Hidden powers and giant forces,
And the high stars in their courses,
Mingle in his strife.”
The italicized lines are almost an echo of the words of an Adept when speaking of the possibility for the disciple, of an ultimate escape from the laws of Karma, which give him the right to demand the secrets of nature. “He obtains this right by having escaped from the limits of nature, and by having freed himself from the rules which govern human life.” So does Whittier’s initiate. For every one of us there looms a danger in our being prone to mistake desire for will. The paradox of Levi is sound and true: “The will obtains all that it does not desire.” Meditation in this direction will reveal some deep and useful truths to the practical occultist.
But to return to our poets. There are many butterfly hints to be found fluttering through their lines. Time has spared us this one from Marvel:
“At some fruit-tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside
My soul into the bows does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings.”
And Matthew Arnold, turned dreamer for the nonce, has netted us one, more meaty than diaphanous, in which we find hints of periodic Devachanic sleep, between every period of earth struggle, of man’s threefold nature which serves to hide the memory of his other lives, and a touch of Karma as well: