Serpent of Gensis

Tradition also gives these Magi the title of "Kings;" because initiation into Magism constitutes a genuine royalty; and because the grand art of the Magi is styled by all the Adepts, "The Royal Art," or the Holy Realm or Empire, Sanctum Regnum.

The Star which guided them is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.

Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philosophy can possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible and the Eternal. It perfectly and incontestably reconciles these two terms that at first blush seem so opposed to each other; faith and reason, science and creed, authority and liberty.

It supplies the human mind with an instrument of philosophical and religious certainty, exact as the mathematics, and accounting for the infallibility of the mathematics themselves.

Thus there is an Absolute, in the matters of the Intelligence and of Faith. The Supreme Reason has not left the gleams of the human understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable verity, there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters and Kings of the World.

Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives the intellectual world a life which has its regulated movements and its progressive phases. It is with Truths, as with the luminous rays: nothing of what is concealed is lost; but also, nothing of what is discovered is absolutely new. God has been pleased to give to Science, which is the reflection of His Glory, the Seal of His Eternity.

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. The Priests of Egypt knew, better than we do, the laws of movement and of life. They knew how to temper or intensify action by re-action; and readily foresaw the realization of these effects, the causes of which they had determined. The Columns of Seth, Enoch, Solomon, and Hercules have symbolized in the Magian traditions this universal law of the Equilibrium; and the Science of the Equilibrium or balancing of Forces had led the Initiates to that of the universal gravitation around the centres of Life, Heat, and Light.

Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of Egypt that the Earth revolved around the Sun; but they did not attempt to make this generally known, because to do so it would have been necessary to reveal one of the great Secrets of the Temple, that double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life. This Truth was ridiculed by the Christian Lactantius, as it was long after sought to be proven a falsehood by persecution, by Papal Rome.

So the philosophers reasoned, while the Priests, without replying to them or even smiling at their errors, wrote, in those Hieroglyphics that created all dogmas and all poetry, the Secrets of the Truth.

When Truth comes into the world, the Star of Knowledge advises the Magi of it, and they hasten to adore the Infant who creates the Future. It is by means of the Intelligence of the Hierarchy and the practice of obedience, that one obtains Initiation. If the Rulers have the Divine Right to govern, the true Initiate will cheerfully obey.

The orthodox traditions were carried from Chaldea by Abraham. They reigned in Egypt in the time of Joseph, together with the knowledge of the True God. Moses carried Orthodoxy out of Egypt, and in the Secret Traditions of the Kabalah we find a Theology entire, perfect, unique, like that which in Christianity is most grand and best explained by the Fathers and the Doctors, the whole with a consistency and a harmoniousness which it is not as yet given to the world to comprehend. The Sohar, which is the Key of the Holy Books, opens also all the depths and lights, all the obscurities of the Ancient Mythologies and of the Sciences originally concealed in the Sanctuaries. It is true that the Secret of this Key must be known, to enable one to make use of it, and that for even the most penetrating intellects, not initiated in this Secret, the Sohar is absolutely incomprehensible and almost illegible.