On the other hand, if he be good, generous, chaste and abstemious, or has any virtue hitherto latent and concealed in him, it will work its way out as irrepressibly as the rest. Thus a civilized man who hates to be considered a saint, and therefore assumes a mask, will not be able to conceal his true nature, whether base or noble.
This is an immutable law in the domain of the occult.
Its action is the more marked, the more earnest and sincere the desire of the candidate, and the more deeply he has felt the reality and importance of his pledge.
The ancient occult axiom, “Know Thyself,” must be familiar to every student; but few if any have apprehended the real meaning of this wise exhortation of the Delphic Oracle. You all know your earthly pedigree, but who of you has ever traced all the links of heredity, [pg 436] astral, psychic and spiritual, which go to make you what you are? Many have written and expressed their desire to unite themselves with their Higher Ego, yet none seem to know the indissoluble link connecting their “Higher Egos” with the One Universal Self.
For all purposes of Occultism, whether practical or purely metaphysical, such knowledge is absolutely requisite. It is proposed, therefore, to begin these papers by showing this connection in all directions with the worlds: Absolute, Archetypal, Spiritual, Mânasic, Psychic, Astral, and Elemental. Before, however, we can touch upon the higher worlds—Archetypal, Spiritual and Mânasic—we must master the relations of the seventh, the terrestrial world, the lower Prakriti, or Malkuth as in the Kabalah, to the worlds or planes which immediately follow it.
OM.
“Om,” says the Âryan Adept, the son of the Fifth Race, who with this syllable begins and ends his salutation to the human being, his conjuration of, or appeal to, non-human Presences.
“Om-Mani,” murmurs the Turanian Adept, the descendant of the Fourth Race; and after pausing he adds, “Padme-Hum.”
This famous invocation is very erroneously translated by the Orientalists as meaning, “Oh the Jewel in the Lotus.” For although, literally, Om is a syllable sacred to the Deity, Padme means “in the Lotus,” and Mani is any precious stone, still neither the words themselves, nor their symbolical meaning, are thus really correctly rendered.