The Magic Key

The Principles of Truth are Seven; he who knows these, understandingly, possesses the Magic Key before whose touch all the Doors of the Temple fly open.

One of the old Hermetic Masters wrote, long ages ago: “He who grasps the truth of the Mental Nature of the Universe is well advanced on The Path to Mastery.” And these words are as true to-day as at the time they were first written. Without this Master-Key, Mastery is impossible, and the student knocks in vain at the many doors of The Temple.

There are planes beyond our knowing, but when we apply the Principle of Correspondence to them we are able to understand much that would otherwise be unknowable to us…a knowledge of the Principle of correspondence enables Man to reason intelligently from the Known to the Unknown. Studying the monad, he understands the archangel.

Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates. “He who understands the Principle of Vibration, has grasped the sceptre of Power,”

Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes maybe reconciled. Where does “darkness” leave off, and “light” begin? What is the difference between “High and Low”? Between “Positive and Negative”? The Principle of Polarity explains these paradoxes, and no other Principle can supersede it. The “Art of polarization” becomes a phase of “Mental Alchemy” known and practiced by the ancient and modern Hermetic Masters.

Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates. There is always an action and a reaction; an advance and a retreat a rising and a sinking. This is in the affairs of the Universe, suns, worlds, men, animals, mind, energy, and matter. This law is manifest in the creation and destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; in the life of all things; and finally in the mental states of Man.

There is a Cause for every Effect; an Effect from every Cause. It explains that: “Everything Happens according to Law”; that nothing ever “merely happens”; that there is no such thing as Chance; that while there are various planes of Cause and Effect, the higher dominating the lower planes, still nothing ever entirely escapes the Law.

Gender is in everything; everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles Gender; manifests on all planes. If you would understand the philosophy of Mental and Spiritual Creation, Generation, and Re-generation, you must understand and study this Hermetic Principle.

The Kybalion

Glimmer of Dewdrops

And on the first day of the week when the sounds of the temple bells sought their ears, one spoke and said: “Master, we hear much talk of God hereabout. What say you of God, and who is He in very truth?”

And he stood before them like a young tree, fearless of wind or tempest, and he answered saying: “Think now, my comrades and beloved, of a heart that contains all your hearts, a love that encompasses all your loves, a spirit that envelops all your spirits, a voice enfolding all your voices, and a silence deeper than all your silences, and timeless.

“Seek now to perceive in your self-fullness a beauty more enchanting than all things beautiful, a song more vast than the song of the sea and the forest, a majesty seated upon a throne for which Orion is but a footstool, holding a sceptre in which the Pleiades are naught save the glimmer of dewdrops.

“You have sought alawys only food and shelter, a garment and a staff; seek now One who is neither an aim for your arrows nor a stony cave to shield you from the elements.

“And if my words are a rock and a riddle, then seek, none the less, that your hearts may be broken, and that your questionings may bring you unto the love and the wisdom of the Most High, whom men call God.”

And they were silent, every one, and they were perplexed in their heart.

Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of the Prophet

This Discovery

Woe to me if I tell and woe to me if I do not tell!

If I tell, then the wicked will know how to worship their master;

And if I do not tell, then the companions will be left in ignorance of this discovery!

The Zohar

An Itinerant Hermit

The heart itself, or the twelve-petalled lotus, which alone of the centres is not attached to the organism, and which can go out of it and live – by the exteriorisation of its “petals”, which can be rayed outwards – with and in others, will become a traveller, a visitor and anonymous companion of those who are in prison, those who are in exile, and those who bear heavy loads of responsibility.

It will be an itinerant Hermit, traversing ways leading from one end of the earth to the other, and also ways through spheres of the spiritual world – from purgatory to the very feet of the Father. Because no distance is insurmountable for love and no door can prevent it from entering – according to the promise which says: “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew xvi, 18).

It is the heart which is the marvellous organ called to serve love in its works. It is the structure of the heart – simultaneously human and divine, a structure of love – which by way of analogy can open our understanding to the significance of the meaning of the following words of the Master: “And lo, I am with you always, to the end of time.” (Matthew xxviii).

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter IX, The Hermit

The Risen

“What, pray tell, of Baha-ullah!”
Spoke at once the latest wise-one.
“He’s accepted all the others
Gone before; the way is union?”

“This, you see”, revealed the Rabbi,
“Charts a line which roughly follows
Down through time, a line of prophets,
Give or take a right-tongued Sophist.

“Eastern influences flourished
In our land, but naught surpasses
Now – or ever – true Kabbalah,
Gnostic scripts were ne’er so magic!

“Not so!” claimed the Vedic master.
“Ours, the early bird of progress
`May pass through the stages faster,
Incarnating ever after.

“Vishnu, here, the force outstanding,
Krishna, there, the force transcending,
Both appear within our scripture,
Bhagvad-Gita; song unending.”

“What of us,” cried out the pagans,
“Surely we’re the lords of mystery?
Since the early days of Egypt,
We’ve survived the Western history!”

“Those who claim that resurrection
Is the sole preserve of prophets,
Born beyond the ancient’s time line,
Listen well, and don’t forget it:

“Old Osiris: dead then risen;
Great Demeter’s daughter: risen;
Dionysus next was risen,
Then the Orphic bard was risen!”

Meditations on the Tarot: Concentration without effort

Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!

This counsel, or command, or even warning, however you wish to take it, is most serious; this is attested by its original source, namely the words of the Master Himself:

“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew xi, 30)

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter I, The Magician

Om Mani Padme Hum

Over to the left in the same home county, the sun touched its golden brow to the High Street’s Eastern end, flooding the entire length with a pearlescent mirage of soft light.

It cast a shimmering spear through a particularly well-positioned bedroom window, instantly awakening the Master, who climbed from the narrow single bed, lit a stick of rose-infused incense, struck a set of copper wind chimes and then padded off to the bathroom chanting a dawn mantra.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Soaring Eagle

Half an hour later the Master re-emerged sans magazine or whiskey glass but clutching to heart an exceedingly large, old and important-looking volume.

The much-lamented loss of Pros Theon had abruptly ended a few short minutes after entering the small, cluttered bathroom, where it was at the bottom of an ever-increasing pile of toilet-reading material and duly rescued by its ecstatic owner.

Tremendously relieved, ten or twelve years of life added back on – a full Jupiter return! – the Master placed the book on the desk in the study, switched on the ancient desk lamp and turned to the penultimate section:

‘Los Días de la Transformación’; The Days of Transformation.

Translating and interpreting the elaborate text was a mission. It took every effort of will and much metaphorical ploughing for the book to yield its rare fruits.

After only half an hour the Master, who had a surprisingly short attention span for one given to meditating, looked up from the text and out of the window for inspiration. In that same instant a piercing set of eyes imparted the truth – a reminder – with almost unfathomable simplicity:

‘‘Forwards backwards; time is taking
Cosmic steps through every section.
Herein find the secret waiting:
Future from the past; reflection.’

Soaring Eagle then spread his wings and flew towards the Master, who felt like a very small child in that same instant and rushed towards the great bird as if pulled along on some invisible line between them.

Pros Theon

The Master sighed, deep in thought, and approached an overloaded bookcase on the Eastern wall of the treatment room. The afternoon sun cast rendered certain areas invisible with its blinding rays.

Scanning the shelves intently, following the words on each well-worn spine with a finely-nailed forefinger, all but that which the Master sought was readily apparent, the object itself merely absent.

After almost an hour of fruitless seeking, the Master stamped a foot and sighed loudly in frustration. Thoughts from what was by any standards a frequently exercised brain penetrated the atmosphere with ease.

Where on Earth is the magical book?

There was no answer to this question.

Didn’t I see it just after Halle Bop came around again and the moon was side by side with Jupiter?

Again, there was no answer, but the Master felt sure this was when the rare and ancient copy of ‘Pros Theon’, which translated into English as ‘By the Gods’, had last been consulted.

Where can it be, for heaven’s sake?

Who could say? No word came, though the room was imbibed with an overpowering sense that to lose the text completely would be disastrous.

There were only seven transcripts of the book left in existence and at least two of those – the Master’s included – were incomplete. Of the other six, a well-used copy was with the exiled Dalai Lama and the Chief Rabbi – who may well have denied its existence had he been questioned – kept a pristine version hidden away in his library behind the more orthodox texts.

Mahavatar Babaji had somehow obtained a copy of the book that he subsequently left with his disciples, while a famously un-heard of Sufi Magician inherited the fifth from his grandfather. This highly revered leader of a largely forgotten tribe of nomads had escaped persecution by retreating to a hidden network of mountain caves above the plains of ancient Babylon.

The Vatican had the remaining two copies of Pros Theon. One was in fragments and a second had been retrieved by the Knights Templar from a vault below the Church of the Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The Master felt a sudden chill. Could it be true that the only freely available text of Pros Theon had been lost or even stolen?