HOW TO RECOGNIZE MASTERS 
331 
matters, and she has never done any work in her life, even of 
the needlework order. I had seen her once before since my 
escape from America, and she said she had something to 
show me, but I took no particular notice, and she did not 
insist. My object in calling on this second occasion was 
multiple: I wanted to see the man with whom she is living, 
who has not yet returned from Russia; I wanted to make love 
to her; and I wanted to smoke a few pipes of opium with her, 
she being a devotee of that great and terrible God. 
Consider now: the Work whereby I am a Magus began in 
Cairo 
(1904) 
with the discovery 
of the Stele of 
Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, in which the principal object is the Body 
of our Lady Nuit. It is reproduced in colours in The Equinox, 
Vol. I, No.6. Jane Cheron has a copy of this book. On 
Friday afternoon, 
then, I was in her apartment. I had 
attained none of my objectives in calling on her, and was 
a bout to depart. 
She detained me to show me this 
"something." She went and took a folded cloth from a 
drawer. "Shut your eyes," she said. 
When I opened them they saw a cloth four feet or more in 
length, on which was a magnificent copy, mostly in applique 
silk, of the Stele. She then told me that in February 1917, 
she and her young man had gone to the South of France to 
get cured of the opium habit. In such cases insomnia is 
frequent. One night, however, he had gone to sleep, and on 
waking in the morning found that she, wakeful, had drawn a 
copy of the Stele on a great sheet of paper . 
It is very remarkable that so large a sheet of paper should 
have been at hand; also that they should have taken that 
special book on such a journey; but still more that she should 
have chosen that picture, nay that she, who had never done 
anything of the sort before, should have done it at all. More 
yet, that she should have spent three months in making a 
permanent thing of it. Most of all, that she should have 
shown it to me at the very moment when I was awaiting an 
'unmistakable' sign. 
For observe, how closely the Words of my Entry of