THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING
this strange finding robbed him of his last excuse for not
taking up the work. Here was the reason for the years spent
by him in climbing mountains. Because he had climbed
mountains he desired ski; because he had climbed mountains
he had gone to Cumberland in the winter previous, and there
found the disciple K. M. W., whose request for the ski had
brought him to the loft. Here, too, was the reason of his
life-tragedy, for without that he would not have gone to
Cumberland at that time or gone to his house in Scotland
that summer. There was no further escape. He must take
up the terrible Karma, which he had evaded, in spite of the
tremendous pressure brought to bear upon him by the
Masters, for five years. It is Their silent dealings with him
which fill Volume O of the Zgiinox.
Broken at last, he went to the topmost point of the hill
which crowns his estate, at midnight, and there, as we read
in the diary, ‘““I once more solemnly renounced all that I
have or am. On departing, instantly shone the moon, two
days before her fullness, over the hill among the clouds.” A
pencil note in the diary, written much later, underlines the
words ‘two days before her fullness,” and notes: “And I
attained two quarters of year later approximately.”
The traces of this decision are now apparent when, from
August 22 to 25, we find him at Maidenhead writing
Aha! In this poem he gives a complete account of all
that had occurred to him. Beginning with some hint of the
aspiration to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy
Guardian Angel, it continues with an account of the method
of meditation, culminating in that same Knowledge and Con-
versation. The agony of the Passing of the Abyss is then
H2 99