The Great Work of the Hermetic Art is before all things the creation of man himself; that is to say:

First - The full and complete conquest of his faculties.

Second - The development of all his forces and energies.

Third - The perfect Emancipation of his Will.

Forth - The establishment of Manhood and the attainment of absolute Individualization.

Man is not truly man unless he is a FREE-man. So long as man is shackled by limitations, whether self-created or by man-made legislative enactments, he is not a free-man, therefore a slave.

This is in no wise indicative that man should ignore the statutes created by other men. On the contrary, it stipulates that the free-man is so proud of his inheritance that he will not stoop to commit "sin" or a wrong against other me or society. Having attained such a freedom from the dictates of his own passions, he is too noble to stoop to any unworthy act. It was written of such: "The men best governed are those least governed," because they govern themselves.

The concept of the Heretic Science and Alchemical processes is the development of the three fold man: body mind and Soul; the complete activation of all his forces, powers and energies, the attainment of Soul Consciousness here and now and the severing of all man-made shackles.
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The aim of Initiation:

The study and mastery of Occult Science reveals to man the mysteries of his nature, the secrets of his organization, the hidden potentialities with their possibilities and the means by which he may attain happiness, the successful achievements of his life's purpose and, lastly, a degree of perfection; in short, the aim and end of his destiny. This is the secret of Initiation and has been its purpose since the first man became conscious of his Soul or spiritual self and inaugurated the Mysteries whereby all men might, if they so desired, attain spiritual consciousness.

The "key" to this process is the hidden teaching in all sacred writings: it is the basic foundation of all religious inculcations.

The older Mysteries were dual in their object; that is to say, the Masters had two distinct purposes in view; it was a double doctrine.

The first object was to draw man from his state of barbarity (1) and civilize him and then take civilized man and instruct him toward his perfection; in other words, to lead man, who was universally believed to be lost or fallen, back to his firs nature. According to his doctrine, man must become regenerated, his spiritual nature brought to the ascendant, and this is only possible through a process known as Initiation, the method being Alchemical and the means transmutatory.

(1) Unfortunately for mankind, just as we had about convinced ourselves that man had at last mastered the cruelty in his nature and had accepted a new Law governing his actions toward his fellow-men, we are amazed at the outburst of a cruelty heretofore, even when in a state of utter barbarity, thought foreign to reasoning human beings. At no time in the known history of man, not even in the conquests of Mexico and South America, was there such wanton destruction of undefended property, of innocent men, women and children as that in Russia, both during the revolution and now (1938), in Ethiopia, in China and in Spain.

How far at least a part of humanity has retrogressed is readily seen when we compare the actions of directing officials of enemy forces during the Revolutionary with those of present wars. During the Revolutionary war the enemy officers would not permit the burning of homes unless it was absolutely essential for their success or protection, and certainly there is little or no record of the killing of defenseless men, women and children. That was more than a century ago. Compare this with the inhuman destruction of life in Russia during the revolution and continuing up to date with what took place in Ethiopia and what is happening in Spain and China. Many of these nations have set themselves back by fifty thousand years, and unless they are wiped out, as is likely to happen, will have Karmic reaction for that long a period.

The second object was to discover the means whereby gross matter could be raised to its first nature, which was lost to all but the very few.
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Gold became the symbol of this first matter and has so remained, because gold is the purest substance known to man and resists even fire, the universal cleanser, and gold was to matter that which the AEtheric Fire is to the Soul. Thus Initiation had two divisions:

In the first division only the propensities were purified; the "man" only was put though the crucible. This was a spiritual alchemy, a process of transmutation, a human Initiation.

The second Initiation led up to the mysterious operations of nature and was an initiation of the "Body".

In the one was contained the search for the Cornerstone of the Philosophic Temple of Mankind, and with ingenious symbolism it taught the Neophyte that all humanity should and could be reunited into one great fold of universality, differing in expression, but united as to objective - a diversity of Unity.

In the second division the Neophyte was taught to search for that which led back to a new Golden Age, the Philosopher's Stone of turning failure into success and the Elixir which not alone prolongs life, but maintains health and well-being.

The object of all this philosophy and of all Initiation is to obtain that Knowledge and Art of how to make perfect that which either nature has left imperfect or man has degraded by the misuse of his free will, and to apply this power to the benefit of himself first and then to his fellow-man, Occult knowledge recognizing that man's first duty is an unselfish one to himself.

Afar in the past, when man first commenced to reflect on himself, he became aware that, although knowing and approving the good, yet he was strongly inclined to do what was neither to the ultimate benefit of himself or others, and this in itself proved that the strength of his desires was far greater than his reason. He enjoyed only partly, or in appearance only, his inheritance of free will. It quickly became apparent to him that if he utilized his right of choosing and determining his actions throughout his life, he must subdue those unruly passions which controlled his very being. From thence sprang the first idea of the sage, to be free-man and master of himself. Every institution and philosophy which has in view the making of Masters and Adepts must primarily have in view this self-mastery.
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Alchemical Science had its origin in Arabia and was closely associated with religious rites. Geber is its accredited founder. The Egyptian priests were initiated into the mysteries of the Divine. Like its predecessors, Alchemy postulated an orderly Universe, but Alchemy was richer in its varied details, far more picturesquely embroidered, more prodigal of strange fancies to make it interesting, that the Initiatory Art and Science of Egypt. The Alchemist constructed his ordered scheme of nature on the basis of a universality of life. The Alchemist saw life in everything and that life threefold in its aspect. He recognizes the manifestation of life in the form or body of a thing, in its spirit and in its Soul.

Things may differ materially in appearance, in size, taste, smell and other outward properties and yet, according to alchemical science, be intimately related, because they were produced from the identical principles and animated by the same universal Soul. On the other hand, things might resemble one another closely in their appearances outwardly, yet differ in their essential qualities, because, according to alchemy, they were formed from different elements and in their spiritual properties were vastly different. The transformation of one thing into another, according to this science, can only be effected by spiritual means acting on the spirit of the thing, because the true transformation consists essentially in raising the substance to the highest perfection whereof it is capable(2).

(2) Within man there are two constantly active fires. One is his creative energy, while the other is his Divine Principle. All men are familiar with their creative energy, how it governs and controls their every action. Because of lack of control, all the crimes in the catalog are committed daily. It makes a monster out of a weakling, a demon out of a physical wreck. Under control, it is the impetus of the imaginative faculty, and men become inventors, artists, scientist, musicians, authors, physicians, masters of scientists, musicians, authors, physicians, masters of science, but still no more than men. But when this creative energy, this sex fire, is raised up to its highest perfection, then meek and lowly man becomes an Initiate, a Master, one of the Gods - a free man in every sense of the term; and to be truly free, no longer under the dominion of any other man or set of men, is the highest that man can attain in this mundane sphere and is the Odyssey sought by all philosophers.
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How man may use his forces and express them harmoniously is the secret of this philosophy and is the "Pearl of Great Price" as mentioned by the alchemists. A deep and earnest study and a steadfast purpose on the part of the Neophyte to live the life as taught by instructors and guides will in due time open his vision to the true and most wonderful meaning of these philosophies. All this foregoing philosophy would be idle unless actually relating to man's moral good and ultimate freedom. The true understanding of it gives us a natural religion and expounds our former faith; it is the connecting link between earth and heaven, between moral law and material law, between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm.

Morals are but the revised statues of religious inculcations, while spirituality is religion itself. God about us, in our very presence, not somewhere else, is a stronger influence than any theory can be, however elaborate. We must have more than a conjectured God. Our own intelligence resides some where in some thing. Which is the substance? Is it the most subtle, homogeneous and ultimate element of our bodies - and what? Dissection," says William Hemstreet, in "Mind Is Matter," "has laid open to our eyes the secret channels, battery and paraphernalia of an electric fluidic life. Thus may not the Creative Intelligence inhere in the Universal ether? This is ‘image' in which we have been created." And, further, "The plant needs actual contact with sunshine, not to possess in itself a ‘theory' about sunshine nor a ‘belief' in sunshine. Man is in need of a God that he can actually associate with, with his spiritual and physical particles in reality of contact, like the proximity of one we love, not a theory of god. Nor a belief in a distant God." Lacking this contact, man will continue to be forced to rely on other men like himself, and the chances are it will be someone of lesser growth and intelligence than himself, and in consequence the tendency is ever downward and away from perfection(3).

This downward tendency away from individuality and toward universal serfdom has been proceeding rapidly within the past decade. Before the World War, while kings and emperors still ruled many nations, the universal tendency was toward freedom and individualism. Millions were fighting within themselves to awaken sufficient courage to risk their own life and possessions, to gain freedom from the dominion of others, and we were well on the way toward an earthly democracy where men would be judged by what they truly were. Then came the World War, ostensibly to bring such freedom for all men, but with just the reverse result. Untold millions who were will on the way toward such freedom have completely reversed themselves or permitted themselves to become so weak that they are more completely bound, body, mind and Soul, than the serfs under Ivan the Terrible, and there is no written history to indicate that there ever was a time when King or Emperor in any land dared to set himself up as unto God himself as do the egomaniacs of today, nor did they dare to command and force into obedience the millions as is done today in many lands. Even the Czars of old Russia gave their victims a chance of life by sending them to Siberia, whereas now there is wholesale execution of the most cruel, diabolical and unreasoning kind. Within a decade or less humanity has lost the freedom and right of self-determination it has been fighting for since so-called civilization began. Cruelty and destruction are greater today than when Genghis Khan and his hordes overran Europe.
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Hermetic science is upheld by what we term Holy Writ. The men who wrote the moral and spiritual precepts of the Scripture had great, unspoiled minds and hearts. For moral reasoning, long sight and fine intuition they were giants compared with modern money-and-power-mad human creature, incrusted as we are with modern materialism, and upon mere human standards we should revere their views. They taught, as do the Initiate Schools of today, that virtue, love, hope, graciousness, forgiveness and strength to fight for the right are the hygiene of the Soul, whereas vice, guilt, despair, weakness, covetousness and infringement upon the rights of others are diseases and death to the Soul.

"For to be Carnally Minded is Death, but to be Spiritually Minded is Life and Peace." ___St. Paul

When we give our minds earnestly to a study of the mere transitoriness of mortal life and affairs and yet can feel how continuous our hopes and loves are, we then realized the utter incompatibility of the Soul with the purely earthly.

We then see and realize that the substantial human successes and earthly possessions fade, literally and exactly, like the sunset behind the mountains. All personal grandeur, strength, popularity, business or political success, official station and power, property and even empires pass away like the clouds. None of them is abiding, simply because the physiology is not abiding. If the body were everlasting, if all things did not undergo mundane changes, then the earth and time were eternity; then mundane aspirations would fit physical life. It requires an eternity to match human loves. Our ambitions are more than commensurate with earth and time. Is there an answer to the demand of every heart for permanence? We walk, act and build for permanence, with scarcely any thought of death, but we are upon quicksand here. Is there one place that is safe and certain? Yes! As seeds sown in the ground have innate qualities drawing them upward into the air and sunshine, so do we have innate qualities drawing us upward to ethereal realms. This is our Sacred Science, our Alchemical Process. One who can contemplate a lily or a rose, a newborn babe or the devotion of a mother in the sick room and say there is nothing higher than mundane life is simply Soulless and without spiritual perception. Such a one deserves the serfdom that is becoming the lot of most men in the present egomaniac age.

When we assume with scientific certainty that the mind of man is linked with a durable vehicle, such as a spiritual entity, and that this has the boundless ether as its realm of life and activity, than we are ready for delivery from our earth-worm condition into sunshine, the assurance and the content of eternity. Suns and planets must needs perish, but in the final crash they cannot harm the Soul which has dared to search for enlightenment and freedom from entanglements not of its own creation.
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As, one by one, men, co-operating in earnest simplicity with the divine forces of which by nature they are the repository, perceive clear imaging upon a purified mentality of the essential union within them of each sex form and of recovered lost faculties throughout the subtler intricacies of surface sense of enacting that bi-unity, they come to understand the past and future of their fate; what has been done and what yet remains for them to do; what was the true growth that struggled up through the snows of their outer nature, and how much waits within still to grow forth. They face life with a sense absolutely new and an incentive to be active, to overcome and to achieve.

The vices, no less than the virtues which characterize with such marked invigoration the present generation, are prophetic and initiatory of the rapid and inevitable change that must supervene throughout societary life, both in its lesser and greater form of family, nationality and universality. The vices and weaknesses, the utter servility of today must be transformed into virtue (fair dealing with others) and strength, or the present races with the few exceptions of those who attain self-mastery, will be self-destroyed and lost to history; and well this should be, because at no time in the age of man have there been greater opportunities than at the present moment.

Since the time when the incorporation of spiritual potencies began to create reflection on the qualities of the desires which were produced within man, he has, in the rough-and-ready fashion of a relative inexperience, solved the mental problem suggested by the phenomena of his moral emotional nature. Men simply announced themselves to be constituted of elements of opposite kinds, generating forces of conflicting tendencies. For centuries a temporary but necessary purpose has been served by epitomizing the work of all nature struggling upward toward true development and freedom, as the flight of the good (constructive and elevating) against the evil or destructive within or about man. This view was the only one, under past circumstances, whereby the battle of life could be faced and maintained.
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Either the misdirection and inflammation or force called evil, because it endangers freedom, harmony and life, must be suppressed, or the instincts for equable distributing of affectional vigors, which are called good, for want of a better term, because they engender justice, peace and progress, must be largely reinforced from the hidden sources of life (4) before a deeper insight can safely be acquired into the facts of moral force.

(4) These sources of life and power have been hidden to the vast humanity because the powers and forces in control have desired it should be so in order that the few might successfully govern the many. All knowledge that had a tendency to give man strength and power and make him free and self-governing was "forbidden knowledge" and only for the few, and had to be taught sub rosa and in secret schools. Man was taught to make the most of his body and to accept God on faith.

His Soul was in the keeping of Kings and Priests and, to tell the truth, was permitted to be dormant, having no more light or wisdom at death than when it was born. Thus the millions were as pawns held on the grasp of a few men, these fully realizing that once man awakened to the fact that he possessed spiritual potentialities which would make him as great or even far greater than those who held him in bondage, his own serfdom and their rulership would be ended.

Advancement for 300 years was rapid, and man began to achieve the acme of freedom, only to resell himself, body, mind and Soul, to the overlords of greed and personal power, and there is great danger that the mass will be hurled into far greater slavery than ever known before, for man's downfall and degradation are on a par with the heights he has attained.

Vice cannot now decrease by weakness of the faculties through which it worked, for the whole power of the humanitary organism may not thus be impaired. The tares must stand and grow for the safety of the field under the eyes of the all-wise husbandman, for virtue rises to potencies that will master or transmute vice, nor by repulsion of its currents, but by the absorption of them into the current of the stronger stream.

The conception of life and force which outgrow from man's present mentality suggests to him that which his daily life and all the universal phenomena verify - that life-force is one. The direction of its currents, however intricate or interpretation, all referable to the same series of impulsions, and that the whole range of facts constituting the suffering and errors of mankind, are but abnormal phenomena of this life-force. The ordinary sensitiveness of man to the life-force greatly varies among different individuals and is generally exceedingly superficial. His nerves, though markedly more acute than the nerves of men who lived some hundred years ago, are still exceedingly dense and carry to his consciousness no more than a few of the strongest waves of the movement that sustains him. He can recognize the fact that his blood rushes to and fro between surfaces and centers, and collects and disperses.

The most profoundly and minutely sensitive depths, even in exceptional natures, unless spiritually or soulfully developed, Which the mirror of external consciousness succeeds in reflecting, afford as yet to man only suggestions of the immensities of the life throughout his being. Similarly, the lenses man has learned to manufacture affirm the vastness throughout the infinite worlds beyond this. This suggests that life-force transcends analysis, prevents understanding through normal faculties and can be understood only by those who have opened their Soul-sight by developing their spiritual nature to the same degree the physical nature has been developed by time and environments.
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At the present stage of human progress it is as unintelligent as it is cowardly to sit down before human nature and affirm its weakness and its viciousness, and attribute thereto the necessary prolongation of suffering on earth(5)

(5) Man's viciousness, which is the basic cause of man's inhumanity to man, has been excused on the ground that it was "Human nature" and, therefore, unavoidable. This concept is gradually giving way to a better understanding of the reality, and the new conception is that viciousness is not natural except to the criminal, perverted nature and must be controlled by adequate methods. The vicious animal is either confined or destroyed. The viciousness in the individual must likewise be either self-governed (confined within the person) or held in abeyance. If the person is not willing to control himself, then society must do it.

When this is once fully understood, then a whole society will no longer be at the mercy of a maniac sitting on a throne or in a governing seat, leading an army or subjecting nations to his egomaniacal whim. As it is now, whole nations supinely immolate themselves to that one person, often morally lower than the lowest in their entire rank, man clown the peacock's pride. Must not God be mocked and well-nigh regret His creation of man when He reviews the spectacle of fifty or a hundred million men bowing the knee to a degenerate's or egomaniac's command as though he were a God of Creation and of high heaven, forgetful of that great command: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"?

The fatalism of this popular inference is an insult to both God and those men who have become God-conscious and to the whole accomplished work of the multitudinous from animated by the one and eternal force. Men no longer gape aghast at the fixed depravity of men; they know better, if they will permit the ever-present intuition of wisdom to speak. The knowledge of himself that one man may have, if he will use it, is sufficient knowledge t be the gathering point of knowledges he should have of all the other millions. Let man be wise to register and to protect and to enact each delicate movement that may thrill the fiber of his deep Soul, and he beholds the beginning of wisdom, but only its beginning. He thus opens to himself the first page of the book of nature, according to his reading. Gazing into the realm of his own spontaneity, man comes to realize that among the atoms of stirring consciousness is something that he cannot create not command. It is something that demands conscious, effortful development. Then there will come forth a something toward which his faculties by instinct strain, seeking to worship in love, but through which carries to him streams of vast inapprehensiveness and makes itself at home within his little domain, impregnating him with possessions of its essence of individuality. It surcharges all the vessels of his inmost being until there will be an outpouring of power and energy and make of him a man apart, kindred to both his kind and God, yet free and independent, related to all, yet separate from the unworthy and undesirable.
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Freedom to be himself is at the basis of man's nature. Protection for his central life-emotions and education of the faculties for consciousness in the pure region of his being are not only necessities for man, but are conditions without which his perfect sanity or balance of mind and spirit cannot be maintained. If a man claims this freedom, demands this protection, seeks this education, he isolates himself amidst an impending and irascible mass of views, opinions and dogmas that dictate and coerce throughout every department of life - in religion, philosophy, politics, science, are, sociology and even business - by virtue of an in defense of the vested interests and prescriptive rights on which their influence and personal benefits and profits rest(6).

(6) This is the basic reason why the Occult and Initiatory Fraternities of all ages have been maintained in secrecy and have kept the identity of their Novitiates shrouded in mystery. It cannot be said that his necessity no longer exists. There is, in truth, greater need today than for centuries past. Though we live in a supposedly enlightened age, where freedom of thought is apparently guaranteed to all men, nevertheless, the restrictions are greater today than for a long time past. This is true even in democratic nations, while in other nations fraternal organization have been outlawed.

Men wound themselves with their own tools; the knowledge that should serve them often renders them slaves. They kneel in helpless superstition before the things of their own fashioning - a fear-god, self-created. Still the high manhood, deep-enveloped in superstitions, waits for an opportunity to grow forth and manifest itself. It is this NOW to which all men should turn with patient watchfulness and faithful study and application.

In the holy depth in man, where God makes sensible the qualities of pure human desires, is latent all that should be learned. It is the keynote of the reality of all that makes human life desirable, enlivening the consciousness of each man at the core of his personal emotions. Veritable perception is alone registry of these emotions. Honest investigation and estimation of all the phenomena produced by other men remain impossible, unless they be based upon the personal experience of the Soul, from which the necessary hypotheses of the existence of human instincts is alone deducible. Silence at that sanctuary of his nature, where the all-holiness which man fails to comprehend deigns to meet in simplest intimacy with his frail capacities of sensational consciousness, makes silence of all harmonies and their joys throughout the whole productiveness of every other faculty that he puts forth. However brilliant or attractive may be the mental work of teachers who fail or who refuse to hear these deep vibrations, their influence rests upon the lives of men as weight and not as light; moves throughout convictions, cooling, never impassioning; creates in hearts negation rather of veritable sentiment than aspiration for greater wealth of feeling.
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The legitimate claim of each person whether man or woman, but a claim most difficult to exact of modern social development, is to be himself. The universal tendency of today for universal regimentation is against this, despite the fact that individuality is the only basis of that perfect altruism which alone can retrieve society. Man can be, and can only be, in the sanctuaries of profound emotion, that which makes him a man; that phenomenon of power and will for perfectness; that machinery for passionate intention for universal rightness; that form impregnated by the divine quality which is man's life on earth. Then, and only when, hi is thus man is he the ruler of man. Alas! sad man, foolish creature, bearing within his breast this gem faculty for every perfectness, he, nevertheless, lies down in sheep-like weakness to be crushed by the social customs of his own making, the Juggernauts that he has helped raise. For the semblances of power that he gains by little increases in science, education, wealth, political influence, which command a relative obedience and superficial admiration; for the semblance of pleasure that he can extract a little while from portions of his nature by pampering them to abnormal growth, he misses, for the most part, all the power and well-being which are the essential attributes of his deep, human sense of being.

The evolution of humanity suggests the proper methods and contrivances for the general improvement and convenience of man, but evolution cannot use them, not daring yet to seek the consciousness of those qualities at its vital heart-centers which are the mainspring of material and intellectual productiveness and which would dictate the most helpful application of the organizing material provided by science and invention.

Among the peoples who have led the progress of the world and among whom the sense of manifold experience, need and aspiration increases hourly, generating the growth called civilization, two lines of tendency are to be marked. These are the tendency to develop higher and subtler qualities painfully and the tendency to gain experience in the recklessness of pure and noble sentiment. The highest growth transcends all pain; the keenest pleasure should be free of all debasedness. Men must grow toward higher perfection, and they must live with joy. What ever in man is pure, true, human, Divine, is essentially both progressive and satisfying.
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The suffering of the growth-seekers clings to their brave endeavors, because they cannot yet divest themselves entirely of impressions stamped on their mentality from without, from social prejudice and injustice, from religious formulae and Commercial and political skullduggery and all the rest that offers to men's minds conditions which they would wield and dominate, but which unhappily control, limit and dominate them. The slow degradation that corrupts the heartless pleasure-seeker results as malady from the hyper-development to which they urge a limited set of faculties and the absolute atrophy to which they leave the larger wealth of those with which, as human beings, they are necessarily endowed.

Both forms of suffering are signs alike of man's strange ignorance of the great powers to which he only is inherent. He will be able to escape from each if he will but turn faithfully toward that gathering-ground of all essential forces within his quivering Soul. Let those who dare, let those who Will, feel their slow way along the circumstances of life today and take what comes and dream that they do not change except for the better.

Those who wonder, those who want, those who suffer, will one and all, because of that clear presence of the fine all-life that sparkles in the breast of man at this triumphant hour of his labor, find that they belong to a new race with which the world is to be gifted after the deluge of egomaniacs, and that their pain, their weakness and their folly only came from not knowing this. Let loose the posers of nature in you, man and woman, that God may be incarnated. Study the inspired writings of the old Masters as herein made clear, and then let the clear voice of simple instruction ring to your adoration on the Sinais to which you rise at every hour of the sweet repose when life impours. Hurl right and left and far all claims of systems of thought and life that served old time, if they still cling to your skirts and burden your free ascent.

One claim uprears itself in holiest lawfulness, inflaming the altar of your heat - the world's cry for redemption - and lo! the god who meets you in the eternal sanctuary of yourself comes but for that.
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The subject of Hermetic science is man, while the object is the perfection - the all-round development - of man and centers in a certain unity with Divine Nature to which man is co-related.

The work of spiritual transmutation is accomplished by means of a certain method of life, plus the development of the Soul faculties, including the Will and Imagination, the two grand agents essential to success.

Eliphas Levi, one of the great Master-Teachers of the past century, recommends the postulant in the proanos of the Spiritual Temple to rise daily at the same hour - at an early hour - bathe summer and winter before breakfast in cold water, never wear soiled clothing, even if necessary to wash them himself; to exercise himself by voluntary privations that he may be better able to bear involuntary ones; finally, to impose silence on all desires except that of accomplishing the Great Work of his own regeneration. This is simply a preliminary preparation of the physical Temple for the greater work to be done and which is of another and different character.

Another Master-Teacher, Vaughn, describes it as Soul chemistry, an Alchemical science, a process of a triadic character. This triadic process is the transmutation of the gross physical body by the Soul within it, the exultation and Transfiguration of the Soul, and the illumination and deification of the Soul by contact with the Universal Consciousness generally known as God. This process accomplishes the regeneration of the whole man, turning him into a spiritual temple, as is the true object of Occult Philosophy.
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Still another Master-Teacher informs us that when this modification or New Birth has been accomplished, the Initiate is placed in communication with the creative and constructive forces of the Universe. The avenues of spiritual (Soul) perception, which are narrow, difficult and full of barriers to the psychologist of the materialistic schools, are freely thrown open for unlimited exploration, and the illuminated epopt may proceed to the Invocation of the celestial intelligences, the Souls of those who have accomplished and departed, and to the assertion of intellectual dominion over the Hierarchies of elementary beings and contact with the Hierarchies of the Great White or Invisible Brotherhood.

The depth and heights of his own Immortal nature are also revealed to him, and from the pinnacle of his spiritual center he may soar into ecstatic, yet Conscious, communion with Spiritual Hierarchies. On the physical plane he may perform, by the adaptation of natural laws, many prodigies which seem to the uninitiated observer a defiance of all law. He may endue inert substances with the potency of his individual Will and potentize them; he may, if he has delved far enough into the Occult realm, search human hearts and read their destinies, perceive events happening at distances, and impart to suitable subjects a portion of his own prerogatives, inducing trance, clear-sightedness, prophetic vision and re-establish health.

The Hierophants of old, far less materialistically and more spiritualistically inclined, were familiar with a far more varied spiritual science than we of today. They could easily lay claim to advances on the Path wherein we are slowly and painfully traveling, and had obtained a permanent possession of a power and knowledge which it was dangerous or impossible for them to reveal, except to a few chosen ones, and which they consequently spoke of in veiled language. They, nevertheless, endeavored to extend this knowledge to others, in order that it might be perpetuated, and to this end they invented their symbols and allegories in the hope that either a Divine Light would illuminate deserving seekers and enable them to penetrate to their inner significance, or that the Secret Schools and Initiate Masters would continue to exist and teach and guide willing Novitiates.

The Alchemical Initiates lay claim to the possession of tremendous secrets, to invincible power over certain forces, but, above all else, all their energies were directed toward on goal - the gaining of Wisdom and the power that comes with Knowledge.
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‘Happy is the man that findeth Wisdom and the man that getteth understanding, for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honor.

"Her ways are of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is the Tree of Life to them that lay hold upon her, and happy is everyone that retaineth her.

"Get wisdom, get understanding; forget it not, and she shall preserve thee, and she shall keep thee.

"Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life."

These sayings are perfectly congenial to the teachings of Alchemical science and exactly in harmony with the subject and the object of its work.

Knowledge and Wisdom were not synonymous in the Ancient Schools. Sandivogius told his readers: "There is an abundance of knowledge, yet but little truth known. The generality of our knowledge is but as castles in the air or groundless fancies. I know of but two ways that are ordained for getting Wisdom, viz., the Book of God (the Soul) and the Book of Nature (the body); and these also, but as they are studied with reason. Many look upon the former as a thing belonging to them or as without existence; upon the Latter, as a ground for Atheism and, therefore, neglect both. It is my judgment that, as to search the Scriptures is most necessary, so without reason it is impossible to understand them. Faith without reason is but implicity. If I cannot understand by reason how a thing is, yet I will see that a thing is so before I will believe it to be so. I will ground my believing of the Scriptures upon reason; I will improve my Reason by Philosophy."

When God made man after His Image, how was that? Was it not by making him a rational creature? Men, therefore, who lay aside reason in the reading of the mysteries do but unman themselves and become further involved in a labyrinth of errors. Hence it is that religion is wisdomless and degenerated into irrational notions.

All Occult Initiates would have the followers of Alchemical science test all teachings by what they call "the possibility of Nature," or its applicability to man's physical and spiritual needs. Hence the test of the philosophy is not with them a written record; and consistently with this principle, no Initiate urges his opinion upon authority(7), but always in the style of: "Dear Neophyte, listen to my words, apply them and thereby prove them," or he might say with St. Paul, one of the most zealous bold and independent reformers the world ever knew, "Prove all things, but hold fast to that which is good."

(7) this is one of the "landmarks" of the ancient Fraternity, and for this reason neither the authentic Order nor any of its Neophytes or members may urge upon others the acceptance of its teachings, nor that they associate themselves with the School. Advertising, proselyting and high-pressure salesmanship such as we know it today, all have been expressly forbidden.
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Notwithstanding this high authority, he who accepts truth only because it may be proved or demonstrated to be advantageous to body, mind and Soul or all three, and disregards mere authority, is still stigmatized as other than a desirable associate.

The Initiates, therefore, standing upon this ground, would have been persecuted had they published their opinions openly, for they lived for the most part at a period when it was agreed by those in authority that coercion, violence of proscription, might be legitimately employed to force men into established faith(8), the imagined enemies of which, besides being held up to public abhorrence, were often burned at the stake.

(8) With the ending of the Inquisition, men breathed more freely, and it was confidently expected that, having passed through the dark ages, man would nevermore be bound. No man could foresee that, as civilization supposedly advanced, the mass would become so weak and servile as to permit the establishment of any system which would be a thousandfold more brutal than the older regimes had ever dared to be. Yet it has come to pass that in numerous countries fraternal organizations have been forced to disband, are expressly forbidden, citizens of other that the accepted faith are maliciously mistreated, scattered and their property confiscated, detention camps filled by political dissenters and treated in a manner such as animal herds never experienced, and "purges" the rule, not the exception. Even in the dark days of the Inquisition no man, however debased, could conceive of a time when mass murder such as that in Russia since the revolution could become possible and continue in defiance of all human reason, understanding and sense of right, while Germany is a close second and Italy not far behind.

Even America no longer has any positive assurance of safety, because the agents of the Anti-Christ countries and systems are active within our country and practice and preach without interference or molestation; and if America should fall into the same bestial slavery as have Italy, Germany, China and Russia, its Citizens alone are to blame for permitting this spawn of hell to find sufferance within its borders to poison the minds of the young and dissatisfied.

Those inclined toward our philosophy, students, Acolytes and Neophytes, might reasonably question: What has political slavery to do with spirituality and the attainment of either Mastership or Godhood? Simply this: Freedom of individuality is the basis of all attainment, and man's Sainthood is for naught if he be confined in prison camp or shot at the prison wall.

One author thus affirms: "Believe ye that I conceal these things out of envy? No, surely, for I protest to thee that I grieve from the very bottom of my soul that we are driven, as it were, like outcasts from the face of the Lord throughout the world. We travel through many nations just like vagabonds and dare not take upon ourselves the care of a family; neither do we possess any fixed habitation. And although we posses all things, yet can use but a few. What, therefore, are we happy in, excepting speculation and meditation only, wherein we meet with great satisfaction of mind?

"Many do believe (strangers to the Science) that, if they enjoy it, they would do such and such things; so also even did we formerly believe, but being more wary, by the hazard we have run, we have chosen a more secret method. For whosoever hath once escaped imminent peril of his life will (believe me) become more wise for the time to come."

The system of secrecy was never discontinued, and those who have continued in charge of the Secret Schools were most wise in this, as time has so well vindicated them and their age-old system.
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"The Law," said Apollonius of Tyana, "obliges us to die for liberty, and Nature ordains that we should die for our parents, our friends and our children. All men are bound by these duties. But a Higher duty is laid upon the sage; he must be willing to die for his principles and the truth he holds dearer than life. It is not the Law that lays this choice upon us; it is Nature; it is the strength and courage of our own Souls. Though fire or sword threaten man, it will not overcome his resolution or force from him the slightest falsehood, but he will guard the secrets of others' lives and all that has been entrusted to his honor as religiously as the secrets of his Initiation. And I know more that other men, for I know that all that I know, I know some things for the good, some for the wise, some for myself, some for the Gods and naught for tyrants.

"Again, I think that a wise man does nothing alone by himself; no thought of his is so secret but that he has himself as witness to it. And whether the famous saying, ‘Know thyself,' be from Apollo or from some sage who learned to know himself and proclaimed it as a good for all, I think the wise man who knows himself and has his own spirit in constant comradeship to fight at his right hand will neither cringe at what the vulgar fear nor dare to do what most men do without the slightest shame."

In these statements we have the true philosopher's contempt for death and also the calm knowledge of the Initiate, of the comforter and adviser of others to whom the secrets of their lives have been confessed, that no torture can unseal his lips. Here, too, we have the full knowledge of what Consciousness is, of the impossibility of hiding the smallest trace of evil in the inner world, and also the dazzling brilliance of higher ethics which makes the habitual conduct of the crowd appear surprising - that which they do - not with shame.
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To the Occult Initiates, the ancient injunction, Know thyself, as inscribed upon the temple of Apollo, attributed by some to Pythagoras, by others to the Greeks and yet by others to the Egyptians, was the ground and sum of all Wisdom. In this knowledge was found, as they believed, the knowledge of God, not that God is in man except as he is in all things, but the knowledge of God lies in the nature of man and not in the nature of any other thing in the universe. He who looks for it elsewhere is on a journey away from the object he seeks and shall be disappointed.

The Initiates were not acquainted with the later and erroneous theory of our supposed descent from apes. They possibly did not realize the significance in Nature of that law which regulates the survival of the fittest and best prepared. They did not need science to teach them that the weakest always go to the wall unless protected by the strong, but they were acquainted with the capacity for improvement in all substances and in all departments of Nature.

They believed, as we believe today, in the existence of undeveloped potencies in every kingdom of being. They studied the mysteries of Correspondence and the great Law of conditions. They investigated the operations of energy in the direction of developments.

They did what we mostly fail to do; their great end was to assist Nature, to bring to consciousness reason, intelligence, humaneness, to help in fulfilling the Law, to begin work where Nature left off or was arrested, to improve what was defective, to complete what was unfinished, to ameliorate the ill-conditioned, to refine the coarse, to remove the superfluous. They believed, as we teach, that a change might be effected in all substances, and they sought to work up to the archetypal idea which dominated in each department of Nature. In other words, they endeavored to realize the ideal, to produce perfection in the given substance.

Thus the physical Alchemist elaborated the potencies of metals in order to obtain gold, while the spiritual Alchemist, the Occult Initiates, sought to produce by development and spiritualization the human archetype and to realize the ideal humanity. We find throughout their writings and processes a clear proof of their acquaintance with the Law of Spiritual Evolution which is discernible by a rigorous analogy with that of the physical world. Modern science, regrettably, concerns itself but little with the possible future of humanity, as is indicated by the law which it has discovered. Conversely, underlying all Alchemical science there is the consciousness of a grand future for both spiritual and physical transfiguration, perfection, beauty and visible illumination - things outward being an index of things inward - which are possible, perhaps inevitable, for man, and this future can at any rate be achieved by the elect, those who refuse to discard the vision of the Soul.

As at present conducted, our modern experiments are devoid of practical results except that it animalizes and brutalizes man and decreases his humaneness, while it increases his mass consciousness. The lines of investigation reach a certain point and there leave us.

Alchemical science discovered the hitherto inscrutable means of passing the barrier which confronts us, and in so doing taught us the tremendous secret which is no less than that of a Divine character which, however, cannot be publicly revealed.
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In their instructions the Occult Initiates protect their knowledge and secret teachings from the profane by means of allegorical language and the use of symbols, leaving their veritable meaning to be divined by the really sincere student with the help of an insight imparted from the developed subconsciously within. They likewise perpetuate their secrets by means of the Initiation of tested disciples of unquestioned discretion, to whom they liberally lay open the treasures of their accumulated knowledge.

Seeing that the Creator of all beings, before the foundation of the world and before ever they were brought forth, had and contained the same in his mind and Wisdom even the little world, man the Microcosm, as well as the greater world, the Macrocosm, according to the testimony of sacred writings, must not then the world, which is the greater, as well as the lesser, which is man, have their Creator as their original and beginning within themselves, so that neither the Creator nor His creature are separate from each other? Seeing, then, that it cannot be said that perfection is attained before the end has reached its beginning and the beginning united itself with the end in sequence to a new birth and production, the question is whether both the greater and the lesser world, in order to reach perfection, must no in al their workings aim at this, that they may return to their beginnings to be united with them?

All the creatures of God, for their melioration and glorification, stand in an endless evolution on the path to perfection and must be known and comprehended. A thing cannot be known otherwise than by its end and operation or out-working, as a tree by its fruits, and that the lesser world is the end and comprisal of all creatures and works of god and consequently an outbirth of the great world or Macrocosm wherein all other creatures are comprised. The question, then, is whether there can be any other way by which man may attain to a right knowledge of the great world, with and in all its parts, than in and out of himself? Man, as in the end and abridgement of all things, the Beginning has manifested itself, for the End is nothing but the Beginning wrought out and the start of something still greater; that is, displaying into act and manifested, so that the End is hidden in the Beginning as the Beginning is manifested in the End. As a consequence of this, both the worlds have a great affinity and perfect likeness, yea, and unity one with the other, and they must be wrought out with one another and thereby reach their highest perfection.

We do not deny that many of those who become interested in Alchemical science did so because of Material gain, but it is clearly indicated that their labors were overshadowed by the portents of a higher achievement and that even their works read obviously in two ways, literally and transliterally; so also their operations had two objects, and both of these objects were pursued from the first beginning of the science, and this is both just and right. Physical gain may be our vocation, while spiritual development be the avocation; there is nothing inimical in this.
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The spiritual interpretation was not an afterthought, not was the spiritual search an aftergrowth. The arcane knowledge in both instances preceded the arcane literature. The secrets of the ancient Sanctuaries and of the Holy Assemblies, as the Holy of Holies of the Initiates was known, embraced both the physical and the transcendental. It was known that one law variously applied obtained in all departments of Nature as regards the development of species and of the potential energies in all things.

Their acquaintance with the Law enabled the Initiates to develop the latent possibilities of the mineral world, which possibilities resided not in the different species, but in the common elements, and so chemistry was born. Their acquaintance with the identical law also enabled them to elaborate the transcendental potencies in man. Thus Initiation and Soul Consciousness became possible. In the vulgar parlance, they could transmute metals, and they could likewise transmute or transfigure humanity.
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Hermetic science in its literature enshrined both processes, which accounts for its composite character, like a skein of silk in which two colors, distinct, though almost inextricable, are confusedly tangled and braided. The evolutionary doctrine of alchemy is scarcely a subject for formal quotation from the sequence of alchemical literature, for it is the foundation and sum of that literature. There is, of course, the hackneyed maxim frequently cited by the champions of the "spoliated past" which puts tersely, after the manner of the wisdom of old, the whole story of the development of the species into a nutshell: "The stone becomes a plant, the plant an animal, the animal a man, and man a God." This is fundamentally and scientifically true: rock ground into dust becomes food or fertilizer for plant life, plant life feeds the animals, animals become food for man, and Man then has the opportunity to develop himself into a God. However, this is not the evolution with which we are now dealing; we are not here concerned with the mode in the manifestation of the Law which differentiated species, but rather with a fundamental principle, and a philosophical reason for the principle which Occult and /alchemical science applied in practice.

Thus we return to our beginnings and accept the dictum that the highest Wisdom consists in this: that Man know himself, because in him God has placed His Eternal Word (part of Himself), by which all things were made and upheld, to be his Light and life, by which he becomes capable of knowing all things, both in time and eternity. Therefore, let the sincere inquirer and deliver into the deeper mysteries of nature learn first to know what there is within himself before seeking in foreign matter within himself; and by the Divine power within himself let him heal himself and transmute the dross into Soul substance, then seek with success to unravel the mysteries and wonders of God in all natural things.
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Hermetic science in its literature enshrined both processes, which accounts for its composite character, like a skein of silk in which two colors, distinct, though almost inextricable, are confusedly tangled and braided.

The evolutionary doctrine of alchemy is scarcely a subject for formal quotation from the sequence of alchemical literature, for it is the foundation and sum of that literature. There is, of course, the hackneyed maxim frequently cited by the champions of the "spoliated past" which puts tersely, after the manner of the wisdom of old, the whole story of the development of the species into a nutshell: "The stone becomes a plant, the plant an animal, the animal a man, and man a God." This is fundamentally and scientifically true: rock ground into dust becomes food or fertilizer for plant life, plant life feeds the animals, animals become food for man, and Man then has the opportunity to develop himself into a God. However, this is not the evolution with which we are now dealing; we are not here concerned with the mode in the manifestation of the Law which differentiated species, but rather with a fundamental principle, and a philosophical reason for the principle which Occult and /alchemical science applied in practice.

Thus we return to our beginnings and accept the dictum that the highest Wisdom consists in this: that Man know himself, because in him God has placed His Eternal Word (part of Himself), by which all things were made and upheld, to be his Light and life, by which he becomes capable of knowing all things, both in time and eternity. Therefore, let the sincere inquirer and deliver into the deeper mysteries of nature learn first to know what there is within himself before seeking in foreign matter within himself; and by the Divine power within himself let him heal himself and transmute the dross into Soul substance, then seek with success to unravel the mysteries and wonders of God in all natural things.
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He who possesses the knowledge of the Microcosm. This is that which the Initiates of the past so loudly proclaimed - that every on should know himself. But I admonish thee, whosoever thou art, that desirest to delve into the inmost parts of Nature, if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. If thou knowest not the excellency of thine own house, why dost thou seek and search after the excellency of thine neighbor's house? The universal Orb of the world contains no greater mysteries and excellence as a little man, formed by God in His own image. Even though there were no god, then man would be greatest, and all the mysteries would reside with him, awaiting revealment.

He who would be great among the students of Nature will nowhere find a greater or better field of study than himself. Therefore, will I here follow the example of the Egyptians (Initiates) and, from my whole heart and certain true experiences proved by me, speak to my neighbor in the words of the Egyptians: ‘O Man, KNOW THYSELF; in thee is hidden the Treasure of Treasures."

Alchemical or Occult science is the one and only avenue of gaining knowledge concerning the absolute of being; and in this claim there is nothing narrow, intolerant or exclusive, for the simple fact that there are no other claimants. It is open to anyone to reject it on the ground that we cannot know; it is also the privilege of anyone to be indifferent about positive truth; but if that truth does exist, and thereby a known way to its attainment, then Occult Initiation is the way. It is the Metaphysical foundation of the spiritual chemistry; it is the art, both ancient and infinite, to which those who seek Wisdom must apply themselves.
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The search after positive truth applicable to man's manifold development can be pursued only in one direction. There is but one certain system, only one science, which can lay claim to possess the way. That system, that philosophy, that science, is Alchemical, the Hermetical method of transmutation.

It is not alone a question of the Soul or just men made perfect, nor yet of establishing correspondence with those exalted Hierarchies of existence whose altitude of interior development transcends whatsoever can be imagined at the apex of human evolution, It is a question of the opening of man's individual Consciousness, of his Immortal Soul, of his inalienable interior self-possession, in the universal consciousness of God.

To be qualified to become an Initiate, man is not called upon to make any sacrifice of his reason. He must exercise it to the fullest extent, must apply it to his personal improvement and his progressive development.

He is not required to profess any definite creed. Initiation is concerned with the Attainment of Knowledge, not with the enunciation f dogma; but it is undeniably required of the aspirant that he should be possessed of spiritual aspirations and, above all, of a keen desire for Immortality, which is the testimony of the interior self to the truth of Immortality and is confirmed by a testimony without in the external facts of spiritual possibilities.

Whosoever is acquainted with these facts has a certain and substantial knowledge on which to base his faith which will induce him to greater effort for self-improvement, and thus the science in which he now operates is transfigured. Even now he may reasonably anticipate in the future a solution of many problems to which as yet he has found no key.
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Occult science offers a key to the future progress of Humanity and a practical modus operandi for the evolution of the perfect man. These statements may be reduced within even narrower limits, and we say: Alchemical science or Occult Initiation comprises a physical demonstration concerning he unseen which is around us, whence it is the true alchemical intritus in varam atque inauditam physicam, and an interior illumination concerning the unseen which is within, together with a way to God, or the understanding of the Law, the end of all human development. It embodies a system of educational work toward the perfect life, both physical and spiritual, not to mention the ultimate in worldly attainment.

These, it is submitted, are sufficient reasons for the dissemination of its doctrines and principles. But we may advance beyond this initial standpoint and affirm that a way to Wisdom and a method to the perfect life are the essential elements required in that new religion toward which all the Higher Forces in humanity seem to be instinctively moving: in that new religion which shall realize the best aspirations and constitute a transfigured synthesis of all previous creeds. Existing modern necessities; faith is less than knowledge, and as knowledge is required by the age, the development of humanity has not by any means been perfectly accomplished by systems based purely on faith.

As Hermetical science is in harmony with the conclusions of modern science and with the theorems of modern philosophy, in harmony with the best aspirations of all religions and is itself committed to no arbitrary doctrines, it is incumbent on those who receive it to spread the knowledge which they posses, to endeavor by personal experience to increase this knowledge and undertake, so far as in them lies, to begin the education of humanity in the perfection promised by the Master-Teacher of the Secret Schools.
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The soul of man has the power, when the body has been made free of pollution or carnality, the heart cleansed of malice and offense, spiritually and occultly, to act upon any matter whatsoever, therefore, it is said that all potentiality is resident in the Soul. The work is to bring the dormant, yet dominant, power of the true, pure, living, breathing spirit and eternal Soul into act.

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to take a man in what is called his natural state - St. Paul's natural man - after he has for years indulged all of his passions, having a view of what is called the world, honors, pleasures or wealth and make him sensible to the mere abstract claims of the right or spiritual verities and willing to relinquish one single passion in deference to it. Most assuredly, this is the one grand task of those who have the welfare of humanity at heart, but this once accomplished, the work of improvement is easy.

Consider a man ever seeking only what may gratify some selfish passion, a stranger to all generous impulses, unconscious, perhaps, of their existence, or only regarding heir manifestation in others as evidence of imbecility and weakness. How is such a man to be brought out of this state into a better view of things, so as to feel his dependence upon and appreciate their claims upon him? Generally it will be only as the result of suffering, loss, the need of a companionship and a knowledge which will not fail. Thus we have the reason, a Divinely instituted cause for universal suffering and the cause which brings about such suffering.

Consider the man whose Soul is corrupted by all sorts of evil passions, until he has become morbidly sensitive to everything that in any manner interferes with his personal comfort; let him be petulant, irritable and morose. How is such a man to be awakened?

We might speak of downright sins which generate a class of Men, a few of whom find their temporal homes in prison and other institutions or expiate their crimes upon the block. How are such men to be stopped in their career and brought to a sense of responsibility? Unquestionably, the greatest difficulty in all such cases is to bring into action the conscience which lies buried within, yet, though buried and inactive, is not altogether dead, and the great awakener of which is suffering and sorrow, the actual loss of something beloved, and let it be said that the basis of most sorrows is affection or love for some one thing or person.
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When the Will is educated and freed through knowledge from the entanglements of materiality and animality, new and noble virtues are formed. This is naturally true because man is naturally bound to either virtue or vice, and when on leaves the other takes its place. This is the doctrine of substitution or, in its higher phase, transmutation, but in either case the replacement of one thing by another thing. As such substitution of the lesser by the greater takes place, the individual becomes a self-conscious center of evolutionary forces, and this, united with unselfish love, uplifts all that comes into contact with it, for it is through such a purified desire and Will that regeneration and reconstruction are possible.

Moreover, the Will, through Wisdom and aspiration, brings illumination and the knowledge of Divine things by which Consciousness may expand and contact the Consciousness of God. It is then that all the possibilities of Nature - all creation - are opened to us, together with an innate realization of the possibility of attaining to the utmost along every avenue of endeavor.

There is another and more common class, those who are distracted between contrary passions and desires, such as love of pleasure or of money or both, or a love of glory and of ease. What peace can such find or how is it possible for them to enjoy tranquility? These require an almost complete change of character or disposition. So also with those who, under a vague notion of being in the right, have no more solid foundation for it than self-conceit - who think the whole world wrong but themselves and are uneasy and unhappy with everything around them which does not happen to be adjusted to their particular wishes and predilections.

Such people often look with an evil eye upon Providence - the functioning Law - which, without interruption, proceeds to its general ends in total disregard of all incongruous individualities. How are such people to be dealt with? To plainly point out their errors is but to arouse their enmity and excite opposition. The only way is to ignore their defects and arouse in them a desire for that which is both permanent and of immediate and future value to them and permit the conversion from one state to another to take place within.

The only sense of peace and well-being results from a deep love for some truly worthy object and the application of all one's energies to the achievement of that desire. The self is forgotten in the attempt to achieve - peace quickly comes to those who can forget themselves.
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When our inordinate attachment to material things has ceased, when we are no longer dependent upon them for every sensation and pleasure, we are able to judge them at their true value and love them for what they really are - beautiful or necessary stepping stones toward a higher attainment. It is utterly false philosophy or religion that teaches men to hate the things of the world and class them as of the devil, for nothing exists which has not its proper use and purpose and is, therefore, immaculate in its naturalness. The ignorant misuse of things and powers in themselves pure and useful causes pain and sorrow which we foolishly mistake for evil, whereas it is but the means toward awakening us to truth and reality.

When we really come to know the material world we will learn to truly love it and, knowing its value to us in our present environment, we will try to serve and uplift. Then, too, we will grasp the purpose of life - the descent of spirit into matter - of Souls into flesh; and, as an Ancient Initiate has well said: "The angels aspire to become men, because perfect man, the man who has attained Godhood, is even above the angels," while another teacher, St. Paul, has said: "Know ye not that ye shall judge the angels." The man who attains Soul consciousness is far more capable to serve his fellow-men than are the angels of heaven, for through his correct knowledge and the compassion which is born of his knowledge, he is equipped above and beyond them in his capacity to uplift and redeem humanity.

The law of self-sacrifice, when for a noble and practical purpose, is the highest evolutionary law and the only one whereby the enlightened Soul may hope to advance to greater heights. In wise self-sacrifice lies true greatness; in renunciation and worthy service the only realization of peace. From this we can understand why one of the great Souls, a Master-Teacher who had worked consciously and in harmony with this Law, said to his followers: "He that would be greatest among you, let him be the servant of all." He that would be master must first be willing to serve that he may learn the duties the Master may command.
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Hermetic science has, through the experiences of the ages, been able to demonstrate that the identical principles which work secretly and mysteriously in the Soul of the Neophyte can be applied exteriorally in the development of the body of man. This science in its higher significance deals with the Soul's development and its potentialities, but it also, and co-jointly, has in view the universal improvement of man's physical being. It does not end there. Its intermediate service is in mental illumination and exaltation and the achievement of material success and advancement. The so-called "salvation of the Soul" must be accomplished along with the redemption of the body and elimination of mental and physical slavery. At no time must we be foolish enough to underrate the vehicle of interior perfection nor the directing power of the mind; otherwise we are incarnate here to no purpose. The combined laws of evolution and development must fulfill their course in both the inward and the outward man.

Through our physical being pulsates the animal, and so long as we remain on this plane we will be subject to the laws of the material kingdom, both physical and animal. When the mortal has been awakened to the Consciousness of the higher self through which the spiritual circulates, a plane has been attained where it is possible to dominate and control the lower by the higher. At this point it is the God in man who assumes the sovereignty, manifesting the God-like powers which are the possession of those who have overcome.

Through the understanding and application of these Hermetic laws a power is created which is easily capable of controlling the material self, and man may continue in both physical and mental vigor sol long as he cares to use the body as a habitation and the local from which to direct his activities.
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The point is at last reached in our physical evolution and the soul's development where we must rise in the higher currents of vibratory force and, placing ourselves in harmony with it, cast off the old animal bondage to which we have been sol long subject, governing instead of being governed - masters of our faith.

The body of man is the Hall of Initiation wherein man's soul must be tried, awakened and strengthened. Within it the Master, the great Initiator, the Transmuter, takes all of the baser passions and changes them into spiritual essence or Soul-fire. Here in this Hall experience is built into strength uplifted by virtue; and it is by means of these virtues, which are often sublimated from the baser passions, that the Soul of man is developed to the highest and attains to the status of Hierarch in the White Brotherhood of human service. The incentive must be a holy (high) intention, drawn from the bottom of a pure and sincere heart and conscience, free from selfish ambition, hypocrisy and all other vices which have an affinity with these, such as arrogance, boldness, pride, love of luxury, petulancy, oppression of the weak and similar evils. These are to be eradicated from the heart, so that when the Acolyte prostrates himself before the throne of grace for obtaining health, strength and enlightenment he may do so with a conscience free from unholy and degrading things. All that is unworthy may be transmuted into a holy temple of God, wherein uncleanliness has been purged and weakness replaced by strength, ignorance by Wisdom and hatred by compassion.

Man commences the Alchemical process by purifying the desire-nature, and he takes this lower nature in hand to purge out of it everything which is selfish; selfish in the sense that it will benefit the self to the loss or sorrow of another. How shall he thus free himself? He does not want to destroy, for that which he has gathered together is experience; and experience has been built into faculty and transmuted into power, and he now has need of all these powers that he has been gathering during his climb that lies behind him, but to change them into power, force and energy. It would need so much less patience and effort to destroy some of these qualities which are part of him, and he feels he might slay them and be well rid of them. But is is not thus he can enter into the Temple of the Higher Self; he must take them there as a sacrifice and perform the harder task of purification or transmutation and save the essence or spirit thereof and apply it in his new life.
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There are two Hermetic operations, the one Spiritual and the other material, and these two are mutually dependent, as are body and Soul. For the rest, all Hermetic science is contained in the Doctrine of Hermes, which is said to have been originally inscribed upon an Emerald Tablet. The first articles have been expounded, and those follow which are concerned with the operation of the Great Work.

"Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, and subtle from the gross, gently, with great industry. It rises from earth to heaven, and again it descends to earth, and it receives the power of things above and of things below (according to the Law of Duality). By this means shalt thou obtain the glory of the whole world, and all darkness shall depart from thee. It is the strong power of every power, for it will overcome all that is subtle and penetrate all that is solid. Thus was the world created."

To separate the subtle from the gross in the first operation, which is wholly interior, is to set the Soul free from prejudice and all vice both destroyers, which is accomplished by the direction of Wisdom, personal skill and application; finally, by the use of energy and the fire or your awakened Will. By these are we enabled to change into spiritual gold things which are least precious and even the refuse (evil passions and propensities of human nature).

That which is above is proportional to that which is below, and reciprocally. The word art, when reversed or read after the manner of sacred and primitive characters from tight to left, gives us three initials which express the different grades of the Great Work. "T" signifies triad, theory and travail; "R," realization, and "A," adaptation.
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When the Masters of Hermetic and Alchemical science say that but a short time and little money are required to accomplish the work of this science and, above all, when they affirm that one vessel alone in needed; when they speak of the great and unique Athanor, which all can use, which is ready to each man's hand, which all possess without knowing it, they allude to philosophical and spiritual Alchemy - the transformation of man. As an indisputable truth, a strong and determined Will can arrive in a short time at absolute independence - the aim and end of man on earth - and we are all in possession of the chemical instrument, the great and sole Athanor, which answers for the separation of the subtle from the gross and the fixed from the volatile. This instrument, the intelligent, reasoning, awakened human mind, complete as the world and precise as mathematics, is represented by the sages under the emblem of the Pentagram or the five-pointed star, which is the absolute sign of human intelligence.
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The first step is to let Love, not the purely human passion, but the emotion which embraces within itself generosity, justice, forgiveness, strength, compassion, manhood and affection, reign supreme, so as to leave no room in the Soul for hate. To do this is to recognize the utility and beauty of all existence not distorted by human passions. "Love your enemies," said the great Teacher, and we soon learn to recognize that our greatest enemies are the carnal passions and low desires within us, "a man's greatest foes being those of his household." It will not be difficult to love, which is to forgive, these when we realize their past utility, that they have actually been the means of our evolutionary advancement and of our ascent from animality, for through sensation, mostly unpleasant, they give us experience. But now we have learned the lesson; we have assimilated all that the passions in their lower aspect can teach us. What more, then, to do with them? Are we to cast out and destroy an old servant merely because his apparent usefulness is ended? To do so will probe a fatal mistake, though this would be a much less difficult task than what is required of us, for it is far easier to destroy a passion than to purify or transmute it, yet such transmutation is the evolutionary function of the higher self.

As we advance toward Initiation, every faculty must be uplifted and trained to serve us on a higher level of manifestation, for the opposite pole of every vice is a virtue into which the vice must be transmuted. This is the Great Work, the Hermetic science, the Alchemical process.

Take covetousness, for an example, the cruel, grasping passion which is pre-eminently the vice of this competitive and mongrel military age. When it completely possesses a man he becomes, if he were not actually so born, an egomaniac, and there is no depth of selfishness, degradation or cruelty, no barbarism, to which he will not descend. He will stand unmoved, steeped in luxury, while all around him are misery, suffering and want. It will induce him to "corner" the necessities of life or the things he needs, so that thousands of the enslaved will suffer for lack of food and fuel, and all for something of which he already commands a superfluity and which in reality can gain him nothing.
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When the Light of the higher self and the love of the Soul is turned on this aspect everything changes, as the point of view is changed. No longer do the purely material things of life seem ultra-desirable. The narrow self, which has seemed so separate from our fellow-men, enlarges and includes them also, for we realize that they are but an extension of ourselves and that so long as they are bound we cannot be fully free. Though as of old we still long to have and to hold, the things we now covet are spiritual treasures, and we seek them not only for our individual selves, but for our larger selves, which includes and embraces our brethren on earth.

As we expand interiorly and redeem and regenerate each vice and passion, we awaken to find that we have made a wonderful advance in consciousness, in mental prowess, in human achievement and in our station in life, the mission which brought us into the earth-life.

Hermetic philosophy is not a doctrine; it is properly a practice - an exact mode of life. It is the practice of justice, kindliness, compassion and spiritual precepts to the end that man may properly develop and bring into manifestation all of his dormant forces, energies and possibilities, and that he may attain freedom from the shackles which have bound humanity for ages, making him mo less than the angel which left heaven to become man in order to attain Godhood.
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The terms embodied through this Monograph, such as the Great Work, the Secret Schools, the August Fraternity, the Rosicrucian Fraternity or Rosicrucian Foundation are virtually synonymous. They all refer to sources of instructions and authority under which guidance and training are made possible for the aspirant.

The Ideals which motivate the training of this Confederation of Initiate Schools are clearly indicated throughout the Monograph. For those who sincerely and earnestly seek wisdom and a complete self-development through these higher Occult Arcanum, the Door IS open.

A monograph, "The Secret Schools," has as its subject the Rosicrucians (original or Randolph Foundation) and their work, while another, the "Confederation of Initiates,' suggests the nature of the training in the Higher Occult of the AEth Priesthood. Either of these brochures will provide the contact for the sincere aspirant with those who may direct him in the Path of Higher Attainment. Upon request, the undersigned will forward a copy of one or both of these publications.

It is well to remember that in approaching the "Ancient Landmarks" of this most ethical of all schools - the Rosicrucian Fraternity - the first expression required from the aspirant is suggested by the phrase: "I am willing and eager to begin."

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