III. 
  
THE TEMPLE OF TRUTH 
  
  
THE INITIATION. 
  
I, Khaled Khan, beheld that Vision and received this Voice upon 
the Holy Hill of Sidi Bou Said, in the country now called Tunisia, but 
from of old sacred with many sanctities. 
Thus far it is permitted me to speak freely of that which came to 
me in my long search for the True Wisdom; but to me in my long 
search for the True Wisdom; but to declare the Mode of mine 
Initiation, whereby I gained ingress to the Place called the Temple of 
Truth (but by some Dar-el-Jalal) it is forbidden. Nor may I disclose in 
what land that House is to be found, more openly than to say: It is cut 
from the living rock of the middle point of the summit of an high 
mountain apart, the range Jebel-el-Asharah. 
Now being brought after many days into a Place where Light 
was, being shed through a carven screen of topaz, graved with a Rose 
of nine-and-forty petals on a Greek Cross, from the Sun, and that also 
at midnight, I found myself in the presence of a certain aged man (for 
it was written that His days should be an hundred and twenty years) 
who stood before a table of seven sides, whereon were fire, and 
incense in a thurible, and bread. Of these did he bid me partake; and 
they being consumed, he took a phial of golden oil from their midst, 
and anointed mine eyes, and mine ears, and my lips. 
With that I was aware of the image of a God, severe and noble 
of aspect, his spirit utterly calm, in his right hand a sickle and in his 
left an hourglass. And as I looked upon him, he reversed his wrist, for 
the last grain of sand was fallen through. 
Then did my Instructor point with a little wand to a great chart 
not wholly filled, and there came the shadow of a man's hand, and 
drew the image of a Lion at the end of the writing. 
Above this parchment, which was partly furled, was a square 
tablet of white marble, on which, inlaid in gold, I read these characters 
about the Image of an Eye within a radiant Triangle.