(13) Concerning the flow and ebb it is said, that everywhere from the presence of the moon two winds continually blow, whose abode is in the Gulf of Satavês, one they call the down-draught, and one the up-draught; when the up-draught blows it is the flow, and when the down-draught blows it is the ebb.

(2) Moreover, the lations of the stars approximate to the eternal circulations of the heavens, not only locally, but also in powers, and the irradiations of light. But these are moved conformably to the mandates of the celestial Gods. For the most pure, agile, and supreme part of the air, is adapted to be enkindled [ i. e. is most inflammable], so that when the Gods assent, it is immediately set on fire. And if some one thinks that certain effluxions of the celestial bodies are imparted to the air, his opinion will not be discordant with what is frequently effected by the divine art. The union, also, and sympathy of the universe, and the simultaneous motion of the most remote parts, as if they were near, and belonged to one animal, cause these signs to be sent from the Gods to men in the most luminous manner, primarily, indeed, through the heavens, but afterwards through the air.

(1) When we had crossed the threshold of the door Which the perverted love of souls disuses, Because it makes the crooked way seem straight, Re-echoing I heard it closed again; And if I had turned back mine eyes upon it, What for my failing had been fit excuse? We mounted upward through a rifted rock, Which undulated to this side and that, Even as a wave receding and advancing. "Here it behoves us use a little art," Began my Leader, "to adapt ourselves Now here, now there, to the receding side." And this our footsteps so infrequent made, That sooner had the moon's decreasing disk Regained its bed to sink again to rest, Than we were forth from out that needle's eye; But when we free and in the open were, There where the mountain backward piles itself, I wearied out, and both of us uncertain About our way, we stopped upon a plain More desolate than roads across the deserts. From where its margin borders on the void, To foot of the high bank that ever rises, A human body three times told would measure;

(34) Strange as it may appear to one not acquainted with the subject, glimpses and flashes of this consciousness, in rare instances, filter down into the consciousness of individuals on this earth at the present time, and have done so in the past. Many of the brave souls and keen minds of the Illumined have actually pierced the veil of this plane, and have been almost blinded by the light that has flashed upon them.

(31) I journeyed years and months for love of that Moon, Heedless of the way, absorbed in God. With bare feet I trod upon thorns and flints, Seeing I was bewildered, and beside myself, and senseless. Think not my feet touched the earth, What knows the heart of road and stages? What of distant and near, while it is drunk with love? Distance and nearness are attributes of bodies, You journeyed from the embryo state to rationality Without footsteps or stages or change of place,

(11) The Plane of Elemental Consciousness, like all the great Planes of Consciousness, contains seven sub-planes, and each of these seven minor planes, and so on until the multiplication has been made seven times. The sub-plane we have just briefly considered is but one of the seven, and the remaining six are equally important. In these unmentioned subplanes there are manifestations utterly unknown to modern science and to the uninformed person, but of which the occult masters have made a careful and thorough study.

(27) By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the moon comes a knowledge of the lunar mansions.

(10) Know ye what I do know, the name of the ground, where are its limits: the house of the moon

(7) Behold, again, the seven subject Worlds; ordered by Aeon's order, and with their varied course full-filling Aeon! [See how] all things [are] full of light, and nowhere [is there] fire; for 'tis the love and the blending of the contraries and the dissimilars that doth give birth to light down shining by the energy of God, the Father of all good, the Leader of all order, and Ruler of the seven world-orderings! [Behold] the Moon, forerunner of them all, the instrument of nature, and the transmuter of its lower matter! [Look at] the Earth set in the midst of All, foundation of the Cosmos Beautiful, feeder and nurse of things on Earth! And contemplate the multitude of deathless lives, how great it is, and that of lives subject to death; and midway, between both, immortal [lives] and mortal, [see thou] the circling Moon.

(36) The Rosicrucians and the Illuminati, describing the angels, archangels, and other celestial creatures, declared that they resembled small suns, being centers of radiant energy surrounded by streamers of Vrilic force. From these outpouring streamers of force is derived the popular belief that angels have wings. These wings are corona-like fans of light, by means of which the celestial creatures propel themselves through the subtle essences of the superphysical worlds.

(79) And the waning of the moon which takes place in the sixth portal: for in this sixth portal her light is accomplished, and after that there is the beginning of the waning:

(1) Already had the sun the horizon reached Whose circle of meridian covers o'er Jerusalem with its most lofty point, And night that opposite to him revolves Was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales That fall from out her hand when she exceedeth; So that the white and the vermilion cheeks Of beautiful Aurora, where I was, By too great age were changing into orange. We still were on the border of the sea, Like people who are thinking of their road, Who go in heart and with the body stay; And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning, Through the gross vapours Mars grows fiery red Down in the West upon the ocean floor, Appeared to me—may I again behold it!— A light along the sea so swiftly coming, Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled; From which when I a little had withdrawn Mine eyes, that I might question my Conductor, Again I saw it brighter grown and larger. Then on each side of it appeared to me I knew not what of white, and underneath it Little by little there came forth another.

(41) And I saw the chambers of the sun and moon, whence they proceed and whither they come again, and their glorious return, and how one is superior to the other, and their stately orbit, and how they do not leave their orbit, and they add nothing to their orbit and they take nothing from it, and they keep faith with each other, in accordance with the oath by which they are bound together.

(26) In concluding our consideration of this high plane, let us glance at the following words from the pen of Sir Oliver Lodge, the great English scientist, who has given the world startling corroboration of some important ancient truths known to the occultists and esoteric teachers; he says: "Let us imagine, then, as a working hypothesis, that our subliminal self—the other and greater part of us—is in touch with another order of existence, and that it is occasionally able to communicate, or somehow, perhaps unconsciously, transmit to the fragment in the body something of the information accessible to it. We should then be like icebergs floating in an ocean, with only a fraction exposed to the sun and air and observation; the rest, by far the greater bulk, eleven-twelfths—submerged in a connecting medium, submerged and occasionally in subliminal or sub-aqueous contact with others, while still the peaks, the visible bergs, are far separate. Such an iceberg, glorying in its crisp solidity and sparkling pinnacles, might resent attention paid to its submerged subliminal supporting region, or to the saline liquid out of which it arose, and to which in due course it will some day return. 'We feel that we are greater than we know.' Or, reversing the metaphor, we might liken our present state to that of the hulls of ships submerged in a dim ocean among strange beasts, propelled in a blind manner through space; proud, perhaps, of accumulating many barnacles of decoration: only recognizing our destination by bumping against the dock wall; and with no cognizance of the deck, and the cabins, and spars, and sails, no thought of the sextant and the compass and the captain, no perception of the lookout on the mast, of the distant horizon, no vision of objects far ahead, dangers to be avoided, destinations to be reached, other ships to be spoken with by means other than by bodily contact—a region of sunshine and cloud, of space, of perception, and of intelligence, utterly inaccessible to those parts below the water line." VII. The Soul of the Gods It must be apparent to every careful student that it is practically impossible to speak in ordinary terms of the expression and manifestation of the Self which is known to the Rosicrucians as "The Soul of the Gods." It is sufficient for the purpose to merely indicate its existence as a phase of the Ego—existing in a latent state in most individuals, but affording occasional flashes of its presence to a few, and destined to become the normal plane of conscious functioning to the whole race in the course of spiritual evolution. Moreover, on certain planes of life and being, even today, there exist beings to whom this phase of consciousness is habitual and normal, even as is the plane of human consciousness normal and habitual to the majority of our race today.

(12) Next above the Plane of Ethereal Substance comes the Plane of Energy (A), which comprises the ordinary forms of Energy known to science, its seven sub-planes being, respectively, Heat; Light; Magnetism; Electricity, and Attraction (including Gravitation, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, etc.) and several other forms of energy indicated by scientific experiments but not as yet named or classified. The Plane of Energy (B) comprises seven subplanes of higher forms of energy not as yet discovered by science, but which have been called "Nature's Finer Forces" and which are called into operation in manifestations of certain forms of mental phenomena, and by which such phenomena becomes possible. The Plane of Energy (C) comprises seven sub-planes of energy so highly organized that it bears many of the characteristics of "life," but which is not recognized by the minds of men on the ordinary plane of development, being available for the use on beings of the Spiritual Plane alone--such energy is unthinkable to ordinary man, and may be considered almost as "the divine power." The beings employing the same are as "gods" compared even to the highest human types known to us.

(10) On this plane of consciousness are operated many of those forms of "magic" known to all occultists. The occultist moves Matter not by exerting a physical force upon it by means of his mind and will, but, instead, by acting upon the consciousness of the material atoms by the power of his own consciousness! This is no place, of course, to go into detail concerning this phase of occultism, but it has been thought well to indicate here the source and nature of the power underlying occult phenomena of this kind, and the "why and wherefore" of its manifestation.

(5) Even as distinct with less and greater lights Glimmers between the two poles of the world The Galaxy that maketh wise men doubt, Thus constellated in the depths of Mars, Those rays described the venerable sign That quadrants joining in a circle make. Here doth my memory overcome my genius; For on that cross as levin gleamed forth Christ, So that I cannot find ensample worthy; But he who takes his cross and follows Christ Again will pardon me what I omit, Seeing in that aurora lighten Christ. From horn to horn, and 'twixt the top and base, Lights were in motion, brightly scintillating As they together met and passed each other; Thus level and aslant and swift and slow We here behold, renewing still the sight, The particles of bodies long and short, Across the sunbeam move, wherewith is listed Sometimes the shade, which for their own defence People with cunning and with art contrive. And as a lute and harp, accordant strung With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make To him by whom the notes are not distinguished,

(113) Let him who wishes, then, approaching to the true instruction, learn from Parmenides the Eleatic, who promises: "Ethereal nature, then, and all the signs In Ether thou shall know, and the effects, All viewless, of the sacred Sun's clear torch And whence produced. The round-eyed Moon's Revolving influences and nature thou Shall learn; and the ensphering heaven shall know; Whence sprung; and how Necessity took it And chained so as to keep the starry bounds."

(5) When they tell us that a certain cold star is more benevolent to us in proportion as it is further away, they clearly make its harmful influence depend upon the coldness of its nature; and yet it ought to be beneficent to us when it is in the opposed Zodiacal figures.

When the cold planet, we are told, is in opposition to the cold, both become meanacing: but the natural effect would be a compromise.

And we are asked to believe that one of them is happy by day and grows kindly under the warmth, while another, of a fiery nature, is most cheerful by night- as if it were not always day to them, light to them, and as if the first one could be darkened by night at that great distance above the earth's shadow.

Then there is the notion that the moon, in conjunction with a certain star, is softened at her full but is malignant in the same conjunction when her light has waned; yet, if anything of this order could be admitted, the very opposite would be the case. For when she is full to us she must be dark on the further hemisphere, that is to that star which stands above her; and when dark to us she is full to that other star, upon which only then, on the contrary, does she look with her light. To the moon itself, in fact, it can make no difference in what aspect she stands, for she is always lit on the upper or on the under half: to the other star, the warmth from the moon, of which they speak, might make a difference; but that warmth would reach it precisely when the moon is without light to us; at its darkest to us it is full to that other, and therefore beneficent. The darkness of the moon to us is of moment to the earth, but brings no trouble to the planet above. That planet, it is alleged, can give no help on account of its remoteness and therefore seems less well disposed; but the moon at its full suffices to the lower realm so that the distance of the other is of no importance. When the moon, though dark to us, is in aspect with the Fiery Star she is held to be favourable: the reason alleged is that the force of Mars is all-sufficient since it contains more fire than it needs.

The truth is that while the material emanations from the living beings of the heavenly system are of various degrees of warmth- planet differing from planet in this respect- no cold comes from them: the nature of the space in which they have their being is voucher for that.

The star known as Jupiter includes a due measure of fire , in this resembling the Morning-star and therefore seeming to be in alliance with it. In aspect with what is known as the Fiery Star, Jupiter is beneficent by virtue of the mixing of influences: in aspect with Saturn unfriendly by dint of distance. Mercury, it would seem, is indifferent whatever stars it be in aspect with; for it adopts any and every character.

But all the stars are serviceable to the Universe, and therefore can stand to each other only as the service of the Universe demands, in a harmony like that observed in the members of any one animal form. They exist essentially for the purpose of the Universe, just as the gall exists for the purposes of the body as a whole not less than for its own immediate function: it is to be the inciter of the animal spirits but without allowing the entire organism and its own especial region to run riot. Some such balance of function was indispensable in the All- bitter with sweet. There must be differentiation- eyes and so forth- but all the members will be in sympathy with the entire animal frame to which they belong. Only so can there be a unity and a total harmony.

And in such a total, analogy will make every part a Sign.

(8) There is reported to us from the highest occult sources of information the fact that the ALL presents Itself alternately in great periods of Manifestation (called the Cosmic Days), followed by a like great period of Unmanifestation (called the Cosmic Nights). During the Cosmic Night the Eternal Parent exists as if wrapped in an unconscious and dreamless sleep, from which with the Dawn of the new Cosmic Day it awakens gradually into Manifestation. The Cosmic Day, in turn, gradually finds itself changing into a Twilight, which slowly but surely darkens into the Cosmic Night when all again is stilled and quiet. And so on, and on, and on, in infinite sequence and repetition—in infinite rhythm—the Cosmos presents this succession of Days and Nights: of Manifestation and Unmanifestation. And, so it has been forever and ever, and will continue forever and ever, without end, ceasing, or interruption. Such is the report of the wise and the illumined teachers of the race.