The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

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. 40