The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE EQUINOX take a much more definite form than an abstract one. In the former case when Sappho has once appeared, except for a break here and there, the vision is rational enough—if we can use so bastard a term to express ourselves in; not so the latter, which is particularly vague. In considering these visions and future ones, it must be remembered that though we now insist on a continuous chain of ideas as proof of their validity, and equally so with such as we may deal with later on, we at present find, above all else, that simplicity is our most certain guide; for we are as yet solely dealing with the visions of a student, who, as such, like a school-boy, is expected to work out all his visions in full as if they were mathematical problems. The master may use algebraical and logarithmic short cuts, if he likes, in the solu- tion of his intricate problems, and we shall also find many of these masterly rights of way are quite as baffling, I am afraid, as the curious mistaken byways of the beginner. Further, it must ever be borne in mind that the deeper we dive into the occult sciences, although the simpler our language often becomes, the less we find our ability to express ourselves in mere words and ordinary phrases ; from complex terms we sink to simple paradoxes, and from philosophic and scientific symbols we rise into a land of purely linguistic hieroglyphics —and thence silence. The task of consciously classifying and interpreting the phenomena in the Spirit Vision (in contradistinction to optical vision) is one of the chief duties undertaken by the Adeptus Minor, that is to say, of an individual who has passed through the grade of 5°=6°. P. had not as yet accomplished this. And in another part of the manuscript already referred to it is 320