The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES “What career shall we choose for our son?” have said many stupid parents; “he is mentally and bodily weak, and he is without a spark of courage :—we will make a priest of him, so that he may ‘live by the altar.’” They have not understood that the altar is not a manger for slothful animals. Look at the unworthy priests, contemplate these pretended servants of the altar! What do they say to your heart, these obese or cadaverous men with the lack-lustre eyes, and pinched or gaping mouths ?? Hear them talk: what does it teach you, their disagreeable and monotonous noise? They pray as they sleep, and they sacrifice as they eat. They are machines full of bread, meat and wine, and of senseless words. And when they plume themselves, like the oyster in the sun, on being without thought and without love, one says that they have peace of soul! They have the peace of the brute. For man, that of the tomb is better: these are the priests of folly and ignorance, these are the ministers of Antichrist. The true priest of Christ is a man who lives, suffers, loves and fights for justice. He does not dispute, he does not reprove; he sends out pardon, intelligence and love. The true Christian is a stranger to the sectarian spirit; he is all things to all men, and looks on all men as the children of a common father, who means to save them all. The whole cult has for him only a sense of sweetness and of 1 Actual priests. Levi’s ideal priest, of whom ‘bad’ is an impossible epithet, is not to be looked for in the Church. He is in that ‘Church’ which is also Ark, Rose, Font, Altar, Cup, and the rest. He is that Word of Truth which is ‘established’ by two witnesses.—O. M. 39