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is inverse; for there the most degraded are the least intelligent and most
weak. Thus the law of fatality compels the demons to descend when they
believe and wish to rise; and so those whom I call the Chiefs are the most
powerless and the most contemptible of them all.
Those evil spirits which form the crowd, tremble before a Chief who is
unknown, impacable, and deaf, never speaking, and whose arm is always
raised to strike. To this phantom are given the names of Lucifer, Adramelek,
and Belial; but this phantom is but the shadow of God disfigured by their
perversity, and remains among them to torment and terrify them for ever.
Be guarded in the words you speak. Speak not of God, unless you are
illuminated. All the images which you create, whether of God or of other
ideals, remain imprinted on that luminous medium---the Astral Light of the
soul, and of the world; and there is that Book of the Conscience which shall
be opened and its records revealed in the Last Day.
Know that the Human Brain, although it receives, does not make any visible
record of impressions; otherwise they woud be engraved upon the grey
matter of the Brain and anatomists would see them there.
The nerve substance does not perceive and collect, by reason of this essence
(the Astral Light), the living and ineffaceable pictures of the spiritual
atmosphere which you evoke. You may even by sympathy, present or past,
with the desires, evoke the impressions of other persons; and thus it is that
you can communicate with those who are dead and even perceive the bodily
form they have thrown aside, and which they must retake when the grand
Consummation arrives and the world is transfigured.
To such as ask you where Paradise and Hell are situated, you should
answer: Paradise exists whereever you speak the truth, and do the right;
Hell is present wherever you speak that which is false, or do that which is
evil.
Paradise and Hell are not localities, they are states, and the contrasted
states will remain to eternity; even as good must ever remain in opposition
to evil; as the essential of a personality is opposed to that of Intelligent
Existence, which is Liberty.
The plastic universal medium, the unsubstantial substance, which is light,
motion, and life, this androgyne magnetic force, receives, preserves, and
communicates all the forms and images which are the impressions of the
Word: this it is which gives form and colour to plants; it is this which stamps
upon the fruit of a mother's womb the impress of her thoughts and desires.
It is this which produces apparitions and the sensible visions of exaltation
and ecstasy when Superior Spiritual Powers communicate to us by the
correspondences of the Word, or when Inferior spirits seek to mount to our
plane by sympathy with our grosser passions.
There is no real isolation in this world, there is no point of form and no
variety of thought which has not its correspondence, item by item, through
analogy, with that which is above, as well as that which is below, in the
infinite and finite worlds. This is the true ideal of the mystical Ladder of
Jacob whose rungs are bound together by the two Pillars of Light, and which
provide for the unbroken circulation of Intelligence and Love through the
vast areas of the Universe.
Nothing entirely new happens under the Sun; causes lead to new causes and
effects precede these. Prophetic intuitions are but the result of a
consideration of the analogies between the past and the future, read in that
luminous volume composed of such mobile yet incorruptible characters as
are the waves of the sea.
Hence it follows, that to divine----is to see.
Each man bears his earthly future in his natural character, and he has his
character imprinted on his face and in his hands, in his natural movements,
in his glances and his voice.
Each personal will has at its disposal three modes of force----moral power,
instinctive power, and physical energy. Moral power is that solidarity which
exists between all truly spiritual souls; instinctive power is the solidarity
subsisting between the impulses and resistances of material substances. To
each of these forces there is a corresponding form of life.
The middle or Instinctive force acts upon us without our active participation
when our Moral force is in abeyance, and when one desires to give it free
play one must slumber, or at least sleep more or less.
There is a voluntary slumber, as there is an involuntary or physiological
sleep. Voluntary slumber is somewhat lucid, because it does not absolutely
break away from reminiscence.
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Prophecy and Thaumaturgy are Natural faculties.
The Re-animation of the Dead in the case of certain men and under certain
circumstances is not a thing naturally impossible. At the moment of death
the soul finds itself free from, yet near, the earthy tenement it has just left,
and if the really vital organs have not been destroyed, it can be recalled by
one whose will has tremendous force. Death is only absolute when the vital
organs have lost their integrity.
Examples of re-animation are not infrequent, but when they occur the
occurance of death is denied, and the facts observed are explained by saying
that the person was only in a trance or lethargy.
To deny that death has occured in these cases may be permissible, but
public opinion should have the courage of its convictions and should always
deny it.
O thou who art now wise, thou hast been an infant; what has become of the
infant? it has passed away, but you still live.
You have been a youth, he has passed away, but you are still with us. You
were once a young man; what has become of that young man? you still live.
You are now a man of full years, or perhaps even an old man; what will
become of you, old man? You will die, but you will exist for ever. Yet each of
your stages of development has left its corpse, only you do not happen to
have seen it. Only believe then that your last corpse will not be appreciable
by you, and so you may rest in a peaceful immortality.
You have but to undergo one more transformation before you remount to
that source of life from which you once sprang.
Transformation results from eternal motion, which is the essential law of
vitality; check this and enforce a stability at any stage of evolution, and you
create a real death.
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Behold thyself then, by natural law, immortal.
Would you then be for ever the slave of secondary causes, or will you
become their controller?
Will you submit to them, or will you choose the high alternative of directing
them?
If you will become a Master, set free your spirit by relying on the Hermetic
Stone, and exercise your Will Power through the Word transmuted into
action. Join to an Intelligence, really set free, an all-powerful Will, and you [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]