THE EQUINOX
love: he leaves to God the secrets of justice, and understands
only charity.
He looks on the wicked as invalids whom one must pity
and cure ; the world, with its errors and vices, is to him God’s
hospital, and he wishes to serve in it.
He does not think that he is better than any one else ; he
says only, ‘So long as I am in good health, let me serve
others; and whenI must fall and die, perhaps others will take
my place and serve.”
IX
THE NUMBER NINE
Tuis is the hermit of the Tarot; the number which refers
to initiates and to prophets.
The prophets are solitaries, for it is their fate that none
should ever hear them.
They see differently from others ; they forefeel misfortunes.
So, people imprison them and kill them, or mock them, repulse
them as if they were lepers, and leave them to die of hunger.
Then, when the predictions come true, they say, “It is
these people who have brought us misfortune.”
Now, as is always the case on the eve of great disasters,1
our streets are full of prophets.
I have met some of them in the prisons, I have seen others
who were dying forgotten in garrets.
The whole great city has seen one of them whose silent
1 This is the true clairvoyant Levi. The Levi who prophesied Universal
Empire for Napoleon III was either the Magus trying to use him as a tool, or a
Micaiah unadjured.—O. M.
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