EPISTO LA ULTIMA 
503 
II 
The second part of this letter, which appears to be 
expanding into a sort of essay, will be devoted to Yoga. You 
will have noticed that the grade of Mas-ter of the Temple is 
itself intimately associated with Yoga. It is when one reaches 
this plane that the apparently contradictory forms of the 
Great Work, Magick and Yoga, begin to converge, though 
even earlier in the course of the work it must have been 
noticed that achievements in Yoga have been of great 
assistance to magical operations , and that many of the mental 
states necessary to the development of the Magician are 
identical with those attained in the course of the strictly 
technical Yogic operations. 
The literature necessary to the study of Magick is 
somewhat variegated; there are quite a number of classics on 
the subject and though it would be easy enough for me to 
draw up a list of not more than half-a-dozen which I consider 
really essential, there may be as many as an hundred which in 
the more or less subsidiary forms are useful to the 
magICian. With Yoga the case is very different indeed. The 
literature on the subject is so enormous and contains so vast a 
number of more or less secret documents which circulate 
from hand to hand , that I believe that the best advice I can 
give anyone is to cut one's cloth very sparingly if one is to 
make a fitting suit. I do not think I am going too far if I say 
that Part I of Book 4 and my Eight Lectures on Yoga form 
an absolutely sufficient guide to the useful practise of the 
subject ; anything else is almost certain to operate as a 
distraction . 
Swami 
Vivekananda 
summarised Yoga under four 
headings, and I do not think that one can improve on that 
classification. His four are: Gnana, Raja, Bhakta and Hatha, 
and comprise all divisions that it is desirable to make. As 
soon as one begins to add such sections as Mantra Yoga, you 
are adding to without enriching the classification, and once 
you begin where are you to stop? But I honestly believe that