Serpents of Wisdom

Serpents of Wisdom
Part 4

How different all this is from the ways of the Masters, the Initiates and their Disciples!!

Fulcanelli explains:

“They are pledged to no oath and bound together by no statute; their free will is subject to only one rule voluntarily accepted and obeyed: the discipline of the Hermetic Philosophy. They do not know one another, they have no meeting place, no headquarters, no temple, no ritual, no exterior mark by which they can be recognized.

They were, and still are, lonely workers scattered about the world, ‘cosmopolitan’ researchers in the narrowest sense of the word. Since the Adepts were conscious of no hierarchy, the Brotherhood was not looked upon as rank; to it they dedicated their secret work, their experience, the positive Light that had been revealed to them by a living Faith.”

It takes the kind of courage which can only come from true Faith, to stand alone, apart from the crowd (that some mistakenly see as a support group); to depart from all ceremonies, rituals and public acts of devotion.

Most humans have a gluttonous need to show off to others their accomplishments; and when they have no accomplishments to justly announce, they tend to gravitate into the spiritual zone where it is possible to claim unverifiable, nebulous accomplishments. In their eagerness to ‘be thought somebody’, they often associate with evil men who take advantage of their defect, and who use them as instruments to spread their own rotten teachings.

You may reason that these cranks, holding their furtive, little meetings, and giving their inane and boring talks, and writing their sensational and superficial books, are not exactly evildoers. You may, perhaps, find them harmless and well-intentioned, imagining them to really be trying to bring enlightenment to us all.

I shall give you the Master’s answer:

“It is the greatest sin to alter by one iota my Holy Words revealed to man in general. And this is truly said, for upon him who dares this risk will fall awesome punishments, unless himself he be a Master, who knows the Laws of the Within. Then - should he deem it necessary - he may explain the secret Truths unto the few, and for their understanding only. The rest must wait until they are ready too, to be initiated with the Light.”

The American TV evangelists are the best examples of how dangerous is the practice of changing the Holy Scriptures to suit the needs of the reprobate businessmen who run the shows. They have taken the words of THEIR master and turned it into a money-making machine.

Nothing is sacred to these putrid abominations, and their credulous followers get exactly what they deserve. Who can cry for people who refuse to see that which is quite plain to others?

This kind of extortion is painfully self-evident among the TV preachers, but not altogether peculiar to them. The so-called New Age and the majority of the Occult Orders are also infested with the same vermin, but maybe here it is hidden under a greater subtlety. To be able to detect the large part of the deception, you have to be trained by the Masters in the real Occult Sciences, but unfortunately, few have been so blessed. One of the most obvious reasons for this, is that the majority appear to be satisfied with imitations. As AEsop says in his fables:

“Men often applaud an imitation, and hiss the real thing.”

That this is true can be clearly seen when we discover the thousands of books written, claiming to have ‘re-discovered’ (a strange term to use for something that was never lost but has always been in the keeping of the Great Masters) the beliefs and practices of the ancient Druids.

The public’s ferocious appetite for what is given out as lost rites and magical practices of the Druids is astonishingly great, and considering the fact that a Student at their Mystery Schools had to spend more than twenty years committing their Sacred Teachings to memory, it is also astonishingly naive to imagine that we can learn anything real from these cheap books. And since the Druids never put their beliefs down in writing, we wonder from which stagnant pool the authors of such books fished their inspiration.

Even Stonehenge, standing there for all to see, remains a mystery to this day. This monument can be seen, touched, measured and read by all and sundry; and it can be read and studied by ‘experts’, sensitives and unsensitives alike, but all to no avail! Stonehenge, like the Sphinx, keeps its secrets.

And who shall, these days, explain to us the rich symbology of the Cauldron of Ceridwen; of Gwion Bach who swallowed three drops of the content of the Cauldron; of Morda the blind man; of the Horses of Gwyddno; of Elphin, and of the Hare, the Greyhound, the Fish, the Hawk, the Grain of Wheat and the Black Hen, all found in the story of Taliesin in the Mabinogion?

And who shall unravel the poems of the Chief Bard Taliesin?

“Minstrels preserve in their false custom,
immortal ditties are their delight;
Vain and tasteless praise they recite;
Falsehood at all times do they utter.“
Taliesin

The Spite of the Bards

All that is written about the Mystery Teachings of the Druids , the wise Oak Men of old, is nothing but speculation and theory; and sometimes not even theory but only crude invention.

If you are interested in reading about the history of the Celts, and about the wisdom of their leaders, then read Pliny, who has much to say about them, and who, after all, observed them at close range unlike the modern day hallucinator.

The Druids are not the only ones being used as an instrument to line the pockets of cunning malefactors; the Ancient Egyptians, Scandinavians, Gnostics, the Popol Vuh of the Quiche Mayans along with the Hermetic Teachings, have also been put to the same mis-use.

Hermes Trismegistus, the Scribe of the Gods, whose Secrets, according to Zosimus of Panopolis, was regarded as an esoteric art and was revealed exclusively to the Egyptian Hierophants and their Initiates at the Mystery Schools.

Nothing has changed since then, for the Secrets are still only known to the Adepts, in spite of what the rabble claim.
In the preface to ‘The Glory of the World’ it is written:

“The books of the Alchemists seem to have had a dual purpose: firstly, one of inter-communication between Masters of the Art, many of whom remained anonymous, or used pseudonyms; secondly, as an advertisement to possible seekers that there was a mystery to be sought. The works themselves make it clear that one cannot follow the Art from books alone, and that the would-be adept must seek a Master in order to learn the secrets of the Art.....”

Again we discover that the only way a Student of the Mysteries can find his way through the maze, is with the aid of a kindly Master. All else is worthless opinion, vain assumptions and empty conceit, being based on error and ignorance.

The ‘Kybalion’ says that:

“The half-wise, recognizing the comparative unreality of the Universe, imagine that they may defy its Laws - such are vain fools, and they are broken against the rocks and torn asunder by the elements by reason of their folly. The truly wise, knowing the nature of the Universe, use law against laws; the higher against the lower; and by the art of Alchemy transmute that which is worthy, and thus triumph. Mastery consists not in abnormal dreams, visions and fantastic imaginings or living, but in using the higher forces against the lower - escaping the pains of the lower planes by vibrating on the higher. Transmutation, not presumptuous denial, is the weapon of the Master.”

Let the Student’s aim constantly be to deserve the attention of the Masters through sane thinking, through Love and Service to our fellow man, and through Faith; and lo!..... the Master will appear. “But who is this Master?” asks Isha Schwaller De Lubicz.

“Have patience. You want to know too soon; he who would win perfect knowledge must begin by recognizing his perfect ignorance. If you were not deceived by words, you would not have failed to recognize the Master already.”

I have heard it said that the peoples of this world are becoming more aware and spiritual; that after the turn of the Century we will yet again celebrate the arrival of the New Golden Age. Between then and now, a variety of disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, wars, etc... all culminating in the shifting of the poles, have been predicted to take place. I cannot speak for the disasters, but will leave such things to the Great Powers whose work it is to visit on us such events as will benefit our growth, although I do have doubts as to the early arrival of the Golden Age.

Blavatsky says in her ‘Secret Doctrine’ that:

“The cycle is moving down and, as it descends, the physical and bestial nature of man develops more and more at the expense of the Spiritual self.”

We are at the moment about 5000 years into the Kali Yuga age. It is the fourth and last age, and according to Fulcanelli, it is “an age of misery, misfortune and decrepitude”. The ancient Hindu Cycles states that the Kali Yug will take 432,000 years to work itself out. This means that we still have 427,00 years remaining of this dark age, and, of course, just as many years before the arrival of the next Golden Age.

In the Vishnu Purana there is a prophecy concerning the Kali Yuga and it runs as follows:

“The whole world will be in turmoil. There will be rulers upon the earth of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death upon women and children, size the property of their subjects; they will be of limited power, their lives will be short and their desires insatiable. People of various countries will mingle with them and follow their example; the people will perish, wealth and piety will decrease until the world will be wholly depraved.

Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification, and external types will be the only distinction of the several orders of life.

A rich man will be considered pure; dishonesty will be the universal means of subsistence; weakness the cause of dependence; menace and presumption will be substituted for learning; liberality will be devotion; mutual assent, marriage; fine clothes, dignity. He who is the strongest will reign; the people, unable to bear the heavy burdens will flee; thus decay will constantly proceed, until the human race approaches annihilation.”

This prophecy, written thousands of years ago, no longer sounds like a prophecy, but more like fact. This is life, perfectly described, at the end of the twentieth century, and it makes one shudder to see how easily humanity has taken to this life-style; like a duck takes to water.

These are the reasons why the Disciple of the Path have a duty to keep the Flame alive for their brethren - for the few who are getting weary and who are earnestly searching for a better way. The merely curious will fall away of their own accord, returning to the manifold deceptions of the New Age with its various cults, sects and personalities.

This is an age when we make horrible wars on one another, not to establish justice on earth, but out of greed for wealth and lust for power. We imagine we are no longer savage, that we are sophisticated and progressive, educated and civilized. We smile condescendingly at our forefathers with their Pyramids, hieroglyphs, works of art, manifold Gods, sacred writings and ‘heathen’ beliefs; replace it all with skyscrapers, modern art, psychiatry, television, cars and atom bombs - and curiously call it progress.

We stress the importance of education for all - and we seem to have -in the words of Machen,

“the crazy notion that a man who can read a book is educated, while a man who cannot read is uneducated.”

He goes on to say:

“It would be, perhaps, too much to say that education in any real sense is utterly impossible at the present day. It must be a work of enormous difficulty; for true teaching that can be given from books or from word of mouth is straightaway contradicted and annulled by the whole atmosphere and circumstance of modern life. How can we truly learn beauty if our days are passed for the most part in a horrible orgy of hideousness and corruption?

How can we expect a factory hand to realize the beauty, the wonder, the mystery of anything whatever when his whole life is passed in some soul-and-mind and body destroying occupation; when his daily work is hardly more intelligent than that of the cogs and endless bands and poison vats which he has to supervise - and his only holiday is made up of a nightmare, washed down with much adulterated beer?

A man who lives such a life can see nothing and understand nothing; he has, not by his own fault, but by the fault of his master and spiritual teachers, fallen again from Paradise; and, so far as one can see, his one idea of happiness is to turn out his master and become a master himself - which is about as foolish and futile as if one proposed to regenerate America by seeing that every adult citizen became a millionaire.

One discovers but little hope for such men as these; and the so-called education that is given them is probably but the adding of fuel to the flames of their burning - it is a giving of a picture gallery to a blind man. It has been shown again and again that the result of more than fifty (at the time Machen was writing) years’ compulsory ‘education’ has been the creation of a race of ferocious and degraded hooligans.”

Instead of evolving, humanity seems to be degenerating. The trend does not appear to be towards a better and brighter future, but towards a living hell. What will be the outcome? Those who are already awake, will know; those who are asleep, do not care.

“A hundred ages we had kept
Cradled in visions of hate and care,
And each one who waked as his brother slept,
Found the truth....... “
Shelly

Prometheus

There are many who long for beauty and justice but feel overwhelmed by the corruption and the evil in the world, and are at a loss as to how to even begin to make a difference. They feel powerless against the self-serving system, and after a few futile attempts at being heard, they give up, forgetting that without the help of the Higher Powers, little, if anything can be achieved. Whereas, if a person approaches the Holy Beings with petitions for help or guidance with a sincere and trusting heart, their prayers will be answered. There are specific ways of doing this and I will give you one of the ways of the Masters:

“To address the Higher beings you must never kneel down; for the act of kneeling down lowers the whole attitude of the petitioner, and brings him in attunement with the lower worlds of beings; with the material, or even lower. Therefore, the supplicant should stand upright, with arms crossed over the breast and one hand resting lightly on each shoulder. He should look UP.

Furthermore, he should address his petition silently and mentally; for the spoken word issues from within outwards, and as soon as it is uttered it flows into the material realms of illusion and is lost there. It can then have material results only and, at the worst, they may be dire in the extreme, or being answered with satanic laughter by the lower elementals if the prayer should be in connection with Spiritual conditions.

The only powers that can be addressed with the spoken word are the dark beings, or the material. In order to petition the Divine denizens of the Spiritual Realms, the prayer should be from without inwards; from the material to the Spiritual. That is the only way in which such prayers will reach the goal for which they are intended. At the same time, the supplicant should raise up his thoughts. They should go inwards and upwards, and always silently.

“Here is a Prayer which is absolutely Spiritual, and yet can have marvelous results for the good of ALL mankind if sincerely projected in the manner I have just described;

“Life, Light and Love,
May the Spirit of Goodness reach out into all Space.
May the positive POWERS of these Principles
overcome all negative conditions.
And may Peace Profound reign everywhere.
So mote be it.
Amen. Amen. Amen.

“Face the East when doing this, and do it as many times each day and night as you wish.

“This will help the world in general, for you will attune with the Great White Brotherhood of all the Divine and Spiritual Entities; and they will HEAR you and ACT.”

These are the Teachings of a truly Great Master on how to Send Forth the Light to combat the evil in this world. We are never alone, for there are always Divine Beings nearby, waiting to help us; but we have to approach them, of our own free will, before they can come to our assistance. For as long as we imagine we can do it unaided, our conceit will bar all communications with the Spiritual Realms, and the only ‘inspiration’ we receive will be from the lower beings who take delight in misleading and destroying all that is good and true.

Bernard Shaw correctly observes:

“Common people do not pray; they only beg.”

Instead of groveling on our knees, asking God for whatever little thing our hearts desire, our prayers should be more like Blavatsky’s will-prayer - an internal command.

The Will is the first of all Powers. Through the human Will the passions are made to correct themselves; but will or intent of purpose must be followed by Action. To merely talk and have good intentions will lead us nowhere. The idle who dozes and loafs and languishes in spiritual sloth, die before they wake up, like bad seeds that never come to fruition.

These are the cowardly gray masses who swarm the earth like clouds of locusts; they are filled with fear and irresolution and labour under the mistaken belief that they are virtuous in their apathy. But virtue can not rise out of inertia and a dull person can never become a magician.

We have to meet life head on, conquer life’s obstacles through will-power and act as one who desires goodness. The human will grows through usage and adversity, for adversity is the creator of the will, in the same way as shadow or darkness is the creator of the Light. Therefore adversity and darkness are not evils visited upon us in order to confound us, but are instead tools to be used to enable us to grow towards the Goodness of the Light.

All genuine mystics love action; for they, above all other people realize that what they see they can never obtain unless they do what they can to raise themselves, step by step, to become nobler. Learn to enjoy a challenge, for without this drive you will complacently ‘chew the cud’ with the rest of the herd.

This is one of the reasons why Karma should be abolished, for it leads to dread of action, making a person hesitant to move for fear of doing something wrong. Thus, Karma becomes the avoidance of adversity; the very adversity needed for the removal of ignorance and the growth of the all-important will.

Levi states that:

“Every man is either good or bad. No middle course is possible. The indifferent, the lukewarm are not good; they are consequently bad, and the worst of all bad, for they are imbecile and cowardly. The battle of life is like a civil war; those who remain neutral betray both parties alike, and renounce the right to be numbered among the children of the fatherland.”

Only a person who is bold and fearless in the face of adversity, will be counted among the faithful.

Such a one will know that the Lords of Life and Light assists and protects the warrior who fights with the Sword of Righteousness and who never allows the worm of doubt to live, or for sleep to overtake his wakefulness.

This is the Child of Light who rises from the ashes of ignorance, like the Phoenix, and flies off on wings of truth towards the Light.

“I am the Lion-god coming forth with extended strides.

I have shot arrows and wounded the prey.

I am the Eye of Horus. I have conquered.

Let the Osiris Ani advance in Peace.”
Egyptian Ritual

When the Masters say action, they do not mean that you should toil and sweat until you drop. To labour like a cart-horse in order to keep a business going or to make a fortune, is wrong, for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

We have all come across the pitiful slaves who work all day and often far into the night, seven days a week, in order to hang unto their position in life; climbing executive ladders, driving bargains, peddling, soliciting, hawking, canvassing, bidding and thieving, simply to get rich. To watch these mortals, whipped by greed and ambition, half dead from their feverish efforts, is a deplorable sight.

They toil and grind, drudge and slave, as if driven by the demon himself - like berserkers with work-assignments from Niflheim. And for what? Some miserable earthly ‘kingdom’ they never even have the time to enjoy! If we put all our time and effort into building a material empire, and then, as life goes, we happen to lose it all, what will we have left?

As Al-Ghazali states:

“You possess only whatever will not be lost in a shipwreck.”

Should Providence want you to succeed in a venture, you will achieve success with a healthy amount of honest effort; but if you go against the grain, you may have to continually breathe life into a thing that was not meant to exist.

It is, in fact, ignorance, or a kind of madness, to strive too much to gain the things which are beyond our reach; and if we strive too much to gain the things which are not for us, we may lose the things that were intended for us.

If you lose all your worldly goods,
And only have two loaves of bread -
Sell one of them: take what you get,
And buy some flowers for your Soul instead.
Sa’adi

A Student of the Mysteries should carefully guard against too much seriousness and austerity. The Path is strewn with haunted shadows, dressed like morticians and with complexions the colour of ectoplasm, who avoid all merriment and act like waiters at a four star restaurant.

Wherever they walk, they puff up arid dust clouds of their own grave self-importance, and are about as jolly and optimistic as a sacrificial victim at a satanic mass.

These dull mortals want to give the impression that they are carrying the wisdom of the world on their slouched shoulders, but one look behind their screen of pretended piousness should uncover a nest of vanities with hungry, open mouths, waiting for their daily feed of puffed-up worms.

Somehow (who knows how?) their ventilated brains got hold of the wrong end of the divining rod and they mistook solemnity for wisdom, as Americans will often mistake the Grand ol’ Opry for culture.

Over-seriousness is an affectation and a sign by which we may recognize the person who pretends to be holy and wise, making up for the lack of inner spirituality by attempting to appear as if they are grappling with the deep mysteries of the Universe.

Michel de Montaigne asks:

“Is there anything so assured, resolved, disdainful, contemplative, solemn and serious as an ass?”

He also says:

“No one is exempt from talking nonsense; the mistake is to do it solemnly.”

And we all talk nonsense most of the time, and if we are without vanity we will admit to it and laugh about it; but if we are wrapped up in self-love and pride, we will take offense at others lightly brushing aside our ‘deep and profound’ statements. Our feelings will be hurt and we sulk like spoiled children who, momentarily, are not getting the attention we feel is rightfully ours.

Whereas, Wisdom brings joy, and when you are filled with joy, you can afford to bring humour and laughter into your life. A sense of humour is the mark of the Sage, but solemnity is the mark of a Fool.

Be Free and Live! Forget all about the bigots who damns you to hell for not believing as they do. Their opinions are mean-spirited and irrelevant and their eagerness to condemn you for ‘behaving badly’ is great. They will make you a ‘sinner’ for a word, and their boasts about morals, doctrines and diets should be esteemed no higher than you would a braying ass. What they say, let them say.

Epictetus told us that if a man is unhappy, it is his own fault, for God made all men to be happy. And the Master adds to this:

“There is no absurdity which has not its defender. If the absurdity be too stupid it will destroy itself in the end, and there is no need to worry about it. But good fun, which keeps young the heart and mind, is like true virtue: we cannot do without it, and it will keep people away from vice.”

The Master also says:

“Happiness is an Illusion. Sorrow is an Illusion. Better be deluded by happiness.”

A person who is always depressed, serious or angry, is unbalanced and lacks faith in the protection that comes from the Higher Powers to one who puts his trust in God.

The Master asks:

“Have you come to the blessed realization that nothing can hurt you if you have faith in God’s love?

“Have you not come through countless incarnations and is it not true that nothing can destroy the eternal you that is part of God the Father? Then why be anxious, or have fear?”

These questions are particularly apt in an age where we put so much trust in psychology, and run to see a psychoanalyst, therapist, counselor, or whatever else one should wish to call these busybodies, with all our real and imagined problems. From them, we learn to shift the blame for our own weaknesses over to such absurdities as co-dependencies - whatever that is.

We learn to call ourselves dysfunctional when we indulge in bad, criminal, or just plain stupid behaviour. These doctors of the mind flourish in spite of the fact that they understand nothing of the human mind; treating the effects they see with theories that have sprung out of guesswork, and not even good guesswork on the whole. They do not understand that a person has a Higher and a lower mind, nor do they understand the battles fought between these two opponents.

That the eyes of these self-opinionated doctors were opened, would be too much to hope for. Their vision is obscured by their own conceit and what they desire is not the truth but proof of their own opinions and foregone conclusions. That is not all - they charge a fee for their ignorance!

I think we can safely sweep aside these shrinks along with the other quacks of the New Age (for they belong in the same garbage-can), and settle for the fact that, in the words of P.B. Medawar:

“........ psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century.”

The Master says:

“There are as many ways to Heaven as there have been, are, and will be human beings, provided they sincerely wish for this divine felicity. The best a man can do is to thank the Celestial Spirits for all good things when they come; to be patient in all adversity; to ask forgiveness when he has erred and offended against the Laws (which are engraved on each man’s heart, if he will but heed and read them); thus, when he has gone astray somehow, help will always be sent to lift him up again; for the Gods are terribly patient.

By avoiding evil to the best of his ability, he will keep the mirror of his heart clean, and the ever-loving Sons of Light will do the rest; for they understand: having once been frail men themselves. If mankind would only realize this truth, they would strive with all their might to rise to all that is good, loving, and merciful. Then the world would at once become an Earthly Paradise, and the human wolves, jackals and tigers which now abound would lay themselves down by the side of the meek and lowly, and turn their ferocious will to the purpose of helping their Brethren instead of destroying them.”

Let us ask the Master if this will ever come to pass:

“The Great Message has rung forth many times, and those who have listened have been saved. It is the newcomers, who have but lately evolved from the Shadows, who must ever be taught anew. The True Teachings should never cease; nor would they if all men were always ready to receive them, but all have to learn their lessons in the hard school of the material before they can ascend to the spiritual. After each period of darkness appears a Torch-Bearer who is willing to sacrifice himself in order to bring to Man the Holy Illumination of Truth; and those who are sufficiently evolved will hear and follow.”

23

Idries Shah, in his book ‘Learning how to Learn’, says:

“You ask how studies deteriorate. One of the causes is the sheer weight of numbers of deluded or superficial people who demand ‘deep or ‘spiritual knowledge’. They create a supply-and-demand situation which can cause so much imitation of teaching and learning that the studies’ imitation is taken for the real.”

Although the esoteric Teachings of the Masters never deteriorate, metaphysics or the occult, in an exoteric sense, has turned into a sideshow of freaks; and it is to be hoped that one of their hideous little Aliens will arrive in a gigantic spaceship and whisk these mystery-mongers away to some remote planet, re-named Abracadabra in their honour.

Imitation is always dressed up in confused and fantastic sounding teachings which take their students along roads that lead nowhere, and where, eventually, detours will have to be made, and other roads tried.

This type of seeker will normally choose the broad highways thronged with other seekers like themselves, and who entice them with loud boasts, loud music, and cheap thrills.

Few, if any, notice the narrow, little dirt road, covered in sharp rocks, leading off to the side. Nobody stands at its entrance advertising its glorious Destination; it has no arrow pointing to it and no street sign has been afforded this simple Path.

Its virtue can only be understood by those whose Higher Minds have become active. These Seekers will gratefully separate from the crowd and start their lonely journey along what at first seems an uninviting and testing path. Only their Faith keep them moving forward until all the tests of the Path have been overcome, and until the day arrives when they can be Initiated with the Light.

These Initiates will then know that only the simple Truth can stand unadorned by worldly opinion, human reasoning and vain intellect - all empty glories which feed off the approval, applause, and flattery of those whom Shakespeare called ‘the plumeless genus of bipeds’.

The things that are most hidden and unperceived by the majority, are often those we see, handle, and experience on a regular basis; as, for example, the apple must have dropped on countless heads before it fell on Newton’s. We are told by the Alchemists that we come into contact with the Mercury of the Sages, the Prima Materia, in our daily lives, and yet, its virtue goes undiscovered by scientists, priests, and housewives alike, and is revealed only to the Chosen of God.

So what is that mysterious something which causes us to be Chosen of God? What is it which eventually wakes us up and makes us aware? What rends the Veils? What are the Veils?

We need not go to the mysterious and exotic for our answer; neither do we need to have enough money to travel to faraway Tibet, India, or Egypt. We do not need to be titled or to have a University degree; nor do we need to go to California to attend New-Age workshops, or to go to Sedona to have our brains pickled by charlatans - for Thoth and the Seven Divine Masters of Wisdom made the secret accessible to all, and the Keys to the Temple are intricately simple to find.

Let us start by examining the last question: What are the Veils?

The Veils are ‘hung up’ by that master draper, the lower mind: layer upon layer of it. These layers consists of: Opinion, Hatred, Cruelty, Greed, Envy, Intolerance, Vanity, Pride, Credulity, Jealousy, Materialism, Lust, Self-righteousness, Judgment of others........ need I go on?

These are the traits of the lower mind and as long as these are allowed to master us, they will shut out the Light from our Higher Mind. The Veils are our lower emotions and passions, and unless we can transmute these into the Virtues of the Higher Mind by means of Mental Alchemy, we shall continue to exist as blobs of the base and lackluster metals. Our minds will be rusted, stiff and opinionated iron; our hearts will be cold and cruel steel; and we will drag our heavy, leaden feet through our self-created spiritual swampland, trying all the while to keep from sinking into the slime.

The transmutation of the lower emotions into the Higher is True Magic. Nothing else will do. You can waste lifetimes on ritual, ceremonies, conjurations, on running after gurus, on consulting tarot cards and astrologers, on talismans and cheap incense, on incomprehensible tomes or the childish literature of the thrill-seekers; but the fact still remains that, until you have become thoroughly disillusioned and disgusted with all the false teachers and teachings in existence, you will not look for the real thing.

Until you stop seeking for the answers outside yourself and look to the Master within, the Higher Mind, you will be like the mongrel who barks up the wrong tree.

But when the time comes that you are guided by your Higher Self, answers to seemingly unsolvable questions will come. The lower mind with its incessant chatter and tyrannical self-interest will be stilled, powerless against the patient and loving rule of the Higher mind who guides with Justice and Mercy.

At such a time, the Cabala will yield its secrets to you; the Druids will invite you to drink from their Cauldron; St John will let you share his Revelation; the Sphinx will tell you all that she had witnessed; Osiris will free your limbs from the mummy-cloth, and Thoth-Hermes will write your name in the Scroll of Life.

“Hail Soul, thou mighty one of strength! Verily I am here, I have come, I behold thee.

.

I have passed through the Tuat (the underworld), I have seen my Divine Father Osiris, I have scattered the gloom of night.

I am his Beloved One.

I have stabbed the heart of the darkness of Set (the lower mind).

I have performed all the ceremonies for my Divine Father Osiris.

I have opened every way in Heaven and on Earth. I have made a Victorious Path for myself.”

When you have fought the lower emotions and won, you will be the Victorious Warrior of Light who draws forth the Sword of Righteousness from the Stone; the Excalibur of Wisdom which, here on Earth, should be used to protect the weak, the poor, the sick and the needy, and also as a pointer to direct other worthy Seekers to the Path of the Masters.

Never again will you have to ask: who, where and what are the Masters, for you will KNOW. And your reunion will be celebrated with tears of joy and laughter; and as the great poet Shelly said: ‘tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.

It is fitting that I should end with the words of a Great Soul, the Beloved Master whose words have been quoted throughout this little patchwork quilt.

“Brothers and Sisters: A great work is waiting for you all. It is the work of the true mystic, it is the work of the Great White Brotherhood. It is the work of the Adepts who by means of consistent self-development, have fitted themselves in the ruling of the world. But it is not necessary for us to rule the world from a throne, or by means of dictatorship. We must rule the world by love and service. That is our work. The preparation for this need neither be long or arduous; all that you need is goodwill, and persistence; and Love. And the result of this work to you will also be the power to control forces both in the spiritual and physical realm. The Masters will impart to you wisdom by communion and inspiration; which is otherwise unobtainable.

“And their protecting hand will be over you and they will cover you with their feathery wings and keep you from all harm. As the Master says: ‘......and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

“If you do all these things there will at times shine from you a light such as you see in the famous picture ‘The Presence’; a light that is not of this earth but of the celestial realms where is the House of the Father, the House with many mansions. You yourself will become a Presence, and even if your light cannot be seen, it will be felt; for it can never be entirely hidden.”

“May we all receive grace to be found worthy for this great work, and may the blessings of Light, Life and Love be with you now and for ever and bring you Peace Profound."

AMEN

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