136
Each practice
is in itself
a demon
which
must
be destroyed;
but
to be
destroyed
it must first be evoked.
Shame upon
that Master
who shirks
any one of these practices,
how-
ever distasteful
or useless it may be to him !
For
in the detailed know-
ledge of
it,
which
experience
alone can give him, may lie his opportunity
for crucial
assistance
to
a
pupil.
However dull the drudgery,
it
should
be undergone.
If
it
were
possible
to
regret
anything
in life, which
is
fortunately
not the case,
it
would
be the hours wasted in fruitful
practices
which
might
have been more profitably
employed
on
sterile
ones
:
for
NEMO
^
in tending
his garden seeketh not to single out the flower
that
shall be NEMO after him.
And we are not told that NEMO
might have
used other things than those which he actually
does use;
it
seems possible
that
if
he had not the acid or the knife,
or the fire, or the oil, he might
miss tending
just
that one flower
which
was to be NEMO
after him!
1
NEMO
is
the Master
of the Temple,
whose task
it
is
to develop
the beginner.
See Liber CDXVIII, Aethyr XIII.