex, the negative pole is
in the brain; the positive pole is used for genera-
tive purposes. As a direct outgrowth of this con-
dition (temporarily maintained in order that man
may think and develop his higher nature and at
the same time continue to offer opportunity for
other lives to come into manifestation) the institu-
tion of marriage has been established.
   10. To the Hermetists, marriage is therefore
symbolic of the ultimate reunion of the two halves
of each individual's androgynous nature when,
after repeated appearances and associations, each
establishes equilibrium within his own constitution.
The wedding ring was accepted by the ancients as
being symbolic of the golden ring of the spirit fire,
which connected the spiritual and material natures
of every individual. These ancient philosophers
have predicted that ultimately the present methods
of reproduction will be abolished and both halves
of the spirit fire will be turned into the brain. One
of them now finds its polarity in the pituitary body
                        19






and the other in the pineal gland. These two tiny
ductless bodies, while an enigma to modern science,
were recognized by the ancients as organs of great
antiquity. The ancient wisdom teaches that the
pineal gland was the original organ of vision,
namely, the third eye, called in the Sanskrit Dang-
ma, or the Eye of Shiva. It is the all-seeing eye
of the Masons, and the meaning of the word Budd-
ha. In uniting its spark with the pituitary body,
this gland fuses the broken circle, and thus consum-
mates thfie Hermetic marriage, whereby through an
immaculate conception in the brain the great light,
or the Shining One, is born as a luminous spark in
the third ventricle of the brain, which is the Master
Mason7is chamber in the ancient and accepted rite.
Today, students of the ancient wisdom are seeking
to prepare themselves for this peculiar work. The
Hermetic marriage is, therefore, an individual mat-
ter involving the recognition of individual com-
pleteness; and (more than that) requiring of those
who aspire to it a sincere effort to be balanced,
sane, and consistent in everything they do. In the
alchemical retorts and vials we recognize the bodies,
glands, and organs of man; and in the chemicals,
the essences and forces coursing through the body
of man. With these the individual consciousness
must labor until it is capable of combining them
according to the perfect formula.


20









The Hermetic Marriage


                 PART THREE

     HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY IN MYTHS
             AND FAIRY STORIES

  1. What child does not grow up in a fairyland
extending from the first glimmering dawn of under-
standing to the time when the grim realities of ma-
turity tear down the dream world and replace it
with hopelessness and despair?     The greatest
tragedy of life is the destruction of dreams, when
only shattered parts of life's hope remain. Hearts
are broken all the way through this great pageant-
ry of existence, but the first heartbreak is when the
fairy stories and their wonderful little people are
given up, and those beautiful beings with which we
have peopled the world of our fancies give way to
heartless human creatures of real existence. Man
thoughtlessly destroys not only the dreams of
others, but makes his own world a nightmare peo-
pled with hobgoblins of selfishness and egotism.
The fairies of childhood are always benevolent,
kindly, helpful, serving the poor in distress, right-
ing wrongs, and doing many beautiful things;
while the realities of later life are generally malev-
olent and prdductive of all the miseries that the
fairies of childhood sought to heal with their silver-
tipped wand and rainbow dreams.
                       21






  2. In this great game of life why cannot we still
preserve some of the beauty and romance of fairy-
land? The world of pixies, gnomes and fairy god-
mothers is just as real in childhood as the grind-
ing commercial system is during later life. Eco-
nomics would suffer no injury nor would standards
collapse if dreams were perpetuated and man in-
structed how to build solid foundations under his
castles of ether, for human beings are ever children
at heart. Man grows old but he never grows up;
like Peter Pan, he is childish from the cradle to the
grave. Life for the average person has not enough
of beauty or sweetness in it with which to combat
the sordid grind of modern things. Here and there
one lives a whole life in a fairyland of poetry, art,
or music. Such a one we call a dreamer. But as
the years weigh heavy upon us, we forget Prince
Charming and Princess Beautiful and ourselves be-
come cruel old ogres who live to frighten other
children's souls out of their dreams. Are not most
of us in our daily lives akin to the same cruel old
giants dwelling alone in castles of gloom  over
which we shivered in terror and sorrow when we
read the fairy stories of long ago?
   3. Will any child ever forget Cinderella and
her wonderful glass slipper--how she met and won
the beautiful prince while her envious sisters and
cruel stepmother gnashed their teeth in rage? The
story is part of childhood. But with the coming
of years poor little Cinderella is forgotten; the rag
dolls are thrown in the corner; the toy blocks are
covered with dust, for the dream world of child-
                        22






hood has faded from the mind, and little pattering
feet once running hither and thither have given
place to slow uncertain steps. Yet the romance
finds another setting. Prince Charming becomes
a soda fountain clerk or floor-walker in a down-
town store, while Princess Beautiful sells ribbons
in some little country shop.
  4. The lives of people are really fairy stories,
in which they play out the comedies and tragedies
of their lives and seek for something in today to
take the place of the shattered dreams of yesterday.
Few of us have ever realized that fairy stories have
their counterpoint in Nature. The world about us
is filled with ugly stepmothers and half-sisters who
cannot wear glass slippers. They are not living
people, it is true, but they are attitudes and
thoughts; for our own dispositions, when perverted
and soured, become ogres and hateful witches seek-
ing eternally to destroy that which is good and
kindly within ourselves.
  5. Do you remember Beauty and the Beast-
how, in spite of the evil witchery that had turned
the handsome prince into a hideous monster, the
coming of Beauty into his life restored him again
to human shape and greater happiness? Many an
individual, through the lack of beauty in his own
heart, has become a horrible, hideous beast, who
while still in human shape has all the attributes of
a ferocious animal. How often the sense of beauty
is the thing which redeems! Beauty of soul and
beauty of life bring back happiness to the beast.
The whole world is a romance of Beauty and the
                        23






Beast. We see it on the battlefield of Flanders,
where flowers are springing up in the shadows of
the trenches. In Nature we ever see Beauty re-
deeming the Beast. Out in the forest the dark, dead
tree is gaunt and bare; but Nature with her magic
wand covers the tree with creeping vines, decking
its gaunt limbs with mantles of flowers and urging
the birds to build their nests amid its dark branches.
A beautiful word, a beautiful thought, a beautiful
life--all these are fairy wands which bring back
Prince Charming from the darkness of gloom and
despondency.
  6. Have you read the story of Sleeping Beauty?
If not, go straight to the library and visit the chil-
dren's room. Sit down on one of those little chairs
about ten inches from the floor, get out the book
with its colored pictures and much-thumbed pages,
and go with the Prince through the great forest of
nettles and thorns which surrounds the place of
Princess Beautiful. The princess is under a spell
which causes her to sleep until she is' awakened by
the handsome prince, who passes through all the
obstacles of life in order to claim her as his own.
  7.    Have you ever realized that you are both
the Prince and the Princess in one-that the Prin-
cess is your own better nature, the spirit of beauty
lying asleep in you, hidden away behind walls of
nettles and thorns of conflict? These thorns and
briars are the struggles and disappointments and
impediments of life, for there is a crown of thorns
in every life. Man longs for the beautiful and the
true, but he must always claim it from a heart of
                        24






sorrow and sadness. Peace will never be found
without labor. So go with the faith of a true prince
into the world, which is the forest of nettles, for
the world is filled with aggravating, pricking, tear-
ing, and wounding things. But if you will go
through life with the faith of the fairy Prince, you
will find that the thorns give way before you, that
the nettles and briars part and let you through;
for there is a reward for those who seek to beautify
life and awaken the spirit of harmony lying asleep
behind the briars of privation. There is beauty in
all things. If your life has been deprived of it, go
forth like the Prince and claim it. Remember,
however, that happiness must always be reached
through the forest of thorns and that every spirit
must be a hero to attain it.
  8. Let us stop for a moment in passing and read
  over again those wonderful legends, The Thousand
  and One Nights-how Sinbad sailed the seven
seas, and Ali Baba watched from his tree while the
thieves hid their treasure in the mountain side. Fan-
tastic stories these, but in every one a lesson.
Every one is true, if we can but read the meaning
aright.
   9. Will you ever forget Aladdin and his won-
derful lamp, how the poor beggar boy who lived
with his widowed mother (Masons take note) won,
by means of his magic lamp, everything in the
world that his heart desired. He married the Prin-
cess Beautiful, overpowered the evil magician, and
became Caliph of Bagdad. Here again life is un-
folded to us. What is the lamp of Aladdin that
                        25






gives him everything that he desires. The lamp is
wisdom, which is gained under the ground in the
darkness of the earth-meaning life and its com-
plexities. The genii that serves it is Nature, who
obeys all who understand her laws. The Princess
is happiness, peace, and the spirit of eternal ro-
mance, which lead man in his quest and strengthen
him that he may win the great battle of life; for in
saving his own soul he wins the Princess of his
dreams. The evil magician is selfishness and his
own lower nature which seek to prevent Aladdin
from having the lamp, for the animal must die
when man becomes human. Aladdin becomes the
Caliph of Bagdad, which represents the attainment
of Godhood or wisdom and the mastery of his own
universe as a result of his exploits. All these
stories have a meaning the child never suspects,
but so deep that the sage cannot comprehend it all.
   10. The greatest minds that ever lived have
believed in fairies. If they have not believed in
embodied ones, at least they have believed in the
principle of fairies. Socrates had his familiar
spirit that comforted him in time of sorrow. Na-
poleon had his little red gnome, which was seen
sitting on his shoulder at the battle of the Pyra-
mids. Paracelsus declared that the fairies were
elemental creatures and that the reason small chil-
dren see them is because in early childhood the soft
spot on the crown of the head has not closed and
the, pineal gland or etheric eye is still somewhat
active.


26









      The Hermetic Marriage

                 PART FOUR

     THE LOVE STORIES OF THE GODS.

  Romance fills the mythologies of every nation.
They are the romances of natural forces, for in all
the faiths of the world the creative powers of nature
are personalized. Human feelings and emotions
are attributed to them. Idylls of beauty and pathos
fill the scriptures of all peoples, and the sanctity
of the finest and highest forms of human sentiment
is lauded as virtue by every spiritual message the
world has ever received.
  The ancients (speaking in the language of men)
taught that the gods were the planets, and that the
rays from these distant planets came as suitors
bringing gifts to the earth. They taught that all
things in Nature plighted their troth one to the
other; that from these romances came forth the
gods of creation and the spirits that labor with the
universe in its forming.
  In India, Brahm--the Father God, the life of all
things-awakened the universal substance, Matri-
padme-the great Mother Lotus-by a ray of light
which he caused to descend from the heavens. This
ray of light, striking the Lotus, kissed it with a
gleam of energy that vibrated through the entire
                       27






blossom. Thereupon the blossom opened its petals
and dropped its seeds which, falling into Chaos,
were the beginnings of the worlds.
   In the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice
we are told how the god of music and harmony
wooed the goddess of beauty and love. Later be-
cause of the sting of the serpent Eurydice died and
descended into the world of Pluto. Orpheus fol-
lowed her into the depths of hell, seeking to win
her back from the realm of death. Losing her at
last, he wandered broken-hearted and alone to an
untimely grave.
   His myth (like the others) deals with the beauty
of attitudes and is entirely impersonal, for Orpheus
represents skill and Eurydice signifies inspiration.
When she had been taken from his life, he could no
longer play the harmonies which before had filled
his soul. We often fail in life because of the lack
of inspiration which adds soul to the dexterity of
the fingers. Every life must not only have the
power to accomplish: it must also have the inspir-
ation to lead it on. Here we have the laws of pol-
arity at work in life. These are the two opposites
-skill and inspiration. How easily one can de-
stroy the other, yet how perfectly the one comple-
ments the other! All things in Nature are at their
summum bonum when each quality complements
every other. Reason, logic, philosophy, courage,
daring-even aspiration-are the masculine quali-
ties or factors. They lend strength to accomplish-
ment, but they are incomplete unless there is added
to them inspiration, intuition, grace, beauty, faith,
                        28






and love-either love of labor or of the spirit be-
hind labor.
  From India comes what is probably the most
beautiful of all love stories-the legend of Radha
and Krishna. Out in the forest these two loved and
played, and the myth of their romance has become
one of the great spiritual inspirations of India.
  Krishna was the spirit, gallant, beautiful, and
dynamic-the Prince Charming of every love story
-while Radha was the body, Nature, the eternal
receptive thing. As the sun radiates its light upon
the earth, so Krishna brought his gifts to the one
he loved. In their story is played the drama of the
love of Life for Substance, and the romance in
which Life redeems Substance through eternal de-
votion is a beautiful thing indeed. Krishna at-
tained divinity, and through love Radha-the soul
-was liberated from the shell of substance and
became one with the spirit of Light.
  The analogy is in every religion and everything
in Nature. Wherever we turn from the bubbles of
ether to the cells of the body, we find the universal
law of polarity. We find the romance of electrons,
the love story of the fire mist, the swirling ethers,
the endless waves of the sea as they kiss the shore,
all manifesting divine romance. There is a sanc-
tity, a divinity, in the lessons of Nature which
makes us all better for the realization of our indi-
vidual part in the joyous Plan.
  It is man, not God, who takes the romance out
of life. By his selfishness, cruelty, licentiousness,
                        29






and greed, man tears down the altar of Vesta and
fills the world with degeneracy.
  If people would live the occult life, they would
come to realize the beauty of comradeship and
brotherly love, which are the basis and keystone of
the universal Plan.
  In the last analysis, we are all of one family,
and not such a large family at that. We are living
together on a little globe which is but a speck of
dust in Chaos. With all our presumed mental
growth, with all our philosophy and logic, we have
not yet learned how to live at peace with one an-
other. We have not yet learned the first principles
of relationship and our duties in the universe.
  We have come to look upon contention as neces-
sary. We have instituted a reign of hate to take
the place of fraternity and kindliness, and time
after time we have drenched the earth with the
blood of our fellow creatures. We have loosed the
beast that goes howling for destruction, slaying our
fellow creatures for meat and trimming our cloth-
ing with the fur and feathers of defenseless crea-
tures whom we have slaughtered for our selfish
ends. This was not the plan of Nature.
  God made a garden and gave it to man. Man
having made of this garden a hell, now offers it
back to God. But in the due course of things the
wrong shall be made right, the errors shall pass
away, and only the reality shall endure. Let each
hasten that day by going (as did the prince in the
fairy story) to rescue Beauty from her long sleep;
let each awaken inspiration from the tomb where
                        30






she has so long lain, thus adding to the material
attributes of reason, logic, and law the spiritual
attributes of grace, beauty, and ideality.
  The world lives not by bread alone, but by hope.
Each day man rises to his daily struggle fed by the
spirit of hope. Even the most material of us dwells
largely in the spirit of our dreams. That which
builds and constructs in our dreams is Good; that
which destroys is evil. For ages the spirit has been
imprisoned by limitation, and this little spark of
hope within is the only light that has shone through
the barred windows of the soul.
  Did you ever think of the romance that there is
between the spirit and its hope, between the heart
and the hand. Did you ever think that there is a
marriage within man himself where his reason weds
his dream; that his mind-masculine and domi-
neering-is united in spiritual wedlock to the heart
-kindly, sympathetic, and compassionate?  This
is the real romance of the gods. None shall ever
reach wisdom until within himself these nuptials
have been consummated and that point of union
reached where love and logic, hand in hand, guide
the spirit in its search for understanding. Thus
man is guided in his search for truth and led to the
greater goal of cosmic understanding.
   Neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy alone can
ever rule the world wisely and well, but when these
two join forces, then the affairs of the world will
be run as wisely as those of the gods. Then the
Lords of Compassion shall join with the Lords of
Reason in molding the destiny of the universe.
                        31








      The Hermetic Marriage

                  PART FIVE

     NATURE THE DIVINE INSTRUCTOR

  1. Age after age man is forced to admit that
Nature, an apparently unintelligent entity, is the
final criterion of all his virtues and vices. In order
to survive, all things must be natural. Nature is
eternally consistent. All things that are unnatural
are false; all things that are natural are true. True
does not mean good or bad, according to modern
standards: it means in harmony with consistency.
It is natural to be consistent; it is unnatural to be
inconsistent. To be consistent is to be happy; to
be inconsistent is to be unhappy.
  2. All visible things bear witness to that invis-
ible spark of immortality which we call spirit.
This spark is eternally unfolding; it is ever in .the
state of becoming. Man is a magnificent atom;
the universe is a magnificent man. Every moment
of life is a transition period-the passing out of an
old into a new mental, spiritual or physical envir-
onment. The personality of the bodies are ever
bearing witness to the changes taking place within
the invisible spiritual atom. Birth, growth, and
decay bear witness to the scope of function at-
tained by the spiritual germ, which is the real "I"
of every living thing. This "I" is ever molding
                       82






bodies in the likeness of itself. Like a shadow, the
body moves in consistency with its spiritual urge.
Between them is perfect harmony. The body must
bear witness, therefore, not only of the virtues of
the consciousness but also of its ignorance and per-
version.
  3. As before stated, harmony and happiness are
nearly synonymous. Physical harmony is health,
mental harmony is balance, and spiritual harmony
is peace. Harmony is natural; inharmony is un-
natural. To be unnatural is to be unhappy-in
spirit, mind, or body, as the case may be. We are
living in an unnatural age. Nearly everything that
we do is inconsistent and unnatural. The food we
eat is unnatural; the clothes we wear are unnatural;
the thoughts we think are for the most part either
artificial or morbid, or at least distorted by our
own unnatural view points concerning life. As a
result, we are unhappy, sick, and totally unable to
fill our proper places in the great plan. The white
race is largely composed of nervous wrecks who
demand an ever more complex civilization to furn-
ish thrills for their satiated nerves. The day of
simple things is passing, and with it many of the
finer sentiments of life. We do not mean that our
day does not have its advantages nor our ethics
their redeeming features, but we do believe our cul-
ture to be assumed, our respectability largely a
sham, and our virtue a veneer. Our entire code of
life is unnatural, and as such is doomed to destruc-
tion. It will carry with it down into dissolution
those who have become dependent upon its fal-
lacies.
                       33






  4. As surely as physical disease is the result of
an unnatural physical condition, so a diseased
mentality is the outgrowth of unnatural mental
activities. An unnatural emotional nature is a dis-
eased one. And, what is far worse, all mental,
moral, and spiritual diseases are contagious. An
individual with a diseased viewpoint on life should
be quarantined in the same way as a person with
the small pox. The types of germs that radiate
from diseased lives are far more dangerous than
any which science his discovered.
  5. To be a student of alchemical philosophy
one must be an individualist. In modern medicine,
physicians do not treat ailments; they treat indi-
viduals. Individualization is a property peculiar
to all mental development and has consequently
divided all human beings from each other, fre-
quently also from the plan of Nature. In studying
the animal we may study a species, but in studying
man we consider a species all in one--a unique type
in every case. Therefore the problem confronting
the student of human nature is an ever-changing
one, with as many angles as there are human minds.
The power of choice that the mind exercises inde-
pendently of Nature and whereby it elects to dis-
obey Nature is the cause of nearly all the sorrow
in the world today. All human beings have two
natures: their truly human nature and their animal
nature. The first is natural to man, while the
second is natural to the beast. In crisscrossing or
changing, therefore, we have the false process of
assumption; for man can assume an animal nature
                        34






but it is always unfitting and degenerating for him
to do so.
  6. During the last hundred years there has been
a great revival of the ancient wisdom. Incidentally,
there have also been revived a number of things
which do not pertain to the subject at hand. Thou-
sands of people have studied the ancient masters,
with profit more or less according to their own basic
natures. Most have assumed a great deal and have
grown very little. The soul of man grows like the
plant. It unfolds under the light of reason and
lifts its face to gaze straight and unafraid at the
power that gave it being. The great Masters are
the spiritual gardeners who take care of the human
flowers. The Master may love the human flower
and tend it with all care, but only God, Nature, and
its own inherent life can make it grow. And oh,
how slowly it grows! You may sit down and watch
it for hours and see no change. But in due time
and in its own season it blossoms forth in all its
glory, loved 'and admired by all who pass that way.
God is the head gardener, Nature is the fertile field,
and we are the growing plants. Let us make certain
that we are really growing half as much as we think
we are.
   7. Are we really building a beautiful character
of our own or merely renting one from someone
else? Are we borrowing virtues from others or
building them in ourselves? Are we spending our
time fighting our failings or cultivating our vir-
tues?  Are we praying to the gods for more wis-
dom or making better use each day of that which
                        35






we already have?     These are questions which
everyone must honestly answer, but there are very
few honest people and equally few responses. If
the average occult student could be bought for what
he is worth and sold for what he thinks he is worth,
fortunes would be made overnight.
  8. The thoughts of other people can never
vicariously become a part of you; you may take
your pick, however, from all the wisdom of the
world and make it your own by mental labor.
There must always be the adjustment between the
fact as it is in its simplicity, and the application of
that fact to your own life. You must live upon
knowledge like the plant that takes the life of the
earth and builds from the dirt its delicate organism.
Most disciples believe all they hear, and swear by
their instructors. A few wise ones weigh all things
and cling unto that which is good (in the sense of
being useful). Each person should chew his own
intellectual food, or at least digest it if he wishes
to live upon its essences. The ancient adepts un-
failingly impressed upon their disciples the necess-
ity of individually digesting, assimilating, and ap-
plying the things that they were learning.
   9. When this widom really becomes a part of
you, and not merely a registered impression, you
will find that it will begin to mold the tangible
nature into a likeness of itself. Proof of the fact
that the student does not digest and apply the
knowledge that he secures is found by studying him.
A large majority of cult-joiners are crazy-some
                        36






mildly, others violently. The eternal question is,
why? The answer is obvious: They have over-
taxed their minds with abstractions; they have tried
to force themselves to manifest virtues which they
did not possess; they have tried to burst suddenly
into bloom without building their virtues slowly
and carefully as the plant does its form. When
people try to be something they are not, they gen-
erally get into trouble. The only legitimate and
practical method is by gradual development and
growth. Then the candidate for Hermetic honors
becomes an alchemist, gradually transmuting his
entire nature into the thing that he desires it to be.
   10. To grow gradually in a balanced manner
the true secret of success in mysticism. The nature
must grow as an entirety. To be virtuous in one
thing and neglect all others is to be inconsistent;
and to be inconsistent is to destroy one's self.
There is no use trying to reach heaven on a mono-
rail track. That form of locomotion failed years
ago. A well-rounded nature is far more to be de-
sired than one outstanding virtue and a dozen be-
setting sins. In occultism, too much stress cannot
be placed upon the interrelation of things. The
candidate eats certain foods when he is doing cer-
tain things; he sleeps with his head toward the
North Star when he is doing certain things. But to
do anything separately is very foolish. To be vir-
tuous in speech and careless in thinking is rank in-
consistenty, and the penalty of inconsistency is in-
sanity. All students must, first of all, learn to be
consistent. It is a greater help than any single
over-worked line of virtue.
                        37








The Hermetic Marriage


                  PART SIX

       THE ROMANCE OF THE SPIRIT
               AND THE SOUL.

  1. The spirit in man is the divine spark, birth-
less, deathless, and uncreated but containing the
power of creating as part of its immortality. It is
the donor of life--that part of the immortal God
that has taken up its dwelling place in the four fold
tabernacle of Its children. This ancient Tabernacle
(as described in the early Scriptures and also by
Josephus) is in reality the living temple of the
human body, and all its parts and utensils have
their symbolic counterpart in the various functions,
aspects, and anatomic principles of the human
body. In a rare manuscript now unobtainable we
find the entire Holy Land depicted as a human
body. Continuing this analogy, the spirit in man
would assume a position like unto what the ancient
Talmudic priests called "The-Lord-Blessed-Be-He."
The ancients also referred to this power as the
Causal Man, the Ruler of that universe of effects
which He has delivered out of Himself. He is the
composite Elohim, male and female, father and
mother, Who, dividing Himself from Himself, be-
came the Yin Yang of China and the Isvara and
Avalokiteshvara of the ancient Hindus.
                       38






  2. He-the Logos-becomes the perfect lord of
His creation, and having disseminated Himself into
the Not-Self He ordains His disseminated parts to
the great pilgrimage or day of wandering, at the
end of which the heterogeneous composite will be
led back to its unified Cause. The wanderings of
these germs of immortality through the vale of
maya are called by the ancient Jews "the years in
the wilderness."  The tribes of Israel (which to-
gether form the divine Duodecimo and have been
preserved to our rather prosaic times as the cut-up
man in the almanac), under the direction of Moses
carried on their even now uncompleted search for
the Promised Land.
  3. Spirit is that central cohesive power which
binds organisms together-a subtle effluvium in
which the evolving granules float like the planets
in the pranic emanations of the sun. Pythagoras
and other ancient philosophers taught that bodies
are exuded from the spirit in the same way that a
crustacean exudes the substances which later harden
to form its shell. By this we see, according to an
ancient Hermetic adage, that the "marrow gives
birth to the bone." This spiritual monad is the
Atman who, contemplating the great unreality,
gathered the molecules by His magnetism and,
passing them through his auric bodies, sent them
forth permeated with Himself to form His worlds.
These worlds, therefore, are called in Scripture
"the daughters of men." In the same chapter the
spirits are called "the sons of God." These sons
of God saw that the daughters of men were fair
and same down into them.
                        39






  4. These daughters of men grouped themselves
together and formed the material world. They are
the virgins of Nature who are set aside from all the
world to become the brides of Christ. They are (as
we will discuss later) the stones from which are
built that New Jerusalem which is to be wedded to
the Son of Light, according to Revelation. These
bodies, moreover, have a voice, called by us the
soul and by the Greeks, Psyche. This soul is a
material thing in one sense of the word in that it
is born in a manger surrounded by animal appe-
tites. It is that thing which is born a son of man
but can ascend to the dignity of a son of God. Of
course, we do not refer to the soul as a physical
entity in this case, but rather to its principle which
is understanding.
  5. One of the leaves of Hermes' sacred tree
bears upon it the significant alchemical word dis-
tillatio. This means to extract through a chem-
process, usually requiring evaporation. We know
that our daily life is a course in cosmic schooling.
In one sense of the word, a child distils education
from its academic researches. In similar fashion
consciousness distils the products of wisdom and
understanding from the complexities of life. This
distillation was called by the ancients the soul, or
the "perfect voice of the bodies."
  6. You may have read the allegory of the pearl
of great price which the diver seeks under the sea.
The pearl represents the soul, the diver is the spirit,
the diving suit represents his bodies, and the water
is the physical world. As the prodigal son was
nobler and truer for his wanderings, so man learns
                        40






to be as great as his gods by his experiences and
his alchemical distillations therefrom. The spirit
is immortal; the bodies are mortal, but from them
can be extracted an immortal thing-wisdom.
Psyche is symbolized with butterfly wings, for like
this little creature she passes through a state of
metamorphosis. The bodies are ugly worms or
caterpillars, crawling upon the earth in their unre-
deemed and unrefined state. But, like the Eastern
saint who, entering the meditations and contem-
plations, is reborn into reality by his asceticism, so
this ugly crawling thing, blackened with the earth,
enters into its trance condition of chrysalis to be
reborn as a glorious, many-winged creature cap-
able of flying high above the surface of the earth
where once it was chained by its worm-like at-
tributes. Recognizing this marvelous transforma-
tion the Greeks used the butterfly Psyche to repre-
sent the unredeemed man and his final redemption.
   7. For similar reasons the frog and the serpent
were sacred among the ancients, for the tadpole
finally comes forth upon the land and the snake
sheds its skins in the same way that man sheds his
bodies, coming forth each year in a brand-new gar-
ment. This sublime thought has been ably ex.
pressed in the poem, "The Chambered Nautilus."
   8. As the bodies must first be redeemed and
transmuted before they can become immortal,
philosophers have long explained this process by
the love stories of mythology. The romance of the
spirit and the soul is the true mystic interpretation
of the underlying principle concealed in nearly
                        41






every love story of Scripture and myth. The soul
may be called "the experience body" of man. It is
actually the lower nature that will later be drawn
up into union with the higher consciousness to com-
plete the androgynous creation. The soul will some
time be the functioning body of spirit who will
make himself known unto all peoples and unto all
nations through his dearly beloved Son, who bears
witness of him before all worlds. This Son is the
soul, ransomed out of all iniquity, conceived of the
Holy Ghost, and born of an immaculate conception.
He is the Redeemer-Christos, "the fire oil," the
transmuted essences of all bodies, the conservation
of all forces, the proper usage of all natural en-
ergies. This universal energy, if it be dignified or
lifted up, shall draw all men unto it; for when the
brazen serpent is raised all who look upon it shall
live. Experience is the fruit of the Tree of Life,
and when man can eat thereof he shall know good
and evil and shall be in truth as great as the gods.
  9. The romance between the spiritual and the
material may be understood by taking an example
familiar to all Bible readers. The City of Jeru-
salem, adorned as a bride, is married to the Lamb,
according to the allegories of the Book of Revela-
tion. Jerusalem is built upon four hills, from
which fact is derived its name, which means "a city
of stacks."  This is sometimes erroneously inter-
preted "the city of peace."   The four hills are
Qabbalistically the four beasts of Ezekiel, the four
apostle-historians, and the four aspects of the
Egyptian sphynx. They are also the four heads of
                        42






Brahma. Naturally, they are the four bodies of
man, which as a composite form the substances
from which the soul must be extracted by distilla-
tion. Each of us is a walled city, made up of bil-
lions of parts, each alive, each subservient to our
will but each demanding justice, integrity, and
kindliness from its ruler.
  10. To the average person his body is a prison,
which eternally limits him and makes difficult the
accomplishment of his dreams. He would tell the
beautiful thoughts that come to his mind but his
tongue cannot describe them; he would reproduce
the music that he hears in his dreams, but his
fingers are too clumsy. So it- goes, until at last
many despair of ever bearing witness physically to
the undwelling spirit. The wise, however, never
despair, but daily and hourly, by their labor and
their prayers, bring closer the day of their libera-
tion when they shall be transfigured by that glory
which, though always within, cannot shine out
through the darkened glass of untutored souls. At
last his body-the city of his soul-purified and
glorified, dons its wedding garment and becomes
the bride of that spirit which has long dwelt un-
recognized and unrevered in its midst. This re-
generated body is the robe of the high priest, "the
garments of glory unto the Lord." It is the golden
wedding garment of St. Paul without which the dis-
ciple cannot come to the wedding feast of the Lamb.
   11. This is also a key to the Song of Solomon
 the king, probably the least understood and there-
 fore the most reviled of all the Scriptural writings
                        43





of the Jewish and Christian world. What minister
dares to read its chapters from his pulpit? Yet
from all accounts it is as highly inspired as any
other part of the Scriptures. For ages none have
studied it, yet it contains some of the greatest les-
sons to be found in any Scripture of the world.
The dark-skinned maiden of Jerusalem is the earth,
and (by cosmic analogy) the planet and also the
physical body of all Nature; while Solomon, as
Masons have discovered, is a personification of the
sun, the white-faced one whose power and kingdom
no living king shall ever equal.
  12. Here we come to another important prob-
lem. The story of Solomon and his wives has long
been a cause of dissension among Christian advo-
cates of monogamy. The name Solomon is de-
rived from three words, SOL-OM-ON. The name
conceals the trinity known as the three suns, and
is also the name of the superior God in three dif-
ferent languages. We know that a solar system
consists of a radiant center around which revolve
a number of negative receptive bodies. As sub-
stance is the bride of spirit-for the negative is the
servant of the positive,-so the planets revolving
in their orbits about the sun and all the created
things of the universe were referred to by the Jews
as the brides, wives, or concubines of the central
Light. Among the ancients, the spirit was always
considered  masculine and    substance feminine.
This further explains the reason for using the fore-
going symbols. These planets receive the light of
the sun, are bathed in its glory, and exist only be-
cause of its beneficent powers: they are therefore
                        44






called the brides of Solomon    upon   whom   he
showers his treasures. The sun, radiating its light
upon the planets, adorns them with their flora and
fauna; so it is said of the great king, "He robed his
maidens in precious stones, jewels, and costly rai-
ment." The materialist reads only the words and
is offended, for he is of the earth; while the idealist
sees the spirit of all things and is glorified there-
by. We must learn to know that there is great dif-
ference between the spirit of truth and the literal
letter of the law.
   13. In ancient days those who served the altars
of the temple were chosen from among the daugh-
ters of the earth. They came from the highest and
noblest of families. While -still children they were
consecrated to the service of the sanctuary and
were called vestal virgins, for they served the al-
tars of Vesta, the goddess of the earth, the home,
and the family. In the ancient rituals these vir-
gins were married to the gods, with fitting and im-
posing ceremonials. The same rite has been
carried over into Christianity, where certain per-
sons desiring to renounce the world take holy
orders and become brides of God. There is a deep
and important meaning underlying this allegory,
for it conceals that spiritual nuptial, the Hermetic
marriage, in which the lower nature promises to
love, honor, and obey its own spirit.
   14. As far back as mythology goes, we have the
 stories of the virgins of the earth. They have come
 down to us under the composite symbol of the Ma-
 donna. The child of the Madonna represents the
 perfect being-the Illuminated One born out of
                        45






Nature, the Eternal Widow. He is that One that
shall attain to God and things of the spirit, while
Himself molded in the pattern of the earth. This
Redeemer is the Christ-ened man, One born out of
the world, the son of the earth, of whom the
prophets have written. He, the product of nature
had by distillation attenuated and rarified his bodies
so that they reflected the radiant light of the God
in him. Out of the laboratory of life, where tor-
tured chemicals seethe and twist like the agonized
souls of Dante's hell, come those great sages and
saviors who have led man along the pathway to om-
nipotence. They are the children of the Immacu-
late Conception. They were the Widow's Sons, the
children of the Fish, whose father deserted them
and left the fish floating in the sea of eternity, but
who were ordained by their father to redeem the
world. They are all Joshuas, sons of Nun (fish),
ordained to the labor of leading the children of
Israel through the desert and into the Promised
Land. A great soul rising out of the world to save
it, because that soul loves the world, is portrayed
as the man-child in the arms of the Madonna. Such
a soul represents life coming forth out of form,
spirit triumphing over matter, divinity rising out of
Nature; for all things must be accomplished in
Nature.
   15. Among the Mohammedans, or more prop-
erly the children of Islam, it has been taught that
a woman had no soul. It was believed that only
through her husband would she ever be able to
reach heaven. This misunderstanding has long
held Islamic womanhood in bondage to an incor-
                        46






rect understanding of a great spiritual law. Our
previous discussion of this subject should show
what the Prophet really meant. The woman re-
ferred to by Mohammed was not a physical person
but the negative principle of Nature, the earth, ma-
terial substance, or the clay of bodies. The lower
substances are incapable of self-redemption, but
must be redeemed by spirit, the universal savior,
who died for the sin of the world. The raising of
the dead is well symbolized in the story of the grip
of the lion's paw in Masonry or in the raising of
Lazarus in the early Christian mysteries.
   16. The Islamites have taken a cosmic truth as
applying to individuals. This has resulted in a
terrible mistake which is common, however, among
all religions which insist upon taking spiritual
allegory for literal fact. If this materialistic at-
titude is followed and words only are read, Scrip-
ture speedily loses its savor, for no one can pos-
sibly accept the literal stories who has passed
through a modern high school. This is not the
fault of Scripture. The blame should be placed
upon the narrowness of scriptural translations and
the lack of idealism in the human mind.
   17. The body is incapable of self-salvation; it
 must be regenerated and transmuted as the result
 of intelligent directions from spirit. When it re-
 ceives these divine impulses, it exchanges its sordid-
 ness for a greater and more glorious body, rising,
 Phoenix-like, from the ashes of its own mortality.
   18. In symbolism, all energies, vitalities, and
 spiritual powers are symbolized by the Father. All
                         47






substances and elements in the visible universe are
gathered together as the great Mother. When this
symbolism is understood, the Scriptures of nearly
all peoples quickly reveal their cosmic import and
explain their mysteries to those who will search for
them sincerely and honestly.
  19. Many times the question has been debated
as to whether the characters of the Bible ever lived.
Many assert Scripture to be entirely mythological,
while another group affirm it to be absolutely his-
torical. However both of these viewpoints drop
out of sight as comparatively unimportant beside
the all-dominating question, "What does Scripture
mean to me now? How will it assist me to live
better, to think better, to fill my place in the great
plan of every-day existence?" The ancient occult
records tell us that Jesus lived, but that his life
(like all other lives, especially that riper kind long
mellowed by experience) also bore witness to the
plan of Nature.
  20. The repentent Mary of Magdala washing
the feet of her Lord and wiping them with her hair
is of no value merely as an historical incident, but
means a great deal when we see its hidden symbol-
ism. Mary, the body, long servant of Rome, en-
robed in the garments of Caesar, represents man
functioning thoughtlessly in the animal world.
Awaking from its lethargy, the body turns to serve
the spirit of love, humility, and beauty--the divine
thing within itself. The woman in scarlet assumes
the robe of white; the lower animal nature (the
Red Sea) is crossed and, becoming the sole master
                        48






of its own emotions, it serves at last a nobler cause.
  21. Again, the gentle Christ here depicted
ceases to be an historical individual but sinks into
his cosmic role as part of the cosmic allegory. The
Christ spoken of is the Christ in you, the hope of
glory, about which the Psalmist loved to sing. Per-
sonalities play parts in these dramas, but not im-
portant parts. In the physical world the mascu-
line is domineering, forceful and offensive, usually
demonstrating few of the finer qualities but dealing
in weighty matters and clashing shields with the
great problems of material existence. He is the
breadwinner usually, but must sacrifice the fine and
nervous sensibilities, the intuitive powers, the love
of beauty, art, and mysticism, for the needs of
every day life-that is, unless an abnormality oc-
curs. These finer instincts are the birthright of the
feminine, for they represent soul qualities. Man
was not created with the power of conceiving char-
ity, kindness, or love. These he built into himself
through the ages, as the distillation of experience.
He had to earn the right to know beauty, and he
earned it by suffering long for its lack.
   22. Therefore, the eternal will of the Father is
combined with that wisdom which is the fruitage of
experience, and the one in whom these two are
blended stands forth as a Savior of men. The two
great opposites of Nature-the father and the
mother-have been united in him. Therefore, he is
said to be a son of the Hermetic marriage. He is
his own father and his own mother, a priest after
the order of Melchizedek.
                        49








      The Hermetic Marriage

                PART SEVEN

      THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

  1. It has often been said that one of the great-
est problems of our civilization is the problem of
the establishment of homes. The strength of a na-
tion depends upon its home. The moral character
of a people is largely the result of the kind of
training received during the first fifteen years of
life. We have heard it said that those best fitted
to marry do not, while those least fitted to do so
people the world with organisms of such low qual-
ity that only the lowest forms of egos can incarnate.
This was presented to the ancient world under the
mystery of the immaculate conception.
   2. The idea of the immaculate conception is by
no means original with Christianity. It is one of
the oldest concepts of the human mind, for the gods
of a hundreds races and a thousand generations
have been born of immaculate conceptions. In some
mysterious way then even the half-sleeping mind of
man seemed to realize that the world was ruled by
an immutable law of cause and deffect, and that a
great, glorious, and undefiled spirit could come into
the world and manifest only through an undefiled
body. So, when the gods found it necessary to take
upon themselves bodies of clay and enter this world
                        50






of defiled things, these forms were prepared (so
the Scriptures have told us) in a mysterious way.
Their coming was heralded by angelic presences,
Devas, and hosts of spiritual beings. The mass of
the human race felt that with the coming of a great
mind something divine came into the world, and
that its coming must be prepared for and.its temple
made as perfect as man was capable of designing it.
  3. Man is limited by his body, as we have said
before, and his body is limited by the things of
which it is made, by the conditions under which it
came into the world and by the environments which
surround it during the formative periods of life.
The wise of all ages have know this. They knew
that the better the body in its organic quality, the
broader the mind, the deeper the understanding, the
more noble the position that such a one could make
in this world. Hence, they are said to have pre-
pared in their temples the bodies for their saints
and saviors, purifying the lives of the parents so
that the coming creature might be free from those
taints which normally are the birthright of man.
The Essenes, or Nazarites as they were called, were
a group of very holy men and women who lived in
seclusion among the hills of the Holy Land and in
a lamasery on the side of Mount Tabor. They are
supposef to have been of Hindu origin, for they
were ascetics in every sense of the world, spending
much of their time in fasting and meditation.
Legend relates that it was in their house that Joseph
and Mary were trained and Jesus was educated
prior to his ministry.
                        51






  4. The great need of the world today is better
bodies. Better bodies mean better lives and nobler
outlooks. They mean more highminded citizens,
better able to meet the problems of life. Crime is
largely the result of physical bodies that are ever
tormenting the soul of those trying to function
through them. The viewpoint on life becomes dis-
eased, and lives of sorrow consequently follow.
   5. Out of the infinite, the law   of attraction
draws into incarnation lives and intelligences in
harmony with the bodies in which they are to dwell.
Our world is filled with suffering and sorrow be-
cause the bodies prepared for the birth of the race
are so polluted and so carelessly considered that
great, true, and noble ideals cannot manifest
through them. Great souls cannot enter. The im-
maculate conception must first become a reality in
the world before the demigods of old can walk the
earth again, for these great minds must have their
vehicles built according to the law; and today the
builders of bodies are lawless, thoughtless, irre-
sponsible, and selfish to the nth degree. Into the
world come the things which they have thus drawn
to themselves by virtue of the law of attraction. In
response to this law, souls come to inhabit the
bodies that they have built. Their parents pay the
price by the incorrigiblity of the lives which they
have thereby evoked. There is but one answer:
build better bodies. When this is done, a nobler
and better race will come to dwell in them. This is
the stupendous problem that humanity faces; and
unless it be solved, race suicide is inevitable, for
                         52






those who are coming in today are as unfit to give
orders as they are unwilling to receive them.
  6. Each ego coming into the world fashions its
body not only according to the knowledge that it
has gained in its evolution, but also according to
the material at hand. In the case of the average
infant today, about all the little life has to labor
with is ten generations of scrofula, and physical
atoms of such low organic quality that the body can
only be partly efficient at best. Diseased and hamp-
ered, broken even before birth, the ego has but two
paths before it-the one, to come through and
struggle on in a mediocre existence; the other, to
remain waiting, hoping that some day a nobler
vehicle will be prepared for it. This is the way in
which a race must gain its bodies, and is one of
the reasons why the mighty civilizations of the past
were overthrown by barbarians. The savage races
(whose morality is much higher and life far more
natural than ours), being free from the stigma of
the moral degeneracy of civilization, build better
bodies and minds, and soon overwhelm those deca-
dent races that have lost the power to give man his
suitable birthright.
  7. Behind the veil of maya great minds are
waiting, waiting for an opoprtunity to come into
the world in a way that will permit them to be ef-
ficient workers here and carry on the labor of
building the ethical, the moral, the philosophical,
and the scientific structure of our civilization.
Saints and sages are waiting, but there is no suit-
                        53






able place for them to come to, no homes where
they can secure the spiritual, intellectual, and phy-
sical environments necessary for the manifestation
of their highly evolved individualities. As a result,
we have only a few great minds, but seething
masses who are virtually useless and not a few who
are criminal. These souls come, drawn by the law
of attraction, because the environments are suitable
for the development of their varying types of de-
generacy. Behind the veil that separates the living
from the dead are the answers to the riddles of
science and the mysteries of all ages. But great
souls cannot come or be known here until the
bridge is built between the living and the unborn;
until ideal homes are found and efficient bodies are
built in which they may function true to the great
law of progress.

  8. With fear and trembling we face the future
of the race, which is doomed to disaster unless the
immaculate conception become a reality. The im-
maculate conception is not a miracle. It is actually
the realization of the responsibilities and sanctities
of parenthood, in which by right living, right
thought, and right attitude an opportunity is given
for higher and nobler souls to come into the world
and glorify our ethics by their presence. This is
the story of the birth of Jesus, who, watched over
by the priests, was given a body as nearly perfect
as the conditions of that age would permit. This
same miracle can be repeated whenever man will
live to serve his fellowmen, thereby giving the
highest and the best within himself an opportunity
                        54






to manifest itself. The future of the race rests in
the hands of its mothers and fathers-in these chil-
dren coming into the world today, many of them
uncurbed and undisciplined. Through thoughtless-
ness and criminal negligence, parents are dooming
their race to destruction by sending its lawmakers
of tomorrow on their way through life unenlight-
ened, uninformed, and unprepared.
  9. The Master told the story in the parable of
the new wine in the old bottles. He recognized the
fundamental need of a new organization for a new
idea, and he also knew the fundamental need of a
new, clean body as the major factor in growth and
progress. If we do not prepare higher types of
bodies for those higher grades of intelligence neces-
sary to rule a civilization, then a new race will have
to be given to the world that the spirit of progress
may not be thwarted in her plan.
  10. Heredity is not purely a spiritual heritage,
for a man inherits only from himself in the spir-
itual sense of the word. It does hold true to some
degree, however, with regard to the substances from
which bodies are made. The immaculate concep-
tion is therefore a vital factor in heredity, for it
teaches that to noble parents come noble children,
while those whose attitudes and ideals are false can
give to the world only plagues that are worse than
nothing at all. Spiritual heredity draws lives into
incarnation through type     attraction; physical
heredity limits the body in its efficiency to the ma-
terial from which it is formed.
                        55






  11. As a philosophical problem, the immacu-
late conception may be summarized as follows:
Immaculate means clean: it has nothing to do with
miracles. The immaculate conception means a
clean birth, in which the highest and finest of Na-
ture's laws are brought to bear upon the master-
piece of Nature's labors--the formation of bodies
for the habitations of living beings.


56










      The Hermetic Marriage

                 PART EIGHT

                 SUMMARY

  1. In summing up, we may consider three
problems: celibacy, as applied to occult students;
the Hermetic marriage, as an alchemical process;
and the mystery of individual completeness.
  2. All advanced candidates on the path of oc-
cultism, mysticism, and kindred subjects must take
the oath of celibacy for two very good reasons:
(1) They are unfitted for connubial life. Have-
lock Ellis has said that among the ministry are
found not only some of the brighest children in
the world but also more imbeciles than in any other
profession. The advanced specialist in occult work
is carrying on his spiritual investigations with the
transmuted essences of those forces which are
normally used in reproduction.. (2) Because the
candle cannot be burned at both ends, marriage for
such types is unfair to all parties concerned. It is
often fatal to the occultist, for at a certain time the
barriers which separate the brain from the genera-
tive system are removed, and insanity or death will
follow those who are not as fully in control of
their emotion as their position demands.
                       57






  3. All the world, however, is not made up of
adepts or great initiates. Consequently, the assump-
tion of the state of celibacy by people who have no
idea of the meaning of such an act has caused much
sorrow and suffering. The occultist must remember
that Nature is consistent. Celibacy is one of many
things which make an adept. However, he does
not become an adept through one thing alone:
his entire life is harmonized, and celibacy is merely
one of many means which together produce the
desired end. Modern occultism has too many fads;
dieting, fasting, meditating, and a host of other
things are held out as methods of obtaining spir-
itual powers. The jewel of all, however, is con-
sistency. To break all the written and unwritten
laws and play on a one-stringed instrument of vir-
tue is foolish and unbalanced. All things must
work together. He must eat in harmony with his
thoughts, meditate in harmony with his actions,
pray in harmony with his daily life. Being in har-
mony, he is great; and being consistent, he is
wise. It is useless to develop spiritually at any
single point or to try to assume a virtue which is
not part of the nature. Instead of being excep-
tionally virtuous concerning what you eat and com-
pletely vice-ridden in everything else, try being
normally careful in all things. Spiritualize the
animal nature gradually; do not seek to make a
god out of a fool over night. A great occultist was
once asked, "What are the stages of human
growth?" He said, "To the animal man, indulgence
in all things; to the human man, moderation in all
things; to the divine man, abstinence in all things
                        58






earthly." Friends, please do not forget these most
important words, "in all things." The fanatic over-
does some one thing; therefore he becomes unnat-
ural and insane. The wise man, however, grows
symmetrically and gradually, overdoing nothing
but building so solidly that he will not backslide
within the first week.
  4. While a person is striving to be good he
has not yet attained virtue, for virtue lies in trans-
muting the desire to do that which is not right to
the point where it naturally desires to do good.
Many people tell us how they have sacrificed
everything for others, expecting us to be im-
pressed. What use is the gift without the giver?
People who give in the spirit of sacrifice have small
credit coming to them, for only those truly give
who do it for the love of it. In all the relationships
of life, therefore, let spiritual growth be symmet-
rical, building all parts of the nature together. Do
not be a fanatic, for fanatics and prudes alike are
the dead enemies of virtue. Build and grow in a
healthy way. Do not forget to laugh; do not for-
get to cry; but build each day into the nature those
enduring principles of equity, justice, and right
which will gradually build a consistent occultist.
   5. The Hermetic marriage is an alchemical
symbol found in the nature of all things for the
law of polarity is universal. In the human world
it appears as sex-positive and negative, masculine
and feminine. As all electricians know, positive
and negative are opposite poles of one circuit.
Spirit itself knows no polarity, but manifests
                        59






through polarity to the accomplishment of the
Great Work._ Superiority or inferiority of sex, con-
sequently, is a fallacy and hallucination. Being' in
himself androgynous,, each individual has one of
these natures dominant and the other receptive.
Marriage, as a human relationship, is merely an
institution whereby two persons make a contract
per verba de future cum copula. Its actual pur-
pose is two fold: (1) to fulfil the natural law of
polarity in the reproduction of the species; (2) to
fulfil the spiritual law of association whereby the
latent side of the natures of both parties may be
stimulated by association with a personified exem-
plification of the functions, qualities, and powers
lying latent in themselves. In simple language,
years of association result in each sex assuming to
a marked degree the viewpoints, attitudes, feelings,
and individuality of the other. The masculine mind
in association with the feminine heart, consciously
or unconsciously becomes more or less softened,
thereby preventing too strenuous expression of the
material intellect. On the other hand, the feminine
emotionalism and artistic sense by association with
the practical mental temperament, becomes more
independent, more individual, and is thereby pre-
vented from becoming one-sided.
  6. Please remember that we are trying to ex-
press the purpose for which the institution of mar-
riage was established. The lack of cooperation in
the world today has thwarted this purpose to a great
degree. Selfishness and a hundred other major and
minor sins have entered into the domestic relation-
                        60






ship until it has lost nearly all semblance of its
former self. As a result, the humaa .-race has
missed the opportunity to acquire balance and sym-
metry, and daily, because of its own one-sidedness,
ignores the actual meaning of life's relations. De-
luded by the idea that happiness is to be found in
irresponsibility, mankind has wandered from the
path fixed by Nature for its creatures.
  7. In due time the androgynous man will reap-
pear, balanced and perfected in all those things
which now he lacks. This will not be a racial
move, but in every instance an individual attainment.
To this end the race is laboring at the present time;
but man as an individual will never gain the end
until he reflects upon the serious side of life and
learns that he is in the world to secure his spiritual
and moral education.
   8. The two-headed man of Michael Mayer is
symbolic of the two-headed consciousness of man,
or the two powers by which he is ruled: reason as
the masculine head and intuition as the feminine
head.- These two heads not only rule the individ-
ual, but they also rule the race as the statecraft and
the priestcraft. The priest after the Order of Mel-
chizedek, was termed "priest-king" to symbolize his
dual office, which is also symbolically portrayed by
the two cherubim on the mercy seat of the ark of
the covenant and by the onyx stones on the shoul-
ders of the high priest. The so-called modern in-
stitution of marriage is, in reality, the manifesta-
tion of the Trinity, for father, mother, and son are
a part of the divine order. The child represents






the soul of the parents, for to a great degree his life
beairs witn ess of his progenitors.
  9. Individual completeness is the end of all
individual effort. Perfect adjustment between the
spirit of man and his bodies results in the re-estab-
lishment of the androgynous man. It is the end
of the path of growth as far as we know. The
symbol of this accomplishment is the philosopher's
stone, the rose diamond of the Rosicrucians, and
the great pearl of the Illuminati. All the things
which we see are but means to an end: to be met,
to be battled, and to be conquered, as Caesar might
have said. The Hermetic marriage is symbolic of
the individual who has made himself right with all
things, has become one with the spirit of all things,
and (most of all) is true to himself and to his fel-
lowmen. Human relationships lead to divine rela-
tionships, and the unfolding soul builds ever more
noble mansions as vehicles for its expression. Only
through the broadened vista of philosophy does
man see hope, for to the narrow-minded, things are
seemingly hopeless. If behind the apparent chaos
the spirit can still discern the divine order which is
moving him slowly but persistently towards adjust-
ment with himself, he will then be able to recognize
the myriad ways in which the desire of the Infinite
is made known to His finite creations.
   10. Out of the present maelstrom of perverted
sexology the philosopher can see a more noble
spirit arising-not one who in a lofty way has
avoided the endless pitfalls, but one who, nauseated
with the falseness and disgusted with the shams,
                        62






has risen to loftier aspirations. The great task of
our age is to dignify human relationships; to return
the divine crown to the head upon which it belongs;
to purify, to cleanse, and to redeem all things; to
transmute civilization as one would transmute a
personal habit. The Hermetic marriage is the
apotheosis of the world's most abused institution,
which will rise again from the slime into which it
has been cast; for in its proper application and
proper recognition we see the hope of the race.


                    THE END.


63






        BOOKS BY MANLY P. HALL

    AN ESSAY ON THE FUNDAMENTAL
       PRINCIPLES OF OPERATIVE
               OCCULTISM
         A New Book with Three Color
                  Plates
    A SYNTHETIC EMBLEMATIC CROSS
    THE OPENING OF THE THIRD EYE
       THE SEVEN SPINAL CHAKRAS
              Complete $4.00
     Plates separately mounted, each $1.00

Lost Keys of Masonry -  - - - - -    $2.00
The Ways of the Lonely Ones - - - - - 2.00
Shadow Forms (Occult Stories) - - -   2.00
Thirty-eight Thousand Miles of Impressions 1.00
Talks to Students - - - - - - - - -    .50
The Noble Eight-Fold Path -          . - - - .50
Evolution             ----------- .50
Death and After - - - - - - - - - -    .50
Unseen Forces    ----------            .50
Occult Anatomy    ----------           .50
Melchezidek, or the Mystery of Fire - - -  .50
The Hermetic Marriage - - - - - - -    .50


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This book is a preservation facsimile produced for
  the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
  It is made in compliance with copyright law
       and produced on acid-free archival
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        which meets the requirements of
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   Preservation facsimile printing and binding
                      by
            Northern Micrographics
            Brookhaven Bindery
            La Crosse, Wisconsin
                     2013