(1) I have erewhile seen horsemen moving camp, Begin the storming, and their muster make, And sometimes starting off for their escape; Vaunt-couriers have I seen upon your land, O Aretines, and foragers go forth, Tournaments stricken, and the joustings run, Sometimes with trumpets and sometimes with bells, With kettle-drums, and signals of the castles, And with our own, and with outlandish things, But never yet with bagpipe so uncouth Did I see horsemen move, nor infantry, Nor ship by any sign of land or star. We went upon our way with the ten demons; Ah, savage company! but in the church With saints, and in the tavern with the gluttons! Ever upon the pitch was my intent, To see the whole condition of that Bolgia, And of the people who therein were burned. Even as the dolphins, when they make a sign To mariners by arching of the back, That they should counsel take to save their vessel, Thus sometimes, to alleviate his pain, One of the sinners would display his back, And in less time conceal it than it lightens.

(2) We must rather, therefore, say, that sounds and melodies are appropriately consecrated to the Gods. There is, also, an alliance in these sounds and melodies to the proper orders and powers of the several Gods, to the motions in the universe itself, and to the harmonious sounds which proceed from the motions. Conformably, therefore, to such like adaptations of melodies to the Gods, the Gods themselves become present. For there is not any thing which intercepts; so that whatever has but a casual similitude to, directly participates of, them . A perfect possession, likewise, immediately takes place, and a plenitude of a more excellent essence and power. Not that the body and the soul are in each other, and sympathize, and are copassive with the melodies; but because the inspiration of the Gods is not separated from divine harmony, but is originally adapted and allied to it, on this account it is participated by it in appropriate measures. Hence also, it is excited and restrained according to the several orders of the Gods. But this inspiration must by no means be called an ablation, purgation, or medicine. For it is not primarily implanted in us from a certain disease, or excess, or redundance; but the whole principle and participation of it are supernally derived from the Gods.

(25) "These experiences, when they have come to one, have left him in a new state of mind, and he has never been the same man afterward. Although the keenness of the recollection has worn off, there remains a certain memory which long afterward proves a source of comfort and strength to him, especially when he feels faint of faith and is shaken like a reed by the winds of conflicting opinions and speculations. The memory of such an experience is a source of renewed strength—a haven of refuge to which the weary soul flies for shelter from the outside world which understands it not. From the writings of the ancient philosophers of all races, from the songs of the great poets of all peoples, from the preachings of the prophets of all religions and times we can gather traces of this illumination which has come to them—this unfoldment of spiritual consciousness. One tells the story in one way, the other in other terms, but all tell practically the same essential story. All who have recognized this illumination, even in a faint degree, recognize the like experience in the tale, song, or preaching of another, though centuries may roll between them. It is the song of the Soul, which when once heard is never forgotten. Though it be sounded by the crude instruments of the semi-barbarous races, or the finished instruments of the talented musician of today, its strains are plainly recognized. From Old Egypt comes the song—from India of all ages—from Ancient Greece and Rome—from the early Christian saint—from the Quaker Friend—from the Catholic monasteries —from the Mohammedan Mosque—from the Chinese Philosopher—from the legends of the American Indian hero-prophet—it is always the same strain, and it is swelling louder and louder, as many more are taking it up and adding their voices or the sounds of their instruments to the grand chorus." The student must remember that in the experiences noted above, the individual simply has flashes, or period of dawning consciousness on this Sixth Plane of Consciousness, and is not to be regarded as having entered fully and completely into its manifestations, much less as having evolved into a state in which he functions normally and habitually on this high plane. There are beings—once men—who have evolved into the higher state in which they function normally and habitually on this plane of conscious being; but these individuals are no more than mere men, and have earned the right to be called "Demi-Gods." But, even as they once were men, so all men become as they now are by the unfoldment of this higher region of Self. These flashes of consciousness from this high plane are prophetic signs and messages indicating the awakening of the higher faculties, and giving assurance of further growth and unfoldment.

(24) By music we harmoniously relax the excessive tension of gravity. And as those who wish to address the people, do so often by the herald, that what is said may be better heard; so also in this case. For we have the word, that was spoken to many, before the common tradition. Wherefore we must set forth the opinions and utterances which cried individually to them, by which those who hear shall more readily turn.

(10) And if any one will inquire curiously what they are, let him hear: "It is not lawful for thee to hear, but they are worth knowing; The rites of the God detest him who practises impiety."

(9) Now the Lord, having come alone into the intellectual world, enters by His sufferings, introduced into the knowledge of the Ineffable, ascending above every name which is known by sound. The lamp, too, was placed to the south of the altar of incense; and by it were shown the motions of the seven planets, that perform their revolutions towards the south. For three branches rose on either side of the tamp, and lights on them; since also the sun, like the lamp, set in the midst of all the planets, dispenses with a kind of divine music the light to those above and to those below.

(1) Then they [i. e. the gods] said to the Ear: * Sing for us the Udgltha/ ' So be it/ said the Ear, and sang for them. Whatever pleasure there is in the ear, that it sang for the gods; whatever good one hears, that for itself. They [i.e. the devils] knew. 'Verily, by this singer they will overcome us/ They rushed upon it and pierced it with evil. That evil was the improper thing that one hears. This, truly, was that evil.

(14) Music is then to be handled for the sake of the embellishment and composure of manners. For instance, at a banquet we pledge each other while the music is playing; soothing by song the eagerness of our desires, and glorifying God for the copious gift of human enjoyments, for His perpetual supply of the food necessary for the growth of the body and of the soul. But we must reject superfluous music, which enervates men's souls, and leads to variety, - now mournful, and then licentious and voluptuous, and then frenzied and frantic.

(3) But in the world of sense we can perceive That evermore the circles are diviner As they are from the centre more remote Wherefore if my desire is to be ended In this miraculous and angelic temple, That has for confines only love and light, To hear behoves me still how the example And the exemplar go not in one fashion, Since for myself in vain I contemplate it." "If thine own fingers unto such a knot Be insufficient, it is no great wonder, So hard hath it become for want of trying." My Lady thus; then said she: "Do thou take What I shall tell thee, if thou wouldst be sated, And exercise on that thy subtlety. The circles corporal are wide and narrow According to the more or less of virtue Which is distributed through all their parts. The greater goodness works the greater weal, The greater weal the greater body holds, If perfect equally are all its parts. Therefore this one which sweeps along with it The universe sublime, doth correspond Unto the circle which most loves and knows.

(1) The heart of man has been so constituted by the Almighty that, like a flint, it contains a hidden fire which is evoked by music and harmony, and renders man beside himself with ecstasy. These harmonies are echoes of that higher world of beauty which we call the world of spirits; they remind man of his relationship to that world, and produce in him an emotion so deep and strange that he himself is powerless to explain it. The effect of music and dancing is deeper in proportion as the natures on which they act are simple and prone to motion; they fan into a flame whatever love is already dormant in the heart, whether It be earthly and sensual, or divine and spiritual.

(2) And now begin the dolesome notes to grow Audible unto me; now am I come There where much lamentation strikes upon me. I came into a place mute of all light, Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest, If by opposing winds 't is combated. The infernal hurricane that never rests Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine; Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. When they arrive before the precipice, There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments, There they blaspheme the puissance divine. I understood that unto such a torment The carnal malefactors were condemned, Who reason subjugate to appetite. And as the wings of starlings bear them on In the cold season in large band and full, So doth that blast the spirits maledict; It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them; No hope doth comfort them for evermore, Not of repose, but even of lesser pain. And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays, Making in air a long line of themselves, So saw I coming, uttering lamentations,

(1) It is necessary then, as I think, first to set forth what we think is the purpose of every Hierarchy, and what benefit each one confers upon its followers; and next to celebrate the Heavenly Hierarchies according to their revelation in the Oracles; then following these Oracles, to say in what sacred forms the holy writings of the Oracles depict the celestial orders, and to what sort of simplicity we must be carried through the representations; in order that we also may not, like the vulgar, irreverently think that the heavenly and Godlike minds are certain many-footed and many-faced creatures, or moulded to the brutishness of oxen, or the savage form of lions, and fashioned like the hooked beaks of eagles, or the feathery down of birds, and should imagine that there are certain wheels of fire above the heaven, or material thrones upon which the Godhead may recline, or certain many-coloured horses, and spear-bearing leaders of the host, and whatever else was transmitted by the Oracles to us under multifarious symbols of sacred imagery. And indeed, the Word of God artlessly makes use of poetic representations of sacred things, respecting the shapeless minds, out of regard to our intelligence, so to speak, consulting a mode of education proper and natural to it, and moulding the inspired writings for it.

(617) coloured by the reflected light of the seventh; the second and fifth [Saturn and Mercury] are in colour like one another, and yellower than the preceding; the third [Venus] has the whitest light; the fourth [Mars] is reddish; the sixth [Jupiter] is in whiteness second. Now the whole spindle has the same motion; but, as the whole revolves in one direction, the seven inner circles move slowly in the other, and of these the swiftest is the eighth; next in swiftness are the seventh, sixth, and fifth, which move together; third in swiftness appeared to move according to the law of this reversed motion the fourth; the third appeared fourth and the second fifth. The spindle turns on the knees of Necessity; and on the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight together form one harmony; and round about, at equal intervals, there is another band, three in number, each sitting upon her throne: these are the Fates, daughters of Necessity, who are clothed in white robes and have chaplets upon their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos, who accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens—Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future; Clotho from time to time assisting with a touch of her right hand the revolution of the outer circle of the whorl or spindle, and Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis laying

(3) And for this reason doth the smallest round Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors, And who, disdaining God, speaks from the heart. Fraud, wherewithal is every conscience stung, A man may practise upon him who trusts, And him who doth no confidence imburse. This latter mode, it would appear, dissevers Only the bond of love which Nature makes; Wherefore within the second circle nestle Hypocrisy, flattery, and who deals in magic, Falsification, theft, and simony, Panders, and barrators, and the like filth. By the other mode, forgotten is that love Which Nature makes, and what is after added, From which there is a special faith engendered. Hence in the smallest circle, where the point is Of the Universe, upon which Dis is seated, Whoe'er betrays for ever is consumed." And I: "My Master, clear enough proceeds Thy reasoning, and full well distinguishes This cavern and the people who possess it. But tell me, those within the fat lagoon, Whom the wind drives, and whom the rain doth beat, And who encounter with such bitter tongues,

(2) Accordingly there has been much dispute among theologians as to the lawfulness of music and dancing regarded as religious exercises. One sect, the Zahirites, holding that God is altogether incommensurable with man, deny the possibility of man's really feeling love to God, and say that he can only love those of his own species. If he does feel what he thinks is love to his Creator they say it is a mere projection, or shadow cast by his own fantasy, or a reflection of love to the creature; music and dancing, according to them, have only to do with creature love, and are therefore unlawful as religious exercises. If we ask them what is the meaning of that "love to God" which is enjoined by the religious law, they reply that it means obedience and worship. This is an error which we hope to confute in a later chapter dealing with the love of God. At present we content ourselves with saying that music and dancing do not put into the heart what is not there already, but only fan into a flame dormant emotions. Therefore if a man has in his heart that love to God which the law enjoins, it is perfectly lawful, nay, laudable in him to take part in exercises which promote it. On the other hand, if his heart is full of sensual desires, music and dancing will only increase them, and are therefore unlawful for him. While, if he listens to them merely as a matter of amusement, they are neither lawful nor unlawful, but indifferent. For the mere fact that they are pleasant does not make them unlawful any more than the pleasure of listening to the singing of birds or looking at green grass and running water is unlawful. The innocent character of music and dancing, regarded merely as a pastime, is also corroborated by an authentic tradition which we have from the Lady Ayesha, who narrates: "One festival day some Negroes were performing in a mosque. The Prophet said to me, 'Do you wish to see them?' I replied, 'Yes.' Accordingly he lifted me up with his own blessed hand, and I looked on so long that he said more than once, 'Have not you had enough of watching?"

(6) Three maidens at the right wheel in a circle Came onward dancing; one so very red That in the fire she hardly had been noted. The second was as if her flesh and bones Had all been fashioned out of emerald; The third appeared as snow but newly fallen. And now they seemed conducted by the white, Now by the red, and from the song of her The others took their step, or slow or swift. Upon the left hand four made holiday Vested in purple, following the measure Of one of them with three eyes in her head. In rear of all the group here treated of Two old men I beheld, unlike in habit, But like in gait, each dignified and grave. One showed himself as one of the disciples Of that supreme Hippocrates, whom nature Made for the animals she holds most dear; Contrary care the other manifested, With sword so shining and so sharp, it caused Terror to me on this side of the river.

(2) But if any one think well to accept the sacred compositions as of things simple and unknown in their own nature, and beyond our contemplation, but thinks the imagery of the holy minds in the Oracles is incongruous, and that all this is, so to speak, a rude scenic representation of the angelic names; and further says that the theologians ought, when they have come to the bodily representation of creatures altogether without body, to represent and display them by appropriate and, as far as possible, cognate figures, taken, at any rate, from our most honoured and immaterial and exalted beings, and ought not to clothe the heavenly and Godlike simple essences with the many forms of the lowest creatures to be found on the earth (for the one would perhaps be more adapted to our instruction, and would not degrade the celestial explanations to incongruous dissimilitudes; but the other both does violence without authority to the Divine powers, and likewise leads astray our minds, through dwelling upon these irreverent descriptions); and perhaps he will also think that the super-heavenly places are filled with certain herds of lions, and troops of horses, and bellowing songs of praise, and flocks of birds, and other living creatures, and material and less honourable things, and whatever else the similitudes of the Oracles, in every respect dissimilar, describe, for a so-called explanation, but which verge towards the absurd, and pernicious, and impassioned; now, in my opinion, the investigation of the truth demonstrates the most sacred wisdom of the Oracles, in the descriptions of the Heavenly Minds, taking forethought, as that wisdom does, wholly for each, so as neither, as one may say, to do violence to the Divine Powers, nor at the same time to enthral us in the grovelling passions of the debased imagery. For any one might say that the cause why forms are naturally attributed to the formless, and shapes to the shapeless, is not alone our capacity which is unable immediately to elevate itself to the intelligible contemplations, and that it needs appropriate and cognate instructions which present images, suitable to us, of the formless and supernatural objects of contemplation; but further, that it is most agreeable to the revealing Oracles to conceal, through mystical and sacred enigmas, and to keep the holy and secret truth respecting the supermundane minds inaccessible to the multitude. For it is not every one that is holy, nor, as the Oracles affirm, does knowledge belong to all.

(52) The faithful hold that the sweet influences of heaven As we are all members of Adam, We have heard these melodies in Paradise; Though earth and water have cast their veil upon us, But while we are thus shrouded by gross earthly veils, How can the tones of the dancing spheres reach us? Hence it is that listening to music is lovers' food, The inward feelings of the mind acquire strength, Nay, are shown outwardly, under influence of music. The fire of love burns hotter under stimulus of music,

(5) We shall find the Mystic Theologians enfolding these things not only around the illustrations of the Heavenly Orders, but also, sometimes, around the supremely Divine Revelations Themselves. At one time, indeed, they extol It under exalted imagery as Sun of Righteousness, as Morning Star rising divinely in the mind, and as Light illuming without veil and for contemplation; and at other times, through things in our midst, as Fire, shedding its innocuous light; as Water, furnishing a fulness of life, and, to speak symbolically, flowing into a belly, and bubbling forth rivers flowing irresistibly; and at other times, from things most remote, as sweet-smelling ointment, as Head Corner-stone. But they also clothe It in forms of wild beasts, and attach to It identity with a Lion, and Panther, and say that it shall be a Leopard, and a rushing Bear. But, I will also add, that which seems to be more dishonourable than all, and the most incongruous, viz. that distinguished theologians have shewn it to us as representing Itself under the form of a worm. Thus do all the godly-wise, and interpreters of the secret inspiration, separate the holy of holies from the uninitiated and the unholy, to keep them undefined, and prefer the dissimilar description of holy things, so that Divine things should neither be easily reached by the profane, nor those who diligently contemplate the Divine imagery rest in the types as though they were true; and so Divine things should be honoured by the true negations, and by comparisons with the lowest things, which are diverse from their proper resemblance. There is then nothing absurd if they depict even the Heavenly Beings under incongruous dissimilar similitudes, for causes aforesaid. For probably not even we should have come to an investigation, from not seeing our way,--not to say to mystic meaning through an accurate enquiry into Divine things,--unless the deformity of the descriptions representing the Angels had shocked us, not permitting our mind to linger in the discordant representations, but rousing us utterly to reject the earthly proclivities, and accustoming us to elevate ourselves through things that are seen, to their supermundane mystical meanings. Let these things suffice to have been said on account of the material and incongruous descriptions of the holy Angels in the Holy Oracles. And next, it is necessary to define what we think the Hierarchy is in itself, and what benefit those who possess a Hierarchy derive; from the same. But let Christ lead the discourse--if it be lawful to me to say--He Who is mine,--the Inspiration of all Hierarchical revelation. And thou, my son, after the pious rule of our Hierarchical tradition, do thou religiously listen to things religiously uttered, becoming inspired through instruction in inspired things; and when thou hast enfolded the Divine things in the secret recesses of thy mind, guard them closely from the profane multitude as being uniform, for it is not lawful, as the Oracles say, to cast to swine the unsullied and bright and beautifying comeliness of the intelligible pearls.

(7) And when upon their hinges were turned round The swivels of that consecrated gate, Which are of metal, massive and sonorous, Roared not so loud, nor so discordant seemed Tarpeia, when was ta'en from it the good Metellus, wherefore meagre it remained. At the first thunder-peal I turned attentive, And "Te Deum laudamus" seemed to hear In voices mingled with sweet melody. Exactly such an image rendered me That which I heard, as we are wont to catch, When people singing with the organ stand; For now we hear, and now hear not, the words.