(72) And this is the first law of the luminaries: the luminary the Sun has its rising in the eastern portals of the heaven, and its setting in the western portals of the heaven.

(72) And that which (thus) rises is the great luminary, and is so named according to its appearance, according as the Lord commanded.

(79) Such is the picture and sketch of every luminary which Uriel the archangel, who is their leader, showed unto me.

(16) They are likenesses of the things which are exalted. They were brought to a lust for power in each one of them, according to the greatness of the name of which each is a shadow, each one imagining that it is superior to his fellows.

(2) Of the kingly office one kind is divine, - that which is according to God and His holy Son, by whom both the good things which are of the earth, and external and perfect felicity too, are supplied. "For," it is said, "seek what is great, and the little things shall be added." And there is a second kind of royalty, inferior to that administration which is purely rational and divine, which brings to the task of government merely the high mettle of the soul; after which fashion Hercules ruled the Argives, and Alexander the Macedonians. The third kind is what aims after one thing - merely to conquer and overturn; but to turn conquest either to a good or a bad purpose, belongs not to such rule.

(82) And these are the names of those who lead them, who watch that they enter at their times, in their orders, in their seasons, in their months, in their periods of dominion, and in their positions.

(1) That the circuit of the stars indicates definite events to come but without being the cause direct of all that happens, has been elsewhere affirmed, and proved by some modicum of argument: but the subject demands more precise and detailed investigation for to take the one view rather than the other is of no small moment.

The belief is that the planets in their courses actually produce not merely such conditions as poverty, wealth, health and sickness but even ugliness and beauty and, gravest of all, vices and virtue and the very acts that spring from these qualities, the definite doings of each moment of virtue or vice. We are to suppose the stars to be annoyed with men- and upon matters in which men, moulded to what they are by the stars themselves, can surely do them no wrong.

They will be distributing what pass for their good gifts, not out of kindness towards the recipients but as they themselves are affected pleasantly or disagreeably at the various points of their course; so that they must be supposed to change their plans as they stand at their zeniths or are declining.

More absurdly still, some of them are supposed to be malicious and others to be helpful, and yet the evil stars will bestow favours and the benevolent act harshly: further, their action alters as they see each other or not, so that, after all, they possess no definite nature but vary according to their angles of aspect; a star is kindly when it sees one of its fellows but changes at sight of another: and there is even a distinction to be made in the seeing as it occurs in this figure or in that. Lastly, all acting together, the fused influence is different again from that of each single star, just as the blending of distinct fluids gives a mixture unlike any of them.

Since these opinions and others of the same order are prevalent, it will be well to examine them carefully one by one, beginning with the fundamental question:

(78) These are the two great luminaries: their circumference is like the circumference of the heaven, and the size of the circumference of both is alike.

(75) And the leaders of the heads of the thousands, who are placed over the whole creation and over all the stars, have also to do with the four intercalary days, being inseparable from their office, according to the reckoning of the year, and these render service on the four days which are not reckoned in the reckoning of the year.

(553) passion headforemost from his bosom’s throne; humbled by poverty he takes to money-making and by mean and miserly savings and hard work gets a fortune together. Is not such an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element on the vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king within him, girt with tiara and chain and scimitar? Most true, he replied. And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know their place, he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be turned into larger ones, and will not allow the other to worship and admire anything but riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything so much as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it. Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as the conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one. And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth? Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like the State out of which oligarchy came. Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between them.

(80) In short, there are therefore five in the princely council, that one should advise another, and every one is of a peculiar sundry quality; and that compacted or concreted spirit which is generated out of all the powers is their king or prince, and he sitteth in the head in the brain of a man, and in an angel in that power which is instead of the brain of a man, and in the head also, upon his princely throne, and executeth everything which was concluded and decreed by the whole princely council.

(3) "And every one of the saviours will rule over the orders of his emanations in the inheritances of the Light as they did also in the Treasury of the Light. "And the nine guards of the Treasury of the Light will be superior to the saviours in the inheritances of the Light. And the Twin-saviours will be superior to the nine guards in the kingdom. And the three Amēns will be superior to the Twin-saviours in the kingdom. And the five Trees will be superior to the three Amēns in the inheritances of the Light.

(15) They wanted to command one another, overcoming one another in their vain ambition, while the glory which they possess contains a cause of the system which was to be.

(1) Such, then, is the most Divine perfecting work of the Muron But it may be opportune, after these Divine ministrations, to set forth the sacerdotal Orders and elections themselves, and their powers, and operations, and consecrations, and the triad of the superior ranks under them; in order that the arrangement of our Hierarchy may be demonstrated, as entirely rejecting and excluding the disordered, the unregulated, and the confused; and, at the same time, choosing and manifesting the regulated and ordered, and well-established, in the gradations of the sacred Ranks within it. Now we have well shewn, as I think, in the Hierarchies already extolled by us, the threefold division of every Hierarchy, when we affirmed that our sacred tradition holds, that every Hierarchical transaction is divided into the most Divine Mystic Rites, and the inspired experts and teachers of them, and those who are being religiously initiated by them.

(27) And beside Him is seated the Dyad which glitters with intellectual sections, to govern all things and to order everything not ordered.

(502) for I had to discuss them all the same. The women and children are now disposed of, but the other question of the rulers must be investigated from the very beginning. We were saying, as you will remember, that they were to be lovers of their country, tried by the test of pleasures and pains, and neither in hardships, nor in dangers, nor at any other critical moment were to lose their patriotism—he was to be rejected who failed, but he who always came forth pure, like gold tried in the refiner’s fire, was to be made a ruler, and to receive honours and rewards in life and after death. This was the sort of thing which was being said, and then the argument turned aside and veiled her face; not liking to stir the question which has now arisen. I perfectly remember, he said. Yes, my friend, I said, and I then shrank from hazarding the bold word; but now let me dare to say— that the perfect guardian must be a philosopher. Yes, he said, let that be affirmed. And do not suppose that there will be many of them; for the gifts which were deemed by us to be essential rarely grow together; they are mostly found in shreds and patches.

(23) The checkerboard floor upon which the modern Freemasonic lodge stands is the old tracing board of the Dionysiac Architects, and while the modern organization is no longer limited to workmen's guilds it still preserves in its symbols the metaphysical doctrines of the ancient society of which it is presumably the outgrowth. The investigator of the origin of Freemasonic symbolism who desires to trace the development of the order through the ages will find a practical suggestion in the following statement of Charles W. Heckethorn:

(1) These, then, are the sacerdotal Ranks and elections, their powers, and operations, and consecrations. We must next explain the triad of the Ranks being initiated under them. We affirm then that the multitudes, of whom we have already made mention, who are dismissed from the ministrations and consecrations, are Ranks under purification; since one is being yet moulded and fashioned by the Leitourgoi through the obstetric Oracles to a living birth; and another is yet to be called back to the holy life, from which it had departed, by the hortatory teaching of the good Oracles; and another, as being yet terrorized, through want of manliness, by opposing fears, and being fortified by the strengthening Oracles; and another, as being yet led back from the worse to holy efforts; and another as having been led back, indeed, but not yet having a chaste fixedness in more Godlike and tranquil habits. For these are the Orders under purification, by the nursing and purifying power of the Leitourgoi. These, the Leitourgoi perfect, by their sacred powers, for the purpose of their being brought, after their complete cleansing, to the enlightening contemplation and participation in the most luminous ministrations.

(17) On May 10, 1785, Cagliostro attended the conference called for that purpose, and his power and simplicity immediately won for him the favorable opinion of the entire gathering. It took but a few words for the Court de Gébelin to discover that he was talking nor only to a fellow scholar but to a man infinitely his superior. Cagliostro immediately presented an address, which was so unexpected, so totally different from anything ever heard before by those assembled, that all were speechless with amazement. Cagliostro declared the Rose-Cross to be the ancient and true symbol of the Mysteries and, after a brief description of its original symbolism, branched out into a consideration of the symbolic meaning of letters, predicting to the assembly the future of France in a graphic manner that left no room for doubt that the speaker was a man of insight and supernatural power. With a curious arrangement of the letters of the alphabet, Cagliostro foretold in detail the horrors of the coming revolution and the fall of the monarchy, describing minutely the fate of the various members of the royal family. He also prophesied the advent of Napoleon and the rise of the First Empire. All this he did to demonstrate that which can be accomplished by superior knowledge.

(1) What, therefore, shall we say concerning the media? I think, indeed, that from what has been before said, they will be manifest to every one; for these give completion to the indivisible connexion of the extremes. Nevertheless, it is necessary to be more explicit. I consider, therefore, the dæmoniacal tribe to be multiplied, but, unitedly, to be comingled, but in an unmingled manner, and to comprehend all other things of a subordinate nature, according to the idea of that which is more excellent. But again, the tribe of heroes supernally presides over a more obvious division and multitude, and likewise over motion, commixture, and things allied to these. It also receives gifts of a more excellent nature, concealed as it were inwardly; I mean union, purity, a firm establishment, impartible sameness, and a transcendency above other things. For one of these middle genera is proximate to the first, but the other to the last, of the extremes.